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Game News Hammer & Sickle Mod Becomes Full Game

Sol Invictus

Erudite
Joined
Oct 19, 2002
Messages
9,614
Location
Pax Romana
Tags: Nival Interactive

Are you ready for some great news? It looks like Nival's contacted the developers of the Hammer & Sickle mod for Silent Storm to develop it into a full blown game. Wolf Pack had <a href=http://forum.nival.com/eng/showpost.php?p=247136&postcount=24>this</a> to say on the English Nival forums:
<br>
<blockquote>
<br>
Sickle&Hammer is not a mod anymore... We help Novik and his friends to make it a full-blown game!
<br>
<br>
The game was announced in Russian yesterday. We're looking for a western publisher for this game and then when everything's settled, we announce Sickle in English. </blockquote>
<br>
<br>
Here's what the game is all about:
<br>
<blockquote>What sets this game apart from S3 ?
<br>
<br>
In short:
<br>
1949 sets the scene for the game. The main action takes place at the Allies occupation area in Germany, somewhere in Bavaria and adjacent territories.
<br>
<br>
You're a Soviet military intelligence operative sent to this area to establish contact with Polish group, which acted aginst Nazis during the War, but dissappeared. Sudden reappearance of this group and repeating attempts to contact with Soviet intelligence seem quite strange and worrying...
<br>
Your mission is to infiltrate the occupation area, find the group and make the things clear. Although the mission looks simple enough, the things get weird.
<br>
<br>
Main Features:
<br>
- grasping non-linear plot
<br>
- large and free gaming world (fallout-style) which reacts to your actions (if you wipe out a village, you'll be sought for and non-welcomed in this area), your actions in one location may influence the other locations.
<br>
- detailed heroes and relations between team members (e.g. rogue mercenary refuses to ambush his friends, turns agressive and things like that)
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- relations between various renegade groups, criminals and intelligence agencies
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- non-linear dialogues and "quests"
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- "karma" count (too negative means you started the WWIII)
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- game time - clocks are ticking and you may find that you're too late for some events (ambush a convoy or meet with an informer, steal documents while a person is not at home)
<br>
- clothes and documents - proper clothes and (fake) IDs may help you to walk freely and unquestioned whereever you like.
<br>
E.g. dashing woodland fighter weilding a tommy gun will immediately draw police attention in a town, while civil garments will help you stay relatively intact.
<br>
<br>
Well, that's for the starters.</blockquote>
<br>
<br>
The official website has been launched in <a href=http://www.nival.com/hs_ru/>Russian</a> today, so it looks like it's the real deal. It won't be long before there's an English website.
<br>
<br>
There's a bunch of <a href=http://www.nival.com/hs_ru/art/>screenshots</a> available, and it looks pretty damn fine from where I'm standing.
<br>
<br>
Thanks <a href=http://www.strategycore.co.uk>Olav Lognvik</a>!
 

Odin

Novice
Joined
Dec 6, 2002
Messages
35
Nice, too bad they're not making it more different then SS2/2, still looks great tho.
 

Balor

Arcane
Joined
Dec 29, 2004
Messages
5,186
Location
Russia
A bit belated, since it was already discussed in other threads, but good piece of news indeed.
Btw, I found out that they were making it a long time ago - and, in fact, it's almost done - the game is in 'post-production' phase.
You know what that means? It means that it may be released in a couple of month!
I'm talking about Russian version, though - it will take time to find a publisher and localize it.
 

Sol Invictus

Erudite
Joined
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Messages
9,614
Location
Pax Romana
I hope JoWood or some other European publisher gets ahold of it and publishes the game in English for the rest of us. With Nival at the helm I don't think it will be long for that to happen.
 

Balor

Arcane
Joined
Dec 29, 2004
Messages
5,186
Location
Russia
2 Odit:
In fact, it's very different from SS(S).
The setting is much more realistic, no sattelites, panzerkleins, etc. And in fact, as you may understand from the summary, it's YOU who'll be terrorists :).
 

Fez

Erudite
Joined
May 18, 2004
Messages
7,954
They name dropped FO. This had better be awesome or A GREAT RECKONING SHALL BE BROUGHT UPON THEM.
 

Balor

Arcane
Joined
Dec 29, 2004
Messages
5,186
Location
Russia
2 Exitium
I doubt so, I really do. (at least, drastically)
However, since you'll be mostly on your own, you will not have to wait for allies to make their turn.
As I understand, it will be more about story, no fighting a lot of enemies anyway. That mod had a nice balance of both. I hope they'll keep it up.
 

Balor

Arcane
Joined
Dec 29, 2004
Messages
5,186
Location
Russia
Yes. The original SS was hardly an RPG - this one seem to be a full-scale one. At least, all the components are there - we'll se how it plays out.
 

Fez

Erudite
Joined
May 18, 2004
Messages
7,954
Will this be a stand alone game or an expansion still? I think I'd rather they put in the effort for a stand alone game if it really is a full blown RPG, as there are RPG fans who might not have bought the originals due to them being mostly squad based strategy games.
 

Fez

Erudite
Joined
May 18, 2004
Messages
7,954
Balor said:
It's a stand-alone game.

Good to hear, and a wise choice I think.

We'll have to make sure that we nag them to include plenty RPG elements and keep it based more in the real world.
 

Balor

Arcane
Joined
Dec 29, 2004
Messages
5,186
Location
Russia
In fact, they almost did it already, like I said.
Reminds me of a phrase someone said:
All good games come unexpected.
 

NeverwinterKnight

Liturgist
Joined
Feb 4, 2005
Messages
154
looks appealing. but ill wait on some reviews and whatnot first. ive been burned too often by decent sounding previews to not-so-decent games.
 

Fez

Erudite
Joined
May 18, 2004
Messages
7,954
Unless you pay for the quality from a reliable source.
 

Mangler

Novice
Joined
Jan 23, 2005
Messages
67
Novik... well he IS a long time modder for SS2/3. They had been planning on doing various RPG projects with full dialogs, skills, karma effects, the whole nine yards.

Don't expect to ever see it in english tho.

I think the original idea was more JA2 like with RPG elements, however that info is rather dated now... the plan could have changed.

Also this was not unexpected people have been nagging Nival for annother expansion/siequel for ages... too bad the popularity only seems to be lukewarm in N.A.
 

Balor

Arcane
Joined
Dec 29, 2004
Messages
5,186
Location
Russia
Don't expect to ever see it in english tho.
Why so? Since it's a full game, they can do anything about it - even sell rights to publish it to foreign distributors, and that's what they'll do, I'm sure.
Or you think that 'Soviet-oriented theme' will scare away customers?
*shrugs* Dunno. It's a game, after all.
Btw, I'm thinking - is't Novik is the very Novik that runs one of the most famous WW2 forums?
It seems like that - he seems to be very knowledgeable about war and all.
If it so - expect to have unprecentented historical accuracy in that game.
Gotta make some research on that.
 

Balor

Arcane
Joined
Dec 29, 2004
Messages
5,186
Location
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Ok, I found it that he, in fact, that very Novik from http://vif2ne.ru/
(Btw, it's not just WW2, it's Histrorical War forum - Novik's Edition 2)
More then that, the dialogues were written by no less then the (in)famous I. Koshkin!
Have a look if you understand Russian :)
http://www.livejournal.com/users/wiktor/80418.html?
Stuff he writes is simply hilarious! Hype rating just gone up to 101%!
However, that automatically means sucky english version, unless they'll find a similar guy to translate it. And some (most) of it is rather Russia-specific, if you know what I mean.
Btw, there are notions about game being released at the 9th of May :)
After all, they did announce it at the 23th of February (Army Day in Russia).
So, releasing the game at the Victory Day (more then that, 60th anniversary from the victory in WW2) sounds logical enough.
 

Jed

Cipher
Joined
Nov 3, 2002
Messages
3,287
Location
Tech Bro Hell
I would take a sucky English translation over no English translation. I hope they do it, I really want to play the game this promises itself to be...
 

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