La BRÈVE AVENTURE de SILVERFALL (ft. Jehanne Rousseau)

XP : la chronique dédiée à l’histoire et à l’analyse de RPG des années 2000-2010 sur ordinateur et console.
En cette année riche en RPG et – plus encore – en RPG français, on revient sur le jeu qui a permis la fondation du studio Spiders, à savoir l’ambitieux Diablo-like Silverfall. Au programme : le jeu, son add-on et son portage sur PSP, avec une invité très spéciale : Jehanne Rousseau, la directrice de projet de Silverfall !

ME SOUTENIR : https://www.patreon.com/JadenKor

00:00 Introduction
03:13 Silverfall – Développement
11:52 Silverfall – Résumé
16:35 Silverfall – Critique
29:42 Earth Awakening
35:59 Silverfall PSP
40:51 Nouveau départ
43:29 Épilogue

#Silverfall

Merci à Jehanne Rousseau pour l’entretien qu’elle m’a accordée et à @Siha et @Ceizyl pour leur caméo.

Illustrations de l’intro par Tokela : https://www.instagram.com/tokela_toke_ici/

🟣 ACHETER SILVERFALL VIA MON LIEN AFFILIÉ GOG : https://go.adt256.com/t/t?a=1578845458&as=1969455543&t=2&tk=1&url=https://www.gog.com/fr/game/silverfall_complete

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ME CONTACTER : jadenkor@creators-crew.com
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POUR ALLER PLUS LOIN :
❤️ INTERVIEW COMPLETE DE JEHANNE ROUSSEAU : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey_rwLSwRVo
▶️ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qn1AccdaoGM
▶️ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjpg8S04nLc
▶️ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy4pUmn2SpA
▶️ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbeq6x2ftaY
▶️ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6NCvqC7kqo
🔗 https://www.abandonware-france.org/compagnies/monte-cristo-multimyodia-1309/
🔗 https://web.archive.org/web/20171120065539/http://www.titanquest-fr.com/voir-preview_other-a15-p3.html
🔗 https://www.ign.com/articles/2007/06/04/silverfall-dev-talks-ports

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Liens externes :
▶️ BLOG : https://jadenkor.blogspot.com/ ◀️

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2025 is of course a very rich year for the RPG but, unusually, especially for the French RPG, yeah. Obviously there is the phenomenal and international success of the superb JRPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – a killer I say that in passing, it almost ruined the production of this video – but also the highly anticipated Solasta 2 following in the footsteps of the most frank tradition of C-RPG, it is to delight me especially that the demo is awesome and, let’s not forget, Greedfall II: The Dying World, latest version of a unique Parisian studio, with an identifiable style and which fascinates me: Spiders. It is one of those studios with remarkable longevity and an identifiable catalog, from the original Of Orcs and Men to the ambitious Technomancers, including the intense Mars: War Logs, the even more intense Bound by Flame and, obviously, the astonishing and elegant Steelrising. And at the origin of this venerable studio, we find a team that met and formed around the creation of a game, an RPG following in the footsteps of Diablo like others before it and having forged a way of considering, illustrating and designing role-playing like no other, a now-forgotten title bearing the name… Silverfall. Don’t be fooled by the cover, in the 2000s the redheaded warrior in close-up was the fashion, it seems, this Diablo-like deserves to be looked at, as much for what it offered as for its legacy, spawning in its wake a studio with undeniable know-how. Today, we’re talking about Silverfall and in the company, hold on to your hats, of the game’s project director at the time, Jehanne Rousseau. She did me the honor of answering my questions and will return, throughout the retrospective, to the origin, history, and design of this brief adventure that was Silverfall. To your goblin zeppelins and your tree dragons and welcome to XP! [XP Credits] During 2006… in France, in Paris. Jehanne Rousseau has just resigned from her job at Gameloft and is reaching the end of her unemployment benefits, which allowed her to write quite a bit, sell illustrations, and work for board games and, her greatest passion, role-playing games. Determined to find a job in the video game industry, she navigates between interesting and… completely scandalous offers. Disappointed, she finally connects, without much hope, to the AFJV, the French video game agency. And there… Jehanne Rousseau: Advertisement from Monte Cristo seeking a project manager to work on an RPG. I said to myself, but… I’ll go right away, right now! I had three or four interviews, including one with the big boss, Jean-Christophe Marquis, whom I greet in passing despite our sometimes stormy relations at the time anyway. Not for a long time. With the side of it… “What the hell is this girl doing in here?” you see, it was so marked on his forehead. The interesting thing is that, on the other hand, when he said “we’ll take you on,” it was obvious that I had managed to gain his respect. You see, even he was a little amazed himself by… in fact… actually, can you talk to me about role-playing? “Yes.” *laughs* Jehanne Rousseau is originally a graphic designer and great role-player who began her long career in the 90s. A bit of a jack of all trades, as you’re used to here with games from that era, she started by aligning pixels for GameBoy Color games at RFX Interactive where the mind-boggling number of four shades of gray allowed by the machine got her foot in the door. A big fan of RPGs like Call of Cthulhu, which she played sessions on, she moved between several studios, training in game design, even if her first passion, writing and worldbuilding, began to consume her and pushed her to leave her job at Gameloft because Rayman plays golf, Rayman goes bowling and Rayman plants tulips… well, it’s okay for a year and a half, no more. So it is in the spheres of role-playing, journalism and especially in illustration that Jehanne is destined, even if thank you for unemployment money because it’s not what fills the fridge, I’m not going to tell you the… opposite. Even if she manages to work as an illustrator on nothing but Cthulhu and Warhammer, excuse me for saying so, she returns fairly quickly to game development video, all this baggage in his pocket and land in a Parisian multimedia company with a certain panache: Monte Cristo Games. Monte Cristo is a group versed in CD-ROM publishing and subsequently in video game publishing and development founded by a pair of financial engineers from the 90s. Let’s say that their economic market simulations work quite well with unforgettable titles like… Trader 97, it smells good of minitel all that. Monte Cristo strings together successes with trading games well costar Chirac years, I don’t know which I prefer between Start-up, “the first business creation game ” I love micro-managing the dot-com and bursting internet bubbles – a treat, or The Partners, a cheap Sim’s-like where you have to push a boss to emotionally manipulate his employees to… flirt with his interns. Brrr… The publisher chose the multiplayer game niche at first without much success and literally mixed in all genres to scratch the market share : the PC game of Star’Ac, firefighter simulations, but also some titles that did not do too badly in the city builder field like Medieval Lords and especially City Life. Strengthened by their brand new branch opened in Kiev in Ukraine thanks to these few successes, namely Kyiv’s Games, Monte Cristo wanted to surf on a genre of game then in full explosion while Diablo III was desired: the hack’n slash as they say, even if it means a lot, I prefer to say Diablo-like in short. It is in this context that Jehanne Rousseau joined a team adept at the video game splits on a project that she took on head on: a nervous fantasy RPG on computer. The specifications given to Jehanne Rousseau are hairy but engaging: limited budget but consistent with the project, imaginary world to be created from scratch, mandatory multiplayer component and… other types of requests. Not bad your elf model. But there’s something that doesn’t fit, don’t you think? What? Are his ears not long enough? No. More foliage on his clothes maybe? No. Well, then what? Don’t you think they should all be blond? … I love Legolas. Jehanne Rousseau: My mission was to create a hack’n’slash. Because it was a type of RPG that seemed very PC to them, easier to sell… for the German market. So we started like that. Fortunately, we didn’t only reach the German market, but it’s true that that was the initial mission, that was it. French companies at the time had less ease than today in reaching an international market. When we made a game, in the end, we often made it a little for its small market apart from licenses… so Ubisoft was always apart, eh. Coming from mobile, I was more used to reaching international markets than was the case for Monte Cristo, which made games that were often a little reserved for the European market and indeed, which was very much aimed at Germany, which was at the time a very, very big consumer of PC games. Monte Cristo thus brings together, under the leadership of Jehanne Rousseau, a team well motivated by the idea of ​​shaping an entire imaginary fantasy universe and making an RPG in the vein of Sacred. So it will be Jehanne with three friends writing the universe and dozens of quests, Stéphane Versini in game design, he is now at Motion Twin, Wilfired Mallet in programming, Julien Biratte in artistic direction, Arnaud Beaumes in animation and Sylvain Prunier in sound, a fresh team that turns out to get along very well and work well together, in addition to being big RPG enthusiasts. Jehanne Rousseau: Compared to the way development can happen today, there it was still more… Yeah, the group of friends where we played role-playing games on the weekend and actually we met at work to work together. Oh and Monte Cristo obliges, all this in tandem with Kyiv’s Games for everything that is quality assurance and asset modeling. In the Diablo-like, you have to know how to stand out, especially artistically speaking. That’s why The direction is clear: to be inspired by the comics, with the participation of Romain Gaschet, the illustrator of Omnipolis and even before the artworks are done, we opt for a cell-shading rendering with black outlines around the characters to uniqueize the game’s DA. This project is named after the city around which the entire story revolves: Silverfall. As for the creation of the universe, which must be rich and original, it is the world of Nelwë that is built, a land of heroic fantasy undergoing galloping technological progress. Dwarves are substituted for goblins, because goblins are cool and they allow for completely wacky designs in every way. With a fairly large artistic freedom, the team concocts hundreds of models, regions, cities and the artists multiply the piles of drafts directly transmitted to the animators to develop a big big bestiary where it’s… rolalah incredible him, and he’s so cool too. Jehanne Rousseau: One of the tests, we even went quite far because we started to make a demo. We had worked with a license that came from a figurine game… “Conjuration maybe?” That’s it. Yeah the wolf men came from that at the beginning and we had started to model them on that and then well as we abandoned the license we said to ourselves well obviously we ca n’t keep the elements that come from “Conjuration”. We re-impregnated them a little differently so that we wouldn’t recognize the license of course we said we’re going to make werewolves for all races to have variants in fact we launched into something that grew as we went along whereas at the beginning it started from we were told well probably work with this license there, the deal is not done. We embroidered a little on what we had and then a lot of desires that came from gameplay desires, visual desires… it went a little in all directions honestly this universe. After, when it was necessary to consolidate it, it was a little more… laborious. We tried to make a scenario that was a little different from what we usually see but there are things that we did… really at the last moment. Oh, and the nature/technology dichotomy becomes a central pillar of the game, allowing for an alignment gauge à la KOTOR, one of the project director’s favorite games, and major branching in the title’s plot. The inspirations? Miyazaki, of course, but also the Franco-Belgian comics and the role-playing game Shadowrun, which also highlights the opposition between nature and progress. The twenty or so developers move forward quickly despite the tight deadline, while Jehanne Rousseau defends the project to the publisher. The engine is created internally and incorporates all the flagship technology of the time: Speedtree for the trees, the same as for Oblivion, which we talked about, and AGEIA for the physics. Jehanne Rousseau: It was an in-house engine. They didn’t have a truly equivalent game internally, so it’s the same, we had to create all sorts of layers in the engine to be able to manage this kind of game—namely, RPGs. Creating a dialogue editor, in particular, which didn’t exist. Everything was happening at the same time in parallel. It was a kind of big anthill in all directions. Not always easy, I admit, we weren’t very used to managing multiplayer in the team because, you know, we could play in multiplayer. So that, that was, I remember… let’s say moments of “But if it works” “Well yes, but it works in the village… Have you tried testing outside the village?” “Oh no, why ?” “Because in fact, the gameplay still happens outside the village!” and in fact it crashed as soon as we left the village so… But hey, Silverfall is a huge game with a mind-boggling number of things to complete and some finishing touches are simply impossible to achieve, starting with the interface which is largely botched, the bugs too, still very numerous while the deadline is dangerously approaching. Jehanne Rousseau: There was no intro cutscene for example in the game at the beginning. We was on the eve of the release… 2 days before the release I think. The game designer and I, Stéphane, we said no but it’s not possible we can’t just have a voiceover with it and then you arrive in the game like that… we have to do something. So, we started tinkering with animations that we already had and in fact we spent 48 hours at the studio to create this cutscene in a row just before the release… It was posted just before the release. Well, everything was done in a hurry, we also did the credits right away. And I remember the accounting department who always took us for jokes. They arrived earlier than us – they left earlier than us too – but they arrived earlier than us. Women who worked in admin who arrived in the morning and said “Hey, are you already here?” surprised to see us at 8:30… and we were looking at her and we were like “No… we’re still here.” and then she was like “Oh…” and she left really fast! *laughs* Unfortunately, the team is not able to integrate all the features planned for the game, including things that were announced to the press, like the ultimate skills unlockable in late game, it looks bad. We pack all that in a box that is more classic than the equally kitschy and charming Spanish exclusive box and Monte Cristo ends up releasing Silverfall on March 9, 2007. [Silverfall Trailer] Here we go with the original Silverfall but in its Complete edition, so don’t pay attention to the additions of the expansion like the interface and everything, we’ll come back to that. To get started on the adventure, something not so common in the Diablo-like: a real character creation, not pre-defined guys, with a choice of race between human, elf… and goblin and troll, it changes a little. For me it will be Zwifila, a goblin whose appearance can be personalized a little, she has a good head huh? We wake up in the polytheistic world of Nelwë, precisely in the heart of the capital of the kingdom of Egreïd in 658 of the 2nd era, the city of Silverfall. Basically, it’s an Arcanum-style universe where heroic fantasy has taken the full force of the scientific revolution, abandoning the elemental gods, tirelessly exploiting fertile lands , radicalizing nature followers and driving technology zealots crazy. This kind of universe is always very nice, especially since you will see, we have a choice of alignment between the love of forests and the power of the machine. But we won’t be enjoying Silverfall’s prosperity for long , as it’s under attack from hordes of zombie trolls coming out of portals, allowing us to enjoy a tutorial with the city’s archmage, incidentally our mentor, who can throw… woah… fireballs I… I’ve decided I think I’ll become a mage after. The optional tutorial ends with our archmage finding himself possessed by the spirit that led this invasion, spilling the beans about the twist for the little patients who have inquired about the obvious facts reminded by the game. Yes, zoom with the wheel, it’s okay, it’s not my first barbecue. So off we go with our character to the refugee camp of the inhabitants of Silverfall where the son of the archmage – or his daughter if your character is of the other kind – asks us to go and carry out some tasks to bring help to all these wonderful people. Oh, Kyle Katarn, hello. Once the elves are on our side, we head to the troll city suspended by Cloudworks airships, divided between an upper city housing the troll elite and the lower city where the goblin workers are crammed. Oh, and it’s a French game, guys… so the goblins… it’s a general strike! Okay, we’re going to play bribes, favors, and FedEx quests to access the upper city via sewers where we can’t see a thing, please, I’d like to… play, actually? Then after a few tasks assigned by the city leader who has the voice of Desann, it’s official: French casting validated, we find our possessed archmage who announces a long and intense fight… at least it’s settled. But there’s still a long way to go since he now controls his own son who flees to the kingdom of the druids. At least we arrive in a slightly more colorful region after a detour to Silverfall where the inhabitants were able to start rebuilding the city according to our own alignment, we improvise as a water treatment agent by looking for a way to clean up the fountains of Silverfall, I’m not kidding, against the backdrop of a war between the druids and elves manipulated by the spirit we’re chasing… so, beating up elves? Come on. But back to Silverfall ready to open a mixed wastewater treatment plant, a scenario dealing with nature and technology we tell you, to learn in the speech bubble… the death of the king, who came to support the city and the… princess… captured. Really? Plumbing and princess in distress? *yiihou* This dear young lady is not in distress at just anyone’s house since her captors, the Necroraiders, are the most zealous technologist fanatics in the lands of Nelwë with their mechanical implants and their buildings that have nothing to envy of the Borg of Star Trek… at least if you see anything there. Otherwise… well they are very stylish. We infiltrate their headquarters , namely the city… of Solitude? And that will be done by crossing their devastated lands, having drawn all organic matter in their scientific madness. Hordes of enemies, big mechanical boss, discovery of vats where an army of undead is raised and once again sorry if you understand nothing… I made an elemental mage build, hehe there are lots of fireballs . In the crypt, it’s the plot twist moment where we learn that the spirit is called the Dead Shadow, created in ancient times and which can only be defeated thanks to a crystal found in an icy city called Steelight. No need to ask for more, the game has it in spades. Steelight allows us to settle a small dynastic conflict à la Game of Thrones based on bastards, monsters behind ice walls, evil fairies version Mister Freeze and in any case it will be settled with fireballs in the mouth. On the verge of getting our hands on the crystal after learning its location, we have it stolen before our eyes by the Dead Shadow possessing the son of the archmage from the beginning, so top time for the fight… not bad, I think I can optimize again… but plot twist: the Dead Shadow has an even more badass leader who murders the son of the archmage in front of us. The rest, well, we can see the end because the city of Blazis, Silverfall’s twin, is the scene of a summoning of a powerful demon by the master of the Dead Shadow – yes, new plot twist 1 hour from the end, don’t look. Well, we arrive in front of the avatar of this demon… we smash it… and we become king of Silverfall. A little contemplation of the landscape… and it’s over. Going back a little to Diablo-like after 11 C-RPG + variants and 2 RTS, you can’t imagine how happy it makes me, even more so when rediscovering an object like Silverfall. Massacre hordes of opponents, optimize your skill tree, trigger your powers repeatedly and love seeing the bosses decimated in an avalanche of completely abused effects… well, that’s also the essence of the RPG, there’s more to life than storytelling. Silverfall arrives at a rather surprising time for the genre: it’s now been 7 years since Diablo 2 was released and the experiences of Sacred and Dungeon Siege, which I talked about in previous videos, have passed through there, but also and especially the legendary Titan Quest. Let’s break the ice right away: Silverfall is not the greatest Diablo-like of the 2000s, we’ll have plenty of opportunity to… yeah to come back to that. But it already ticks all the boxes of the genre and masters what it undertakes, starting with what sets it apart from the others: its character progression. No class to choose here and even fewer predefined archetypes, you will farm levels that pass quite quickly and distribute all these points in… waah but how many trees are there. So yeah, it might pale in comparison to Path of Exile, which came out 5 years later, but putting it in context, look at all that: active and passive powers, trees unique to races even if this is not specified when creating the character, and not a goblin mage is not very optimal, but also three types of magic further subdivided with its spells of lightning, fire, cold, like light, shadow and lots of other things. You are completely free to choose your distribution, your way of playing and the game pushes enormously to what turns out to be the greatest strength of Silverfall: its malleability. Always possible to alternate between contact, distance and magic with the shortcuts 1, 2, 3 and the rest of the keys assigned to your unlocked powers. Well, we would have liked to be able to remap because having your fingers on 4, 5, 6 is not so natural, drop that bow you’re a MAGICIAN damn it, but it conditions the gameplay well: respect the skills, it’s cheap and easy by simply going to a specialized guy present in each city and we can experiment with the dozen builds that the game allows. Oh and of course there is the classic Strength, Agility, Constitution and Intelligence to influence the damage, HP, dodge and magic… I put everything in Intel, hehe. The only problem, you will quickly see, is that here is the warrior gameplay… and here is the mage gameplay… yeah there is no photo, if you want to have fun in Silverfall, you will have to get your hands in mana, especially when you start to be accompanied… yes yes, there are companions and you will not regret them. Silverfall was released relatively late, so it was able to benefit from a lot of quality of life elements that are now a given for a Diablo-like… and even some things that were ahead of their time enough to have only tested one! No permanent death, you respawn in the nearest village and in the original version of the game… without your loot! Haha. Hahaha. You have to go and find your hard-earned legendary equipment on its little grave at the place of your dire destiny. Oh, and you think it re-equips itself? Naive as you are, I hope you’re patient. Fortunately, all that has been corrected in the Complete Edition. As I was saying, it’s one of the rare Diablo-likes, especially from this era, that has a pretty awesome feature: companions. Eight in total, but only two at a time, they follow classic MMO patterns : the healer, the damage dealer and… well, no tank, I guess. But don’t worry, the healer is completely abused and I think I used max 10 healing potions in my 20 hours of play eh. Yes, the game is not very difficult, especially in magician and if you farm a little . The fireball festival, it’s just abused, you just have to run waving your arms in the middle of the enemies, gather them and send the sauce, often it is not forgiving… if the enemies do not resist the fire. Add other somewhat stupid problems like pathfinding… quite horrible, but which can be managed by switching to WASD command, there are worse. But you know what is the real thrill of Diablo-like? The loot in abundance! Well, Silverfall isn’t the most generous, especially since as a magician, you’ll mostly be looking for outfits that buff Intel and damage from elemental powers, but you have a small number of them, unique effects to read patiently and quality varieties colored with blue, green, yellow and everything, we’re at home. We would have liked the game to transform the test on lots of details that lack finishing: not to bother with autoleveling companions, too stupid in a game that pushes the variety of builds so much, the fact that the latter systematically arrive naked, more advanced tactical options and above all the biggest mechanical flaw of the game: its very sawtooth management of the difficulty. That doesn’t make it the most unforgettable Diablo-like of its generation, it’s even quite conventional in that respect and there are some really unfortunate choices, like scaling enemies based on the player’s level in a Diablo-like I just don’t understand, but its hybridizations with other genres are, for their part, really striking. What pushed me to make this video on Silverfall is largely one of its propositions, both in the universe and in the mechanics, namely the duality of nature and technology… as well as the influences from the CRPG which hybridize wonderfully with the rest of the game. It doesn’t seem obvious said like that but you know a lot of Diablo-like before 2007 with, I don’t know, randomly, choice in the dialogues? Branches in the plot ? A morality gauge? Oh and which is not based on good and evil but a concept central to the universe: nature and progress? We’ll come back to the universe and the plot but it’s what the devs have succeeded best here and what they will also manage to transform very well later in Spiders, to link so intimately universe concepts to game concepts. Take the alignment, typical of the CRPG, it could only be dialogue choices in the side quests and, at the limit, vary the ending? Well, already yes… but depending on your devotion to one side or the other, allows you to access the most powerful loot in the game, to influence the architectural style of Silverfall as it rebuilds… and, for the character, to a completely abused skill tree ! On the technology side, it’s the possibility of having implants and using guns – and on the nature side, you can call little creatures and transform yourself to give enemies huge potatoes. Narratively, it’s talkative, well written, well translated, you have tons of text that I encourage you – sacred request – not to skip but also, like, companion quests, yeah, yeah! People sometimes react to your race, even if I admit it doesn’t happen that often, you can give companions tactics, not via a menu but through rather sharp dialogues… “Don’t stay idle when enemies approach, attack them!” ah yeah, we’re an angry toxic HR manager there. So, we get attached to them in the end and we remember them with their problems, their impossible redemption, their father buried not far from our mission, etc. Jehanne Rousseau: When you want to bring narrative to a role-playing game, having companions, whoever they are – it could even be a flying skull if you look at the references to Torment – also really brings a lot of things that become more intimate, in fact. You create a real relationship with these characters. So, in terms of narrative drive, it’s easier to create a moment of betrayal, for example, which will be very striking. We’re going to have moments that are going to be more poignant or funnier too, eh, because… well, we had a character in particular in Silverfall… the troll, she was a character who was deliberately very funny and whose goal was to bring a lot of humor to this game. Between the group of 3, the nature/techno dichotomy and the contextual reflections of the companions, not to mention their personal quests… well, Silverfall has this Diablo-like scent from BioWare… which doesn’t displease me and which explains why I loved it so much. The result is a CRPG “flavor”, more than a hybridization like Dungeon Siege can be with its active pause among other things, all accompanied by an artistic direction to delight our retinas, even today. If there are two areas where we can’t do it to the French, it’s food… and comics. And if Silverfall lacks a bit of seasoning, we find all the talent of our brilliant illustrators. Just at the level of the models, just the variety of goblins, it’s exceptional: the were-goblins, the wheeled goblins, the flying goblins I love them, the goblin spiders, the goblin ravagers, the mechanical dragons and the exceptional wheeled sentinels… it’s creative, well executed and… well although the universe seems very classic with its setting – despite everything – agreed, we feel that an artistic team was able to have some good laughs. Jehanne Rousseau: These goblins who fly for example and who swing little barrels that they light with their cigars. Lighting it with the cigar really came more from the artists, but the idea of ​​having flying goblins throwing bombs was actually more on the game design side. We had this idea of ​​having these characters… flying enemies to have another type of gameplay with the bomb creating an area. So, suddenly, it was quite interesting to use in terms of gameplay. When discussing this idea with the concept artists, the visual arrived quite quickly and it was immediately a very, very quick go. I think of the dragon too. It’s the same, we had the management who absolutely wanted dragons and, suddenly, we said no but we don’t want to make classic dragons! “We need elves and dragons!” I think that everyone in the team, we both love fantasy, and at the same time we didn’t want to make traditional fantasy and so that’s also why, I think, humor allowed us to get around all that a little and avoid falling into clichés. So we made this mechanical dragon, a kind of improbable construction with wheels and which spits flames but with a kind of chimney in fact, it was more us, in this idea of ​​always taking the cliché, of getting around it, of trying to make something that is visually and conceptually fun. The small choice that makes all the difference and which, as a result, makes Silverfall graphically aged extremely well compared to other Diablo-likes of its generation, is this small discreet cell shading rendering on each model. It boils down to a thin black line around the slightly cartoonish characters, as if they were all straight out of a Soleil comic book and the further we go, the more it gets wild with the icy charm of the fairies on the ice floe, the crazy inventiveness of the… automatons, they definitely have a thing for that, the technologism covered in bizarre implants of the necroraiders or above all the exuberant attention to detail of the dragon trees and other swamp creatures. Basically, a swamp in an RPG systematically pisses me off, there I spent hours just admiring the models made of intertwined mangroves and bark. Add a few simple choices that make it all the more charming: a small day-night cycle, very pretty scenery with the big statues there and everything. Okay, we can’t escape the texture bugs sometimes, especially towards the end and, generally speaking, it’s not the level design of the century, as was often pointed out in the reviews of the time. It’s quite empty and doesn’t really make you want to explore since the rewards are n’t jostling aside from a few chests. Personally, I find it more digestible than the generalized harassment of a Sacred, but I understand the criticism, especially in the era of nervous Diablo-likes consisting of exploding opponents in packs of 1000. But hey, it’s a matter of taste. If we don’t expect a Diablo-like to have a rich and verbose branching story, more solid systems and a worked atmosphere, Silverfall has taken the gamble of taking all these aspects in stride. We thus find ourselves in the world of Nelwë, a land fractured between a flourishing, magical, and rich nature taking the full brunt of the technological revolution, the exploitation of resources, and the madness of men. In terms of themes, what’s quite subtle is that the game doesn’t really decide, and you won’t feel more virtuous being a pro-druid fanatic than a die-hard exploitation enthusiast. The side quests have a lot to do with it: the people of Silverfall and its surroundings are complex, worked by this new dichotomy, not knowing which way to turn, whether to wipe the slate clean of tradition or reconcile these two paradigms. So how does it ultimately feel through the game’s main story? Eh. A bit of a rollercoaster, once again. Let’s just say it lacks a bit of exposition, we don’t feel very attached to Silverfall since the city is directly destroyed, and we are too quickly sent to save something… that we ultimately know little about. The plot takes off in the troll and goblin level of Cloudworks where the ecological and social themes of the game flourish, the jokes about the world of work are delicious, they marry rather well but everything slowly loses its scope as we are slowed down in the progression, little revelation by little revelation throughout the plot. Point A, point B, point C, you know. And then like the druids who arrive to screw us over at the end with their enormous horrible crab because… they got the wrong target. Well done guys, well done. We don’t really understand the nature of the threat, especially since it changes every 2 hours and in the end, we find ourselves quite disinvested. We would have liked at least a small codex to understand this universe, especially if it was illustrated as nicely as the rest of the artistic direction of the title. And then the game is called Silverfall at one point, a city inaccessible during the first 10 hours and with 4 poor merchants when we return there, all this called for it to be a hub, for the city to be a character in its own right! Like missions to reinforce it before the final assault, something persistent and concrete! There are quite a few missed opportunities on this side. Silverfall is an intriguing object, both a bubble of its transitional era between two Diablo and incredibly modern in both its visuals and its mechanics. If it doesn’t succeed in everything it sets out to do, we can’t say it lacks ambition: a rich progression system, complete character creation, a long and dense narrative, chiseled and numerous dialogues… It’s not for nothing that I love this period of Diablo-like, or hack n’slash if you prefer. It tempts, it hybridizes, it writes, it searches, it draws… Taking a few steps in Silverfall is sailing in an ocean of creativity that quickly makes you forget the clumsy mechanics and the pretextual plot. You won’t learn that I love games full of potential and generosity despite their execution and Silverfall is one of those titles that is as endearing as it is strange, the reason why I still think about it even 18 years after its release. Silverfall’s reception was rather mixed in 2007. It was criticized for its lack of polish and innovation compared to Titan Quest, which had been a smash hit, as well as its really poor optimization. Well, the artistic direction is eye-catching and the roleplay elements are emphasized, at the same time it’s really where the game excels, which pushes dear Monte Cristo to re-enlist the team on an add-on to finalize Silverfall’s proposal, an expansion named Earth Awakening. This is the opportunity for this now united team, loving to work together, to correct the situation already technically. We rethink the pattern of the monsters, too predictable, and especially the total overhaul of the interface, the great forgotten of the original game. Oh and of course, revision of the optimization on PC, a free camera, redesigned ergonomics with the possibility of moving with WASD, in short, a big patching job. All these additions also decided the studio to make this expansion not an addition to the base game but a stand-alone version, including the entire main campaign and making it benefit from these optimizations. Jehanne Rousseau: Yeah, that was a requirement from the publisher who told us if we sell a DLC, we only sell 30% of the sales of the first game, whereas if the game is played in stand-alone mode, we really sell it almost as a new game. As a result, we sell a lot more based on, I imagine, figures from previous games or other examples from other publishers. So, we had to make this game standalone and I admit that technically it wasn’t easy either because we had to allow people to play the sequel in the continuity of the first one if they had the first one installed… but also to be able to play it alone. So we had to connect the dots as best we could so that both situations were possible knowing that… it’s not necessarily easy and it took a bit of gymnastics to do that. But it’s also the opportunity to concoct a new campaign of course, set directly after the main campaign, add two new races, about twenty maps and above all a gigantic, deep and well thought out crafting system. So it was on February 21, 2008 that Silverfall: Earth Awakening was released. [Trailer Earth Awakening] Earth Awakening is a big overhaul of all the structural problems of Silverfall version 2007… and a bunch of additions that are good and bring depth where it must. Not easy for me to differentiate what belongs to the original or the stand-alone since I experienced the Complete version, once again, but already the whole interface that you see from the beginning with its ergonomic movable windows, the free camera too, phew, and a whole bunch of things that make life more peaceful on Silverfall. Oh yeah because at the base it had this face, argh. Well already, the most obvious addition, the two new races available: the dwarves and the lizardmen as well as the possibility of importing your hero into the new campaign or starting a new character with a sort of class which is in reality a pre-established build: I draw your attention to the designs of zinzin, berzerker, hunter, assassin, elemental mage, paladin, shadow mage, craftsman and a free specialization to make your own cuisine. And you can also directly choose the alignment. I wanted to force myself to make a warrior… but then I started again like in 40… Earth Awakening offers us a short but solid adventure of a handful of hours from level 45 featuring a necroraider general with plans that aren’t very Gaia spirit of the earth-compatible, namely to awaken a powerful elemental titan with his big machines… yes, it’s Joffre in Oblivion. So what’s the plot worth? It’s. Just. Nonsense . And it’s incredible. The plot goes in all directions: beach dwarves who have decided to take it easy, fucking spaceships with Star Trek-style teleportation, a little stroll on, hold on to your hats, an asteroid or even a biome of magnificent crystals, the art department has once again completely let loose in Monte Cristo for our greatest pleasure, especially in terms of enemy models, the great strength of Silverfall. Ladies and gentlemen, please admire the vat-men with eyes bigger than their stomachs, the mechanical crocodile snakes of hell, the goblin brutes held on by chains and the most terrible of all… the books! Ah, this level in the library is a festival… and ultra hard, did I just get my face beaten up by a desk? The plot goes much more to the point and does not ignore the themes specific to Silverfall: human madness hoping that technology will tame the powers of nature, it’s simplified, even caricatured, eh, we see everything coming as big as a tree dragon but it works really well. Oh and the slightly extended companion quests, even if the latter… still arrive naked, hey where is the magic hat I found for you? Besides that, my favorite addition to Earth Awakening is this pachydermic crafting system, a real flagship during the game’s promotion, and indeed , it fits perfectly with the enormous character building possibilities. It’s up to you to harvest 8 types of materials in all directions with 3 quality variations each, allowing you to build weapons and armor pieces of varying quality. But that’s not all. It’s also possible to add small details to each object, like spikes and everything, to add additional effects or bonuses to make the object ultra powerful. But that’s not all. You can change their shape, their color, have a version in cloth or light, medium or heavy armor, like changing the length and weight of the weapons which affects the speed of the attacks. But that’s not all. You can then enchant them with a few appropriate objects to make them completely overpowered weapons. But that’s not all, rohlala. You can also link the crafted object to a demon to make it benefit from its powers… I just haven’t found out how to do it, yeah right. The only problem is that it requires a huge investment in skill points to do all that, points that won’t be allocated to those… which allow you to use crafted objects effectively, so it’s a bit stupid with this gigantic crafting tree so the best thing is to put a bit of money aside, respec your character in crafting, create and enchant the broken objects then respec the character as he was before, a bit annoying but it can be done. Between the new variety of biomes with jungles, temples, libraries, caverns, but also a smarter level design with the appearance of traps, more staging and more interesting boss patterns than in the original game, Earth Awakening is neither stingy, which Silverfall never was, nor futile given everything it transforms and improves in the original proposition. We will not escape some still annoying things like the enemies who attack during the… dialogues damn, they massacred all my companions when I just wanted to listen to what I was told, and then it is not another game, it remains Silverfall in all its qualities and all its faults. Just that, without being unforgettable, it is refreshing and the conclusion of the plot puts a nice end to this universe made of bark and cogs. Earth Awakening, although having the striking force of an add-on, is positively received. The shooting is fixed, the game runs smoothly, and the main campaign and its sequel ultimately offer a very complete adventure, the ultimate version of Silverfall’s proposal. Monte Cristo, on the other hand, is not in good financial shape, and, with their Silverfall license, the publisher entrusts a third-party developer with an adaptation of the game on console, but not just any console… the PSP! Aaah, I missed portable console games, eh, hello Shadowkey, so it’s 2K Australia, formerly Irrational Canberra, the 2K branch in… Australia, that one wasn’t tough, which got the task of adapting this big, demanding PC game to Sony’s little console… Jehanne Rousseau: As Monte Cristo wasn’t a console publisher, they had to, at one point, make a deal to be able to publish it on console because you can’t publish on console like that, you have to have a license that is given by the console maker, whether it’s Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft, it’s the same thing. But the port was done internally, for the most part, we were a little involved in it. We were looking at it a bit from afar but, honestly, aside from advice on lore and the universe, I had other fish to fry because we had the DLC in progress at that time and so, indeed, I did not participate directly as project manager. Really more to give lore and consulting of that type, but not on the rest. The devs see that the amount of work is going to be quite substantial: just loading the slightest facial texture of Silverfall, it already occupies the entire RAM of the PSP, so good luck. It’s simple: we have to rethink the gameplay, the maps and, by domino effect in fact, the entire game, purify it to the point that what remains of Silverfall is only the scenario and the universe, rather vaguely. It is logically decided to focus the port on a beat them all sprinkled with RPGs like Dark Alliance with new interfaces adapted to this tiny screen. Same for the maps, made more corridor-like and the companions cleared to allow more enemies on the screen. Information is not raining down on this small port of a small game, you guessed it, except that the artistic direction was apparently inspired by… Kingdom Hearts. If you say so, listen, but it is therefore on March 12, 2008 that Silverfall PSP version is published. [Trailer Silverfall PSP] Well… we are not going to spend 1000 years on this port. Although “port” is quickly said, Silverfall on PSP is very different from its counterpart on PC: we are here facing a slightly RPG beat them all in the vein of Dark Alliance, which I told you about in my very first episode… but with the handling… that you imagine. There’s still plenty to save, I’m not a big PSP player but I imagine that this progression system which remains quite rich with stats and active skills to unlock in all directions was good, like the numerous dialogues to choose from and everything… but if, as you saw, the artistic direction was the main asset of Silverfall despite some mechanical problems, there… ouch… ergh… waaah… would you like some more chestnut for dessert? Silverfall PSP version offers the same story with more linear and much shorter maps. So it starts the same with the destruction of Silverfall and we’re going to take the same path with small variations, like playing as your own character in the tutorial, wow. Funny adaptations by the way: if the areas don’t really make you want to be explored like that, the nature and technology alignment points, which you can collect indifferently to unlock the two trees at the same time, weird, are found on the ground by walking in the right places. The fights on the other hand, like the camera, are quite haphazard, tell yourself that to move it, it’s R1 plus the directional arrow… namely the button to consume the rare potions in the game, so it often happens that… NO damn don’t drink!! Oh and then it’s hard. It’s HARD. The life bar melts like snow in the sun and if the first boss is disconcertingly easy, the second… what?? Oh and then the enemies that spawn behind me, honestly? Especially since there are no more companions to heal me, so that’s it for bibi. Due to inaccessible servers, I’m skipping what should have been the most fun about Silverfall in its PSP version: the co-op mode which, indeed, should have been fun based on clearing maps and chaining combos, I’ve had enough fights with my friends on Dark Alliance to know that it must have been cool and it has never been ported to a portable console to my knowledge, Silverfall looks like a good , light and digestible alternative. Just that alone, cold, with the music that loops every 10 seconds, probably due to my version… well, I think the product has had its day. The fact remains that the adaptation remains fairly faithful in many aspects: the ease of respec the character, the 3 types of attacks (distance, contact and magic) quickly accessible on the controller buttons and a farm + loot + boss gameplay loop that always hits the mark. Oh and one cool thing missing from the PC game is the friendly fire of the enemies that you can turn against each other by positioning yourself intelligently so that they kill each other, a little trickery never hurts. The fact remains that the PSP is a console that hasn’t really been spoiled with RPGs and I would be very curious, for those who got their hands on it at the time, what you thought of it, console in hand. Well… well Silverfall on PSP is not a joy in terms of reception. Between the interminable loading times, the ugliness of the DA, the bugs and the handling, this port is received very coldly. Not dramatic for 2K Australia who continue their collaboration with their colleagues in Boston on a little thing, eh not much [BioShock] Well, I think they are not too much to complain about, eh. At the same time, on the Monte Cristo side, things aren’t much better, as the publisher is getting into serious financial difficulties and is launching a last-ditch effort, namely Cities XL, while its cash flow is at its lowest. Jehanne Rousseau: The project wasn’t well thought out. They had invested a lot of money based on the figures – this might make you laugh a little – on the figures for World of Warcraft. Saying, “Well, come on, WOW at the time must have had 13 million players, come on, let’s be super reasonable, we’ll only count half of them on our game.” I don’t want to be stupid, I think the Cities MMO, which was released anyway, I think it had at most… 600 players. Jehanne Rousseau: Well, it was a bit of a smokescreen . Everyone, at one time, wanted to get into MMOs after World of Warcraft. They realized that indeed, on the RPG side, it clearly dominated – at the time – the market, so it was complicated to confront them directly, but they said “If we make another kind of game but MMO too… well we have our place” and so we can have a chance, us too, to win the jackpot… well… there you go. It’s a project that doesn’t have enough to enchant the new team united around Silverfall. So it’s time to make a decision and, almost on a whim, the seven Silverfall station managers decide to leave the Monte Cristo ship and form a brand new studio, Spiders. Jehanne Rousseau: It was really a great adventure even if there were some really difficult moments. There were arguments, there were sleepless nights, there were rushes… It remains a great memory, a moment of really strong creative euphoria and then a sum of extraordinary encounters with brilliant people with whom I have done, for some, again 18 years of journey because we created Spiders together. I haven’t been at Spiders now for a few months, but these are people who will always remain friends and people for whom I have enormous respect, so once again, a brilliant creative dynamic, a crazy development experience… I have no other words, and also, really, a very very strong human moment. [Music] Silverfall is available in a Complete Edition on the GOG platform including the game and its stand-alone Earth Awakening. I’m taking this opportunity to announce it to you here: I am now affiliated with GOG so if you go through my link in the description, you can support me by shopping on the platform that I can only recommend, whether to acquire Silverfall or the other great RPGs that the store is full of and that I was able to cover here in XP. Silverfall is also available on Steam in its Complete Edition, but also if you only want to acquire the basic version or the stand-alone which are also listed. Regarding the port on PSP, well, courage on the second-hand market since the rating of the game is not the lowest or else go through other methods, eh. A hint: double the initials of the PSP. Thank you for reaching the end of this singular retrospective on a game that has long intrigued me, I tried to report on everything that the game synthesized of its time and I hope that you will have liked all of it. Thanks again to the Silverfall project director and former Spiders boss Jehanne Rousseau for the interview she granted me, it was exciting to be able to talk about a game treated in XP directly with its creator, I hope to be able to do this again with other French licenses, I’m thinking of Darkstone for example. Furthermore , if you want this show to continue and to be able to always deal with games, licenses and studios, I can only recommend you to take a look at my Patreon page where you can contribute even with the smallest support. It allows me to improve the episodes and to always free myself from the popularity of the licenses I cover and, believe me, there are still lots and lots of exciting RPGs that I would like to tell you about! Otherwise, you can always help me by liking the episode, subscribing with the bell and sharing the episode on your Discord servers and everything! I can’t wait for the next installment and to tell you about other little-known gems like Silverfall, and I’ll see you soon!