Feb 5
I Miss Mythos
Mulling the last few months of bad MMO industry news has made me think of titles I’ve missed out on. I’ll be honest: I never played Auto Assault. Not once. I feel bad about it too, but it really didn’t appeal to me much back then. Now, mired as we are in the designs of today, a car-based fast-action game sounds like a ton of fun (and makes me kind of hopeful for Jumpgate Evolution).
One game I did play, and I’m really happy I did, was the short-lived Mythos. The stunted step-sibling to Hellgate: London, it was a quirky fantasy hack-and-slash that never made it out of Beta. You have to wonder if Flagship had gone after Mythos instead of the muddled mess that was Hellgate, would they still be around today? Their RMT payment concept was much more straightforward than what they floated Hellgate with, and the tried-and-true hack-and-slash genre was much more of a sure bet.
Mythos featured a number of neat little tweaks that I really liked: funny takes on fantasy tropes, a number of different camera options, an advance on the Diablo-style inventory system … it had a lot of promise. Check out this video I shot of me taking on a boss in one of the first dungeons:
While we always talk about the need for innovation in the MMO genre Hellgate, Tabula Rasa, and Auto Assault would seem to indicate players don’t actually like to try new types of gameplay. Once again this might come down to that ancient sci-fi vs. fantasy argument, but I think it’s a question that bears considering.
Are players who enjoy MMO games just that adverse to anything without elves? Are we ever going to have a AAA sci-fi game geared around massively multiplayer gameplay that gets really crazy big?
And, more importantly, am I the only one that laments Mythos? Let me hear from you, fellow Mythos-missers!
8 comments8 Comments so far
Oh heck no, you’re not alone. I was just reminiscing about Mythos to a friend just the other night — a friend who hadn’t known Hellgate: London was about to be shut down until he and his brother were suddenly disconnected.
He thought his Internet had gone out.
I miss it too.
I just told my wife last night how much I miss it :(
That’s pretty funny — I just talked about Mythos today too (and gave it a mental salute… fabulous game):
http://biobreak.wordpress.com/2009/02/06/mmos-that-never-were/
I never got a chance to miss it. *sniff*
there is light at the end of the tunnel
http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/208782/runic-games-max-schaefer-warns-indie-devs-talks-secret-new-game-diablo-3/
At the same time as “genre Hellgate, Tabula Rasa, and Auto Assault would seem to indicate players don’t actually like to try new types of gameplay” might actually be true, you should also consider that those three games were all broken to one degree or another, especially at launch.
Don’t fret about missing Auto Assault. It sounded great on paper, but it was a truly horrible game. Personally, I will always beat myself up for not getting to try out Mythos though. I really looked forward to it and posts like these does not help at all. :(
Mythos <3
I was prepared to put some money into the game through an ingame store even before the last big patches to the beta. In fact, I think that while the open world change was bold and interesting, they should’ve just released the game as it was after adding that winter zone and then prioritized balance tweaks, economy (crafting and AH) and pvp system while adding content on the side.