Call me what you will but I actually don’t like great series getting exposed to big audiences…they just start to feel less special when everyone’s playing them…
You cannot resist the lure of the dark side forever my friend. >:)
I only wish that the Panzer series had a large enough hardcore fanbase to sustain it. All Sega cares about is making a game that sells, even if that means betraying its hardcore fans.
The new “Shining Force” (I use inverted commas because it isn’t a true Shining Force game), for example, has left many Sega fans reeling with despair.
Tragic thing is that I’m afraid PD won’t be “sustained” for long.I mean let’s face it - we are talking about a series with 5 games none of which were real winners as far as sales are concerned.
Most series don’t last half of it.It’s kind of a miracle PD has…
[quote=“lordcraymen”]todays machines can do pretty much everything you want, you don’t realy have to try to stick with less then 30 polygons or texturesizes like 128*128 pixels for a whole level. and it shows. you can argue if it’s worth spending the time to draw your own textures in photoshop or even on canvas and scan them. but in my opinion it’s worth it.
and it’s not only about the graphics, the old games are polished like that in almost every aspect.
[/quote]
The thing is, that many just don’t realize, is that the original PD trilogy was a masterpiece crafted by perfectionists. TA has been shattered forever and so has our hopes for another masterpiece. You may well dream for one but it will never happen ever again. It really can be likened to the original Star Wars triolgy whos original team were perfectionists as well and created a masterpiece trilogy compared with the debacle trilogy we are faced with today because of the original team being disbanded. The new team may have tremendously more powerful technologies but the perfectionism and vision is imminently abscent, it really is. To me the greatest horror and injustice artistically is to return to an original work of art (a masterpiece of it’s time and should be for alltime) and alter it (especially poorly) for profit. Mr. Lucas has done this out of greed and not only that he has done it shoddily and wiped away the perfection that was originally present, and not only that: he wants us to adopt his new greedy shoddy vision as the original superior one. This is similar to what has happened with the PD series, and why I fear remakes.
It just goes to show that better technology is not always better–especially for creativity; actually it seems to work against it–the limitations of the past seemed to have spurred it, partially I think because we relied on our imaginations more. There is rarely anything left for the imagination in the technology of today.
This is rather becoming a philosophical essay moreso than a post so I’ll be off for now. Ta.
No room for imagination?That fortunately will never happen.
Team Andromeda’s perfectionism doesn’t mean that a new game categorically can’t be as good as the original trilogy, though; it simply makes it harder for another development team to live up to the standards they set. The aesthetics of the original games have stood the test of time, but their gameplay formulas could indeed be enhanced through the capabilities of today’s consoles. Despite all the criticism Panzer Dragoon Orta gets for its artistic style and execution, in straight gameplay terms it’s arguably superior to the previous shooters; it has more variety, more depth and a lot more lastability. If a new team adopted the aesthetic approach of Team Andromeda’s games, it would certainly be possible for them to make a sequel that would live up to fans’ expectations.
I think you summed my thoughts up pretty well there, Lance.
One thing that could have been improved in Orta’s gameplay though… the speed of the target seemed a lot slower and less reponsive than in Zwei (although better than the original game). It’s not bad or anything, but it’s something that would have made the gameplay a tad better.
so… i’ve been trying to remember what my radar idea was, because i know it worked in my mind at the time, but i can’t figure it out anymore 
i know it was 2D and not 3D; but it showed everything you would need to know to now the position of an enemy.
my little idea to add onto what solowing thought up was (you must forgive the connotations) a sonic adventure system for panzer dragoon. it would work like this:
you’re in a vast open area, you can fly around all you want like in PDS and a lot of what solowing thought up would work fine here. then you are directed to go to different places and when you enter them, it starts up a shooter-style level. at the end you would typically fight a boss and then you get whatever you came for, or get wherever you needed to go. if i’m not being clear here is an example:
lets say your mission is to get to the forbidden zone. you park your dragon around some ridge at the camp site, and then run over to a frontier town (like elpis). in this town you run around, talk to coolia, find dynes, etc and then you meet a character who gives you some directive. they tell you to go to some ruins which are said to connect to the forbidden zone. so you leave town, run back to your dragon, and take off.
now lets say you are flying above some gigantor desert (a lot of what solowing said could work well here) but using the map you eventually find the enterance to the ruins. after unlocking the doors you enter and it starts you up in one of the old shooter-style levels. at the end of the ruins you would fight some boss and then escape out the exit. you come out flying above the darkened ocean of the forbidden zone but instead of being the next shooter-level, it’s another PDS-style environment like the desert. you would have the freedom to fly around and explore, but the storyline would continue when you went to a particular part of the map which would load the next shooter-style level. maybe the reason you came to the forbidden zone was to track down some imperial fleet. so now you find the fleet and you have yourself a war against them in the next shooter-level.
this would incorporate everything from the previous games so no one could be angry. sorry if that was incomprehensible, i’m not much more awake than i was before.
That’s actually a pretty damn good idea in my opinion. The only real issue I can see it is that it might seem a bit “illogical” that you had free control over the dragon in some areas and not in others, especially for players who were new to the series (and who wouldn’t know that this was a combination of the two past playing styles). I expect the rail-shooter sections could be explained so that they “made sense” in storyline terms, though; in your ruins example, it could be made clear that the dragon wasn’t safe to stop and explore the place, because it’d be in too much danger from the hordes of bio-monsters if it did.
The only other problem I can see is the kind of problem that crops up with a few double-genre games; a lot of RPG fans don’t like shoot-‘em-ups and avoid them like the plague, so it might limit the appeal of the game in that sense. If it was executed well though, it’d probably be quite a few Panzer fans’ dream game. 
Actually IMHO this is just a mixture of both genres, and it will not work that way. and Actually I don’t think that’s necessary, even in a RPG you can have some really fast paced battle system that involves startegy and speed. I like the gauge thing in grandia 2 =)
I agree it wouldn’t be necessary, though it strikes me as one nice way to incorporate the wonderfully choreographed action sequences of the rail-shooters into an RPG. It’d essentially be similar to the approach used in Shenmue, where combat involved action-game style skill (with its Virtua Fighter-esque combat sequences, and also those interactive cut-scenes). An awful lot of the action set-pieces in Panzer Dragoon Saga did take place in movie sequences rather than in real time, with most of the gameplay feeling quite slowly-paced in comparison; hopefully today’s technology would allow any section of the game to have a sense of energy and urgency though, whatever course a (potential) sequel might take.
It’s a nice idea, and as a Panzer fan I’d love to play something like that, it’s just that in terms of selling the game, rail shooters have limited appeal as gamers expect more freedom these days, to go anywhere and everywhere in fully real time.
I think it would work well if there was just the occasional rail shooter segment, sort of like a mini game, except that it would be used at key plot points instead, to make the action more dramatic… basically what Lance said, I guess. Adding the odd rail-shooting segment into the game would add more variety.
I was thinking about Gun Valkyrie and I think the torso effect would work well in a PD game.You know - one thumbstick controling the directions in which you head and the other controling the AIM and moving the torso once you reached one of the side limits of the screen.One of the triggers to shoot.
(i reckon I would prefer a softer trigger rather than the one on the XBox standard controller tho;a trigger like the one on the saturn;one of the problems of GV is that there is a lag between pressing the trigger and getting the response since the triggers don’t respond to the touch like normal buttons)
If you wanted to move te aim 90 degrees to your right side for example you could continuing pressing the left thumbstick forward (so that the dragon would keep moving) and still use the right thumbstick as your aim while facing the rightside of the dragon.
If you released the left thumbstick however you would still face the nemy on your right but the dragon would stop fliying forward and would turn to his opponent’s side like in so many Saga battles.
Follow me?
No one comments my idea …
I haven’t played Gun Valkyrie, so it’s sort of difficult to imagine. Overall, it sounds like it could work quite well though.
Wasn’t Gun Valkyrie meant to be quite difficult to control, though?
The hard part in GV wouldn’t be featured since the hard part is making your character stay in the air (by pressing the left thumbstick IN hundreds and hundreds of times).
I like the sound of it have you thought about submitting it at all to any companys mainly Microsoft X-box devision or i guess you could try sega but they done care much.
Azeluk.
p.s. unless we have some budding designers here who want to try to make a demo of your idea so you have a working title so to speak to submit.
One reason could be your idea utterly sucks =D
j/k, I think it could work, but actually I hate controls with two analog sticks for some reason.
Not to see where you are going is one thing, not to see where you are flying is another. I think it would look pretty ridiculous to “park” the dragon in mid air while you have some realtime action shooting parts. In an RPG that is a different thing because it’s round based anyway.
Don’t you “park” in every shooting game in some way (except for rail shooters of course)?
yeah but that would take a lot of the grace and constant flying beauty of the dragon away. n realtime it just doesn’t look that good I think.
“f34r leads to c4mping. c4mping leads to l4mn3ss. l4mn3ss leads to… suXX0ring…”
-unknown Jedi Master