I loved this game, and it’s really the only video game I ever played in my (relative) youth back in the mid-1990s.
I’ve got my fingers crossed that this really comes about.
The new installment is called Descent: Underground, and is a prequel to Descent, Descent II, and Descent 3.
Anyone else here fans of the Descent series?
In the meantime, I’m going to drag out my old discs and see if I can find a cheap Mac computer with OS 9 installed so I can hone my skills between now and the expected March 2016 release date.
I don’t really see the point honestly. It came out as more of a tech demo when the likes of Doom 2 was still ruling the FPS stage. You couldn’t really go up or down in those days, maps were one big flat 2D space where the mimicry of a Z axis was done to give an illusion of true 3D. Descent was fun for its time, but its incredibly annoying to control and disorienting. With true 3D in all FPS games right now, its time should be done.
I heard this online (yes, the internet existed in 1994) at the time, too. I don’t know why; no one I knew personally ever had a problem with it. And actually, very few FPS games have true 3D; the map may have a (functionally) actual third dimension, but you’re still stuck on the stupid ground; all you got was better visuals. Descent’s time isn’t done; it’s just beginning. And hey- if we get a rebirth of Descent, we may (eventually) finally get a third Freespace!
The one problem is, as you mentioned, controls. Descent didn’t actually have any control problems- provided you had a decent joystick. Pretty much the only people who have them nowadays are the flight sim nuts, who’ve set up rigs that’re somehow more realistic than the actual plane controls they’re based on; and remnant gamers from the Age Of The Joystick who never got rid of theirs. I’m sitting comfortably in the second camp myself (one hand wrapped around a Sidewinder Force Feedback 2 and the other hand wrapped around another Sidewinder Force Feedback 2; it is really hard to type like this), but I’m part of a small group in that. If the controls are designed to not need a joystick, you lose out on the precision it gives you (even in Descent, a mouse doesn’t work as well), or you cut out those who aren’t old enough to still have one. Either way, you alienate somebody.
You heard that Descent sucked? Don’t get me wrong, for all its flaws, I really liked the game. It was cool to be flying through an actual 3D environment that, like you said, didn’t confine you to the ground. But I felt that the game distinguished itself because you could go in all directions, that was its major selling point. It needed some polish, and some way to support mouse and keyboard like most FPS games. Doom and others like that were graphically superior, faster, and more action packed. Descent was a slow crawl compared to a lot of them. Back then the 3D drew people because it was different. I just don’t think its different enough now to warrant a reboot
I wouldn’t be hard to orient it for a mouse and keyboard, but it they’d be much faster than a joystick that it wouldn’t be fair to play the two against each other. If you use no clipping in a modern FPS game, you could run right up into the air and turn and move just like Descent. Add a couple of barrel roll directional buttons and you’re good to go. But that might detract from the pacing of the original