I watched the Fortune and Hardtack streams, and I really like what I'm seeing, there is music, and it sounds great, plus the concept of different tracks for each hero is really interesting. The combat and controls look responsive and slick, animations look amazing, the enemy AI looks really engaging and intelligent, and the pedesterians seem to have good ambient activities (I like the talk of action nodes), and are nicely detailed and varied so far. Not to mention the city itself looks gorgeous.
I'm not sure if you check this particular subforum currently Idle/Random Other Dev, but if you do I'm curious about a few things.
I saw a few small issues during both streams, pedestrian pathfinding was a little goofy sometimes, they would occasionally do very sharp on the heel turns while walking (with no fluid animation for it), and I saw one or two npcs walking/running into objects/walls, I saw some clipping issues when npcs were near walls, and when the enemies and main characters were at the edge of roofs, they sometimes clipped into them as well.
There was slight animation transitions that looked off as well, Fortune getting out of the car, the duel pistol enemy (after missing the melee kick) whilst recovering on the floor, was shot by Hardtacks shotgun, and magically transitioned to a standing position, and I saw one or two pedesterians feet semi clip/vibrate into the ground while walking during the beginning of the fortune stream and there was two NPC's walking through low hedges, with their legs clipping through them. The NPC's walking onto different elevations looks a little off, their feet sort of hover and raise unnaturally. There was one NPC leaning against a column that was slightly hovering their back in front of it instead as well. And finally, the car physics sometimes was strange, I saw one or two cars flip over in the distance, and there was one car that exploded rather quickly when run into, the physics overall looked really good however, and driving looks great. The enemy ragdolls look exceptional and look like they have a lot of weight to them.
Shadows looked a bit low res during the steam (but that is probably a final stage refinement), and pop in/draw distance sometimes was a teeny bit much. The cutscenes for introducing enemy types seemed pre rendered, and with lower resolution/fps than the actual cutscenes, which looks out of place.
Do you think any of these minor issues/details will be improved upon before release? Or is it too late in the development cycle?
Will there be any more pedesterian variety added, and is there RNG for the different models to have different clothing/accessories/colours/hairstyles to subtly keep it more varied even with the same models? Is there wind sound effects, for when its blowing against the trees/leaves moving across the ground? Will there be peds on balconies/rooftops/high buildings?
I'm really hoping the game can be very hard, I'm looking for a tough challenge, will the enemy on higher difficulties have better aim? Will they throw grenades or shoot their sniper rifles faster (They seem a bit too easy to dodge)? Will they recover from stumbling backwards from shots/falling on the ground quicker? Will they dodge faster? The dual pistol enemies special move of leaping into the air and firing both pistols slowly together in an arc seems highly inaccurate, especially since they aren't even aiming at the character when the move begins, will this move be more dangerous in the final game? Hardtack seemed very powerful and 1 hit killed a lot of enemies (on level 8 difficulty as well), whilst it took Fortune a bit longer to kill basic enemies. Are the mechanics properly balanced to where it isn't too easy for certain heroes like Hard and Red Card, who have fast shotguns, when it takes longer for heroes like Fortune and Rama to kill basic enemies?
Sorry for so many questions, I'm trying to keep it to what has been revealed thus far, and I want to keep an eye out for bugs etc.
