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Fallen Earth: Hidden Content, Part One: Settlements
The team from Icarus Studios' Fallen Earth has put together this new series of developer journals highlighting some of the "hidden content" in their post-apocalyptic MMO. This week, they discuss some of the settlements you may not even know existed.
Dev Journals By Guest Writer on November 10, 2009
In a barren world of mutated creatures and scarce resources, what you manage to scavenge up, craft together or buy off other players becomes extremely valuable. But even in a post-apocalyptic world lies hidden "treasures," salvaged or tucked away from the ruins that only the bravest of players may venture out far enough to discover. The thought of stumbling across an uncharted territory, learning its secrets and reaping its rewards can be very exciting for the lone clone.
In the expansive world of Fallen Earth, there are many remote areas where players may find "secret" missions, lost "cities" and settlements and obscure creatures--a good find in the desolate wasteland.
advertisement The Fallen Earth development team will explore a few of these "hidden" areas--revealing just a fragment of what players can expect to find lurking in the outskirts.
Monkeytown
Nestled away in the north end of the Kaibab Forest, far from the prying eyes of humans, a small company of apes has made its home. However, they didn't just wander in. Oh, no. These are talking apes, and they have a plan.
Why apes? Well, Monkeytown is, to some extent, a labor of love. It was originally Lead Designer Lee Hammock's idea, and everyone knows he's nuts about apes and monkeys! It was first planned as a hidden city of talking gorillas, but we soon realized a major problem with the plan--people would notice a giant city in the Kaibab. As such, Monkeytown became a tiny, concealed settlement in the far north.
The real challenge with Monkeytown was avoiding plagiarism; it was very tempting to write in a Zaius and a Grod. The alpha of Monkeytown is named for one of the gorillas observed by Dian Fossey, but we avoided any other derivative names.
Their story is fairly typical of the Fallen Earth setting--a world in which people are trying to survive and rebuild civilization. Can the apes establish a safe haven in the forest? Will their human neighbors treat them as test subjects, entertainment, or equals?
While the outside world fights over scarce resources, the Monkeytown apes continue to learn about technology, agriculture, and trade. With all these advancements at their stumpy fingertips, maybe Monkeytown can be expanded one day into that great ape city we first imagined...
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Lost City
It all starts with a book that lies on the counter of a tavern in New Flagstaff. It relates to the tale of a real-world adventurer who claimed to have discovered an underground city of gold in the Grand Canyon.
Ultimately, it leads to the scorched remnants of a crashed pre-Fall jetliner and a creepy little collection of bungalows in the wilds of Northfields. In Lost City, a strange woman named Cantata Maxwell keeps watch over those she considers "lost," and each bungalow contains a number whose significance may be known only to Cantata...
Besides spinning an eerie riff off a true Grand Canyon legend, this off-the-beaten-path area serves as a tribute to the popular LOST television series. And, if you finish the mission sequence here, you can earn a pretty handy trinket that boosts your character's Charisma....
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Hive of the Changed
Hidden deep in Kaibab Forest south of Warhall, there is a cave full of deformed savage mutants lying in wait for weary merchants and travelers.
As one may or may not suspect, the inspiration for the Hive of the Changed came through Content Team Lead, Marie Croall's, weekend binge of cannibal movies and the original Hills Have Eyes, if one could imagine. And while the area had been in development for some time, it wasn't implemented until years later--working to our advantage. Players who venture out to the Hive of the Changed can now experience an exciting boss encounter and battle.
As it goes, many of the settlers who attempt to make the journey from the CHOTA stronghold to Gaia are never seen again, pulled into the Hive of the Changed, home to the ravenous Slaith and his followers. Here, a lone soldier (a Gamburian) waits on the edge of their territory, hoping the men sent into the cave to kill Slaith might return, willing to pay brave clones to enter the hive, find what's left of his troop and put down Slaith for good...and for players who haven't yet had a chance to meet Slaith and his buddies in Kaibab, there are plenty of other Changed Hives waiting to be discovered...
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This would be why FE is awesome.
Very interesting.
Yeh my best moment so far is exploring off the map, nearing the "death zones" when out of no where I found a very hidden "Lifenet" base, there were no monsters around, no quests around and it was no where near any cities.
Go inside and theres bodies, creepy lighting, creepy sounds....but no monsters....which just made it creepier.
Instead of just your average "monster spawn" I was even more excited when I found two lifenet crates with super rare goodies I had never scavenged anywhere else.
It was a good feeling for sure.
IT will be hard for gamers to actually step out of the box on this game. For so long with WoW and other games have they been confined to a story, but with FE the player is there own guide into a world and their only limitation is there own. IF the feild of view didnt hurt my eyes I would be playing the game :)
I rarely run on the roads anymore. I have found old abandoned hospitals, garages, small camps with quests ( sometimes even for an AP). All of the little thigs I have found have motivated me to stick with my main even after he hits 45, I plan on going back down to S1 and exploring.. so if anyone needs a hand look me up..
Jugger
This game is a near, near miss. I love the spirit of it, but the combat is still too damn clunky. I tried so hard in closed beta to like the combat, but it's just horrible (the targeting and the animation, to be exact). Fix combat, and I'm a lifetime subber.
I think this right here is what's fueling much of the negative sentiment toward the game. People are confused on what to do since there isn't something telling them step by step so they get frustrated. Most folks who have played the older first gen games like UO and AC I think don't suffer from that so much.
The thing with FE is, I am fully and painfully aware of it's many flaws, but they are all things that can and will be changed for the better over time. The things that make me see past those flaws really are things like exploring, and not only exploring, but finding that there are things actually out there to find... This is the first time in an MMOG, since early Ultima Online that I actually find myself exploring. Looking off in the distance, saying "I wonder what's out there?", and actually going out there to see, and actually finding something interesting (even if there isn't actually any quests there to do). I hope they add more and more of these types of things over time, especially going back and adding little secret areas to the existing areas...
Another thing that's great about FE since release is that they have been patching pretty much daily. So atleast they're working ont he stuff.
I'm kicking myself. I read some posts around release, and a few players commented negatively about exploring as there was nothing to find. It didn't stop me from buying the game, or exploring, but I sort of believed them. I've had a lot of fun exploring S1, though I haven't found anything quite as "big" as the things listed here, and I've only done some serious exploring sessions a few times now.
Anyway, it is now clear that posts you see criticizing that FE is a wide open, but *empty* world. They are just wrong. Maybe those players were unlucky, but probably they are just really bad at exploring and too impatient.
This article got me looking forward to future sessions in FE more than ever!
Nice article, especially the part about the talking apes. Exploration is so much more fun in an open world game without a lot of load screens.
This is one of those things that makes FE so great!
I have already found some many hidden, off the path stuff in Sector 1 alone already. Picked up few extra AP not many others have discovered.
I also found a nice old abandoned warehouse full of creeps to kill and lot of scavenge materials to gather. All alone and by myself. Cashing up chips and filling my crafting inventory with materials.
I've been playing less than a month and have found exploring, even in S1, great fun. Yes, there's things to find, mysteries to solve (is there a way to travel deeper into the radiation "death zones?"). I look forward to "graduating" to S2 and S3, but I'm not rushing it.
If people just weren't in an all-fired hurry to reach end-game . . .
FE is the kinda game where if you see something in the distance, not near a highlights or settlements on the map... Probably you should head out and see what you can find.
I did that in Alpha, and found many intriguing places... Places I have now forgotten, so I have to start watching the horizon again, looking for interesting things to get to.
posts like these really tick me off
CLOSED BETA ISNT JUST YOUR FREE LITTLE GAME TRIAL
listen to yourself, I tried SOO hard in CLOSED BETA but the combat was chunky? what a joke, closed betas are ALWAYS laggy, difficult and bug ridden.....dont sign up for betas if your going to judge the released product off them.
That, too, is largely a product of the post-WoW gamer mind-set. I still link it back to console games, where the goal is to "beat the game", and doing so as quickly as possible is usually brag-worthy. Many people flooded the genre with that same mindset, and it was apparent in many comments that were made - maybe more so than some realized.
Some more common examples:
"It takes too long to level"
"It's all about the end-game" / "End game is all that matters"
"What is level cap and how long does it take to get there?"
"What class is the easiest to level?" / "What class gets the most party invites?"
And one that illustrates the mentality in bright neon to me:
"The lower levels are just useless filler to delay getting to the end game so the company can milk every penny out of you"
The irony of that last sentiment is that I find many people who think that way are fans of item shops or RMT in general... where people can easily spend significantly more - sometimes several times more - on a monthly sub fee than they would with a straight monthly sub that they claim is intended to "milk them".
... and so on.
All of that, in addition to statements made in support of them by the same people, tells me that many people are approaching the genre as they would a console game... A race to the finish line; the sooner you get there, the better.
To tie it into this topic, I think that's why many people who play FE will feel it's not fun enough.. there's no clearly defined "end game"... The idea of exploring to find such hidden gems as the article discusses seems a waste of time to them, unless it means faster leveling or more uber gear. It's why I think FE will remain a niche title... which is perfectly fine by me.
So long as they keep it on track, cater faithfully to that niche and don't make radical changes that affect the gameplay (ie. make it more "WoW-like"), the game should do fine. I wish more developers would do that, to be honest.
posts like these really tick me off
CLOSED BETA ISNT JUST YOUR FREE LITTLE GAME TRIAL
listen to yourself, I tried SOO hard in CLOSED BETA but the combat was chunky? what a joke, closed betas are ALWAYS laggy, difficult and bug ridden.....dont sign up for betas if your going to judge the released product off them.
Wow, lighten up, Francis. You clearly missed my meaning. I NEVER ONCE mentioned lag, so honestly, STFU. Closed beta combat is the SAME now as it was then...clunky. The animations, the lack of any kind of real targeting system...they both create bad combat. Period. It has nothing to do with unoptimized code or hardware lag or latency. In fact, I had no problems with those in beta. But since you have a stick up your arse and felt the need to blow your top, I'll gladly correct you and re-mention how FE is simply a near miss.
You do realize that combat has basically not changed at all since closed beta right? Yeah, you're pretty much an idiot.
On the bright side...
Fallen Earth is a good game despite its weak combat model, and its got a lot of room to grow and flesh out its world.
For all it's supposed clunkiness- something I don't really see - the combat system in FE is far more entertaining than another tabbed targetting faceroll snorefest imo.
It really is one of the better MMOs for explorers in existence. Many easter eggs out there. And funny little things like a corpse hanging from a noose, abandon houses with graves out front (grave robbing anyone?)...
I'm tempted to read the article, but I don't want to spoil the fun! I already know FE has these things out there.
If you want to talk about vacant landscape, you need look no further than SWG. What a supremely frustrating experience that was for an explorer.
Wow, lighten up, Francis. You clearly missed my meaning. I NEVER ONCE mentioned lag, so honestly, STFU. Closed beta combat is the SAME now as it was then...clunky. The animations, the lack of any kind of real targeting system...they both create bad combat. Period. It has nothing to do with unoptimized code or hardware lag or latency. In fact, I had no problems with those in beta. But since you have a stick up your arse and felt the need to blow your top, I'll gladly correct you and re-mention how FE is simply a near miss.
To my big surprise I really enjoyed playing fallen earth even thou its not my type of game.
I agree that the poor/clunky combat is the biggest flaw in the game, combined with how the mobs behave/AI.
If they can polish the combat then I think FE can grow into a big success!
And no, this is not auto attack combat vs. twitch combat its about the quality of the combat system. The feel of FE combat is not comparable to other twitch based games.