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Author Topic: The Binding of Isaac(: Rebirth) [pre-release hype & discussion]  (Read 3106 times)

Mesa

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It's been talked about a lot, it's been teased a lot, I've hyped it a lot, but I haven't seen a good place to really discus this apart from threads that seem to be ages old and mostly about the original.

So here it is, the Not Even Close to Official "The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth" Discussion Thread.
What is TBOI:R, you may ask?

Well, it's a remake of the original Flash-based The Binding of Isaac (and the Wrath of the Lamb DLC) on a brand new engine, complete with a new artstyle (which is sort of a controversial topic), tons of new content from items to bosses to characters and rooms, and a plethora of other things that could not be done in the original.

I'll let the game's wikia tell you what it's about in a decently-detailed form:
Quote from: The Binding of Isaac wikia
The Binding of Isaac is a two-dimensional action-adventure video game where the player controls Isaac or six of the unlockable characters as he traverses through the dungeons located underneath his mother's basement. The video game's gameplay and style are inspired by the dungeons of The Legend of Zelda series, while mixing in randomly procedurally generated floors akin to roguelikes (like traditional roguelikes, death is permanent and the player is forced to restart with nothing if they die) while doing this is in a simple Legend of Zelda like formula. On each floor of the basement below, the player must fight off monsters before he can go into other rooms. Along the way, the player can collect currency to buy items from shops, keys to gain entry into special treasure rooms (as well as special golden chests, libraries that contain book items, and shops), and new weapons and power-ups to increase his chance of surviving. Each floor of the dungeon ends in a boss room, where the player must defeat the boss before being able to go down to the next floor.

It'll be on PC/PS4/PS Vita and likely-ish also on 3DS.
No release date as of yet apart from 2014. The game is nearing the end of development and we may get a proper trailer with a release date as early as next Monday (11th August) but nothing set in stone as of now.
Players who own the original game on Steam will receive a massive royalty discount, and the game itself will cost anywhere between 10 to 20$, probably around 15$ though. There will be pre-orders, and possibly also promotional items for Team Fortress 2 (Ed said he's "working on it").

Until then though, this thread shall serve as a general Isaac discussion and speculation thread, as well as a news thread, so if anything noteworthy happens, it'd be great to relay it here immediately.

The official blog where updates are posted & Edmund's personal blog, where questions are answered.

RULES!
Be easy on the discussion about Isaac's aesthetics & plot though. After all, this is a video game thread, not a religion thread. The last thing we need is a gasoline-drenched discussion about Christianity here and hoping it doesn't turn into a flame war. I'm pretty sure there is at least one religion-related thread in the General Discussion section, go there if you want to talk about that subject.

Also, once the game comes out, PLEASE use spoilers for about the first two weeks after the game is out. I personally don't care about them, but others likely do, and I doubt they'd want to have their fun ruined. This also applies to the current game's spoilers as well, though to a lesser extent.
« Last Edit: August 10, 2014, 04:27:14 am by DarkDXZ »
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Criptfeind

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Re: The Binding of Isaac(: Rebirth) [pre-release hype & discussion]
« Reply #1 on: August 09, 2014, 10:34:46 pm »

I hate the graphics style. It looks so awful. I'm so sad that Edmund is doing this downgrade to graphics with what looks like a huge upgrade to gameplay. Because it totally looks like it will be worth it, and that I will have to play it as I very much love the the first one.

But god.

Damn.

Edmund is the George Lucas of video game graphics.

Edit: By the way, I notice there are no links in the op. This is Edmunds blog. Which last time I checked (a few months ago) was the only official site for the game I could find. It probably has a lot of other irrelevant stuff on it though. /me shrugs.
« Last Edit: August 09, 2014, 10:41:14 pm by Criptfeind »
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Catastrophic lolcats

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Re: The Binding of Isaac(: Rebirth) [pre-release hype & discussion]
« Reply #2 on: August 10, 2014, 12:05:15 am »

I was sure we already had a thread about this, whatever.
I also hate the new artstyle and much prefered the "vector" style that was iconic to Edmund and friends games. The retro art style is really overused these days which unless you take time to make it distinctly unique it comes across as painfully generic. 

While this looks like it will be a major upgrade content wise I can't find myself having much interest in it. The original game was fun, strategic with an acceptable amount of RNG but as more and more content was piled on top of it, the difficulty skyrocketed to insane levels and item power crept it just came down to praying to RNGesus for the most broken combination of items. From some of the teasers it seems that this is just becoming ever more prominent.

It should also be said that there is an increasing amount of of roguelike-likes/roguelite that have much more in depth mechanics especially when it comes to combat. Personally I would see myself migrating to such titles instead of bothering with a re-release on a game I'm already burnt out on. Still it will likely be a good pick for people who haven't/barely played the first Binding of Isaac even if it might start to be showing it's age in the fledgling genre.

I'm personally waiting with eager breath for Mewgenics. That's a lack of games on the market that lets me practice my eugenic programs.
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Mesa

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Re: The Binding of Isaac(: Rebirth) [pre-release hype & discussion]
« Reply #3 on: August 10, 2014, 03:01:29 am »

I can see why people would dislike the shift from the Flash style to a more pixelated look, but I myself enjoy that change, if only because I'm a pixel art maniac and don't mind either the outflow of casual randomly generated roguelikes nor the games with a retro aesthetic.
Then again, I was born in the late 90s so I wasn't really around for the era of proper 8-16-bit games much.

Worst case scenario you won't have to pay much for the new game if you already have the original. Plus it's only a matter of time before someone manages to make a Flash-styled graphics mod.

To each his own I guess.
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Jack_Bread

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Re: The Binding of Isaac(: Rebirth) [pre-release hype & discussion]
« Reply #4 on: August 10, 2014, 03:45:10 am »

I don't trust your isisaacdead link... It sent me through a bunch of what seemed to be adware redirects, before Chrome stopped it. I've got my virus scans running just to be safe. I did a second experimental click and it sent me to a place that I guess wanted me to click to enter, but I didn't trust it.

On topic, I don't really care about the graphics. The flash style is a little iconic, though. Also, I don't think a flash-styled graphics mod would be too true, as you wouldn't get the clean edges that flash's vector art gives you.

Skyrunner

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Re: The Binding of Isaac(: Rebirth) [pre-release hype & discussion]
« Reply #5 on: August 10, 2014, 03:51:31 am »

The artstyle looks pixelized now, instead of the smooth vector art it probably was before. :(
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Darkmere

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Re: The Binding of Isaac(: Rebirth) [pre-release hype & discussion]
« Reply #6 on: August 10, 2014, 04:13:41 am »

Blugh. I'm really disinclined to pay for a rerelease of a game I already own that looks worse than the original.
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And then, they will be weaponized. Like everything in this game, from kittens to babies, everything is a potential device of murder.
So if baseless speculation is all we have, we might as well treat it like fact.

Mesa

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Re: The Binding of Isaac(: Rebirth) [pre-release hype & discussion]
« Reply #7 on: August 10, 2014, 04:26:27 am »

I don't trust your isisaacdead link... It sent me through a bunch of what seemed to be adware redirects, before Chrome stopped it. I've got my virus scans running just to be safe. I did a second experimental click and it sent me to a place that I guess wanted me to click to enter, but I didn't trust it.

Whoops, I fucked the link up. My bad. Here's the actual website.
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motorbitch

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Re: The Binding of Isaac(: Rebirth) [pre-release hype & discussion]
« Reply #8 on: August 10, 2014, 10:08:19 am »

i hope they remove some of the useless items. right now, the dificlty is way to random with i think is mostly caused by stuff like the poop.

aside of that, im not entirely sure if the world needs another retro rougelike. i sure dont, even if i have a strong hatelove to tboi.

ah damn. who am i kidding. of cause im gonna buy it. someone please kill me.
« Last Edit: August 10, 2014, 10:12:01 am by motorbitch »
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Mesa

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Re: The Binding of Isaac(: Rebirth) [pre-release hype & discussion]
« Reply #9 on: August 10, 2014, 10:19:11 am »

i hope they remove some of the useless items. right now, the dificlty is way to random with i think is mostly caused by stuff like the poop.

aside of that, im not entirely sure if the world needs another retro rougelike. i sure dont, even if i have a strong hatelove to tboi.

ah damn. who am i kidding. of cause im gonna buy it. someone please kill me.

I believe Edmund said that he wants to have some of the deliberately weak items in the game, but he did say that things like Lemon Mishap will be buffed, but not overbuffed, since it's the kind of joke item of the game.

TBoI has always had a strange balance, but that's one of its strong sides, all those crazy-broken runs are fun simply due to how ridiculously powerful you can get. And then there are those runs where you never get anything useful and die horribly.
* DarkDXZ shrugs

Maybe I shold stop responding to every single person in this thread...
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Endymion

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Re: The Binding of Isaac(: Rebirth) [pre-release hype & discussion]
« Reply #10 on: August 10, 2014, 02:23:47 pm »

One thing I'm worried / wondering about is how manipulatable the RNG is going to be (Especially since I hear the special stat is gone) and in what ways the item generation rules change/get fixed.

For instance, will it still be possible to roll through the entire inventory of libraries and start generating items from another item set by doing so? And will judgements that get played in devil rooms use the devil room item set?

With more items total in the game, and no special stat, it makes me worry about 'reliable' strats like devil dealing for brim/knife/guppy. Then again, if the devil room door staying open mechanics become reliable.... well, no one is really going to know how to play the game fast and reliable until its been released and people hammer out the details of such things. I just hope the racing scene doesn't get completely destroyed.
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nenjin

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Re: The Binding of Isaac(: Rebirth) [pre-release hype & discussion]
« Reply #11 on: August 10, 2014, 02:24:50 pm »

Quote
It's been talked about a lot, it's been teased a lot, I've hyped it a lot, but I haven't seen a good place to really discus this apart from threads that seem to be ages old and mostly about the original.

The hell, man? You think I stay up til 3am trolling his updates and writing about them for my own benefit? My last post was not even a month ago.....
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Mesa

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Re: The Binding of Isaac(: Rebirth) [pre-release hype & discussion]
« Reply #12 on: August 10, 2014, 07:18:28 pm »

Quote
It's been talked about a lot, it's been teased a lot, I've hyped it a lot, but I haven't seen a good place to really discus this apart from threads that seem to be ages old and mostly about the original.

The hell, man? You think I stay up til 3am trolling his updates and writing about them for my own benefit? My last post was not even a month ago.....

Welp...Guess I was too tired at the time of making this thread to really do proper search. Anyone object if I lock this thread and bump the other one? No? (I mean yours is just better in terms of updates and whatnot...)
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penguinofhonor

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Re: The Binding of Isaac(: Rebirth) [pre-release hype & discussion]
« Reply #13 on: August 10, 2014, 07:24:15 pm »

I disliked the flash style - probably my least favorite thing about the original. So I'm pumped for the entirety of this reboot.
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Mesa

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Re: The Binding of Isaac(: Rebirth) [pre-release hype & discussion]
« Reply #14 on: August 10, 2014, 07:26:31 pm »

Welp, everyone go here now.
(not gonna bother with the whole Move Topic function because I'm tired enough to inevitably screw something up badly)
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