One among my most cherished YouTube movies is that this unusual 2007 quantity from a man with 15 followers and the deal with “FilmNoir82”. It reveals off a tech demo for an unreleased, post-apocalyptic RPG (with music ripped from David Lynch’s 1984 Dune) by Troika Video games, a beloved, however brief lived studio based by former Fallout builders Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky, and Jason Anderson.
The demo appears like an alternate interpretation of Fallout in full 3D, distinct from each Black Isle’s “Van Buren” prototype of Fallout 3 and Bethesda’s later imaginative and prescient of the setting. It seems as if you’d primarily play from an isometric perspective, however the demo additionally reveals the participant zooming into a primary particular person view, presumably permitting for each immersive first particular person exploration and zoomed-out tactical fight.
I all the time interpreted this demo as Troika’s stab at Fallout 3 earlier than getting outbid on the license by Bethesda, however in a vlog on his ever-informative YouTube channel, Troika co-founder Tim Cain revealed that the challenge would have been very a lot its personal factor. Although Cain is unsure about actual particulars, it sounds just like the Fallout license was out of Troika’s attain earlier than it put a lot work into the challenge, code-named “Epic,” and the workforce shifted gears into making a bespoke setting.
And that setting sounds rad as hell. Epic would have been set on a world that resembles ours in lots of respects, however with a planetary ring and a number of moons leading to “loopy tides” in keeping with Cain. Whether or not this world was a human house colony or an alternate fantasy universe all collectively might be one thing the sport itself would have revealed in its essential quest, alongside the explanation for its post-apocalyptic state.
Epic’s world was outlined by factions, with a magical, city empire, northern barbarians, “Wardens of Rust,” and Bogmen all vying for management of an unclaimed territory. As a substitute of selecting a category, your character’s beginning expertise and attributes would have been decided by what faction you got here from and your background in a way much like Arcanum or Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines.
Epic would have had an attention-grabbing ability system: they had been organized into fight, social, thievery, and magic classes, and you’d have been restricted to the ability tree supplied by your background alternative. Characters might, nevertheless, break into a brand new ability tree by getting their foot within the door with a crossover ability. For instance, for those who began with thievery, the intimidation ability can be your crossover with fight, and an intimidation funding would have opened up the likelihood for weapons coaching.
Sadly, Troika was unable to efficiently pitch Epic to publishers, and the studio shut down in early 2005. Greater than the rest, it is Epic’s setting that units my creativeness on fireplace: this very acquainted world that is slowly revealed to be extraordinarily alien. It jogs my memory a variety of how Disco Elysium’s uncanny familiarity belies its alternate physics and historical past, and an apocalypse in a fantasy or far-out sci-fi world is far more interesting to me than some form of boring previous I Am Legend or The Division “plainclothes tacticool guys in an overgrown metropolis” afterscape.
Give me D&D’s Darkish Solar setting, Arkane’s first sport, Arx Fatalis, or the upcoming indie RPG Dread Delusion over some The Final of Us-alike any day of the week. For one more window into the alternate timeline the place Troika by no means died, Tim Cain additionally lately revealed that the corporate had its personal pitch for Baldur’s Gate 3 method again in 2003.
