Evil Genius 2

Coming out this year? NeoGAF has the evidence.

Hope to god this actually happens. Loved Evil Genius.

edited 13th Feb '13 12:00:27 PM by Gingerbread

At long last, Evil Genius 2 has finally been properly announced.

Mwa HAHAHAHA.

Ahem. Evil Laugh. Evil Laugh. Evil Laugh.

FINALLY. Wonder what the new villain selection will be like. And hopefully they'll streamline some of the control elements, a la Dungeons 2 (To make commanding troops or organising heists more interactive and less fly by wire annoyances)

Wonder if it'll be any good. Coz Evil Genius really wasn't. Good ideas, but TERRIBLE execution.

Main issue with the original is that the mechanics don't actually support the game's concept or mesh together in a logical manner. You need to game the system rather than be clever or even build in a "logical" manner (See for example: Doors with higher locks attract agents, so using them to lock your incriminating stuff is stupid. Make a bunch of them lead to a corridor that goes nowhere so agents waste the limited time they have on the island picking them). And the less said about the alert level system the better.

Hope they take a page out of War for the Overworld rather than Dungeons 2, which imho is a bit too shallow.

edited 4th Jul '17 8:49:00 AM by Ghilz

Good news to hear. I hope they improve things for the sequel and fix some flaws the previous game had like the 100 minions limit, not finding out your minions offshore are dead until you go to the map and the dumb AI.

Hopefully you can customize your Evil Genius or based them on popular 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s onwards movies and TV villains like an Elliot Carver expy and possibly have your own harem of deadly bodyguards.

This is SUPER-exciting to me. The original Evil Genius is one of my favorite PC games of all time, and I always wanted a sequel.

It's been 13 long years but now this is happening.

First official trailer.

Oh shit!

I knew subscribing to this thread was a good idea.

Nice to see Maximillian is still the face of the game.

I'm stoked for this. I didn't love the original, but I liked the concept. I'd love to see Evil Genius as it was meant to be, not plagued by terrible design decisions like the original.

The first one has some... terrible design ideas that conflict with the core of the game. I hate how you need to "game the AI" and that requires doing stupid shit that doesn't make sense from an in universe perspective. The game gives you all sorts of cool crap, but you should never use it. Auto guns? Traps? No. the best defense is a fucking corridor that leads nowhere but is filled with doors at the highest security level. Coz the agent AI prioritize doors with higher locks. So the Agents on the island will waste their time breaking into a long super secure corridor that goes nowhere and ignore the rest of your base. Traps and stuff just generates heat.

It really killed the first game for me when I realized how the AI behaves.

Not helping is the fact that the alert system to keep your base security is annoying. Why can't my military minions carry guns all the time? Why must I manually tag intruders if not in red alert? Why can't I just designate a room "Kill anyone who's here who isn't a minion/henchman/evil genius".

That would be neat. To expand on the zoning idea, there should be the option to have areas where you don't want social minions to be around so that they don't get fucked over by traps. Funny thing is, it's the lethal traps that generate a crapton of heat in Evil Genius 1. Non-lethal traps like nerve gas cages are perfectly fine.

EDIT: The minion population issue can be fixed by messing around with the text files.

Edited by CybranGeneralSturm on Jun 22nd 2019 at 11:32:44 AM

I'm definitely intrigued.

If they've improved on the frankly annoying trap mechanics, that'll be great. Plus the faintly frustrating wait times and hero "breaking" options.

It felt so weird having whole commando units just wandering in and then just... leaving.

Still loved the game though.

I like that they are bringing back the "train minions at various stations to make upgraded/specialized minions", that was one of the original game's few good mechanics.

Re: Zoning. Also give us a guard post room? Even Dungeon Keeper had that. The fact you can't task your military minions or guarantee they'll be where you want them is stupid.

I'm interested in including the casino INSIDE the main base. That does add a lot of potentially fun mechanics.

Edited by Ghilz on Jun 23rd 2019 at 5:09:49 AM

Yeah, having the Resort areas connected directly to the lair rather than just sitting on the beach outside seems much more in line with the spy movie style. Hopefully one of the upgrades is hiding the doors into the complex proper with mechanical bookcases and statues and such.

Edited by Dirtyblue929 on Jun 23rd 2019 at 3:07:41 AM

When I first heard of the original game, I was intrigued. I never really got around to buying it though.

Years later, looking at some of the Youtube footage of the gameplay, I'm kind of glad I didn't. The game just didn't look very fun to actually play, as interesting as the concept was.

Hopefully this next game will actually find a way to make the gameplay fun.

Rest assured, it's more fun to play than to watch.

Though something to do during downtime when you're waiting for a plot-critical mission to be discovered or completed would be nice.

The first game has a lot of cool ideas that individually are smart and cool, but they don't mesh togheter. It's actually kinda weird coz it's clearly a well polished game that's well designed and has had a lot of thought put into it, but the final results doesn't work.

Like I said, the way the AI and Heat function is completely at odds with the tools the game gives you to defend your base.

What's silly is how when you trigger global chaos, the agents of justice killing other agents of justice still counts against you on the Heat meter.

Which, I mean, makes sense if the killers are framing you for those deaths, but as a gameplay mechanic means you're suffering penalties on something you really shouldn't be.

That's actually a bit that somewhat makes sense when you remember that the whole point of the agents is they are not in direct contact with their agency while on the island. You get heat when they die because they fail to report back.

The agency that sent them doesn't know they've been killed by other agents. Only that they went to your island and never came back. Ergo they should send more dudes coz something's going down there.

The other agencies don't need to frame you coz it's your island, and the opposition's agents dying implicates you even if you had nothing to do with it.

Of course there's still weird things that one of their comrades witnessing the cross-agency death will generate more heat on you if he returns home despite the fact he should know what happened, coz like, he witnessed a dead body.

Edited by Ghilz on Jun 24th 2019 at 2:00:13 PM

You gain heat when an enemy agent kills a fellow agent, takes photographs of their body, and returns to base to report that they found a corpse on your island.

Yup.

To be fair, they could be reporting the island is crawling with enemy agents. They'd not be wrong.

Edited by Ghilz on Jun 25th 2019 at 12:34:55 PM

So if the Russian Evil Genius is confirmed to be an ascended Red Ivan, do you think the beehive-hair lady with the head dome is Dr. Neurocide?

Malory Archer-looking lady I'm guessing is a wholly new one.

Neurocide would work as an Evil Genius.

Edited by Envyus on Jun 25th 2019 at 4:57:14 AM