Discussion of topics related to licensed games, software hacking/modification, prototypes, and development kits belongs here. Includes topics related to emulating the Dreamcast console on your computer or on another gaming console. Discussion of Reicast should go in the Official Reicast Forum.
...I always get a little disappointed at untapped potential. The Saturn was a major source of this. But here:
This was a Dreamcast game. It was being developed by Ubisoft, and was slated for a summer 2000 release. Here's the full writeup:
March 24, 2000 - Since writing our initial preview of this upcoming Ubi Soft RPG, we've learned a few more details on the title. The concept and story for Arcatera has been in development for over 12 years and is Westka's first international videogame project.
The game consists of one large world with several different regions. The city of Senora has three different districts: Eastwards (a mess), Westville (a regular district) and the very noble and rich Middletown. The game's environments include an old quarry, various swamps, and a huge forest.
As mentioned in our previous preview, all inhabitants of the city have an AI-determined behavior system, similar to Yu Suzuki's Shenmue. This means that they have their own history and personal characteristics so they won't stand day and night at the same place. These NPC's (non-playable characters) will actually remember how you behave against them and can communicate with each other's in complex ways. All inhabitants of the world will worry if they have enough food and water, and will have to avoid monsters, disease, and other difficulties.
Arcatera was originally designed as a classic PC RPG game with a few action elements, but Westka implanted the adventure elements in one of the later stages of development. The Story is non-linear and like many other non-linear RPG games, depends on your actions and puzzles solved throughout. Players of RPG-style games will certainly appreciate that the game allows you to create a team of up to four characters, each with their own unique weak points and skills.
Like in Infogrames' Alone in the Dark 4, Arcatera uses real-time filtering, shadowing, anti-aliasing and variable lighting sources depending on location and time of the day. The battles in the game make use of several special light and transparency effects to make realistic looking explosions, magic spells and fog.
The only other new bit of info that we have concerns the game's sound. Apparently, Ubisoft has signed the famous German synchronizer 'Neben Hans to do work on this area, so we can expect Arcatera to excel in this area.
Stay tuned for further coverage of this promising title from Westka, but take a look at our latest batch of screens in the meanwhile.
Theres just no point to harp on the fact of canceled games. DC probably had more canceled games than any other systems tons of whiched looked stunning. Soul Reaver 2 for example.
We really shoudnt fume about Soul Reaver 2 getting cancelled. I was pissed at first, then the game just turned out to be fairly mediocre, and most magazines/sites claimed that the game only appealed to fans of the first game. I loved Soul Reaver, so I rushed out to buy SR2 amid the so-so reviews.
Wow that looked pretty good. Probably a GD-R or something out there...there's hope, eh?
Just shows the DC is a lot more powerful than most of the games it had on it. I think it could hold up against the current gen of hardware.
As time goes on, I think more and more unreleased games for the DC will surface. Despite popular belief, the DC was doing quite well--it's just that Sega needed something of PS1/PS2 popularity to pull them out of a hole.
doragasu wrote:That screens of Arcatera look to me like poor prerendered backgrounds with poorly designed characters.
But remember this was supposed to be released back in 2000/2001. Also, during many preview builds, the graphics look somewhat wonky.
Anywho, I'm sure it exists in some form. Would be interesting to play it. Going with what Bilal said, I doubt they'd just kill 12 years of work and not keep any record of it.
doragasu wrote:That screens of Arcatera look to me like poor prerendered backgrounds with poorly designed characters.
I wouldn't agree with you on the "poor" part, especially considering the 2000 projected launch. There is some weird block-coloring, but that could be either poor JPEG compression or the result of 16-bit lighting effects.
As for the prerendered bit...I thought so too, until I started looking at them more carefully and found jaggies. They wouldn't have jaggies like that if it was all prerendered.
DaMadFiddler wrote:As for the prerendered bit...I thought so too, until I started looking at them more carefully and found jaggies. They wouldn't have jaggies like that if it was all prerendered.
I'm sure that are prerendered screens, there are a lot of games with prerendered graphics with jaggies, they are very common when you use several prerendered layers.
Actually, if you check around on Google, apparently the game DID come put for PC as scheduled...and that *IS* all in-game graphics. Not pre-rendered backdrops.
It seems a shame if something has been started and then gets canceled tho 
