38 Studios Unveils its First Look at Project Copernicus

Looked kinda cool. Too bad it was an MMO. It'd be cool if someone took those assets and made an RPG with em.

@Lucidlife said:

An MMO? They are doomed as a studio. The MMO train has left the station. No one cares anymore.

You would think so and I would wish so, but the amount of income MMOs gain in total is continuing to rise. There seems to be a population that plays each new release of an MMO then migrates to the next thing that brings up its ugly head. Further more MMOs are primarily played by social gamers and that means casuals which = more wallets to investors. So ya the string of bad MMOs will unfortunately not be going away.

That wasn't a very exciting video to watch. The only compliment I can give it is that the art style was lovely.

An MMO? They are doomed as a studio. The MMO train has left the station. No one cares anymore.

The graphics engine is dated, but the environments look really really nice and unique. Less copy and pasted than WOWC was. However, I'm not going to play an MMO for a company that's in financial ruin. I'd have to worry every day about trying to log on to find my server no longer exists.

I bet this game will never see a public release. Reckoning was supposed to help pay for this, but I don't think they met their mark.

Looks like WoW 1.5. This feels like what you get when you have a wealthy uber WoW fan like Schilling, trying to come up with his dream project, which is to get paid to play more WoW......I hope it works out. I wonder if the game world is larger than the state of RI....hmmmm...an E3 mystery perhaps?

Jeez, convincing a state to fund an MMO? Mind control or ignorance? You decide, Tonight on CBS

Nice video, some good stuff in there, shame its an mmo.

I'm sorry Mario but your WOW killing MMO is in another castle.

Never realized the crisis would touch the game industries. That's a pity.

the video is nice.

Nice art style, but I don't think it will stand a chance against the other established MMOS out there. What a shame.

Really like the look of it. I felt the same way about Reckoning. Hope 38 Studios can finish it. Looks really interesting.

Yikes! This game (and studio) has got no shot....

Ugh, Trajan.

Okay, now with that out of the way I'll watch the video! ;)

This is going to fail, no matter what the quality of the game is.

Oh boy, a MMO that was being developed while WoW was at its peak. I WONDER HOW THE COMBAT IS GOING TO BE LIKE!

Seven years and this is all? Link developed better than this in seven years.

Lands of (and?) Kingdoms of Amalur : Reckoning - Online

Hey! That looks wholly original and not like any other MMO I've ever played!

Those were some jagged looking environments.

Seven years in development and not even a second of gameplay. Yeah, I get it, dazzle my eyes with "prettiness" but cut to the chase and show me what makes your game possibly any different to the dozens upon dozens of other cookiecutter MMOs.

Seven years.

Looks like what I'd imagine World of Warcraft environments would look like, if it came out in 2012.

If the gameplay is noteworthy, and not standard fare, I'll gladly take a look.

Those are alot of corridors.

The trailer and all of the things going on just reminded me of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes which was a...game. Is that game still running?

And it still doesn't have a name.

I would prefer if Project Copernicus was actually set in Rhode Island.

If this is anything like Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning or anything like other fantasy MMOs than I could not care any less about it.

A FANTASY MMO??!!! Well I mean it COULD work?

Looks good, but we need to see gameplay. They are obviously going for a comic book vibe, and I think they achieved it pretty well. Unfortunately, I can also see lots of people saying this is just a WoW clone; and honestly, they are very similar in appearance. It will all come down to gameplay, it seems.

If the combat system is anything like what was in Amalur, I'm already sold. Amalur was a strong game, which a beautiful world. It seemed destined to be an MMO when I was playing it. I hope they get to release this game, especially since they have been working on it for seven years.

Some pretty cool looking locations in there, imo.

As much as I hate to be "That guy," I didn't see much to be impressed with. Yeah, some of the environments looked cool, but they also looked familiar to any fantasy setting.

Looks like a "come and buy me" trailer to me. This project is what got them in trouble in the first place and they're desperate for someone else to take it on.

Doesn't really look like any familiar locations from Reckoning.

What were they thinking? Their first announced project was a fantasy MMO in one of the hardest markets to penetrate in video games? The art design is totally fine, but that doesn't matter because frankly it looks like shit. And let's be honest - it's probably going to offer the same dated MMORPG combat system that's been around for years. Project Copernicus was an absolutely horrible idea. Don't they have market analysts there to tell them these things?

Excitement 0

Pretty fantasy MMO architecture does nothing for me at this point.

I'm willing to bet that this video was previously available only to investors, or was only meant to be, and now they are showing it off because they pretty much have no choice.

Really though, this shouldn't give any more hope to anyone about what it was or is. I don't understand how they think they can keep the cards so close to the chest at this point. They're going to need to drive some serious hype on this game over the next year+ to get even close the the number of people they are going to need to pay their loans off, and survive.

WELL worth the Money![/sarcasm]

The enviroment looks interesting but I want a look at lore, which I hope Reckoning will do when I get around to it, and most importantly the gameplay. I really hope they working on a sample of the gameplay just now to show people. If they truly have some interesting and unuiqe, lets hope so, they might be able to set up pre-order/beta access to try and stem the hemorrhaging of money.

It's hard to throw criticism at stuff that people have worked hard on designing and modeling, but so far none of the areas shown in the video elicit any excitement from me. I know it's a fantasy setting, but "fantasy MMO" doesn't need to translate to "looks like a more shiny WoW". That being said, until we see more on the other systems in the game, no one can really make any fair judgments on it.

I like the artstyle.

What do you think?

What can one say about a flyover of a textured heightmap and some 3d models?

The window for fantasy MMOs making a profit has long since been closed.  Last couple had a nice initial rush of buyers but then after a couple months, your down to a few.  Hell, MMOs of any style are really hurting now with so much competition among the MMO crowd and also from normal games. 
 
I believe some of the higher ups in 38 studios had this grand dream that they would grow as large as blizzard from their MMO.  TIme for them to cut their loses and regroup or die.

"38 Studios Unveils its First Look at Project Copernicus"

They might as well close up shop. No sense in blowing a ton of money to make a mediocre MMO.

I sort of feel the same way about this game as I do about the Penny Arcade games. There is no denying that Gabe, Tycho and Curt are all passionate about games. But loving games and making games are two different things. The guys from PA seemed to either get this a bit more and reeled in the scope of the game or were just limited by the budget and what the developer could do for them. 38 on the other hand has basically had Curt and Rhode Island saying do whatever! Make a WoW killer. And that's fine at the start of a project. But we're going on six years. One hopes that there's enough producers in there to keep them on track, but these recent issues say otherwise. It certainly doesn't take 300 dudes to model all that, so one can hope there are some amazing engineers and programmers making it amazing.

I'll be interested to see how it does but in honesty: Between Diablo 3, BF3, and maybe Guild Wars 2? I'm good for online content. If SWTOR couldn't keep me interested, I don't see how this can. Which is a bummer since I've had some great MMO experiences. It's just not what I dig now.

Go Sox, though. =/

Only showing the game now is a bad PR move, also there was no gameplay

Giant Bomb makes no apologies for content.

Also, I think it looks cool, but need to see some gameplay, as already said.

Also #2, video needs more Rich Gallup in front of a green screen talking about the game.

If they need money then why not strip the MMO stuff out and release this game as a single player RPG.

Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning did well and i'm really enjoying it, hope this does too.