Shadowrun Returns Catch-All

This is my first experience with the shadowrun universe, so I don't have a "feel" for the fiction that this game is missing. I'm having a great time playing the game as a series of tactical battles mixed with some story beats (reading), and some light exploring.

I find great joy in speccing an elf samurai to have max quickness and ranged attack skills, gear him up with three strong rifles, and then mow people down. Hiring mages with some big AoE bombs and healing spells is a good time too.

If you're in to deckers, shamans, support classes, and classes that specialize in the non-combat skills then I can see why this game would not do it for you. So far there have been zero chances for those types to shine like they would in a pen and paper version.

It does feel like all it will take for the game to feel more engaging is some talented game designers to work with the editor. All the conversation tree features you would need are there. Its harder to tell if the engine/editor will support exploration or other tougher features like branching storylines though. I think anyone on the fence about the game on similar grounds should wait 6-12 months but I'd say the core campaign and the promising future are worth the $20 buy-in.

Oy, dying near the end of a long mission sucks. It is also BS that you can revive your knocked out allies but you don't get the same chance for them to revive you if you get knocked out. My character is a decker, so he's the one on the long matrix run at the end of one of the scenes. A lucky shot clipped him at the end and now I have to redo everything. Coyote was nearby with her trusty shotgun and a trauma kit but it doesnt seem to matter.

Just got a notice on Steam about this being on sale, yeahhh : )

Is the Digital Deluxe edition worth it? The PDF of short stories, it's 10 extra bucks :/

On sale you say? This was one of my "maybe it will be part of the Fall Steam sale" games

Apparently the Kickstarter edition is not the Deluxe Digital Edition, so I guess I'll do the add-on during the next sale.

Harebrained Schemes has been able to get Microsoft to drop their DRM requirements, and will be able to release the base game, the Berlin expansion, and all future expansions DRM-Free:

Hey Everyone!

We just want to send out a quick update to share some good news. Thanks to a new agreement we were able to negotiate with our partners at Microsoft, Harebrained Schemes is pleased to announce that we are now able to release fully DRM-free versions of Shadowrun Returns and future expansions such as Berlin.

The DRM-free versions of SRR and Berlin will continue to be fully supported. You'll be able to download all game patches, use the Shadowrun Returns editor and experience user-generated content downloaded from third-party sites such as Nexus.

We’re starting work to get Shadowrun Returns available on GOG.com right now - not sure how long that will take but we’ll let you know as soon as we have an answer.

We’re very excited we’re finally able to offer Shadowrun DRM-free to everyone and look forward to making it available!

Take care,

HBS

I just realized something. This game is Unity based and a Microsoft owned IP. That means they could probably get this out on Xbox One pretty easily if they so desired.

Um, so apparently the Berlin campaign is free if you kickstarted the game, but costs $15 if you purchased the game after the kickstarter?

Well, thank you for making my decision to wait until a very steep Steam sale before picking up the second campaign. I enjoyed the game enough that I would very much like to play the additional dlc, but not at that cost. Especially when you are giving it away for free to the original kickstarters. Thanks, Hairbrained Scemes, for screwing part of your customer base.

For some reason I expected the expansion to be free. Oh well. I may pick it up anyway. I really liked the main campaign.

I don't understand how that's screwing any one over. Isn't that just rewarding backers? Isn't that a good thing to do?

IMAGE(http://25.media.tumblr.com/d4f8db53cee285c7eee3a84f554f7189/tumblr_mwiwk47TCZ1qbvogio1_500.gif)

Tkyl wrote:

Thanks, Hairbrained Scemes, for screwing part of your customer base.

As I see it, having bought neither the game nor kickstarted it to help it get made in the first place, it seems entirely how things should work.

They didn't screw over their fan base. Berlin was always part of the kickstarter. And in fact, they've recently managed to get Microsoft to allow them to release any and all future expansions DRM free. At the time of the kickstarter Microsoft wouldn't allow that.

The base game is thin to the point that I felt a little sore at paying $20 for it (and the UGC isn't very interesting--part of this, oddly enough, is because the pack-in game's assets looked so good; few modders would be able to build assets in the same style and to the same quality). I was never under the impression that the Berlin expansion was free, but even adding that to the base game barely gets it up to an acceptable length and depth for an RPG for me. So I'll be waiting until Berlin is on a very very steep discount to purchase it. The backlog's deep enough that I don't need to grab it right now.

Well, I am blond so I could be wrong about Berlin being free/not free.

I don't know the entire details, like if it updates the existing campaign, but Berlin adds saving anywhere.

LiquidMantis wrote:

I don't know the entire details, like if it updates the existing campaign, but Berlin adds saving anywhere.

They need to patch this in. If they put it behind a pay wall then I will accept the griping.

garion333 wrote:
LiquidMantis wrote:

I don't know the entire details, like if it updates the existing campaign, but Berlin adds saving anywhere.

They need to patch this in. If they put it behind a pay wall then I will accept the griping.

Agreed.

Oh, it's in the update:

Save Anywhere: You can save your progress at any time during the game. This functionality will also be added to the original Shadowrun Returns “Dead Man’s Switch” campaign.

Guess I'll let this one sit on the pile a bit longer.

LiquidMantis wrote:

I don't know the entire details, like if it updates the existing campaign, but Berlin adds saving anywhere.

Great. I want to play this game. Loooooove the art style but the saving thing was putting me off, as well as the sense that I might get a chunkier game if I waited, I'm going to take the plunge any month now.

Trachalio wrote:

They didn't screw over their fan base. Berlin was always part of the kickstarter.

Exactly. It was a stretch goal, not an inherent part of the game. People that didn't get in on the kickstarter, but pre-ordered the collectors edition directly from HSB also get the Berlin campaign as part of that. It's only the people that bought/pre-ordered the standard version that have to pay separately, which really ought to have been expected since the product description for the normal version never mentioned Berlin.

Tkyl wrote:

Um, so apparently the Berlin campaign is free if you kickstarted the game, but costs $15 if you purchased the game after the kickstarter?

Well, thank you for making my decision to wait until a very steep Steam sale before picking up the second campaign. I enjoyed the game enough that I would very much like to play the additional dlc, but not at that cost. Especially when you are giving it away for free to the original kickstarters. Thanks, Hairbrained Scemes, for screwing part of your customer base.

Isn't this exactly the goal of a Kickstarter? To reward the early adopters? They didn't even do the thing that aggravates me normally about this kind of situation and make it KS exclusive. They were upfront about it in the KS (that this was an expansion, but by backing you could get it free). I don't really care if you want to wait for a super discount, but I don't understand the anger here.

Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure I kicked for $60, so I'm not sure the backers are getting the deal you think they are. Since this was a stretch goal reached via massive overfunding, there's probably quite a few deluxe editions in there (like me) who actually would have got it cheaper by waiting. Turns out, I love Shadowrun so it's worked out pretty well for me.

Zudz wrote:

Isn't this exactly the goal of a Kickstarter? To reward the early adopters?

I don't think so. The goal of a Kickstarter is to make the project happen. Pretty much everything else is secondary or tertiary. (Giving bennies to your backers all-too-often treated as more important than the actual project--like, I'm giving myself heartburn regarding backer rewards for my project because any money/time I spend on that is money/time not spent on making a better game.)

Ed Ropple wrote:
Zudz wrote:

Isn't this exactly the goal of a Kickstarter? To reward the early adopters?

I don't think so. The goal of a Kickstarter is to make the project happen. Pretty much everything else is secondary or tertiary. (Giving bennies to your backers all-too-often treated as more important than the actual project--like, I'm giving myself heartburn regarding backer rewards for my project because any money/time I spend on that is money/time not spent on making a better game.)

Pretty much this. It's a good thing to reward your backers, but it's not a requirement or the goal.

SixteenBlue wrote:
Ed Ropple wrote:
Zudz wrote:

Isn't this exactly the goal of a Kickstarter? To reward the early adopters?

I don't think so. The goal of a Kickstarter is to make the project happen. Pretty much everything else is secondary or tertiary. (Giving bennies to your backers all-too-often treated as more important than the actual project--like, I'm giving myself heartburn regarding backer rewards for my project because any money/time I spend on that is money/time not spent on making a better game.)

Pretty much this. It's a good thing to reward your backers, but it's not a requirement or the goal.

Yeah, Kickstarter is (supposed to be) about raising funds to complete a project, not pre-pre-order rewards.

SixteenBlue wrote:
Ed Ropple wrote:
Zudz wrote:

Isn't this exactly the goal of a Kickstarter? To reward the early adopters?

I don't think so. The goal of a Kickstarter is to make the project happen. Pretty much everything else is secondary or tertiary. (Giving bennies to your backers all-too-often treated as more important than the actual project--like, I'm giving myself heartburn regarding backer rewards for my project because any money/time I spend on that is money/time not spent on making a better game.)

Pretty much this. It's a good thing to reward your backers, but it's not a requirement or the goal.

Okay, fair enough. The way you make the project happen is typically through some kind of perks, or operating as a pre-order system, but that's all splitting hairs.

Upon actually poking around the Shadowrun Returns KS page, I'm going to rescind my comment. It's clear that the second city will come later, but but that it will be paid DLC. They also don't say that it will be free to everyone, but it does kind of look like it could be. Apologies Tkyl, carry on.

Berlin was a stretch goal, with the entire messaging being "more Catalyst-created content coming after the game is released". They were also upfront that a) it would most likely (at that time) be DRM'd due to Microsoft's demands, and b) be free for backers.

Also, as mentioned higher up, save anywhere is being patched into the base game once Berlin launches.

I don't see any problem with how they're approaching this. They're asking people to *gasp* pay for the game and *double gasp* pay again for DLC if they *triple gasp* didn't back the project during the Kickstarter campaign.

To me, regardless of my backer status, this is EXACTLY how I would expect this to work.

As someone who pre-ordered the game long ago (but didn't see the KS campaign), I'm not sure that I'm too fond of this. They got my money early too, but I don't get the early campaign? Well...poo.

Let me put it this way, if I had been told from the start that to get what backers get, I would have to pay $35 when they only paid $15, I would have felt like it was a bad deal. I understand paying $20 when they only had to pay $15. (25% discount is acceptable to me for backing.) But having to pay over double what they paid (and only be told that after you paid the first half) just leaves a sour taste in my mouth.*

*Especially after how short the base campaign was.