Shadowrun PC XBOX360 Game Announced To Fan Outrage Thursday, May 08 2008

It was announced recently and they now have an official website. They have some forums and so far they're not getting very many supporters of the idea of making a team-based FPS game from a tabletop RPG.

If you're a nerdly like myself, you may know Shadowrun, and you're probably also at least disappointed in the decision to make the game in its current format. It's an odd decision to use an RPG genre for what is essentially a cookie-cutter game nowadays. They could have created their own and not paid the royalties.

The guy who's making the game has a blog post explaining the decision, however the reasoning is a bit short-sighted. The one thing I think should be realized is that unless this game is drastically better than the already near-perfect team-based FPS games out there, there won't be any reason to buy it. If nobody buys it, the reasoning that they're going to have a series of games won't hold up because nobody will pay for a part two if part one never made any money.

Eh, it's a shame they decided to take this route and not a slightly more involved game (like Deus Ex) but still use some of the easier to sell semantics of a FPS game.

12 comment(s)

Anthony Trudeau wrote on January 23, 2008

An FPS role playing game just doesn't seem right. Now an X-COM style, turn-based system would be cool!

Adam wrote on January 23, 2008

There are tons of examples of FPS RPGs (Oblivion as the most recent, MMOs as a bad but relevant example) and I do think Shadowrun could have done well in that form.

I'm not a huge fan of turn-based games, I prefer a turn-based game adapted into a real-time game (such as NWN which does deal with everything in turns).

My big problem with this whole game is that it's a stupid capture the flag game. I would have been happy with nearly any other format. Did they seriously think that the Shadowrun franchise would bring over the UT and CS players?

Anthony Trudeau wrote on January 23, 2008

I don't think the FPS model can capture the essence of an RPG -- especially a table-top RPG. That opinion may be due to my definition of an RPG. For example, I don't think the FF series were RPGs.

Adam wrote on January 23, 2008

I don't think anything can capture the essence of a pen and paper RPG, but there are a lot of games that get close.

Typically the best take the adventure approach to the RPG with plots that you can involve yourself in if you want (a linear but non-forced storyline that you can stray from if necessary). I can't speak highly enough of some of the more recent RPG games in the recent years (Oblivion and Morrowind before it, NWN) as well as some of the older turn-based RPGs (Baldur's Gate for instance).

I think both styles are perfectly acceptable and capture what the games are intending to deliver.

I agree that Final Fantasy may not be as good of an RPG as others and probably better classified as an adventure game only.

What's funny is that people on the Shadowrun boards are complaining about the fact that FASA Interactive has rewritten the storyline and thrown away most of what is Shadowrun. My biggest complaint with it is the format of the game and I couldn't care less if they rewrote the Shadowrun canon (as that is what is always done when you move from one media to another).

Anthony Trudeau wrote on January 23, 2008

You know, why hasn't someone tried to capture the essence of the good ole table top RPG with various online and desktop tools? I guess I never got into RPGs as much as you see in spoofs and such. No dress-ups for me! :) So, emulate the player characters forms for the players a view for the game master to set encounters, advance a map using the Quake engine, display health, provide views of the characters stuff, et al. And then connect everyone through VoIP. If I had the knowledge and equipment I have now then it would have been cool.

Adam wrote on January 23, 2008

The live-action (LARPers) people are always worthy of a good laugh or two. I'm always amazed how they can take themselves so seriously...

I've seen various web-based RPG tools a while back. All were text-based, but provided some good mapping components, character sheet generators, etc to provide a very easy way to simulate everyone being in the same room.

But they all stopped short at some sort of graphical display, likely because imagination is supposed to be such a big part of the RPG in the first place.

billy g wrote on January 23, 2008

a first person shooter rpg could be good for shadowrun. if you could shoot spells and what not, theyd need to incorporate alot of aspects from the tabletop game to impress me. doing it like oblivion would be one good way, i believe the knights of the old republic system could even be interesting to use for it. its funny that they are trying to shine up shadowrun for the kids these days. the previous console games for shadowrun, in my opinion are great. im gonna try shadowrun duels pretty soon...im kinda skeptical tho

Spencer Reynolds wrote on January 23, 2008

This sucks! Yet another demoralizing butchering of a perfectly good game system by those idiots at Microsoft games! First they take three steps backward with the Mechwarrior 4 series, then they take one of my favorite RPGs and turn it into an FPS. I hate that. And if they plan to make a sequel, WHY!!!!! The first one doesn't have a plot ot build on, so why make a second one, except to scam gamers out of their money. I think Microsoft games should stick to Halo and leave the other kinds of games (sinulators and RPGs) to the companies that can do them right.

Zalos wrote on January 23, 2008

I would like to see a game like Fallout but with Shadowrun

Adam wrote on January 23, 2008

I think all Shadowrun fans would. Fallout, Deus Ex, Half Life.

At the very least rename the game from Shadowrun to something indicative of what it is "Shadowrun: Battles" or some such. The precedent they're setting now with this game will be unfortunate if they ever get the chance to make future games (they'll lose their Counter Strike fan base if they then switch to an RPG, they'll keep losing their Shadowrun fans if they don't do right by the canon of the game).

MassaKOW wrote on January 23, 2008

I think that FPS can blend very well with the RPG element, take a look at STALKER: Shadows of Chernobyl. Thats how you implement RPG elements into a FPS

Adam wrote on January 23, 2008

I think there's a lot of ways to make the Shadowrun game good as a FPS and I've mentioned them already. But they're not doing that. They're building a Counter Strike clone with health-giving trees.