BASS2 announced

[remixor]

Well, Revolution is planning on releasing Beneath a Steel Sky 2 late this year.  If they can refine their BS3 engine a bit and nail down some solid narrative, it should turn our really well.  I have a lot of faith in this company, more than in any other current commercial adventure developer (not that there are really that many).  For me, this is going towards filling the Sam and Max-less void.

EDIT: link - http://www.adventuregamers.com/newsitem.php?id=480

[m0ds]

Sweet! Knew this'd happen! I'm sure it'll be a great game, tho in a Vel-istic way; "I probably won't play it"

[TheDude]

This is good news for adventure games at least. I hope they don't use the BS3 engine since the game's only in pre-production and by the time it's released it won't look too great, the BS3 doesn't even look that great now.

[LordHart]

Cool. I actually only started playing the original before I came to TAFE today, and it seems pretty good. So, a sequel might be good.

[BOYD1981]

i really hope they don't make it 3D but instead get Dave Gibbons back to do some hi-res backgrounds (well, i suppose they could be made 3D with the right kind of tools but meh)...
there was talk of a BASS2 shortly after BASS was completed, it might have worked back then, but now revolution will have to work pretty damn hard to make a game that lives up to the original, i think a prequal might work better than a sequal, that way they don't end up rubbishing the original's storyline

[m0ds]

I can't remember the writers name, though I do remember Charles Cecil saying that he wouldn't make a BASS2 unless it was written by the same chap. So thats all good!

[MrColossal]

um, I highly highly doubt it's not going to be 3d...

I played BASS and it was really pretty crap. the whole "Wow characters move around and stuff!" wasn't really all that amazing or important to the game at all. The story and a large portion of the puzzles existed on seperate planes and I didn't know what to do or why I was doing it for a large portion of the game. The animation looked good but I could care less about the main character or Joey and blah blah blah

whatever, I hope they can make a better game this time around I hope they use the world they created to their advantage with 3d. The environment was interesting and the multilevels and all the clutter, I hope it doesn't disappear in this game [if they make it set in The Gap I'm gonna explode some faces]

[m0ds]

When did you play BASS eric? Cos when it first came out in 94, it was pretty "hi-tech". Smooth animation and all that.

LucasArts used similar animation a year later in The Dig and Full Throttle, so the original BASS was considered "before its time".

I value it as a good adventure game. But I'm not really into cyber-punk games, so the story didn't really grip me as you say. The locations in the original felt too confined and not enough of them, they all seemed to be within this one little area of a huge metropolis.

But yeah. As long as BASS 2 has an original storyline, perhaps even original characters and doesn't try and follow on from the original game - it should do well.

[sedriss]

Omg omg omg! There is a god!
Bass is the best adventure game EVER!

And i agree with boyd.
For the love of GOD, let it be 2d and let gibbons design it.

Cant wait for this one!

[Domino]

Revolution will probably build up a lot of hype about BASS2, and then decide to cancel it at the last second.

Then they will just wait for all the online petitions to roll in, just to see how much people really want it.

[Kairus]

Do you really think there's any chance for it to be 2D? Everything comes in 3D these days. I think if adventure games come back, they would just never be the same they were.
I'm looking forward to see this BASS2 but I don't think I could probably even handle the system requirements. I didn't play BS3, I heard it was good but didn't read reviews or something... Was it point and click or a more residentevilish style?

[MrColossal]

i'm not saying it wasn't hi-tech for it's time and i'm not saying anything against it's technology, i'm says that the tech did nothing to enhance the game. people walked about and you could follow them from room to room for...? Nothing... There was no point

only what, once did it matter where a guy was in the scenes in relation to you?

i agree on the constrained feeling [huge city and there are 2 apartments i can visit] but what i hope is that the 3d will open up the game world much more. i really want to be able to run and jump and climb through all those pipes and such, not just walk up to a random old man sitting on a stool and push some buttons.

[auhsor]

BASS was a very cool game. I only got to play it all and finish it a year ago (i downloaded a copy a few months before it was officially released as freeware). We had a demo of it when I was little and I always did want to play the whole game.

And so yeah, the news of a sequal is very cool. That is if they do it right.

[Lazy Z]

I think this is good news, while it does seem a bit out of the blue. I've actually never played the first BASS for more than 15 minutes, I've downloaded a copy ever since it was released as freeware, but it's just sitting there in my hd.  Don't ask why I haven't played it, I dunno.

Still, I'm kinda looking forward to this, it's nice to have a "big name" game to look forward to, now that Sam & Max 2 was cancelled.

[AGA]

Eric: the walking from room to room thing you're talking about was in Lure of the Temptress, Revolution's first game. It was called Virtual Theatre. I'm pretty sure they didn't use it in BASS...

[Nellie]

Virtual Theatre was used in BASS, but to a lesser (and more realistic, IMO) extent.

The point of Virtual Theatre had very little to do with the gameplay, I think.  It was just to make the characters in the gameworld act more realistically, rather than have everybody stand in exactly the same spot for the entire chapter/game, as happens in pretty much every other adventure game in existence.

I'm sort of hoping that at some point Revolution will pick up the concept of Virtual Theatre again and make it more sophisticated.  The movement and actions of the NPCs in The Last Express really, really breathed life into that gameworld, and it bothers me that no other designers are looking at this avenue of innovation.

[Chicky]

SWEET!

never completed Bass, so i'll have to do that first. I hope BASS2 is not as easy as BS3 tho, i completeed about 20% of that at a mates house

-OSC

[Ali]

I might be going against the flow but I really think this game should be in 3D and I remember thinking they should make a 3D sequel when I played the original.

The style of BASS would really lend itself to the cinematic camera movement that a 3D game would facilitate. It could really add to the atmosphere. I'm really looking forward to this game.

P.S. Blade Runner also used a system similar to Virtual Theatre which I thought worked really well. And less annoyingly than Lure. And in Blade Runner your jester friend doesn't get stuck in a bug and refuse to move. Then you have to start all over again...

[GarageGothic]

I'm sort of hoping that at some point Revolution will pick up the concept of Virtual Theatre again and make it more sophisticated.  The movement and actions of the NPCs in The Last Express really, really breathed life into that gameworld, and it bothers me that no other designers are looking at this avenue of innovation.

I'd really like to see somebody doing a Laura Bow-like detective game in 3D, without the time-blocks but with characters constantly moving around having conversations in real time. It would be like those experimental plays where the actors are all over the plays and you the audience decides who to follow. Some first person shooters like Deus Ex have had this, but most of the conversations would be triggered by player proximity. I'd like to see something where there was constantly something going on whether the player was there or not. It would also allow for some cool situations like hiding tape recorders or listening to conversations from a distance (Far Cry style). Of course it would need some kind of AI that determined if the player was too close and the characters would talk about something else. And I see a lot of timing problems if a character got out of sync with the others he was supposed to meet, because the player character stood in his way or something.

Edit: I think a third person interface like in Hitman or Splinter Cell would be best for this sort of game. With added interaction options of course.

BTW, I think Revolution claimed that they used the Virtual Theatre system in BS3 as well (the skateboarder walking around in circles and the colonel walking up and down the street I assume). That's pretty much what it felt like in BASS too - nothing like Lure of the Temptress

[Joseph DiPerla]

They should make BASS2 a 3d rendered to 2d game. And they should use AGS to make the game.