BlackBoxBETA - Beta Test Community

Fallen Earth - Beta First Impressions

It seems there’s nothing us gamers like more than the end of the world in as much 3D glory as possible and according to the apocalyptic vision of Icarus Studios’ designers we’ve got a deadly humanity-destroying virus to contend with alongside the run of the mill radioactive fallout; you’d think nuclear holocaust would be sufficient...

In our first “hands on” of the Fallen Earth beta testing we try to ignore the similarities with Fallout 3 for a moment as we begin our foray into the wastelands of the “Plateau.”

The Fallen Earth story centres on the survivors of a small area of the United States surrounding the Grand Canyon, cut off from any other humanity by fields of impassable radioactive land... an old trick and one we’re happy to overlook given the enormous play area provided even at this early stage of development; 1000km2 of blasted and war-torn terrain to explore, scavenge and of course litter with the broken bodies of those you come across. The game begins with your awakening as a clone; one of thousands of copies produced over years for scientific research... a live subject for your master’s experiments into gene-technology. As your gruesome past is laid out to you by your would-be rescuer she leads you quietly through the basic game mechanics; moving, shooting and interacting with your environment, as well as your character abilities and skills pages. Although this gives far from a full explanation of what you’ll need to play the game, it’s a very neat mini-tutorial that eases you into some of the basics (which are a little different in FE) without really noticing that you’re playing a tutorial at all.

This is not to say that Fallen Earth shows its cards early, far from it... We still don’t fully understand everything that’s possible in this huge game, nor have we seen one of the most promising parts of the FE world – vehicles! Exiting the tutorial section the player is presented with the first game choice; your starting abilities and location. The player can choose between the typical array of ass-kicking abilities to begin the game, with rifle, pistol and melee specialities, or you can choose to take the more interesting route of a crafter – again with the ability to specialise in one of a number of different areas to ease your progress into the game. From your choice of abilities the player is then given a choice of starting town, all located about the first area of the game named the Plateau. So far we’ve been working mostly on our crafter character, a gunsmith based in Embry. We found the town pretty quiet – a side effect of the early stage of beta testing is that this huge world is yet to be fully populated, with some towns thriving and others feeling like a ghost town with only the NPC residents to keep you company.

The trade skill system in FE is huge; a simply staggering array of professions, recipes, schematics and parts that will eventually combine into almost every major item the game has to offer. The approach of a player-driven economy and crafting system isn’t a unique one, but it’s always pleasing to see system of this scale that might actually work in practice. Although we’ve only been testing the FE beta for a few weeks the B3 crafter is already churning out a selection of weapons to put a small country to shame... The progression through to more powerful weapons and other advanced crafting is very player-friendly, without making things so simple that the system is trivialised – you’ve still got to work hard and do a lot of searching about to produce the best gear. Our favourite part of the crafting system has to be the ability to craft and therefore increase our characters chosen crafting skill while logged out of the beta; the player can select any number of items to be crafted and add these to a work queue, which as long as you have materials and space will go on crafting whatever your doing – your personal construction team! The speed of crafting is increased by being close to appropriate tools and facilities, allowing you to leave your character parked while logged out to prepare your next batch of items. With the crafting professions able to create everything from your beginning weapon, a paintball gun, right up to quad bikes and dirt buggies, the economy will rely entirely on players to make the most of this game... a frightening prospect but also an exciting one if FE receives the following it deserves.

As I’ve mentioned it above it’s probably a good idea now to explain that paintball gun part... it’s not typo, you begin the game with nothing better to battle your foes than a paintball gun converted to fire air-rifle pellets, not really the mutant blasting weapon of mass destruction we’d hoped for . It’s actually as bad as it sounds too, with even well aimed shots flying wildly past your target, and those that do connect causing just as much damage as you’d expect from a modified paintball gun. Although the paintball gun remains a feature of your early days in the waste, you’re thankfully given the opportunity early to pick up another larger ranged weapon, and replace your basic paintball guns with more powerful ones. One thing we really approved of in the short time we’ve been playing is the huge level of customisation for you character, it’s been done very smoothly and looks slick; we love seeing our character running about completely tooled up – you can hang a weapon off everywhere you can think of, leaving the average character looking like a low-budget Rambo . Of course with this being a world of scavenging what you can, and making use of everything, our character currently sports some rather stylish 3D glasses so unfortunately the Rambo image is somewhat lost, but we feel the overall effect is fairly pleasing. Combined with the ability to raise abilities by use and so not being restricted to any single "class" means that Fallen Earth will always keep you engrossed - Tired of crafting? Go blast some mutants!

I don’t want to go too much into the questing and storyline of the game at this early stage – it’s likely to still get some tweaks and changes, and of course we’d like to leave as much of the game unspoiled and just give a feel of how the game is developing. The quest system will feel familiar to any RPG gamer, the typical selection of quests and types if available in every town to help you work your way through the levels and trade skills, and introduce you to the area. A main storyline persists through the start of the game as you search for your rescuer, who has once again brought you back to life as a clone. The side quests are generally pretty interesting, somehow managing to avoid the well known grind that often takes over a large scale MMO as the quests are often multi-part stories leading the player to discover new areas to explore, with well written and cynical characters to keep the player engrossed. Combined with some excellent area design we were rarely left looking for something to do, often finding ourselves stuck exploring a new town long after we meant to stop playing!

Overall the early impressions of Fallen Earth have been awesome, we’re really impressed by the sheer size of the game and how fluidly it all fits together, the player can choose to do and explore anything they please without the unnecesary confusion all to common in a game of this size. Combine this with the mass of player-driven features and Fallen Earth is looking to really shake up the MMO genre, and show the big players that Indie studios like Icarus have got what it takes to produce some killer games and halt the stream of “cloned” and unimaginative titles with some serious innovation!

Now we’d rather like to finish our dune buggy – we’ll see you in the wastes... (to be continued.)

The Good

Massive size * Huge tradeskill system * Craftable vehicles * Player-driven world * Apocalypse sim ^{(We love it, you love it.. why hate it for not being the first?!)}

The Bad

Graphics need more work to "compete" with the big MMO's * You really do get fed up with that popgun * Steep learning curve if you want to get the most from it

The Ugly

Radioactive apocalypse - everything is ugly! We'll never get bored with a good mutant..

Room for Improvement

More extensive knowledgebase * Game engine needs some polish, really starts to slow down under pressure

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