I don't often get to use the phrase "criminally underrated" in earnest about a channel, but for yours it is absolutely true. Seriously, we should start arresting people for not being subscribed.
it's still crazy to me that I won't sit through a 90 minute popcorn movie but I WILL sit through a 233 minute niche video essay about an obscure early 00's CRPG with full attention.
I've had to resort to watching hilariously terrible movies to get a laugh and entertainment from them anymore. Nothing but shit for the last 20 years (apart from foreign cinema)
Man I love your videos so much, genuinely hard to describe the joy I get from hanging out as you talk about these kinda obscure RPGs from the 90s and 2000s, its nostalgia + discovery + wonder all at once. Thank you!!
I actually played this game more than Planescape due to Planscape having such hard-to-read text. Also Soulbringer was so different from any other game I played.
One of my favourite parts of these reviews is looking back at *old* reviews at the time. It's interesting to see just how bang-on most of them are, even looking at the game now
Masterful, throrough and always exciting. You make old games feel like new releases with the amount of energy and information you bring to each of these titles.
The way the character models are sort of textures snapped onto a skeleton is such a charming look. It's a shame the look wouldn't have been appreciated by many at the time when the arms race for polygons was in full swing.
I agree. 2D skeleton rigs are built-in to most 3d modeling programs nowadays. It makes animation a lot faster to produce. Paper-doll style layering for animation back in the days of flash was really common too.
Your channel is a obscure and esoteric gem of these times, that's why I subscribed, I consider myself with my 37 years old a some sort of "connoisseur" too, but today you have gave a lesson of humbleness in the best way possible: I never in my life listen to mention this game!!!! I will be glad if in the future you decide to tackle Mageslayer
I actually played Mageslayer for a few hours during the Nox video as I was trying to get footage of mid-90s magic-action games, but ended up using AI art instead.
Wow! Another epic long retrospective from one of my favorite channels. You, Dungeon Chill, Andrew Bluett & Prime Theater have all uploaded epic retrospectives within just a week's time frame. I'm in heaven.
As much as the graphics and animations look quite crude, I do really like the environment and visual design. It's very moody and bleak, giving it a really distinctive tone. The pixelated texturing probably helps it to hold up by not going for photorealism and instead going for something a bit more impressionistic.
Yeah it didn't look that bad to me other than some really blurry textures for artworks and stuff. It probably suffered a lot for competing with purely pre-rendered 2d rivals and much more advanced polygonal games like Vampire.
Great work! I hear you often reference arcanum in your reviews. I am really hopeful you'll have a review on it in the future! Thank you for the great video!! 😊
I've never heard of this game until now. It reminds me so much of Summoner when I look at it. This definitely looks 100x better than Ultima IX. God that game will never not haunt me.
I really do have a sense for new uploads haha everytime I think "Oh this certain UA-camr hasn't uploaded in a while, I wonder when their next will be?" 1 or 2 days later it happens. So glad to see another video from you and I love this channel.
I love it that you cover titles that are, for the lack of a better word, interesting. Be it the premise, the gameplay mechanics, the time they were released in, their development history... Many of these I have played, some I consider absolute gems, others - like Spellcross, for example - I remember reading a review of in gaming magazines or played a demo, but never got the chance to actually buy and finish. Your videos almost feel like documentaries, and that's the highest praise I can think of - they're so well researched and packed with fascinating information. Do you have any plans to talk about D.W.Bradley's Wizards&Warriors, by any chance? There are so many games I hope you will cover, but this one especially so.
I'm not a Wizardry guy but I do mean to cover Wizards and Warriors one day, yeah, espiecally if I can find team members to ask about the behind-the-scenes stuff.
Great work as always. The detail of the research and the presentation of thr info are what makes these videos worth it, as I have never played or heard about most of the games you cover
I love that you always find some obscure game and make one of the best pieces of content imaginable on it. Well done again. Always a treat when you upload
Thanks! Not that long though, you can exhaust most online sources in about or week or so. It's contacting devs or hunting down stuff that isn't archived in one place that can really bog you down.
Regarding to impostor graphics, I think what you said is true, each individual body part seems to be a two dimensional "billboard" always facing to the camera displaying the said body part sprite in correct angle. The same technique was used for example in Myth, but the billboards/impostors were whole characters instead of individual body parts. The effect of popping is prevalent in Myth as well, but even more noticeable since the sprites are larger and there are several clones of the same unit, resulting in a "wave of pops" (for the lack of a better term), when multiple units change their sprite at the same time due to camera rotation. I have a degree in programming/computer graphics but it is indeed sometimes hard to tell just from the visual appearance what kind of specific technique was used. I tried to briefly google for the exact algorithm without luck, most probably it is described in either some research paper or early "Graphics Gems" books - if one could only find the right one.
As usual, a great video. Will replay Soulbringer once I have time (i.e. once my financial situation is again stable). My memories of the game are really good, I think it is one of those that shaped my own tabletop rpg worldbuilding, alongside first BG, first Diablo and Nox.
"Ah yes, the _demon_ papers, by Rafaella of Horrath!" I remember picking this up in a jewel case alongside Planescape: Torment. I made multiple attempts at Soulbringer, coming within the finishing stretch at one point, but the latter half of the game really began to drag its heels, losing the sense of adventure that kept me invested during the former. The sudden death of your uncle Andrus, the promise of interesting dungeon design brought about by the Iron Mines (in which a much younger me felt awfully clever using the minecarts to destroy the nigh-invincible golems), and the way magic was drip-fed enticingly to the player eventually gave way to a repetitive slog of slowly singling out increasingly powerful enemies. Once again, another great entry into your expanding library of thorough, highly informative reviews. Keep it up MrEdders, it's always worth the wait!
Welcome back Mr Edder, man I remember this game from PC Zone magazine. Then again, alot of those "forgotten" games you mention appeared alot in PC Zone magazine, but I think it due to most good games came from Europe during the late 90's to early 2000
PC Zone reviewers also had some personal relationships, so they were more likely to get exclusive coverage etc. I think PC Power, Edge, and PC Format also had pretty close PR links to Gremlin, whereas PC Gamer UK (at least around this period) don't seem to have been particularly close.
@@MrEdders123 PC Gamer always been the "Crappy" one among those magazine, but ironically it still survive to this day in Internet format though. I think Edge Magazine was the magazine that get inclusive preview and interview with studios and game, but problem is that they usually has the less market but alot of game studios read Edge Magazine as they focus around the world. Personally my favorite was PC Zone with Charlie Brooker, Paul "Macca" McCandles and Tim Anderson who were humourous writers.
@@hanchiman I couldn't stand Brooker lol, he tried too hard to be funny. Literally half the Soulbringer preview he did was just random jokes that had nothing to do with the game.
@@MrEdders123 haha, I know what you mean, that the reason I loved his stuff. He usually write nonsense at the beginning that is unrelated to the game. I remember before he quit PC Zone, he had a page where people can send him "Hate Mail" to him where they personally insult him and he would insult them back. I liked Mr Curzon and Culkin corner
I'm a bit of a video essay snob (I think I'm allowed to after making a few of my own, however crummy they may be) and look upon video essays longer than an hour with extreme suspicion. A lot of them ramble on without an exact thesis. I really enjoyed this one, you seem extremely well researched. I was initially wanting to research this game to make my own essay, but I don't like retreading ground and you've beat me to this one! Liked and subbed, Best of luck to you in your future essaying endeavors :D
Thanks! tbh one of the reasons I try to focus on more obscure games is so I'm not competing with as many other channels, as my editing skills etc aren't that good 😁Still, I think there's always room to focus on games from different perspectives or in different contexts. Also I didn't really uncover a huge amount of behind-the-scenes stuff regarding the making of the game - it'd be interesting if someone got to discuss it with Steve Lovesey, Don Kirkland, Paul Green, or one of the other leads.
About the text and resolution issue. I played the GOG release through dxwnd purely because I wanted to be able to alt tab out of the game but found out that I could use it to adjust the resolution and enabling bilinear filtering in it made the text much more readable.
Soulbringer, Siege of Avalon, and Divine Dinvinity were my favorite obscure rpgs of the early 2000's. Never have I met in person someone who has played one of these games 😅.
To expand: I can understand game reviewers with limited time on their hands and no access to behind-the-scenes information to bash games harder than they should, but sometimes I can't help but wonder if they even understood the game they played or just looked at it through the lens of The Bigger Title available at the time. Because comparing Solbringer to Diablo only makes sense when you look at the release dates and genre and nothing else.
@@Salantor In fairness I don't know what Infogrames marketing were saying to them behind the scenes. The PR or marketing people often pushed the "it's like X but with Y" angle to journalists, as they felt it was the best way to communicate what a title was to audiences.
This story does feel simple & familiar, but I sorta like that about it? Feels like a decent starting point to build upon. Maybe even games in different genres that use the lore differently or even better. Oh, what could have been, I suppose.
Sitting on a modern blockbuster movie of 120' mins? Will flip my phone before the hour. Sitting on a retrospective of a game from an age past? Hooked and all time gone. Great video! I love the way you handled it!
I actually really like the character models with their 2D limbs, its a unique look that'd be really cool to see elsewhere, even with the popping. Very PS1 looking.
@@damirkosm The absolute worse case scenario would probably require running it in a Win98 VM or something and using software mode, but tbh I think a game from 2000 would be way too demanding for that.
Thank you for this. My dad bought me this game decades ago and ai could not remember the name, so it had bee gnawing at me for years and years... the game i swore i played but no one else could confirm existed... thank yoy
I have to agree with the statements that this game didn't excel in any one thing but did many things on a okish lvl. I do like the audio effects and audio itself. Specially the motive that is present on @2:25:05. Very good and aspiring to an epic adventure soundtrack. The graphics are not something to write home about but definitely could be worse. I do like the atmosphere even if it's mainly doom and gloom. Overall this does seem like it had ideas but not the execution, maybe experience with working on such titles was the missing thing as is speculated throught the video. Shame that this was not a foundation and basis for another entry. The devs would be smarter next time (probably). Also another excellent MrEdders video, cheers!
Another excellent video *:･ﾟ✧ You have a great narration: nice pace, well-written script, calm and clear voice, tasteful humor, everything is perfect. Please kindly consider making a video on Sacred (2004).
Gremlin were an interesting company, my first exposure to them was finding a boxed copy of Re-Loaded in a bargain bin at a toystore as a kid. It was pretty cheap, and overall decent, I enjoyed the violence, explosions, and goofy characters. This game passed me by completely, probably because I wasn't online at the time and wasn't really paying attention to the industry or stuff at that time. Learning that this has the same writer as Realms Of The Haunting does NOT inspire confidence in me, but I guess I'll keep watching and see where it goes.
Love your work as always. This is what people should mean when they say "games journalism." Stupid question, but how do you get the non-english review magazines? Do you speak enough of all those languages to interpret the information or do they have translations available somewhere?
No I don't speak any of them, I just run them through DeepL. Sometimes I then run those translations by native speakers if it's something important (e.g. I did this quite frequently when researching Dune to clarify some French stuff). Archive.org lets you select text from the page (if it's not utterly shit quality) and in the cases of most magazines and such, there's a pure text file available too. This sometimes misreads words, though.
I'm 'pretty' sure that the torso of the characters are sprites and then the head and limbs are 3d models and/or it's set up paper doll style w sprites. It could also be that just the forearms are 3d models for the sake of combat fluidity, I can't tell for sure. At 2:22:13 you can see the layering of the torso on the General Store trader more easily tho. There's a Soulbringer video somewhere where someone else observed the same, but I can't find it. I also think they may have used the pre-rendered high detail models to create some of the sprites kinda like how Mortal Kombat did it, but I can't say for sure.
Oh the originals are definitely high-poly 3d models, yeah. There's art of them floating around and screenshots from 3dsmax or whatever it was. It would be amazing if someone found all the original 3d models, sadly 99.9% of games from that era had all their original assets wiped to make space for new projects :(
@@MrEdders123 * cries out in games preservation * Yeah it's a shame. It's better nowadays but that's not saying much. lol Esp w how efforts to preserve stuff and have research resources protected keep getting thwarted by companies and governments.
I love these long videos. Also this might seem silly but have you ever played the Pool Of Radiance game/s? I never see anyone talking about those DND games
No, they were before my time, but I'll be doing a PoR video at some point because I want to cover the 2000/2001 remake and it'd be better to have the original in mind as a point of comparison when I do.
@@MrEdders123 I was thinking that the 00s one would be right in your wheelhouse. I remember playing it a lot when I was younger and getting reamed because I didn't understand the mechanics
I take one week off of the Interwebs and computers - and in the meantime my favourite retrospective maestro has uploaded another magnum opus. I know what I'll be doing tonight. EDIT; Yes, they are 'imposters' of sorts. You know how DOOM doesn't have 3D models, but 2D sprites rendered from 45 degree angles? And you know how most 3D models use 'skeletons' for animations? This is basically combination of the two - 3D skeletons using multi-directional sprites for limb parts, instead of actual 3D meshes. I think this is still used today in things like sports game crowds - but don't quote me on that, I don't play sports games.
Yeah the Actua Soccer guy quoted in AGITW said it wasn't called imposters at the time, but would probably be labelled as that today. I did a tiny bit of research into it and modern games definitely still use imposter rendering and such, just much more up-to-date or specialized methods. There are nvidia papers on the topic from the past couple of years for example. I'm just not sure about it in Soulbringer as I'm only going off similarities to AS/Tribal Lore et al
Hey bud, love your videos on CRPGS. Your planescape video is the most indepth one ive ever seen. Any chance you could cover Fallout 1/2 or system shock?
Thanks! Probably not though, sorry. I try to avoid better-known stuff (yeah I know I did the Infinity Engine games lol), one reason being there's so much information floating around that it's really hard to collate everything. With Fallout, for example, there was already an insane amount of info available even before Tim Cain launched his channel. I'm going back and forth on something like, say, Arcanum or Ultima Underworld, since they're relatively well-known (by CRPG standards anyway) but don't get that much in-depth coverage. But if they then got remastered and a bunch of other channels started covering them, I'd probably not bother. Sometimes I just randomly change my mind and do stuff anyway (I never had any intention of doing BG or PST when i started the channel),
I enjoy Soulbringer for what it is. Judging one game based on the greatness of another just spoils the fun. It's the same reason I enjoy B horror movies. Are they the best horror films? No, but they're some of my favorites. Silly, goofy, tropey fun.
I think they use pre-rendered sprites as used in 3D isometric games (like some PS1 games forwards, like Breath of Fire 3) but usually there's one sprite for the whole body so they animation must be baked frame by frame into these sprites. If you want smooth animations at 60fps you'd need 60 sprites for each second of the animation. To use mocap data and possibily applying the same animation to different characters, they split these sprites into body parts, each pre-renderer individually. With the mocap data probably they tied each sprite to certain parts of the 3D body (a 3d point for the chest sprite, one for the head, one for the upper part of the arm, etc) and displayed the right sprite for the kind of orientation, and camera view. In modern 3D animation they combine different animations to different parts (ex. walking while the head points to the mouse cursor, jump and fire a gun at the same time, etc). Possibly they could do that too without pre-rendering all combinations of animations but as said in the video too, it seems like they play one animation at a time. The issue is that each body part has a set of pre-rendered angles that is too limited compared to what the mocap data use. Each part switches from one angle to another to roughly and this visual effect is multiplied for each sub-sprite for each character. With a single sprite per character, there's only only switching from a sprite angle to another. Add also the issue of sprite clipping to the nearest ones or them not covering the right places always (sometimes one body part is not fully connected to another because one is rotated and the pixels don't cover some areas. ex. some space between the waist and the hip). I don't mind the approach, it's an interesting idea to use for having smoother animations with sprites and not using lots of texture memory. Maybe with a bit more pre-backed angles and sprites shapes it'd work better. The main issue is that slowness of the input, in particular with the combat. Maybe they weren't able to mix from animations to have faster reactions or maybe they tried what was used in some online RPG games, you don't react instantly but the action is more tied to the character stats, one action should end before doing another, with a certain pacing. Also they designed the combat so that you could have a list of moves to pick from, like a MMORPG. Certainly in games like Phantasy Star Online or Xenoblade Chronicles they limited the actions to the controller buttons and had far better speed overall.
You don't necessarily need 60 frames to achieve '60 FPS sprite animation'. There are two main ways to achieve this; you can move the sprites to 'interpolate' animation (for what I mean, check out some of the the smooth DOOM mods, i.e. Brutal DOOM's player weapons) or even rig up 2D skeletons using sprites (which is what I do with my games).
@@PenguinDT yes, particle systems basically are made of multiple sprites just moving around without baking all of them together (but sometimes it's done like that to save resource or if it's good enough). 2D skeletons work for 2D animations or special cases (ex. breathing) where you just move or morph the sprite or one of the sub-sprites of the character and it's enough, while here they wanted to use mocap data that has positions. rotations, etc in 3D. It's not common to see animations with 3D skeletal data applied to sprites, i mean to work in 3D with any camera view instead of on a 2D plane with some 3D look. still, there are games that have 2D sprites within a 3D enviroment that animate in 2D with all the tecniques to interpolate things without having to bake all together and they work fine.
I think you're right about the underlying skeleton thing - in the editor mode you can activate an option that shows all the NPC's have a basic wireframe model that is probably related to the motion capture stuff
I don't often get to use the phrase "criminally underrated" in earnest about a channel, but for yours it is absolutely true. Seriously, we should start arresting people for not being subscribed.
it's still crazy to me that I won't sit through a 90 minute popcorn movie but I WILL sit through a 233 minute niche video essay about an obscure early 00's CRPG with full attention.
Why's that? User-created content is clearly better. People actually CARE about what they make, unlike the movie where they're just doing it for money.
I can't even watch my own videos all the way through desu
Everything gets turned into a TV series anyways. Interactive media > Passive media
I've had to resort to watching hilariously terrible movies to get a laugh and entertainment from them anymore. Nothing but shit for the last 20 years (apart from foreign cinema)
It's just a little longer than "Killers of the Flower Moon" and infinitely more entertaining.
Man I love your videos so much, genuinely hard to describe the joy I get from hanging out as you talk about these kinda obscure RPGs from the 90s and 2000s, its nostalgia + discovery + wonder all at once. Thank you!!
A 4h video on that game packaged with Planescape Torment nobody played?
okay, lol. I'll watch it.
I actually played this game more than Planescape due to Planscape having such hard-to-read text. Also Soulbringer was so different from any other game I played.
For all the game's faults, that snowy intro scene really is cozy
The amount of research you seem to put into your reviews is astounding!
I just ask ChatGPT for a summary desu
Always love when we’re blessed with another Mr. Edders banger
Big Ed always delivers the goods
+1 to that
means it's pizza day today!
But why does this game looks soo good? This style just speaks to me.
One of my favourite parts of these reviews is looking back at *old* reviews at the time. It's interesting to see just how bang-on most of them are, even looking at the game now
Masterful, throrough and always exciting. You make old games feel like new releases with the amount of energy and information you bring to each of these titles.
Yesssss I don’t even care if I’ve ever played the game. Your reviews are too well done. I’ll watch
The way the character models are sort of textures snapped onto a skeleton is such a charming look.
It's a shame the look wouldn't have been appreciated by many at the time when the arms race for polygons was in full swing.
I agree. 2D skeleton rigs are built-in to most 3d modeling programs nowadays. It makes animation a lot faster to produce. Paper-doll style layering for animation back in the days of flash was really common too.
Your channel is a obscure and esoteric gem of these times, that's why I subscribed, I consider myself with my 37 years old a some sort of "connoisseur" too, but today you have gave a lesson of humbleness in the best way possible: I never in my life listen to mention this game!!!! I will be glad if in the future you decide to tackle Mageslayer
I hope one day we can get a Mageslayer re-release
I actually played Mageslayer for a few hours during the Nox video as I was trying to get footage of mid-90s magic-action games, but ended up using AI art instead.
Wow! Another epic long retrospective from one of my favorite channels.
You, Dungeon Chill, Andrew Bluett & Prime Theater have all uploaded epic retrospectives within just a week's time frame. I'm in heaven.
As much as the graphics and animations look quite crude, I do really like the environment and visual design.
It's very moody and bleak, giving it a really distinctive tone.
The pixelated texturing probably helps it to hold up by not going for photorealism and instead going for something a bit more impressionistic.
Yeah it didn't look that bad to me other than some really blurry textures for artworks and stuff. It probably suffered a lot for competing with purely pre-rendered 2d rivals and much more advanced polygonal games like Vampire.
Yeah, the art direction is good, something which is much more important than graphical fidelity.
Great work! I hear you often reference arcanum in your reviews. I am really hopeful you'll have a review on it in the future!
Thank you for the great video!! 😊
I love this game! Played it so many times over the years! Very underrated!
I've never heard of this game until now. It reminds me so much of Summoner when I look at it. This definitely looks 100x better than Ultima IX. God that game will never not haunt me.
I really do have a sense for new uploads haha everytime I think "Oh this certain UA-camr hasn't uploaded in a while, I wonder when their next will be?" 1 or 2 days later it happens. So glad to see another video from you and I love this channel.
Another classic from the lore master himself
The singularity is when AI can construct an infinite number of infinitely-long MrEdders videos. Thats when i fully succumb to the machine.
Always excited for a new video
your videos are always a pleasure to watch my friend
You have NO idea how much I needed this
I love it that you cover titles that are, for the lack of a better word, interesting. Be it the premise, the gameplay mechanics, the time they were released in, their development history... Many of these I have played, some I consider absolute gems, others - like Spellcross, for example - I remember reading a review of in gaming magazines or played a demo, but never got the chance to actually buy and finish. Your videos almost feel like documentaries, and that's the highest praise I can think of - they're so well researched and packed with fascinating information.
Do you have any plans to talk about D.W.Bradley's Wizards&Warriors, by any chance? There are so many games I hope you will cover, but this one especially so.
I'm not a Wizardry guy but I do mean to cover Wizards and Warriors one day, yeah, espiecally if I can find team members to ask about the behind-the-scenes stuff.
Great work as always. The detail of the research and the presentation of thr info are what makes these videos worth it, as I have never played or heard about most of the games you cover
Yesss! I had a feeling you'd upload something soon. Thanks for the video!
Blessed by an upload! Thank you very much mr. Edders
Fantastic as always. Your channel is a gift, and it deserves to grow.
I love that you always find some obscure game and make one of the best pieces of content imaginable on it. Well done again. Always a treat when you upload
Amazing work just found your channel. You're great!
I swear, I learn so much from your investigative style.
I just sent a bunch of emails. A real fan would've gone to Sheffield!
I refuse to believe it's been 9 months since the Plainscape video
Yeah I miss being able to hammer a video out every couple of months during covid lol
I guess you found a way to record. I am happy to see you are still uploading.
wonderful video, very fascinating. i'm always amazed that there are still cool old crusty RPGs like this that I'd never even heard of.
Your retro reviews are the best, glad to see you back with another one
Great to see your content on my feed once again!
This was... quite thorough. Impressive.
Special thanks for trying to find out who exactly were artists.
Just discovered you. Decent library to work through as i renovate my house. Thanks for the effort.
Thank you for all your incredible work. I can't imagine how long this took to research.
Thanks! Not that long though, you can exhaust most online sources in about or week or so. It's contacting devs or hunting down stuff that isn't archived in one place that can really bog you down.
Magnificent review on a game I never played. Always a pleasure. Very much looking forward to the Ultima: WOA review!
Development hell seems to have been just as deadly in the 90's as today. Given how quickly tech was developing at the time.
Regarding to impostor graphics, I think what you said is true, each individual body part seems to be a two dimensional "billboard" always facing to the camera displaying the said body part sprite in correct angle. The same technique was used for example in Myth, but the billboards/impostors were whole characters instead of individual body parts. The effect of popping is prevalent in Myth as well, but even more noticeable since the sprites are larger and there are several clones of the same unit, resulting in a "wave of pops" (for the lack of a better term), when multiple units change their sprite at the same time due to camera rotation. I have a degree in programming/computer graphics but it is indeed sometimes hard to tell just from the visual appearance what kind of specific technique was used. I tried to briefly google for the exact algorithm without luck, most probably it is described in either some research paper or early "Graphics Gems" books - if one could only find the right one.
As usual, a great video. Will replay Soulbringer once I have time (i.e. once my financial situation is again stable). My memories of the game are really good, I think it is one of those that shaped my own tabletop rpg worldbuilding, alongside first BG, first Diablo and Nox.
Dated graphics? The game looks great for a 2000 videogame wtf
Happy to see you back!!
"Ah yes, the _demon_ papers, by Rafaella of Horrath!"
I remember picking this up in a jewel case alongside Planescape: Torment. I made multiple attempts at Soulbringer, coming within the finishing stretch at one point, but the latter half of the game really began to drag its heels, losing the sense of adventure that kept me invested during the former. The sudden death of your uncle Andrus, the promise of interesting dungeon design brought about by the Iron Mines (in which a much younger me felt awfully clever using the minecarts to destroy the nigh-invincible golems), and the way magic was drip-fed enticingly to the player eventually gave way to a repetitive slog of slowly singling out increasingly powerful enemies.
Once again, another great entry into your expanding library of thorough, highly informative reviews. Keep it up MrEdders, it's always worth the wait!
All of your videos are great. Thanks!
just letting the algorithm know that this is awesome and must be recommended to much larger crowds. :)
Welcome back Mr Edder, man I remember this game from PC Zone magazine. Then again, alot of those "forgotten" games you mention appeared alot in PC Zone magazine, but I think it due to most good games came from Europe during the late 90's to early 2000
PC Zone reviewers also had some personal relationships, so they were more likely to get exclusive coverage etc. I think PC Power, Edge, and PC Format also had pretty close PR links to Gremlin, whereas PC Gamer UK (at least around this period) don't seem to have been particularly close.
@@MrEdders123 PC Gamer always been the "Crappy" one among those magazine, but ironically it still survive to this day in Internet format though.
I think Edge Magazine was the magazine that get inclusive preview and interview with studios and game, but problem is that they usually has the less market but alot of game studios read Edge Magazine as they focus around the world.
Personally my favorite was PC Zone with Charlie Brooker, Paul "Macca" McCandles and Tim Anderson who were humourous writers.
@@hanchiman I couldn't stand Brooker lol, he tried too hard to be funny. Literally half the Soulbringer preview he did was just random jokes that had nothing to do with the game.
@@MrEdders123 haha, I know what you mean, that the reason I loved his stuff. He usually write nonsense at the beginning that is unrelated to the game.
I remember before he quit PC Zone, he had a page where people can send him "Hate Mail" to him where they personally insult him and he would insult them back.
I liked Mr Curzon and Culkin corner
I played this as a kid bundled with torment but I've never seen content made on it this is so good
I'm a bit of a video essay snob (I think I'm allowed to after making a few of my own, however crummy they may be) and look upon video essays longer than an hour with extreme suspicion. A lot of them ramble on without an exact thesis. I really enjoyed this one, you seem extremely well researched. I was initially wanting to research this game to make my own essay, but I don't like retreading ground and you've beat me to this one! Liked and subbed, Best of luck to you in your future essaying endeavors :D
Thanks! tbh one of the reasons I try to focus on more obscure games is so I'm not competing with as many other channels, as my editing skills etc aren't that good 😁Still, I think there's always room to focus on games from different perspectives or in different contexts. Also I didn't really uncover a huge amount of behind-the-scenes stuff regarding the making of the game - it'd be interesting if someone got to discuss it with Steve Lovesey, Don Kirkland, Paul Green, or one of the other leads.
return of the king
About the text and resolution issue. I played the GOG release through dxwnd purely because I wanted to be able to alt tab out of the game but found out that I could use it to adjust the resolution and enabling bilinear filtering in it made the text much more readable.
Thanks for the info bhelish, I tried wine3d/dgvoodoo and a couple of others but not dxwnd.
This is the longest review I've ever watched and it was worth it!
3-4hrs is bite-sized by youtube standards now 😁
Soulbringer, Siege of Avalon, and Divine Dinvinity were my favorite obscure rpgs of the early 2000's. Never have I met in person someone who has played one of these games 😅.
I think a lot of people went back and played DD due to Larian's later games. But yeah I was barely aware of it at the time.
Hi.
Divine Divinity was amazing. Kept up and played Beyond Divinity and Ego Draconis.
Can't say I appreciated the newer Divinity games.
all these games were on the pirate market of the cis. especially in divine divinity and siege of avalon. here soulbringer was a much more rare guest
Pretty sure I was thinking today while at the supermarket: "Been a while since Mr. E made a video. Hope something comes out soon."
Lo and behold.
The intro is basically my welcome back speech. Lol
Thank you so much! Didn't know this one. Also wanted to say that I am really hoping for a Divine Divinity review someday.
This game reminds me of Neverwinter Nights with its look. Very well done!
I was just thinking how you could probably recreate the entire campaign (minus the combat system) in Aurora
man I love these videos. good stuff
Genuinely excited to watch a 4 hour video on a game I’ve never even heard of
Another masterpiece from MrEdders
Finally finished watching, took me a week. Great video, thanks!
holy shit he's back
Merci beaucoup ! Thanx a lot to give me another great insight to add another forgotten gem to my rpg collection 😊
Thank you for another dose of "Why I started to hate game reviewers". Some of those quotes are just infuriating.
To expand: I can understand game reviewers with limited time on their hands and no access to behind-the-scenes information to bash games harder than they should, but sometimes I can't help but wonder if they even understood the game they played or just looked at it through the lens of The Bigger Title available at the time. Because comparing Solbringer to Diablo only makes sense when you look at the release dates and genre and nothing else.
@@Salantor In fairness I don't know what Infogrames marketing were saying to them behind the scenes. The PR or marketing people often pushed the "it's like X but with Y" angle to journalists, as they felt it was the best way to communicate what a title was to audiences.
I cant wait for the next video man!
Recording it now :)
Thank you so much for another documentary.
This story does feel simple & familiar, but I sorta like that about it? Feels like a decent starting point to build upon. Maybe even games in different genres that use the lore differently or even better. Oh, what could have been, I suppose.
Sitting on a modern blockbuster movie of 120' mins? Will flip my phone before the hour. Sitting on a retrospective of a game from an age past? Hooked and all time gone.
Great video! I love the way you handled it!
Nice!
only 30 minutes in - but holy SHIT this documentary is fucking great. Fantastic work.
I actually really like the character models with their 2D limbs, its a unique look that'd be really cool to see elsewhere, even with the popping. Very PS1 looking.
The return of the king!!! Too bad this game's gog copy didn't want to launch on my pc
Did you try the compatibility patch/wrapper combo?
@@MrEdders123 I'll try the patches when I have more time, thanks, video probably has a section about that :D
@@damirkosm The absolute worse case scenario would probably require running it in a Win98 VM or something and using software mode, but tbh I think a game from 2000 would be way too demanding for that.
Thank you for this. My dad bought me this game decades ago and ai could not remember the name, so it had bee gnawing at me for years and years... the game i swore i played but no one else could confirm existed... thank yoy
time for another a nice binge thanks again
Such a good creator!
:D
Welcome back buddy
I have to agree with the statements that this game didn't excel in any one thing but did many things on a okish lvl. I do like the audio effects and audio itself. Specially the motive that is present on @2:25:05. Very good and aspiring to an epic adventure soundtrack. The graphics are not something to write home about but definitely could be worse. I do like the atmosphere even if it's mainly doom and gloom. Overall this does seem like it had ideas but not the execution, maybe experience with working on such titles was the missing thing as is speculated throught the video. Shame that this was not a foundation and basis for another entry. The devs would be smarter next time (probably). Also another excellent MrEdders video, cheers!
Awesome work, once again!
Woohooo!!!!
This is a great game but I could never understand the combat. Thanks for helping!
Another excellent video *:･ﾟ✧ You have a great narration: nice pace, well-written script, calm and clear voice, tasteful humor, everything is perfect.
Please kindly consider making a video on Sacred (2004).
Your videos are super interesting, thx!
Huzzah for the upload!
Gremlin were an interesting company, my first exposure to them was finding a boxed copy of Re-Loaded in a bargain bin at a toystore as a kid. It was pretty cheap, and overall decent, I enjoyed the violence, explosions, and goofy characters.
This game passed me by completely, probably because I wasn't online at the time and wasn't really paying attention to the industry or stuff at that time.
Learning that this has the same writer as Realms Of The Haunting does NOT inspire confidence in me, but I guess I'll keep watching and see where it goes.
Having Paul Green as the writer/designer was a huge marketing point during the run-up to release :D
@@MrEdders123 Pretty dire, but it seems his writing was put through the wringer by this game's tortured development, so I can't judge too hard.
algorithm comment, thank you based MrEdders for another banger
Time to grab some snacks and binge!
Great video as always.
Love your work as always. This is what people should mean when they say "games journalism."
Stupid question, but how do you get the non-english review magazines? Do you speak enough of all those languages to interpret the information or do they have translations available somewhere?
No I don't speak any of them, I just run them through DeepL. Sometimes I then run those translations by native speakers if it's something important (e.g. I did this quite frequently when researching Dune to clarify some French stuff). Archive.org lets you select text from the page (if it's not utterly shit quality) and in the cases of most magazines and such, there's a pure text file available too. This sometimes misreads words, though.
I'm 'pretty' sure that the torso of the characters are sprites and then the head and limbs are 3d models and/or it's set up paper doll style w sprites. It could also be that just the forearms are 3d models for the sake of combat fluidity, I can't tell for sure. At 2:22:13 you can see the layering of the torso on the General Store trader more easily tho. There's a Soulbringer video somewhere where someone else observed the same, but I can't find it. I also think they may have used the pre-rendered high detail models to create some of the sprites kinda like how Mortal Kombat did it, but I can't say for sure.
Oh the originals are definitely high-poly 3d models, yeah. There's art of them floating around and screenshots from 3dsmax or whatever it was. It would be amazing if someone found all the original 3d models, sadly 99.9% of games from that era had all their original assets wiped to make space for new projects :(
@@MrEdders123 * cries out in games preservation * Yeah it's a shame. It's better nowadays but that's not saying much. lol Esp w how efforts to preserve stuff and have research resources protected keep getting thwarted by companies and governments.
I love these long videos. Also this might seem silly but have you ever played the Pool Of Radiance game/s? I never see anyone talking about those DND games
No, they were before my time, but I'll be doing a PoR video at some point because I want to cover the 2000/2001 remake and it'd be better to have the original in mind as a point of comparison when I do.
@@MrEdders123 I was thinking that the 00s one would be right in your wheelhouse. I remember playing it a lot when I was younger and getting reamed because I didn't understand the mechanics
I take one week off of the Interwebs and computers - and in the meantime my favourite retrospective maestro has uploaded another magnum opus. I know what I'll be doing tonight.
EDIT; Yes, they are 'imposters' of sorts. You know how DOOM doesn't have 3D models, but 2D sprites rendered from 45 degree angles? And you know how most 3D models use 'skeletons' for animations? This is basically combination of the two - 3D skeletons using multi-directional sprites for limb parts, instead of actual 3D meshes. I think this is still used today in things like sports game crowds - but don't quote me on that, I don't play sports games.
Yeah the Actua Soccer guy quoted in AGITW said it wasn't called imposters at the time, but would probably be labelled as that today. I did a tiny bit of research into it and modern games definitely still use imposter rendering and such, just much more up-to-date or specialized methods. There are nvidia papers on the topic from the past couple of years for example. I'm just not sure about it in Soulbringer as I'm only going off similarities to AS/Tribal Lore et al
perfect Timing :D
'...or waifus'
I wonder if there's anything specific MrEdders had in mind there lol
I was thinking of the Silverfall cover art desu
Hey bud, love your videos on CRPGS.
Your planescape video is the most indepth one ive ever seen.
Any chance you could cover Fallout 1/2 or system shock?
Thanks! Probably not though, sorry. I try to avoid better-known stuff (yeah I know I did the Infinity Engine games lol), one reason being there's so much information floating around that it's really hard to collate everything. With Fallout, for example, there was already an insane amount of info available even before Tim Cain launched his channel. I'm going back and forth on something like, say, Arcanum or Ultima Underworld, since they're relatively well-known (by CRPG standards anyway) but don't get that much in-depth coverage. But if they then got remastered and a bunch of other channels started covering them, I'd probably not bother. Sometimes I just randomly change my mind and do stuff anyway (I never had any intention of doing BG or PST when i started the channel),
I enjoy Soulbringer for what it is. Judging one game based on the greatness of another just spoils the fun. It's the same reason I enjoy B horror movies. Are they the best horror films? No, but they're some of my favorites. Silly, goofy, tropey fun.
go on mr edders screw them ppl makin noise
I think they use pre-rendered sprites as used in 3D isometric games (like some PS1 games forwards, like Breath of Fire 3) but usually there's one sprite for the whole body so they animation must be baked frame by frame into these sprites. If you want smooth animations at 60fps you'd need 60 sprites for each second of the animation. To use mocap data and possibily applying the same animation to different characters, they split these sprites into body parts, each pre-renderer individually. With the mocap data probably they tied each sprite to certain parts of the 3D body (a 3d point for the chest sprite, one for the head, one for the upper part of the arm, etc) and displayed the right sprite for the kind of orientation, and camera view.
In modern 3D animation they combine different animations to different parts (ex. walking while the head points to the mouse cursor, jump and fire a gun at the same time, etc). Possibly they could do that too without pre-rendering all combinations of animations but as said in the video too, it seems like they play one animation at a time.
The issue is that each body part has a set of pre-rendered angles that is too limited compared to what the mocap data use. Each part switches from one angle to another to roughly and this visual effect is multiplied for each sub-sprite for each character. With a single sprite per character, there's only only switching from a sprite angle to another.
Add also the issue of sprite clipping to the nearest ones or them not covering the right places always (sometimes one body part is not fully connected to another because one is rotated and the pixels don't cover some areas. ex. some space between the waist and the hip).
I don't mind the approach, it's an interesting idea to use for having smoother animations with sprites and not using lots of texture memory. Maybe with a bit more pre-backed angles and sprites shapes it'd work better.
The main issue is that slowness of the input, in particular with the combat. Maybe they weren't able to mix from animations to have faster reactions or maybe they tried what was used in some online RPG games, you don't react instantly but the action is more tied to the character stats, one action should end before doing another, with a certain pacing. Also they designed the combat so that you could have a list of moves to pick from, like a MMORPG. Certainly in games like Phantasy Star Online or Xenoblade Chronicles they limited the actions to the controller buttons and had far better speed overall.
You don't necessarily need 60 frames to achieve '60 FPS sprite animation'. There are two main ways to achieve this; you can move the sprites to 'interpolate' animation (for what I mean, check out some of the the smooth DOOM mods, i.e. Brutal DOOM's player weapons) or even rig up 2D skeletons using sprites (which is what I do with my games).
@@PenguinDT yes, particle systems basically are made of multiple sprites just moving around without baking all of them together (but sometimes it's done like that to save resource or if it's good enough).
2D skeletons work for 2D animations or special cases (ex. breathing) where you just move or morph the sprite or one of the sub-sprites of the character and it's enough, while here they wanted to use mocap data that has positions. rotations, etc in 3D.
It's not common to see animations with 3D skeletal data applied to sprites, i mean to work in 3D with any camera view instead of on a 2D plane with some 3D look.
still, there are games that have 2D sprites within a 3D enviroment that animate in 2D with all the tecniques to interpolate things without having to bake all together and they work fine.
I think you're right about the underlying skeleton thing - in the editor mode you can activate an option that shows all the NPC's have a basic wireframe model that is probably related to the motion capture stuff