This Land is My Land Preview - Your Thoughts?

I came across this teaser trailer for a new Unity based game that explores some of the more meaningful themes from the old west of the United States. I'm curious of you fellow developer's opinions on this game. To word it better, your first take on it?

Here is a Polygon article from late last year on what the developers are hoping to accomplish with this project. I'm providing this to give a bit of context to the game and it's development.

https://www.polygon.com/2018/9/3/17...-preview-native-american-western-stealth-game

To kick off the discussion I see a few technical issues with their animation and movement of creatures...but my big takeaway from this is very nice cinematography. Not sure if they are using Cinemachine or Timeline for this, but I'd wager they are. The shots are composed very nicely. Also the music is heavenly, so it's looking to have a very nice soundtrack.

 

Actually looks like something I'd like to play, though I haven't seen anything beyond what you've shared here. No gameplay.

Animal animations do look rough, but whatever. I don't really care about stuff like that.

Music is fine, but a bit generic and heavy handed. Just sounds like Somber Track #10,567 to me.

Stealth focused gameplay interest me, but every stealth game I have ever played is exactly the same. Gets boring fast. Maybe they'll do something different.

One thing that will make me drop the game quick is if they moralize. Basically at all. I don't want to see good guys versus bad guys. Everybody is bad guys -- just some bad guys have more advantages than others. I'm fascinated by Native American cultures perhaps more so than any other cultures, but it's a poor understanding of history to moralize the conflict between europeans and them. Perpetuating shame on whites and victimhood on Natives does niether side any favors. Jared Diamond is a good author to check out to understand what factors shaped that conflict.

I hated RDR2, so if this game is half-way decent I'll support it just to spite Rockstars disappointment.

 

Came here to say this, thank you.
You are indeed the Big Time Master.

 

I love when games are immoral. But sometimes they dont go all the way. Like that Airport scene in Call of duty were you could shoot innocent bystanders. Why weren't there any kids in that scene? Its unrealistic and only done so because of moral reasons

 

The game already got censored in places because of No Russian, so I suspect that there was at least some level of practical consideration in there, too. Plus, the whole thing only worked because of people's moral discomfort with what was going on in that level, and it worked well enough without making it even more graphic.

Personally, I think it's good when people take morals into account in their work. I certainly do!

 

My opinion is that either you do it right or you dont do it at all. Why go half immoral, its just lame. Plus it would have been a interesting social experiment.

 

Considering CoD name value (at the time) and budget it would have been one damn expensive social experiment.
It was effective enough IMO. Were there any animals, pocs, disableds? I didn't notice. The idea was that you are executing a false flag terror attack. IIRC you don't even have to shoot in that sequence.

 

Yeah, I only shoot the police when I played through it. Thats whats nice, you can decide for your self I remebered the child zombie in first episode of Walking dead. Its was awsome seing kids in those roles.

 

Mod note because we got a report so I'll remind people:

Political comments may be deleted or edited by moderators so please think about what is typed. Games can touch politics, but don't discuss the politics themselves beyond recognising the game has a voice, and the general industry.

You may not post your own opinion on present day politics, but can talk about a game including politics in gameplay or a business using politics for revenue.

If you can't work out the distinction, don't chat about the political side of things.

 

I dunno why there is any discussion at all about the need to kill children in video games... I think all of humanity is on the same page there.

When I said moralizing, what I meant was the attribution of dumb judgement on history -- the simplification of a long series of complex events which culminated in conflict and destruction of cultures and people into a stupid "good guys versus bad guys" hollywood type of story. I'm all for a story with depth and nuance that isn't afraid to explore tough subjects that we can all learn something from, but moralizing is the antithesis of that.

Anyway, it's all speculation because we haven't seen much yet, but from what I've read it seems like these developers have good taste and judgement IMO.

 

If the game contains moments were US soldiers stomp Indian children with their boots to save bullets I'm all in.

 

I agree with what you're saying here, but it also adds a tremendous amount of scope that might not be feasible with a smaller team. I think they can make a large game that touches on these smaller more focused nuances, but you couldn't spend much of your development time working out those scenarios. This is going to have to be high level stuff, almost distilled down to "us" vs. "them." You have to find those moments where you can interject those human aspects, but it's likely they will be less common. Or code extremely complex AI and world interactions that do some of these more nuanced bits of storytelling for you, but again, you add layers of complexity you add to the development time and budget expense.

That aside...you're on to something for sure. It's always a matter of perspective, who's right, who's wrong. One person's terrorist is another's savior. As you know, stories are usually told by the victors so we don't get an accurate tale do we? What if a story is from the perspective of the one's who lost everything to tyranny and oppression? Isn't that enough justification to tell a story through this means? That it's the lesser known perspective.

 

I'm going to call you out on this right now. It's not appropriate for this forum and frankly not appropriate anywhere in the world to speak like this. No one in here is going to advocate violence against children...whether it's a realistic or historic depiction of our human depravity or not. It's not appreciated and I hope you can contribute your proper feelings about some of the more technical aspects of the game shown in the trailer. You likely have some technical knowledge you could put to use and use to critique what was shown.

 

I do not agree I think we should educate people on history and the cruality the generations before us have commited . Otherwise it's a risk it will happen again

Edit: similar I don't like it in film and games when you can kick or punch someone a thousand times, when in reality all it takes is a single time and that the person lands unlucky

 

People should learn the distinction between "depiction" and "advocating for"... Showing something for artistic reason (entertainment, surprise, or inducing other positive or negative emotions) does not mean we or the authors advocating for it in real life.Or I guess Steven Spielberg is advocating for shooting humans into pieces with machine guns on the beach...

 

Who isn't though

 

Good point. I think that's why I prefer they just not try to do it at all. I mean, just getting to be the Natives says quite a lot on it's own. It's pretty standard to assume the guy you are playing is the good guy. Just don't go out of the way to demonize or sanctify humans -- what does that add? Just let humans be humans and we can judge them how we wish without the author beating us on over the head with their simplistic conclusions.

Anyway, does look like something to keep an eye so thanks for putting it out.

 

I think it looks pretty good, Unity and foliage always looks a couple of generations behind Unreal (Until Book of the dead level becomes standard). And the draw distance of grass is really short in the video. I dream about thick dense foliage as far as the eye can see in stereoscopic 3D

 

Moralizing in games is pretty much a wasted effort, unless people are still hanging onto the failed notion that what players do in games will somehow be translated to real life. That said, some things, especially in realistic games, are just disgusting and there's just no reason for them to exist. If a game is to have some kind of value at all, then the content must be considered in terms of its value to the player as well.

I think that the only somewhat effective thing you can add to games is the concept of personal ethics (as opposed to some kind of immediate social moral responsibility). For example, it's ridiculous to say that a game shouldn't involve killing because you think that people in general should not kill. That's moralizing. But I think it's interesting to put a player in a situation where they have the ability to transgress slightly even the moral context of the game world, and where the consequences are to some extent logical and natural. That provides a measure of ethical dilemma, and propagates a level of meaning for the player in what they will do.

 

And the game looks beautiful. Interestingly, in terms of lighting, pretty much all the long distance shots look amazing, while some of the closer ones are a bit meh. Overall probably the best thing I've seen in Unity.

 

Welp. Some people just couldn't be nice and I knew the line was crossed when I felt bile enter my throat :S

I have to say the environments look expansive and cool.

 

This.

One thing you may bring to IRL with you from games and those are emotions. That's the point. That's why we're trying to induce emotions and give the experience (can be disturbing or full calm or lovable or whatever) to the player.

In real life I'm counted as a social justice warrior, and all that. But for example CODWWII was garbage. No one asked for these kind of things. It was unnecessary and honestly, boring.

 

True, though this goes as much for the speaker as it does for listeners. Don't be surprised if people mistake your depiction for advocacy if you fail to clearly communicate your position.

As an example from this thread, if you say you're "all in" for something with no further context then it's not a reader's fault if they get the impression that you're advocating for something.

 

Luckily I didn't endorse his post in any way. And it was intentional.

 

My first thoughts seeing the prairie schooners (the covered wagons) were to Oregon Trail. Only this time around we get to directly kill the party members of the wagon rather than trying through obscure means as the actual leader. One of my fun memories from school is of a student who named the party after other students and would call out when one died.

 

Doesn't Tarkov look a bit better visually speaking? They have some really nice terrain shaders and details up close.

 

I thought this one looked more pleasing, but maybe it's just my preference.

 

It looks visually nice for me. Definitely is pleasant to watch.
But at current state, I can not say much more, other than nice showcase, since as was mentioned previously, there is no gameplay. So maybe in next video, we will see some gameplay too?