You'll run, be killed, and reborn in a "baby" state as a simple, low-rent sim (though we suspect the game won't be using that term, for obvious reasons) - a blank, featureless avatar that can be male, female or even neither. You start the game as one of those consciousnesses in a place called the Land of the Lost, a nightmare scenario which you're trying to escape. Without giving too much of the books' plot away, a sinister secret cabal of net overlords is feeding on the consciousnesses of innocent humans, trapping them in virtual space to make their personal fantasies that little bit more real. In this world, the ultimate status symbols and playthings of the super-rich are their own personal virtual realities, tailored to their interests and specifications. Everything from shopping to games has become an all-consuming alternate reality played out by humans ("Citizens", inhabiting their "sim" avatars) and computer-controlled AIs called Puppets.
Otherland depicts a near-future world where the net rules all, and virtual-reality headsets that turn it into a surround sensory experience are commonplace. The aesthetic of Lambda Mall is weirdly dated - a very 90s version of VR - but the graphical performance isn't. It's rare enough to get the reluctant presence of a licensor, but Williams seems genuinely delighted to be here promoting this game - and after all, why shouldn't he? It's not just that his work is being faithfully adapted - it's that his predictions are coming true.
#RPG BASED ON TAD WILLIAMS OTHERLAND PS2#
You remember them: 8-bit heroes of The Hobbit and The Way of the Exploding Fist, and then cult classic Shadowrun, who in later years struggled valiantly with the tide of licences and conversions heaped on them by Atari, sometimes triumphing against the odds (as in PS2 Transformers).Įven the impossibly garrulous author Tad Williams is here, bulldozing through the jetlag on raw enthusiasm alone, talking enough to fill the thousand pages of one of his books. And yet here we are in baking, steamy Singapore, the guests of dtp Entertainment (the publisher) and its new Singaporean outpost, the development studio Real U, formed around a core of ex-Melbourne House talent. In a field as formulaic as videogames, you seldom come across anything as unlikely as this.
Everything changes, even your own appearance, and nothing is even pretending to be real.
For want of a better soundbite, let's call it the first cyberpunk MMO: a virtual world about virtual worlds, in which your avatar is an avatar, the NPCs play NPCs, and you explore a multiverse in which you might be in realistic historical surroundings one minute, and cartoon fantasy ones the next. Otherland - from the books by Tad Williams - is a mind-bending concept. This is no World of Questhammer: The Rune Crusade. If all that doesn't sound out-there enough, wait till you get a load of the game they're making. A wealthy Asian city-state looking to compete with its neighbours and foster an entertainment industry of its own. A bunch of talented, dispossessed Australian developers, striking out in a new field and a new country, with a truly international team.
An American author of doorstop science-fiction and fantasy novels seeing his work adapted for the first time. A German publisher of games and children's software, without a major hit to its name and with no experience in online gaming, committing tens of millions of Euros to the development of what it hopes will be a triple-A MMO.
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