Otherland MMO Announced
I am unsure whether to be excited at this announcement, or to feel dread. Tad Williams amazing Otherland books, about a future world where people interface with the internet via VR, and visit virtual worlds of amazing diversity and beauty. The trouble, (in the books), arises when people start getting stuck, and unable to log off.
There's a strange meta-level there, of playing a virtualized version of a virtual world that's divided into many virtual worlds. But part of the plot of the books was that people got stuck and the worlds somehow became far more realistic than possible. I'm not sure they could get that across successfully.
Really, with such dense source material, it's going to be hard for them to accurately portray it all at once, but it does give them a lot of fodder for expansions. I'll be watching with interest.
Otherland [Eurogamer]
[via: Slashdot]
Sgt. Sausagepants
Posted to Video Games on 2 October 2008
· Comments (8)
Other stuff like this: mmo, otherland
Oh wow, this is one of my favorite series. The Otherland series are the only books I've bought in hardcover. The graphical style is striking, so I'll be cautiously hopeful, for however long it takes.
I haven't read the series, but it sounds similar in many ways to the .hack games. Can anyone give some insight on this?
It sounds like the Myst series.
I personally think it's going to flop. It's going up against the Star Wars: KOTOR MMO, Star Trek, and WoW(as always). I've never heard of the books and from what I'm hearing now, for the first time, they seems pretty generic. I'll give it a shot if it's free to play. If not, sucks to be me. I have too much wrapped up in MMO's as it is now. I can't afford another. =/
Isn't that "can't log off" thing the same story as .hack story?
>Isn't that "can't log off" thing the same story as .hack story?
Yes.
Could be, but Otherland predates that by several years and magnitudes of detail. There is nothing "generic" about it. The story is epic, the characters well developed, and it is less a sci/fi novel than a grand adventure/fairytale. While I love the novels (have read them through at least 5x), I'm quite ambivilant about an MMO. After reading the linked article, they'll at least recieve the benefit of the doubt. Could be interesting...
I will remain ambiguous about it for now but it sounds average, but it could be damn good considering the solid quality source material.
Also, Aladin is right, it not only pre-dates the utterly embarrassing .hack by several years it's also much better artistically and about 10000% better written.