The biggest thing I took away was the bit of detail on development and progress. Here’s the recap:
They’re making good progress on the signature boss encounter they’ve been working on. Content is complete. Now on to polishing, including environment details, difficulty adjustments, and a new character controller.
When ready, they’ll set up a demo for some press and streamers.
When Project Faerthale is done, they’ll move to Pre-Alpha 5.
Their goal is to collect all the info they need with PA5, but there’s always a chance they’ll need more PA phases based on how that goes.
Alpha will commence once PA feedback says they’re solid
So… PA5 is confirmed. TBD on whether PA6+ will be necessary before the move to Alpha.
One cool observation: they’re trying to time the release of PA5 with a limited program for established streamers. I wonder if this means we’ll have more public videos/analysis to dig into once that phase gets underway.
Thanks for sharing Design. Yeah I agree with your comment about streamers. I love watching some of the streams that come out. I know people have different opinions of Cohh but I like his streams the most. The back and forth between him and the devs I find more informative than other streamers. Love him or hate him his production values and professionalism shines when showing off Pantheon.
I just want the game to come out as complete and polished as possible. I have more patience than most. It’s important Pantheon has the absolute best chance to be successful and have a good player base for the long run. If it comes out too early there can be too many bugs, not enough content, or missing the little intangibles that cause people to leave prematurely. I say take your time Visionary Realms, I want to invest years in your game!
My hope has been that there would be some way of getting more information out during the testing phases so that folks who aren’t in PA get to see how everything is progressing. Since folks in PA can’t talk about it, it can definitely look like a black hole from the outside. If this streamer program gets more out and helps prove the case that VR is making good progress, building a solid game, etc., then I think we’ll be able to hang onto people for a while longer.
As for Cohh, I’m a big fan. I hadn’t heard of him until I saw him on the Pantheon stream. Now he’s like my background music during the work day. He seems to be pretty honest, calling out issues when he sees them, but also not being afraid to say when he really enjoys something. That, and since he’s pretty family friendly, he comes off as more of a genuine dude than some of the artificial “personalities” that seem to dominate Twitch.