The Axis Unseen free demo: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1807810/The_Axis_Unseen/
It took about 3.5 years, but now it’s actually coming out in less than two weeks. I’m really excited to see what people think of it and it has been cool watching streamers react to the demo. Somehow my two story tall tree guy is really good at sneaking up on people. :D
original post on imgur
Why the f I see vertical gameplay of someone playing 16:9?
Ahh, a game dedicated to being a stealth archer, fuck yeah, I’m in.
I know right. He knew that was the best way to play Skyrim. This game looks bad ass.
GPU: 4 GB VRAM GeForce GTX 980/Radeon RX 580
Dammit, my iGPU has more than enough computing power but only half of the VRAM.
iGPU’s can use system RAM to supplement VRAM. Might still be doable
Right, i forgot about that. A bios setting, right?
There is a demo, so you can see if it will run well enough for you before you buy it.
I played the demo for a few hours. Might be a solo dev, but his experience is definitely noticeable. Game looks great, albeit unoptimized. Progression is simple and fair. Artwork is incredible for a solo dev. Combat is decent, and unexpectedly satisfying.
Someone else mentioned the excessive blood explosion - it’s the best feeling when you land one of those shots from across a field.
This looks like skyrim sneaky archer: the game.
Definitely gunna play this.
Looks interesting, but the music should hit WAY harder, IMO. Based on the visuals, I was expecting early 2000s Opeth, and I got late 2010s Opeth instead.
The music is all written by a member of ISIS, which is pretty heavy, but in an “atmospheric sludge/post-metal” way. So I can see how you’d think that if you’re looking for something more death metal (which would fit in the fight scenes, although atmospheric sludge or funeral doom would go pretty well in the rest of the game)
Oh snap thanks for pointing this out! Been a long time and I haven’t kept up with ISIS, but their Panopticon was damn near genre-defining for me at the time.
Not really all that related, but if you like Panopticon by ISIS, you might also appreciate the best Appalachian atmospheric black metal I’ve ever heard, Kentucky by Panopticon.
Now find more metal by a band Kentucky
Buddy, “Appalachian atmospheric black metal” is a weird combination of words I’ve never seen before and I’m stoked to give it a whirl. Praise Satan for keeping metal interesting.
Absolute all-timer of an album IMO
This record, a few by Neurosis, and one or two by Cult of Luna were such a vibe. We knew some knuckleheads who even started a joke ish band called Cult of Neurisis lol
I recently got into slug metal. Would you have any recommendations for sludge, funereal, and/or doom metal?
Dopethrone by Electric Wizard
slug metal
Also, may I introduce you to our slug metal overlords, Slugdge
Pallbearer and Ahab are both pretty good for funeral doom or death/doom (depending on who you ask).
I like a little bit of “epic” doom themes but trad doom, power metal, and actual epic doom are a little too cheesy for me, so I lean toward Conan (very heavy, approaching a sludge-drone hybrid) and Khemmis (who describe their sound as “doomed heavy metal”)
I actually usually skew more psychedelic doom or stoner/prog doom, which has a lot of great stuff in the past few decades. Sleep’s Holy Mountain (classic stoner metal), Grief’s Infernal Flower by Windhand (psych doom), Clearing the Path to Ascend by YOB (heavy stoner/prog), Lore by Elder (very proggy but still catchy).
Also, I assume you’ve seen the most common recommendations for classic sludge, The Melvins (especially Houdini and Bullhead), Eyehategod, and Side B of My War by Black Flag. If not, get started there
edit: Obviously I’ve got lots of other fun options in each of these veins, so hmu if you want more
I’ve been on a non-stop yt metal rabbit hole after googling some of these bands. Thanks for re-awakening the wide world of metal. It’s strange how you go through different types of music throughout your life.
Happy to get you excited with some new music! I’ve listened to heavy music for decades but it had definitely gotten a little stale for me. It was only in the last 2 years that I discovered stoner/doom as a sub-genre, so I’m not all that far ahead of you. Some really great stuff that is frankly just as heavy but much catchier than most other metal subgenres. I mean, I love me some black/death metal, but I’m just not really getting obsessed with those bands/albums/songs the same way as I can with this slow riff worship you see in stoner/doom.
Dude, Windhand’s Forest Clouds is so freaking sick. What a vibe—the album art, the track names, and ofc the sound is so awesome. Man, it feels so hyperbolic, but I honestly haven’t had this feeling listening to music in sooo long.
For sure, I dig some death/black metal stuff a bit, but I’ve always been a nu metal plebian that having this convo on reddit would just have die-hard gatekeepers take a dump on me, tbh. I’ve always hated how gatekeepy metal has always been. Thanks for the recs and interesting genre info! All the genre names are so hilariously awesome xD
Windhand was my gateway into this whole world, and I couldn’t agree more. The first time I heard their stuff, it just blew my mind in a way I hadn’t experienced in probably a decade.
I came into metal from metalcore, and there’s no faster way to get yourself banned from the metal subs than posting metalcore, so I feel you in the gatekeeping, too. The doom scene really does pull from all sorts of influences and tends to be pretty accepting of a ton of fringe bands and sounds so you get people that are excited to talk about music instead of just shitting on other people’s taste. So you get “doom wop,” stoner rock, doom ‘n’ roll, fairy doom, witch metal, caveman battle doom, and so on.
Have fun exploring it all! There’s a ton of good shit out there, and for my money, to this day, nothing hits like that first time hearing “Forest Clouds”
Thanks for sharing all this. I go through phases with music and it’ll be great to have some new bands to check out.
Back in the day I got a kick out of this site and would send it to people who were just learning about and starting to get into metal: https://mapofmetal.com
This would be a neat site if it displayed properly.
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Still took less time than Elder Scrolls 6 to come out
Think we know why (this guy quit)
You’d think it would be a blow to Bethesda that their sole programmer quit, but fortunately the creation engine is so cutting edge that I’m sure they’ll lean on it just as it is for years to come.
Is that heavy metal music actually in the game, or is it just for the trailer?
Great interview, thanks
Looks fun. I cracked up when dude shot the deer thing and the blood exploded. I’ll definitely check this out.
Can I play a stealth archer
This, in fact, seems to be the only option.
What about an archer that is stealthy?
Worth giving it a shot!
I feel like credentials such as used to work at Bethesda, aren’t as good as they think they are… Or is it just me?
It’s just you. That a company makes terrible decisions tells not that much about a dev. If a dev says he worked on multiple projects does tell something about the dev regardless of the company. Don’t forget that Bethesda sold their soul to MS and now has a lot more “steering” at the top, devs don’t participate in that.
Edit: a word
You shouldn’t dismiss someone’s 14 year career, including a game of the year, because you don’t like the studio he came from.
Length of time isn’t a credential to me
It is to the real world, it’s called work experience.
I understood it as “they were fed up with the henhouse and proved they could do better alone”.
Yeah but it’s like, ok so you’re a programmer. Neat. Working at a company for a set period of time just doesn’t tell me anything. I guess that’s just me
I don’t blame the devs for bad AAA games, with like 300 people working in one game, if it becomes shit it’s management fault.
Okay but I don’t see how it’s a net positive credential, how it even actually means anything?
What specifically are you disagreeing with? Bad games are bad largely due to design and monetization reasons, both of which developers don’t participate in deciding. But, they do witness all of the good decisions that get cut from the design. Buggy games are one thing you can partially attribute to developers, but saying Bethesda devs have a net negative credential without explaining is willfully obtuse and borderline troll behavior.
Good developers CAN make good games but good games require more than being just good at development… And bad developers can produce fun buggy games
😞
Well, at least he is able and have experience to work well in open world sandboxes with fps mechanics. Something people tend to like. I didnt olqy starfield but y es new vegas, and if a game like this is bad is more because the level desing, progresión, npcs and such are bad done, and any of that things have something to do with a developer.
if they were a lead game designer or writer I would agree. but I think this guy did environmental design, and Bethesda has had pretty cool environments in their games. though not all of them are very believable (in feeling lived-in), they sure do provide some spectacle, and memorability. in fact many of their games have been mostly carried by environments.
Everything but starfield seemed like a plus to me
Well he mostly worked on starfield of he was recently employed there
Depends on their tenure. If they’re old school Bethesda, nah that’s just you. The people who built the older TES games had much more skill than the people churning out schlock or the 473rd rererelease of Skyrim. The newer people, yeah that’s not a feather in their cap really. Starfield is meh at best, and doesn’t hold a candle to stuff like Morrowind.
Especially if we are going back only 14 years. So what did they work on, skyrim remasters or Fallout 4 remasters?
Starfield. Active development started 9 years ago.
Meaning the last 6 years of his career there were on starfield, which he wasn’t a manager of, if he quit 3 years ago.
This feels like a standard toxic gaming community thread where dismissing someone’s achievements is for some reason fair game.
Dude held a job at a huge publisher for 14 years, then quit and developed his own thing.
Good on him!
You’re missing that he quit during the development of that crappy game, which gives him extra points for judgement.
To address your point of toxicity, I didn’t get the impression. In fact it’s the first thing that popped into my mind as well.
Bethesdas reputation is just that tarnished.
Yeah I dunno. Journalist who worked at cnn 20 years quits to make own newspaper wouldn’t do it for me either
Journalism on CNN is alright, it’s the political commentors that have been bought.
Nah I’m just ragging on the fact that Bethesda has released only like 2 new games in a decade and a half. And then updates of the old goodies like every year.
Its not about the developers it’s about how shitty Bethesda is.
Mashing x to doubt…
That timeline was trotted out to make it sound pre no man’s sky during marketing. Inside sources had it’s real development time as way shorter, hence it’s so terrible even for a Bethesda game
That… Still doesn’t feel like a positive thing to mention.
Why do all Unreal 5 games look the same?
Same rendering engine, same lighting, and for the vast majority of them, basically the same rendering settings (as the other person said, tweaking these can actually be quite a lot of work)
Because making it not look like an unreal engine game requires an entire technical art department. Absolutely possible, but there’s waay too many dials to play with.
