Savage 2 Announced

[bapenguin]

Gamecloud (http://www.gamecloud.com/article.php?article_id=1319) has the scoop on the sequel to Savage. Graphics:
- Fully Dynamic Self Shadows
- Higher Quality Models
- Higher Quality Animations
- Bump Mapping and Pixel Shaders
- Realistic Reflective Water Effects
- Point Lighting
- Enhanced Spell Effect System


Gameplay:
- More Control For Action Players
- Improved Melee System
- More Battlegroup Officer Based
- FPS Fast Action Paced Gameplay for Certain characters
- Third Person RPG Accessible GamePlay for others
- Better Items With More RPG Element
- Enhanced Spell Casting System


There's also some screenshots so head on over to Gamecloud (http://www.gamecloud.com/article.php?article_id=1319) and check them out.

[Varsity]

I get the impression it's more of an upgrade than new game?

[lost]

If that's the case then that's a pretty good upgrade in the graphics department. These screens will be hi-def right?

[doubtingthomas]

Awesome, I absolutely love the original. Still play it a ton.

[Oblivion]

first one was so buggy in the beginning that no one continued to play it. the Natural Selection community in my country tried it, but the bugs killed our enthusiasm.

[thecrazyd]

The first one had promise. I'm glad they are making a sequel. Hopefully it will be awesome.

Sweet! You can play as Strong Sad! (http://www.gamecloud.com/img/orig/00/13/19/001.jpg)

[Spooky]

This was/is an excellent game and an excellent premise. The mix of melee and ranged combat, base building/tactics and raw brutal gameplay is extremely entertaining. By the list of what is going to improve I can see the developers have listened to their community of players and really tried to focus on what the community wanted. Bravo, I can't wait.

[The Iron Weasel]

Its good to see that S2 is getting back on the horse after the marginal of sucess with the originals, i love seeing independant developers with good ideas comming out with new games, its refreshing, and good overall for the industry.

[Heretic Machine]

In other news, E.T. 2 was announced today, and it is currently being worked on by John Romero in his garage.

[insidious]

Good for S2 Games. I owned the original Savage and had a blast with it during its peak.
However, the game had a serious learning curve that made it next to impossible for newcomers to effectively fight in large battles, just more fodder for the regulars.

I read somewhere that it uses a new in-house engine, dubbed K2, instead of relying on the original Silverback Engine. Needless to say, models look great. I'm onboard.

[Justin_McElroy]

I fucking love the first Savage. There were some issues, but it's a hell of a lot of fun.

[insidious]

IGN is hosting a 3 minute teaser trailer with some ingame footage of the new behemoth, worker, and what looks like an archer class models. Lighting looks great, behemoth looks badass, and the archer was shown mounting and riding a horse, im psyched.

/oops - just saw the gamecloud screens, some of that is old news

[doubtingthomas]

After watching the trailer, I'm specifically curious about the huge battles that are what savage is all about. You never see more than two characters on the screen during the trailer. Maybe I'm asking too much from a trailer for a game that doesn't come out until next summer.

[Morrolan]

If they make melee combat, you know, good, add some functionality in the commander screen, and update the graphics, all while making it relatively bug-free AT RELEASE, it should be awesome.

[Acidpoptart]

I kinda lost all trust for S2 Games. They were offering Savage on their site online, and what you would get is a key and download of the software. Well, when I made the purchase, instead of giving me my key, it said they were out of keys. They then continued to charge my credit card.

After spending 2 weeks of trying to get a hold of s2 and never having them return my emails, I went directly to the company that handles their online transactions and told them to get my money back. Hey, it worked.

NO ONE can get a hold of these guys. Worst customer service experience ive ever had.

[F3nyx]

I got the impression that the first Savage did only moderately well in the reviews and even worse in sales. How are they making a sequel?

[Liquidize105]

Yeah, I think the FPS-RTS game has only so much room for growth unless it's rebuilt from the bottom up again, in which case there's the headache of testing everything for bugs/balance again.

[Crono]

This game should be toted as the first "true" RTS-FPS/Adventure switch game. Some games these days such as Unreal 2 for the XBox tried to say they were unique by switching between First Person view for ranged weapons and Third Person for melee weapons, but truth be told, Savage was the first to really have it be an important role in the gameplay.

Savage: The Battle for Newerth was great, it's main problem was after playing it for awhile, I kept seeing the same people over and over... the community was just way too small. Great game, small fanbase.

[Demo_Boy]

Savage 1 was super fun. Felt innovative to me.

They released a free expansion pack for it which added a bunch of units and rebalanced.

Loved this game.

Some ppl said the original game did not have enough viable build strategies, like you always had to get the red machinegun fast if you were Humans.
My take was that the weapons were balanced but the style of lag the game had made a lot of weapons unuseable. (Like the electric railgun.)
Sorta like Unreal2XMP lag.
This made melee too spammy. They had a block move but the lag made this feel random.

So if there is one thing for them to fix in the sequel it is the lag flavor. OR they could design around assumed lag. ie less rail weapons, more rapid fire weapons, less positional melee more puzzley melee.

Anyhoo I'm super excited about Savage 2. Automatic buy!!

[KarmaGhost]

Looks sharp.

[Hizawky]

Is this still being made by the super small like 3-man team at S2? Or did they get bigger?

[Chandler]

nope, the super small 3-man team is making http://www.projectoffset.com

I really dont know whos making this savage 2...

[Zeroman]

I dloaded the demo, which appears to be 2.0.. but no servers, can't seem to connect to the patch server, nor lhost a game..??? The "Samurai Wars" mod looks friggin wicked cool, but the website seems to be gone and it may be for euro version only...???

[Demo_Boy]

theres a lot of hacks to do to get it working. visit the forums. i cant guarantee players for the demo though.
also its version 2 of savage 1.