Source Stone Circus | wen
When you wake up, Eagle Horn's new game is finally PV.
In fact, as early as March 10, Eagle Point registered a number of "Ark of Tomorrow" accounts on various platforms, triggering a discussion. At that time, everyone was talking about whether Eagle Point was going to announce a new game again, and sure enough, there was a brief forward-looking trailer on the 16th, but unfortunately basically nothing could be seen.
Preview preview for the 16th
However, at the end of the preview trailer, Eagle Horn hinted that more information about the game would be announced on the 18th. Today, the trailer for this mysterious game has finally been released.
Unexpectedly, there were some changes in the style of this new game, which did not completely continue the route of Ark of Tomorrow.
Although the name of the new game is "Ark of Tomorrow: The End" (hereinafter referred to as "The End"), it is reasonable to look at this difference and say that it is a new IP that has nothing to do with "Ark of Tomorrow". When I watched the various activity PVs of "Ark of Tomorrow" before, the first adjectives that came to my mind were basically "cool" or "tide", but this time the trailer of "The End" made my first impression become "grand".
The game was developed by Eagle Point's studio "Mt. Kaogaku"
First of all, from the currently public screen, the game has elements of light science fiction. As soon as the PV unfolded, it threw a huge earth-like planet overhead camera over, and the visual shock was full. The planet, called Tapa, looks like Earth at first glance, but if you look closely, you will find that it has a huge halo, lava exposed parts of the surface, and in areas that do not look like poles, you can also see unknown visions similar to auroras.
Then, an airborne bunker that looked like a launch from a starship or space station dragged our vision all the way through the atmosphere and onto the surface of the alien star in the yellow sand. The desert was clearly once an ocean, and the wreckage of the aircraft carrier lay next to the rocks that used to be the rocks on the ocean floor; then, the camera spun against the pouring strong daylight, from extremely wide to extremely thin, directly to the game character's sword.
The painting style of several public characters is the eagle horn style that we are familiar with: with a sense of hard design, it is not hard enough to prevent people from calling wives/husbands, and there is no lack of cuteness, heroism and beauty. And they looked at it in tune with this ruined alien, full of chemical reactions.
If nothing else, just relying on this blockbuster PV opening, it will make people look good.
So why is this short two-minute PV eye-catching? Because I think these two minutes have revealed one thing: Eagle Horn is trying a theme that domestic game companies rarely touch, and at least from what has been released so far, its presentation effect is very good.
"The End" has an alien industrial style, a little futuristic sci-fi feel, but avoids cyberpunk or space opera, which is already a bit flooded, and instead chooses the "alien pioneer" which is not a common genre. Reminiscent of Arthur Clarke's Earthlight, a category that, if dealt with well, has a lot of potential, and we may see themes like exploring the unknown, factional struggles, and thinking about civilization.
In addition, although most of the PV takes place in a desert environment, the art style of "The End" is obviously more than that. Judging from the publicity map and the second half of the PV, there will be a variety of ruin aesthetics in the game.
In addition to the yellow sand, we can also see the background of snow, wilderness, and forests, and some of the ruins are covered with plants similar to lichens and weeds, which can be expected that the visual presentation of the game will not feel monotonous. Then in a diverse context, there is a constant aesthetic theme: the magnificent and mysterious ruins of ancient civilizations.
I'm certainly not the only one who finds the towering alien ruins cool. If one side of the theme of "exploration and exploration" is the protagonists who descend to the alien planet, then its opposite may be these mysterious and wordless, and seemingly majestic relics of power.
In this atmosphere, you obviously can't see any battle scenes, but the solemn, hair-trigger sense of confrontation is everywhere.
In the PV, when two figures stand in front of the unknown giants that gradually converge from the debris; when the human technology reminiscent of the Ark of Tomorrow tears through the atmosphere, falls into the ancient alien land, and breaks out of the boulder-like airborne warehouse, you can even feel that two forces and two civilizations are approaching the edge of confrontation.
This PV is still full of danger, remember the room that flashed by in the pilot trailer? It's reappearing in today's PV, but this time, it's been flooded with alarm red light and accompanied by earthquakes—no matter what's going to happen on the planet, it certainly won't be peaceful.
So even though I had no idea what the plot of the game would be, and maybe even guessed something wrong, it did hook up my expectations.
For a game that clearly has a breakthrough purpose, too much restraint is definitely not a good thing. Fortunately, the things presented in "The End" so far have their own characteristics.
Veteran players of Ark of Tomorrow must be familiar with the design style of this device
For example, I've seen sandstorms in Mad Max, I've seen the vision of a giant wall of alien space in Annihilation, and although there are similar shots in the PV of "EndGame", it is not the same thing to look at. The style of these scenes is "Endgame", and they naturally blend in with the entire worldview and are full of their own charm.
In this innovation, it can be seen that Eagle Horn has been maintaining its original intention, continuing its own characteristics, and at the same time striving for progress. Although the modeling of the characters and environments has been 3D, you can see the special "eagle horn flavor".
The stage display of the real machine screen is in the early stage of development, and does not represent the final presentation effect
Whether it is from the perspective of character design, worldview and scene shaping, the span of this progress is natural, giving people a feeling that they are "just like this". As a company that has been making 2.5D games for most of the time, Eagle Point has made a lot of efforts to make this style consistent and progressive effect in many ways at the beginning of trying pure 3D projects.
But while the new game that Eagle Point announced today looks very demanding and the style has changed, I'm not really surprised. Hindsight said, I even guessed a little.
Because if you think about it, you will find that eagle horns actually try new things and never stop. The only game they actually have on the market so far is Ark of Tomorrow, but this game alone shows how widely Eagle Horn's creative scope is.
Ark of Tomorrow is a "two-dimensional" game, but this label is actually only on the visual effects a lot of times. In this game, you can find culture from various fields, and if it should have a label, it should be "diverse".
The diversification of character design is more obvious: truth is full of Easter eggs from Agatha's detective novels, Ethan looks at it with a strong graffiti style, and Xi's design is full of ink painting freehand... In the plot, the figure of various pop cultures can also be seen everywhere, from daily comedies all the way to Hong Kong films and wasteland movies; sometimes, the core of the story is even the kind of content that should generally appear in serious literature.
Eagle Horn's creation has always been exploring a style that it has never done before, and its diversification is the result of this exploration. So no matter what culture you like, how far away you seem from the second dimension, there is a high probability that you will find a familiar figure in the game of Eagle Horn.
Maybe Eagle Point has never been a simple "two-dimensional" game company, and what they do is not simply copy the two-dimensional routines that have been abused long ago. Although Eagle Horn, like any game company in the world, will always have some shortcomings that make players complain, their way of creating with inclusiveness and desire to explore is indeed quite likable.
While the quality of Ark of Tomorrow: The End is unknown, its changes are risky and may succeed or fail. But for the domestic game circle with serious homogenization, this kind of adventurous exploration is really needed. Players who really like "two-dimensional games" naturally do not want this style to be imprisoned in the assembly line-like routine.
Attempts at new things are always accompanied by huge risks, otherwise capital would have been rushed. But fortunately, even with so many logical reasons to keep us in our comfort zone, there are still people who insist on moving the telescope farther away, where not too many footprints have yet to be printed.
Some are like the theme in "Ark of Tomorrow: The End", where in order to develop civilization, human beings must explore and explore in the distant unknown.
It is true that it is risky, but hasn't all those things that have already received praise been improved in this way?