Monday, 22 August 2011

reaction to Dota 2?


Now you know I'm a huge fan of Valve, but I'm curious to hear what you guys think of the recent Dota2 trailer?
Now to be honest, Valve is known for splitting up their development teams and then the last 6 months there's a dramatic change in production for example Left 4 Dead was handled by a team known as Turtle Rock which was originally a Counter Strike source mod that was free on the net using zombie files from Half Life 1. For a solid 4 years they worked on the game and then had all their art changed dramatically when production was handled by the core Valve team.
Now, Dota's long history comes from a Warcraft 3 mod, and it's been split up by other developers who work on League of Legends and other free to play games online and this is one of the last original mod members still working on it. Does it long sorted history really exclude it from looking identical to Warcraft 3 art assets? How much work did valve really put into this?
I've been watching the entire tournament from Gamescom this past weekend and must confess I was intrigued over it even though I'm not a big Dota fan, I played normal WC3 instead. Still the coloring pops, and there's excellent particle systems for the spells. They still call this "Beta" but it looks more then polished for a final release, the tournament was using Unreal Tournament sound file but still some of the voice samples on the characters are there.
So what say you? Is the art bad? or good? or does it get a free pass because it might be a Free to play game? Is it too hardcore tournament level game? And where is Half Life 2 ep3?
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6 comments:

  1. AIM24 August 2011 at 19:00

    First thing I've seen or heard of this game. I immediately thought that valve must be doing a Warcraft add on or something? Yeah, the more valve put in this the better. It's a brand of coffee I've trusted over the years so I'm sure they know what they're doing. My only worry is that this seems like nothing new. Like Deja vu Fantasy.

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  2. crithon26 August 2011 at 00:39

    a comparison shot of all 4 dota themed games
    http://h7.abload.de/img/1313310886859juj3.jpg

    but yeah, there's a slight change but they all have the same identical art direction..... and it's Warcraft 3 which also warcraft takes a lot from Games Workshop and other pop culture.

    Actually recently one of the lead art directors at valve left, he was the background designer of Half Life 2, the one who gave it that eastern europe flavor, he's been said to be working on a game called the Crossing for Valve with the Dark Messiah guys and is now working on Dishonored the steampunk ninja game
    http://www.dishonored.com/

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  3. Red White26 August 2011 at 15:43

    I've never been a big fan of Dota and those types of games myself. I think the guy in this video looks fascinating though. I can't help but think of the opening to Disney's Aladdin when listening to him so I keep waiting for him to jump into song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEGlJP4X4vc

    I can't comment too much because I don't know much about either Dota or WoW to form any sort of opinion, but watching that trailer makes it hard to figure out who I should be rooting for. Everyone looks like someone I'd be fighting against so there's no clear hero character that I can see beyond the girl with the bow. Everything else is just a clusterf*** of battles and rolling around.

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  4. AIM27 August 2011 at 00:33

    I'm actually pulled to the top right image for some reason. Maybe it's the Diablo II in me :P

    You know the name of the lead art director of Half Life 2? That game really felt like an adventure!

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  5. crithon27 August 2011 at 01:32

    red white, yeah I mean the aladdin style narrator is the only guy who stands out because it's that TF2 style personality just OOOOOOOZING OUT of every pour, but also the game and character just seem identical to that genre. It's interesting some of the NAMES are still staying with Warcraft 3 name type. It's like "if it ain't broke don't fix it mentality" but still it's not trying very heard to get other people excited.

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  6. crithon27 August 2011 at 22:12

    sinistar1- that was Viktor Antonov, lead designer on City 17, he was also working on the Crossing during the announcement of Left 4 Dead 1. It was suppose to be this mirror's edge, fighting templar assassin's creed FPS game where your a single player effected it's multiplayer. It was a bold concept but saddly it didn't continue
    http://www.vulkanbros.com/intro.html

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhroZHTjNFw

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