Scandalous indie studio Running with Scissors, Inc worries not the best times after a loud failure Postal III In 2011. The departure of key employees, the development of additions with the hands of modes, the slurred remake of the first game on the new engine … It would seem that the sunken RWS ship could pull out from the financial bottom? Right – Postal 4.
In mid -October of this year, she was not just announced, but immediately released in early access Steam. However, after the first hour of playing the novelty, the impression is that the developers have no more original ideas at all and can only parasitize on the corpse of the most scandalous franchise in the gaming industry. To clarify the situation, gambling contacted Vince Desi, the current head of the RWS studio, and asked to tell me what to expect from the coming fourth part. The developer shared his memories of how the franchise was created, and asked the players not to judge the game of alpha version.
At the beginning of the journey
Ideological inspirers of the Postal series, Vince Desi and Mike Ridel, met while working on Atari. When the corporation began financial problems, the guys did not wait for the reduction and quit; For recent savings, they opened their own studio for the development of projects for various licenses – Riedel Software Productions. In just a year, the company began to work in a plus, putting a hand in the games on the Street Sezam, cartoons Hanna-Barber And even Disney.
It's hard to believe, but the authors of these games will come up with a maniac simulator later
Vince Desi: In 1996, we wanted to create our own, original, product and move away from creating games for children. The gameplay was taken as the basis of the Robotron arcade machine, which stood in our office. I wanted the game to be crazy and gloomy, built on reality, and not on a space garbage or zombie monstrakh. I wrote several scenes, and then allowed the rest of the developers to voice their ideas. Therefore, Postal is a product of the entire studio, each has brought a piece of himself into it.
Gameplay of the same Robotron
In order not to spoil the RSP reputation of an “adult” game, in 1996, Mike and Vince opened a subsidiary – Running with Scissors. Dezi admits that I chose the name not for the sake of reference to the English -speaking idiom (“Do not run with scissors”; an analogue in the Russian language – “Do not play with fire”), but simply because he often indulged with scissors in childhood.
Steve Wick was the main designer and screenwriter of the first Postal: starting from the concept of Desi, he came up with a crazy postman who saves the world from aliens that were disguised as ordinary citizens. The team of the new studio picked up the idea, but in the end replaced the aliens with people. If you do an adult project, you need to break away in full!
Surgery
The idea of the game and its name appeared it is no coincidence: the slang expression “going postal” means cruel, crazy behavior. It went into use after 1986, when an employee of the US postal service, unable to withstand pressure from the authorities, came to work with two pistols and shot fourteen people.
Steve PEC used this tragedy as a script base. But during the development, the studio realized that “chernukha” could adversely affect sales, so the postman was replaced with a dude, and the first word was removed from the name, leaving only Postal. However, this did not protect RWS from court claims filed by postal services.
Loading screens showed foggy, half-crazy notes from the diary of the protagonist, who at least somehow explained the plot
The game was released a year later. First Postal She was a simple isometric shooter who set a single goal before the player: to kill a certain number of police officers, military and other hostiles. Nobody forbade killing civilians either, so the project became the most bloodthirsty game of 1997 – at least at that time he had no equal.
In the center of the plot was a man named Chuvak (Vince himself describes him as “a cross between Einstein and Beethoven with the appearance of Johnny Kash”), in whose head a mysterious voice appeared. He told the hero that the military spray incomprehensible gas poisoning the inhabitants of the city. This disgrace must be stopped immediately, so the dude takes a rifle from the closet and goes to the military base, leaving the mountains of corpses. And having completed his mission, the psychopath finally flies from the coils and goes to kill children to school. But, fortunately, he doesn’t succeed in committing the plan (murder of minors – too much for Postal): ultimately the police twist the dude and sends to the psychiatric hospital.
The release was accompanied by scandals. The media scolded the game for excessive cruelty, and Senator Joe Lieberman even called Postal one of the worst things created in America. Several retail chains completely refused to sell the novelty, but it was only at the studio’s hand: the game was in hearing. Thanks to this, Postal not only paid off, but also dispersed to the circulation of about $ 5 million about $ 5 million). Success allowed RWS to gain financial independence from Riedel Software Productions and think about new projects.
All I wanted is a little milk
Because of the rising hype, the publisher of the game, Ripcord Games , refused to cooperate with Running with Scissors, and the studio plans to create other original franchises went to dust. Therefore, they had no choice but to take up the development of the continuation of postal. Still at the stage of discussion Postal 2 The team decided to create something radically different from the original: with massacres and psychedelic plots, it will not be possible to surprise twice. Fortunately, when you make a product on your own, you can not limit yourself to anything and try something new. Therefore, Steve Wick proposed to show the ordinary life of an American citizen through the prism of satire: to arrange a crazy comedic show, where the player can do everything that will please.
RWS bought a new -fashioned (for 2001) Unreal Engine 2 engine and began to develop, but this process turned out to be almost unbearable. The studio divided the whole world into separate levels and abandoned many things (for example, controlled cars), which could not Rabbit Win Casino be implemented on the engine. The script was written on the go: Steve and the team followed the news and entered every more or less resonant event into the world of game. Postal 2, as planned, was supposed to have a directly breakthrough AI: passers-by had to respond correctly to the player’s actions, communicate between themselves and not get stuck in impassable places. The development of such a large project was a real test for the studio, which consisted of only nine people.
In 2003, Postal 2 reached the shelves, and RWS kept most of the promises: she gave the fans a free open world, where the townspeople of Paradise (as well as cats, dogs and even elephants) live regardless of the player's actions. Ways to broadcast a lot there: a dude could kill, urinate somewhere, set fire to everything that would get on the eyes and play football with a chopped head. And the main character, voiced by Rick Hunter, also hilariously commented on everything that was happening, from time to time breaking the fourth wall.
Vince Desi: In real life, everyone is angry at someone. And in Postal 2, we gave the audience the opportunity to get angry at all at once, including me and the entire RWS team. Modern games are sometimes too serious, and in Postal 2 people can release steam, do what cannot be done in the real world. You can put the shotgun in the ass of the cat, pour people with gasoline and set them on fire or play with the dog of the protagonist, throwing her severed head. And all this with a huge variety of characters: from ordinary white people to dancing gays, terrorists, policemen with donuts and, of course, stars No. 1 in history – Gary Coleman.
Greenpeisers, believers, rednecks, perverts and, of course, opponents of cruel video games fell under the distribution
The plot told about the son of the protagonist of the first Postal, living with his wife in a house on wheels. For five days, he is engaged in household problems: he buys milk, cashes a salary check, goes to the polls, confesses in the church, and so on. But, of course, something always goes wrong. Either the bank will begin to rob, then opponents of cruel Games will be decided on an armed uprising, then the defenders of nature will set fire to the library. Long queues, insults from the inhabitants of the city, hit the police – all this one way or another pushes the player to cruelty, but in fact the game can be passed without any bloodshed. RWS gave the audience a choice: the user himself decided whether the offspring of a dude would go in the footsteps.
Critics were divided into two camps. Some praised Postal 2 for the courage and original ideas, others scolded for a small volume of content, long level loading, poor optimization and, of course, excessive cruelty. Australia completely banned the game, and Germany and Sweden joined it for some time. Users, on the contrary, were satisfied – the game swept off the shelves like hot pies. Best, according to Vince, it was sold in the USA and Russia.
Domestic publisher of the project, Akella , He was so pleased with the release that he contacted RWS and offered them a partnership agreement to jointly develop an exclusive addition for Russia. Vince was not opposed: two years later, the official spin -offs came out in Russia " Coroner ZHZHOT »From the internal game studio" Akelly ". The quality of the addon was significantly different from what was in the original, but even a weak humor, poor (yes, even worse) technical implementation and an absurd story about the lost penis did not prevent the “stock” to sell a good circulation in their homeland and even go out in Japan.
Mukhosransk in the "corkscrew ZHZHOT" turned out to be pale, vile, smoky and absolutely dead
Vince understood that the creation of the next game would need a lot of money, and large publishers are unlikely to cooperate with rebels such as RWS. The release of Postal on the consoles was a long -standing dream of the studio, but to make a high -quality project for the prefixes of a new generation by the forces of a small team is an impossible task. Therefore, when in 2006 Akella offered RWS assistance in development Postal III, The developers were happy to seize this chance.
Alas, this agreement between the studios turned out to be a fatal mistake.
Postal III development diary, where you can find out a lot of interesting
From Russia with love
From the very beginning of development, the third Postal already had problems. Steve PEC gave out a huge number of new gameplay ideas, but they did not fit into a single design document, and therefore it was difficult to make a clear development plan. Only one thing was clear: the game should go out on the consoles, and the point. Akella had a small studio Trashmasters , which at that moment was engaged in the development of the project under PS2 – it was they who were entrusted with the creation of a new postal. Behind the developers at that time there were both parts " Boy with a shadow "," Swordsman " And Swashbucklers – Not the highest quality games even by the standards of the Russian gaming industry.
Development dragged on for six years. Employees blindly performed the tasks: made models, wrote scripts, created levels, painted textures, but without a competent game designer, this was only a set of scripts and asesets. The new Postal could not make a holistic game in any way. As a result, Steve PEC personally went to Russia in order to control the development process on the spot.
True, this did not bring fruits: the non -linear plot, which was so dreamed of in RWS, was simply unrealized. As a result, the leading project programmer, who for months engaged in artificial intelligence residents of the city, simply quit. And then the economic crisis of 2008 struck, and the development was finally stuck. The TRASHMASTERS team was reduced, and Steve himself could no longer live in Russia and went back to Arizona. There, along with RWS, he was mainly engaged in the script, art and voice acting, poorly imagining what is happening inside the Russian studio and at what stage of development is the project.
Vince Desi: We were not even allowed to TRASHMASTERS, because their office was in some state institution where foreigners could not go.
Postal 3 could join the ranks of the police. Only after that the player was forced to cost a non -lethal weapon
When the project budget began to be exhausted, a certain “design-debtor” settled in the office, which was instructed to save the project. First of all, he threw all the ideas and developments of RWS and set out to highlight the core that would distinguish Postal from other games. As a result, Brashmasters Branestorm decided that the franchise was based on meat, blood, guts and a unique weapon. Freedom of action and everyday life in the crazy world faded into the background – only a cruel, “meat” shooter remained. Akella understood that it was time to finish this long -term construction, so they did not agree on changes with RWS, but simply threw new specialists to Trashmasters and gave the installation: finish the game at all costs.
As a result, in 2011, Postal III finally got to the shelves. And from the final result, not only players, but also key employees RWS were in shock.
Vince Desi: How would you feel if your child was born as a result of an abortion in the seventh month?
Postal 3 turned out to be a primitive scooter from a third person, with raw optimization, broken scripts and funny missions. Artificial intelligence worked much worse than in the last game, which at that time was already eight years old. The rigid satire was replaced by sorting humor, the plot was ruined poorly placed videos, and facial animations could not stand any criticism at all.
Journalists unanimously recognized the project by a failure, and the fans of the series began to send letters in RWS with requests to remake the game. Patches who hastily collected at Trashmasters did not save, but only broke the game even more. Ultimately, the third Postal was poorly sold, the TRASHMASTERS closed, and Akella was mired in debt that it simply disappeared from the radar of the gaming industry. The project never came out on the consoles.
The failure of the third part hit hard and on RWS itself. The new game did not bring the desired profit, and key developers left the company. Steve Wick himself was the last, feeling his guilt due to the failure of Postal III. But Vince was not going to bury the franchise on such a sad note – he decided not to stop and return the series to its former greatness.
Vince Desi: In fact, it was a sad situation. Good people worked in Trashmasters, but they suffered from illiterate leadership. Postal III should have been canceled when the situation got out of control. We wanted to remake the game and bring it to mind, but we were not provided with source code and assets. The most important for us were fans of the series. We felt their pain, and therefore refused to call Postal III RWS development.
Parasitization
After a five -year lull, the remake of the very first game took place. Postal Redux They made an HD -orester on Unreal Engine 4: the large budget was not required for this, the remaining members of RWS could transfer the mechanics and content to the new engine. All the gameplay was unchanged, and only minor edits were brought into the plot.
Without Steve, Wik in the studio no longer knew in which direction it was necessary to develop the series, and therefore did not begin to go to a huge risk and release the fourth part. The game was created more for fans than for new players. In addition, the competition Redux amounted to a year earlier Hatred, which gave the players much more freedom in shooting virtual boobs.
The next project of the studio was the addon to Postal 2. But the team was not going to hire new developers: instead, the guys turned to the modders for help. The latter were happy to work side by side with people from RWS and immediately began to create Paradise Lost. But, of course, the lack of a budget and professional programmers markedly affected the final build. The game looked bad, teemed with bugs and lost all the former charm. Nevertheless, the fans were happy with any content from their favorite studio – and in every possible way helped developers to polish the project to a playable state.
The structure of the addition has not changed: the main character will have to survive five days in the destroyed nuclear warhead city, dealing with household problems from the second part. But due to the departure of the main screenwriter, caustic satire disappeared from the game, ridicuating human vices and all that fans loved the second part. Instead, sorted jokes came in half with references to successful game franchises and cinema.
Neither one nor the other project offered anything new – they only hastily repeated the already worked formula. And finally it became clear why RWS all these years have parasitized on their best creations: they saved money on Postal 4.
Finally, not a remake
The announcement of the fourth part of the franchise took place unexpectedly: the developers on the move released not only the trailer, but also the version of the game for early access – it is already lying on Steam. The team decided to completely ignore the events of the third part and instead continue the plot of the second.
RWS invested all the money that they had left without involving third -party investors and publishers: Vince did not want to lose the independence of his studio again. And all the same people that Redux and Paradise Lost have been working on Postal 4 – former modders who simply transferred scripts and assets of the second part to Unreal Engine 4. Vince himself claims that the development has been going on for two and a half years, but it is still difficult to understand what the studio has been doing so much time. After all, Postal 4 at the moment does not look like a new game, but as the next remake of the second part.
Vince Desi: The main difference from the previous parts is that we finally have a new generation engine and on it we can make a big seamless world that changes from the actions of the players. And most importantly, we can finally bring the franchise to consoles!
Events start immediately after the end of the history of Postal 2. The old city is blown up, so a dude with his dog drives around Arizona in search of a new house. At one of the stops, his house is stolen on his wheels, and the hero himself remains in the middle of the road with fifty bucks in his pocket. Yes, now he is dressed in a purple robe and berets – this idea came to the mind of the developers back in the time of the creation of Postal III.
Vince Desi: Players often ask where the classic dude suit has gone. And I will ask you: you wear the same outfit every day? All people change over time. In addition, I love purple color.
Having wandered along the road, the dude notices the city of Edensin nearby, where he decides to work a little in order to buy a new house for himself. And this settlement is not much different from the paradise: all the same red -haired landscapes, cacti, mountains, square houses, packed shops, halls with slot machines and, of course, stupid passers -by, which can be thoughtlessly walking into the wall. The sounds, scripts and actions of the protagonist were also dragged into the fourth part unchanged.
In the distance you can see Mr. House's tower from New Vegas
To find a job, a dude selects a cardboard, writes an ad on it and goes to pester the townspeople with questions – this was already in the famous mission about petitions. Following he enters the employment center, where a man is offered three professions: a guard in prison, a sewage assembly or an employee for catching homeless animals.
Tasks at each work are as if written off from the above Postal III: catch five cats and dogs, screw several bulbs, scrap a scapard with a shovel, find three codes from grilles, etc.D. And there is no special humor there – unless, of course, you are ready to laugh at the shit jokes, which have naughty at Paradise Lost. Killing stupid enemies is also pretty boring. Maybe there will be at least some satire or social message, as in the second part?
Vince Desi: You must be joking. Does Minecraft, Fortnite, Call of Duty, GTA or Assassin’s Creed Social Association or Satire? I am most proud of the Postal franchise for its humor: starting with the settling of the marching group in the second part and ending with a water pistol with Napalm from Postal 4. It's fun to laugh at friends, yourself or even over us. Good time. Your mother, this is a game, not an academic lecture!
Cats are now even fit on the barrel of a revolver. Comfortable!
What else interesting can postal 4 be offered? Yes, in fact, nothing. Graphically, it looks worse than the unfortunate third part. Ugly hud, spelling errors … After an hour of the game, it seems that she was collected in a few weeks, not years. The project is too raw: for example, a moped, which has become a replacement of Sigweed, gets stuck in textures, falls through the level, and sometimes can unsuccessfully turn over and kill the player.
The original weapon, which was so famous for the series, is impressive: what is only a cage with carnivorous pigeons. Steve WIK wanted to add birds in the second part, but then Vince fraught this idea. But now, in the absence of successful ideas, you have to use old developments.
Vince Desi: Rick Hunter, who previously voiced dude, could not play him in Postal 4. We called John Saint-Jonu (the voice of Duke Nyukem and the protagonist This is police ), to a professional in his field. He happily agreed. Of course, if Rick in the future wants to play a signs again, we will always be able to return it to some crazy addition.
It is obvious that it makes no sense to scold Postal 4 at the current stage of development-this is still a very early version of the game, and, according to Vince, there is not even ten percent of the conceived. Now RWS is actively recruiting talented enthusiasts who are ready to help in development. Dezi promises that in his new game there will be more details than in any previous studio project, and the gameplay will become much deeper. He also says that the developers have already achieved significant progress in working out the game design, details of the city and the plot.
A full list of promises from developers can be found here, but how much Postal 4 will stay in the early access, until even Vince himself knows. Now RWS is completing work on subtitles: they want to release the localization of alpha version in several languages, including Russian. In the next updates, police officers, additional objects and new weapons will be added, as well as correct artificial intelligence.
Vince Desi: Closer to the release, we will take on our own for full localization. Fans from Russia we promise high -quality dubbing with votes familiar by the second part. We love you.
Now the fate of the series depends on Postal 4. Whether the main rebels of the game industry will remain the same reckless creators, or this game will be the last nail in the lid of RWS coffin – we will not find out soon. And how do you evaluate the chances of the fourth part for success?