And this is why we can’t have nice things. Interplay has sent a C&D letter to the team developing fan remake of Descent. As you may have guessed, Interplay basically tried to pull the plug on this game’s development, however the team was well prepared for something like that. And as a result of that, Sol Contingency will be refaced, all Descent content will be removed, and the game will be slightly delayed. The good news here is that the team does not intend to cancel it, which is obviously good news to all 6DoF and first-person shooter fans.
As the team noted:
“Interplay may own the rights to Descent, but they do not own the rights to 6DoF, to first-person shooters, or to a type of gameplay within creepy and claustrophobic environments. We realized that everything they own the rights to is, at the end of it all, purely cosmetic. As such, we have decided to reface Sol Contingency and remove the Descent assets – the Pyro will be replaced by another ship, the robots from Descent won’t make a return, and PTMC is no longer part of our single-player story. While we are very sad to see these iconic archetypes go, we will come up with new robots, a new plot, a new ship, new levels, and perhaps a few new weapons and names to differentiate our game just enough from the trademarked assets Interplay is so dearly holding on to.”
In short, this will be basically Descent without Descent. Or you can call it a spiritual successor. Or a game based heavily on its mechanics.
And since Sol Contingency won’t be a game related to Descent, the team will most probably launch a crowdfunding campaign for it.
Finally, Sol Contingency’s Proving Grounds will be slightly delayed. Proving Grounds is meant to be a preview build that will feature Descent-style flying mechanics, support for mouse, keyboard and joystick inputs, deathmatch and team deathmatch game types as well as five to six weapons in total.
Proving Grounds will not be a single-player experience, but an exclusive preview of the multiplayer component of this game.
Enjoy!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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