[2.21] is working on a new LBA

[Reek]

Originally Posted by CiB

Story is only part of the issue- it's perception. You can say "oh the story is simple" or "it doesn't really matter" or "we've put an intro cutscene in that tells you everything you need to know", but people who aren't already fans will still think of the game as "the threequel to the duology I didn't play".

But, going with your suggestion of not referring to the previous games at all, would you really want that? If 2.21 started putting out previews of "Arthurs Little Big Adventure" and it's obviously a sequel to the previous games but they don't mention that, wouldn't you think "this is weird." and wonder why people didn't want to know about the previous games? Is it because they're not making a game they think fans of the original would like? (That is, wouldn't it look like we, as LBA fans, are not getting the LBA 3 we want)

The marketting for an LBA3 (regardless of what it's called) will always have to walk an extremely fine line between "this is a sequel to the originals and we're respecting that legacy" (otherwise folks like you and I will be wary of it) and "it's a great starting point for people who have never played the games before" (otherwise it's not getting new players). Now I'm not saying that's impossible- there are cases where this has worked in the past. But it is really, really hard. Marketting a game successfully under those conditions (especially when the originals are fairly obscure games) is the marketting equivalent of playing Dark Souls on a dance mat while suspended upside down from a hang glider. It's likely to go very, very wrong unless the people doing it are real experts.

My guy, most people played lba2 before playing lba1. It does not matter. They could make lba3 and pitch it as a reboot, who's going to check, the continuity police?

Just start the game with a recap, the same way lba2 did, and that's it.

[SpaceGuitarist]

Originally Posted by Reek

As sgk said, you just don't call it "lba 3". How many people even know that nier: automata is technically a sequel? Or that the game it's a sequel to is itself a sequel and a spinoff of something else? Who gives a shit?

Enough with this excuse already. I've never heard, not once in the history of gaming, of making a remake just to give legitimacy to a sequel. It's never been done, it's nonsense. People who want to make sequels just make sequels.

^ Yeah, this.

Originally Posted by Reek

who's going to check, the continuity police?

[Quetch]

Did I mention my first ever introduction to LBA was LBA 2, which I enjoyed more than anything, then when I played LBA 1 I thought it's really nasty? Still to this day I don't really feel like replaying LBA 1 at all, while I keep installing LBA 2 on every "new" old PC I'm getting my hands one And they're just 3 years apart (1994 vs. 1997).

I find it hard to imagine that a game released in 2025 won't be played by today's generation just because they've missed 2 horribly looking (by their standards) MS-DOS games from 30 years ago which featured a 640x480 resolution with DirectX 3.0 support. And even if they'll wish to check what those are about, they can just search a bit of footage on YouTube, see some cutscenes, see some gameplay, get the idea and move on.

[SpaceGuitarist]

Right?
People will first check if it looks good or not, if it does, then if the game looks interesting (gameplay/story wise), see if there are favourable positive reviews and that is it. Noone gives a crap about whether it's a sequel/prequel/spiritual successor or whatnot.

[Polaris]

The collective blood pressure in this thread is over 9000
I mean I get that they are toying around with something that defined our childhood, but honestly, I'm happy to see LBA-related stuff, even if what I get to witness is shaping up to be an epic failure.

[Quetch]

Well, on the flipside of things, if we look at our reactions in all honesty, we should chill down quite a bit and show some gratitude, since we've been moaning and complaining for the past 25 years 'cause nothing was happening at all and it seemed as it would never happen again, ever... and now that we finally have something, we're going ape$#!t over ourselves with disatisfaction because of this and that... So yeah... I think we need to cool it down a tad, as in the end it's their right to do whatever they want to the game, it's theirs. Sure, we can like it or not and we can also say that it's our game, not theirs, but at the end of the day... they also have the right to create what their hearts desire, not just us.

[CUvox]

Originally Posted by Quetch

Sure, we can like it or not and we can also say that it's our game, not theirs, but at the end of the day... they also have the right to create what their hearts desire, not just us.

our game @ Adeline Software International
their game @ 2.21

[Reek]

Originally Posted by Quetch

Well, on the flipside of things, if we look at our reactions in all honesty, we should chill down quite a bit and show some gratitude, since we've been moaning and complaining for the past 25 years 'cause nothing was happening at all and it seemed as it would never happen again, ever... and now that we finally have something, we're going ape$#!t over ourselves with disatisfaction because of this and that... So yeah... I think we need to cool it down a tad, as in the end it's their right to do whatever they want to the game, it's theirs. Sure, we can like it or not and we can also say that it's our game, not theirs, but at the end of the day... they also have the right to create what their hearts desire, not just us.

you haven't noticed yet that they clearly aren't been honest with us so far?

[Polaris]

They're a firm in a capitalist world, of course they're not honest. They're just not very good at hiding it

[Quetch]

Originally Posted by Reek

you haven't noticed yet that they clearly aren't been honest with us so far?

I just wanted to make that disclaimer, since most of the posts here were with me spitting hateful thoughts about all the things I don't like about what they're doing, so I said... enough with the poison, let things be the way they are. We've seen that our feedback will likely get discarded anyway, so why beat the drums instead of enjoying whatever we'll end up getting? Just think of it as a read-only process, where u can only watch as an observer, being completely unable to shift things in any direction as far as the decisions they'll take. That's why I said, it's ultimately their right and it's under their control, so why bother and stress about it? It's a bit of an open letter to myself and my own thoughts as well

[bloodhound]

Originally Posted by Reek

you haven't noticed yet that they clearly aren't been honest with us so far?

I think it's bullshit to think that they from the beginning had their great mischievous time plan, like:
Beginning: Announce we're doing LBA3
3 months later: Announce that oh, we can't do LBA3, so we have to make a reboot (pay attention to act surprised)
1 year later: Announce that oh, we can't do the reboot, so we have to make a remaster
2 years later: Announce that oh, we can't do the remaster, so we just do a flappy bird, where we replace the images with LBA images (pay attention to be extra-surprised, and quickly hide in Venezuela with all my investor millions)

I mean, it's obviously chaotic, but I don't see any indication that they don't love LBA and that they wouldn't like to in the end create a really full-fleshed LBA game.

[CUvox]

Originally Posted by Polaris

The collective blood pressure in this thread is over 9000

Normal blood pressure is 11000/16000 pascals!

[Reek]

Originally Posted by bloodhound

I think it's bullshit to think that they from the beginning had their great mischievous time plan, like:
Beginning: Announce we're doing LBA3
3 months later: Announce that oh, we can't do LBA3, so we have to make a reboot (pay attention to act surprised)
1 year later: Announce that oh, we can't do the reboot, so we have to make a remaster
2 years later: Announce that oh, we can't do the remaster, so we just do a flappy bird, where we replace the images with LBA images (pay attention to be extra-surprised, and quickly hide in Venezuela with all my investor millions)

I mean, it's obviously chaotic, but I don't see any indication that they don't love LBA and that they wouldn't like to in the end create a really full-fleshed LBA game.

I didn't say they don't love LBA. I said they're not being honest.


You really think they're going to remake two games and then do another remake of the same games? Does that make sense to you?
Like I said in a previous post, they said they'll be working on these remasters (remakes) for the next year, while they wait to find a publisher. How do they know they won't find a publisher next month?


The answer: because they're not looking. They decided to do the remasters instead of the reboot, but they're not telling us yet. Around a year from now they'll tell us that they're very sorry but they couldn't find a publisher despite their best efforts, so here's a remaster.

[bloodhound]

They called the remaster a passion project. That sounds to me like Paulo is doing it in his free time, so that it doesn't take any time away from making the reboot at all. Of course we could both equally be wrong. I guess we'll have to see what really happens a year from now

Originally Posted by CUvox

Normal blood pressure is 11000/16000 pascals!

Hahaha, nice!

[Polaris]

Originally Posted by CUvox

Normal blood pressure is 11000/16000 pascals!

Ah, I had no idea...

As a YouTuber I like once said "While it's entertaining to see stars fall, it's even more to understand why they fell."
So we're in for some interesting LBA related stuff I think.

It could be worse, they could take the Rayman route and release Little Big Lumping Larvae, then make the larvae into their own series.

[SpaceGuitarist]

Originally Posted by Reek

They decided to do the remasters instead of the reboot, but they're not telling us yet. Around a year from now they'll tell us that they're very sorry but they couldn't find a publisher despite their best efforts, so here's a remaster.

woaaaaaah - you're right... I feel truth in this... damn!!

[elmuerte]

Originally Posted by Quetch

Yep, exactly. Not only is it MUCH bigger, but there's a lot of redundancy. You can clearly see they kind of copy + pasted most of the .HQR resources in and out of 2 parent-child folders. That's so strange. Why not just use them once and do a simple path redirect? It's like a supper sloppy in-dev release where they just had 2 repositories partially overlapping and just decided to ship them like that and not bother with tidying things up anymore. It's just like releasing something with Debug symbols on, only worse in my opinion.

Much bigger? It's only 700MiB or something. It has the "new" windows version, and the original dotEMU version using dosbox.

[Polaris]

That's still more than the DOSBox + LBAWin version. Even when adding the CD...