Preview: Lair.

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Baker

2[H]4U
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Jan 12, 2003
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Yesterday I stopped by BestBuy to pick up MotorStorm for my PS3.

Before getting MS in my hands, I stopped by the PS3 kiosk to see what content they had on their PS3. I held down the PSHome button to exit out of their demo and went to their "Movie/Trailer" section to find a trailer of Lair. :eek:

Other than "youtube" bits, I hadn't seen a Lair trailer run on the PS3 on a HDTV (non are available via PS Store) I will have to say that I think the majority of the people around the kiosk hadn't seen the trailer either, cause it had formed a good size crowd. (even the people playing GH2 came over to check it out)

Stoked at what I just saw, and coming back to work today, I hopped over to IGN to see if they had any new information about it... and they do... Some GOOD information :)


Full Article Here (edit: old link went to page 3 not page 1 :p )

*cliffnotes*

One of the biggest lingering questions about Lair right now is its current status and expected release date, so we'll get that right out of the way. The version we saw was an alpha build, but it sounds like the game is pretty close to making it to beta. Factor 5 says that its development process makes for a quick progression from the "first alpha" to the final finished form, and that we can expect to see Lair on store shelves this July. Indeed, dragon battles on our PlayStation 3s are a mere three months away.

Not only will you be able to buy the game in July, but Factor 5 also confirmed that there will be a downloadable PlayStation Network demo at some point.

Although you won't actually be able to take out a mace and jump into unarmed battle, you will be able to land your dragon and cause havoc while on the ground. Once you've touched down, you're able to ram through soldiers and other beasts, unleash spreads of fire and more. Pressing the Triangle button orders your dragon to eat a hapless and unfortunate soldier, giving it back a bit of health. One of the major design elements that the studio wanted to get across as well is that the dragons aren't simply planes but creatures that are capable of waging physical combat and so forth, and to this end it looks like the studio has accomplished its goal.

Though you'll begin by simply flying around and killing dragons and peons as you'd expect, you'll eventually learn how to pick up and throw creatures (like horses), grab onto objects and shake them loose to cause structural damage to the environment, earn advanced physical attacks and more.

As for other whiz-bang technology goodness, Factor 5 confirms that the game will run at a rock-solid 30fps at both 720p and 1080p. The game indeed ran quite well when we played it, with nary a hitch in framerate to be found. This is rather impressive as levels can be as large as 32x32km in size, which is allowed by Factor 5's use of streaming mesh technology, an offshoot of level of detail models.

Lair also makes use of a fluid dynamics system for its impressive water technology, which looks fantastic even up close. This means that boats and objects are actually buoyant and float as they naturally would. Explosions cause waves in the water, which in turn rocks anything that the waves come across.

One of the cool things about the ground armies is that the game plays out these battles in something of an internal RTS engine. The two armies fight independently of your control and the outcome isn't set in stone, so sometimes unintended things will happen. This means that you won't always know whether or not your army will be able to hold off the enemy and you'll have to swoop down and take out a few soldiers of your own to sway the battle back in your favor.
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CAN'T FREAKEN WAIT!!!! :D
 
Baker said:
"Extremely unimpressive" :rolleyes: Are you unimpressed this isn't coming to your X360? I would be unimpressed too...
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Of course, it can't just be that he doesn't like the look of it.

I don't like the look of it either, I think it looks like it would be interesting for about 10 mins and I don't rate the graphics. I don't have a PS3, 360 or Wii... so I take it I don't like it because it's not coming to PC?

:rolleyes:
 
graphically looks decent, but gameplay wise it looks like dynasty warriors with dragons flying in it. Attacking hordes of similar foot soldiers over and over. I hope there's more to this game than some of the videos have shown in the last few days.
 
Psychotext said:
Of course, it can't just be that he doesn't like the look of it.

I don't like the look of it either, I think it looks like it would be interesting for about 10 mins and I don't rate the graphics. I don't have a PS3, 360 or Wii... so I take it I don't like it because it's not coming to PC?

:rolleyes:
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Look at his profile and his other posts. You might find someone that only owns a X360 and saying that PS3 has no AAA's might say something like "Extremely unimpressive".

I think the game looks awsome.... the last game I played that you could mount on a dragon and fly around was Draken: Order of the Flame....compared to that, Lair looks freaken awsome.

If your not into these types of games then what brought you into this thread? :rolleyes:
 
At least he didn't complain that the graphics are too 'brown'. :rolleyes:
 
I can't wait for this game too. Seems super impressive about the scale of the game. This is a game I'm hoping does suck (hyping myself up too much)
 
Baker said:
"Extremely unimpressive" :rolleyes: Are you unimpressed this isn't coming to your X360? I would be unimpressed too...
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All the textures look really bad to me, so sue me.

Maybe I'm missing something but seriously doesn't look like it deserves all the hype it gets on visuals.
 
the alpha video from IGN looked pretty bad, however that doesnt mean its how the final presentation will be. Ill wait for the final game.
 
Did you just look at screenshots or did you watch the HD videos available on www.gametrailers.com?

Go watch the videos if you haven't.

I agree that the screenshots do look fairly unimpressive but the videos look great.

This game looks like it's going to be really fun. Flying around with the Sixaxis controls and then using the buttons and stuff to fight other dragons in mid-air or swoop down to the soldiers and breathe fire at them... :D

Lots of physics involved to make use of the Cell too.
 
VoodooChi|d said:
Did you just look at screenshots or did you watch the HD videos available on www.gametrailers.com?

Go watch the videos if you haven't.

I agree that the screenshots do look fairly unimpressive but the videos look great.

This game looks like it's going to be really fun. Flying around with the Sixaxis controls and then using the buttons and stuff to fight other dragons in mid-air or swoop down to the soldiers and breathe fire at them... :D

Lots of physics involved to make use of the Cell too.
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I agree, this is one of the *few* PS3 titles I'm actually interested in. I agree that from the trailers gameplay *could* get boring fast if it's too repetitive (swooping/diving/attacking looks awesome, but how long will it remain fun?), but really we have to wait until final is available before making a judgment. Some variation in the gameplay, a good story, etc could really elp to make this something great.

It'll be one of the budget titles I pick up when I buy my PS3 slim in 2010 :p
 
Not to mention one known quest to kill 2,000 soldiers in one "world/map". Picking up cows/other creatures to drop on soldiers, destroying villages... Sounds like fun in my book :D
 
Baker said:
Not to mention one known quest to kill 2,000 soldiers in one "world/map". Picking up cows/other creatures to drop on soldiers, destroying villages... Sounds like fun in my book :D
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Those are the things I want: how many different kinds of shit can I pick up and fling into a crowd of soldiers? :D The more variety the better, especially if the reactions are different (eg, some things that hit and roll, others that hit and explode, etc). The possibilities are there, if the devs have actually done their jobs well!
 
:D
DragonMasterAlex said:
Those are the things I want: how many different kinds of shit can I pick up and fling into a crowd of soldiers? :D The more variety the better, especially if the reactions are different (eg, some things that hit and roll, others that hit and explode, etc). The possibilities are there, if the devs have actually done their jobs well!
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After just buying full version of MotorStorm, I think this can be done :)

To bad theres no MP... how fun would it be to kill your friend with a dead cow.... *splat*
 
Lair is a whole bag of confusion. Some screens and videos look simply amazing as hell. Then you see a video with grass that looks like paper. Such a mind screw!

lairwat.gif


Looks nice and this game has an epic scale to it.
 
I like how a lot of the levels look very different even though it's all "medieval"...

If you check out the videos there are some night-time levels in the mountains with lightning and rain going on all around you, and some games are in the day over water. Some are flying through towns with castles and bridges and some are in open fields. Definitely looks like they have mixed it up enough to make it interesting.

I hadn't heard about that cow thing but that sounds sweet too...
 
The new HD videos that Gamespot and IGN just put up look absolutely stunning. This game will be fantastic once it's out. The part that stood out the most to me was when the character jumped off his dragon to fight on top of another, all during gameplay.
 
Technoob said:
graphically looks decent, but gameplay wise it looks like dynasty warriors with dragons flying in it. Attacking hordes of similar foot soldiers over and over. I hope there's more to this game than some of the videos have shown in the last few days.
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This is my impressions, too. Reminds me of when I was hyped for N3. Mass amounts of enemies in huge battles with special abilities and great graphics seemed great on paper, but was quickly washed away by the lack of gameplay. It was a complete letdown and I hope for a better fate for Lair.
 
Yeah, ninety nine nights is another one that this will, I hope, not be comparable to. It sure looks like somewhat similar gameplay in some ways though.
 
Aerobahn said:
Lair is a whole bag of confusion. Some screens and videos look simply amazing as hell. Then you see a video with grass that looks like paper. Such a mind screw!

lairwat.gif


Looks nice and this game has an epic scale to it.
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That gif looks good but when I downloaded the video from GT it was a black hole of darkness and I can't see anything. I had to turn brightness up from 15 to 85 just to be able to see and then everything was just so washed out it was horrible.
 
I'm on my crappy Dell laptop monitor which has bad contrast levels and it looked fine so I'm not sure why yours would look like that.
 
VoodooChi|d said:
I'm on my crappy Dell laptop monitor which has bad contrast levels and it looked fine so I'm not sure why yours would look like that.
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I tried .mov, much better but no where near the gif. Gamespot's HD video is probably better than the compressed GTHD stuff.
 
MrBojangels said:
I tried .mov, much better but no where near the gif. Gamespot's HD video is probably better than the compressed GTHD stuff.
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Did you check out the video on IGN's page that I linked to with the article?

Water looks amazing, and the quick clip of the dragon walking on knights, blowing fire on them and such... Looks like Dragon meets GTA :eek:
 
$50 says it gets boring fast. Great graphics though, but even they get repetitive. Every fireball looks the same, every ship blows up the same, every "splash" looks the same, etc.
 
Focker said:
$50 says it gets boring fast. Great graphics though, but even they get repetitive. Every fireball looks the same, every ship blows up the same, every "splash" looks the same, etc.
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one could say the same about Gears of War but that it's not boring.

Duck, shoot, same enemy over and over. Duck shoot, duck. shoot. Pretty world though. The interview with the developer on IGN does make it sound like they worked extremely hard to make sure quests were always challenging the player.
 
Focker said:
$50 says it gets boring fast. Great graphics though, but even they get repetitive. Every fireball looks the same, every ship blows up the same, every "splash" looks the same, etc.
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The same can be said about other flight action games like Ace Combat and After Burner.
 
Im not that impressed by what I have seen yet, but I hope its cool. Right now it doesnt do much for me, but ill reserve judgement after judgement has been officially passed.
 
The game looks like a really cool concept. I hope its as flexible and fun as it could be. This is one of the few PS3 titles that I think will make it a decent system for me to buy in a year or two when the library is bigger and the prices is (hopefully) lower.
 
I feel like anything that has to do with the PS3, automatically has to be bad.

And I say this not because of this thread, but multi-threads.

I don't understand how this works, nor will I ever...

But seems like if a Wii owner find something to talk about games, hardware, etc, that are related to the Wii and creates a thread, that thread for the most part always stays on topic or at least doesnt stray to far from the original topic.

If a X360 owner finds something to talk about.. upcoming games, hardware, etc... for the most part, it stays a X360 thread and people discuss the topic on hand.

The second a PS3 owner posts a thread related to PS3 content or hardware, it becomes target for flame wars, format wars or people that just hate on it because its associated with PS3.

Its sad really. I can't even get hyped up about a game that has potential to be an awesome because it seems like theres so many X360 fans that can't and won't believe that anything good will come out of something that isn't an X360.


Anyways, I think Lair looks awesome. Every game that I've purchased and played that runs in 1080p looks incredible on my HDTV... I'm sure this one will too... specially in action. If the game sucks that bad, I can always craigslist it. :D
 
Just to prove my point....

Look at Fockers public profile and posts.

You will see that he posts (for consoles) in Wii and X360 threads.

He even said this..

Originally Posted by Focker
I personally think it'd be a good thing for a lot of gamers (360/wii owners admittedly) if the PS3 failed. It'd mean more devolopers would make games for the 360/wii which means more games I can get without having to buy the pricey PS3. (Which I would like to have one, but would rather not shell out the $$ just yet)
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Its not just him, but theres others... that anytime content that is related to a PS3... "it has to be bad or fail"
 
Baker said:
I feel like anything that has to do with the PS3, automatically has to be bad.

And I say this not because of this thread, but multi-threads.

I don't understand how this works, nor will I ever...

But seems like if a Wii owner find something to talk about games, hardware, etc, that are related to the Wii and creates a thread, that thread for the most part always stays on topic or at least doesnt stray to far from the original topic.

If a X360 owner finds something to talk about.. upcoming games, hardware, etc... for the most part, it stays a X360 thread and people discuss the topic on hand.

The second a PS3 owner posts a thread related to PS3 content or hardware, it becomes target for flame wars, format wars or people that just hate on it because its associated with PS3.

Its sad really. I can't even get hyped up about a game that has potential to be an awesome because it seems like theres so many X360 fans that can't and won't believe that anything good will come out of something that isn't an X360.


Anyways, I think Lair looks awesome. Every game that I've purchased and played that runs in 1080p looks incredible on my HDTV... I'm sure this one will too... specially in action. If the game sucks that bad, I can always craigslist it. :D
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Dude, you posted your opinion, and others did the same. Are you that insecure about your own excitement for something that you can't tolerate that someone might differ in their opinion? You said it yourself:

" I can't even get hyped up about a game that has potential to be an awesome because it seems like theres so many X360 fans that can't and won't believe that anything good will come out of something that isn't an X360. "

You can't get hyped because you're afraid that someone might not agree with you? Seems like you have the issues, not the people disagreeing with you over whether an unreleased game might be good. Crying about what some random guy says in this or other threads won't help you "get hyped" about a game.
 
I think it looks amazing... if gameplay is actually fun that game will be sweet (don't have a ps3 though :) )
 
Baker said:
Just to prove my point....

Look at Fockers public profile and posts.

You will see that he posts (for consoles) in Wii and X360 threads.

He even said this..



Its not just him, but theres others... that anytime content that is related to a PS3... "it has to be bad or fail"
Click to expand...

You do realize that what he said is entirely true for a lot of us right? That right now the PS3 is getting whooped in terms of sales, and that way more people own Wii's and 360's than own PS3's? So with that out of the way it would be better for a lot of us if the PS3 bombed because than any games being developed for it would have to jump ship to one of the platforms more of us have, and any new games would have to be developed for one of the two more popular systems, which would end up meaning more games for the majority of us right?

You see the logic in such a statement right?
 
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