It’s not a bad time to be a fan of hyper-violent ‘90s FPS romps. Between the modern sequels like Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus and original homages like Ion Maiden and Project Warlock, we’ve got plenty of corridors to soak in blood. Can we ever really have too much, though. The gory reveal trailer for Prodeus suggests not.
From a screenshot, Prodeus would look right at home amid Doom, Duke Nukem 3D and Quake, though it would definitely be the most handsome of the bunch by quite a bit. Its modern tricks are more visible when it’s in motion. The lighting and animation, for instance, are worlds beyond the games that inspired it.
Developers Mike Voeller and Jason Mojica say that they’ve reimagined old-school first-person shooters using modern rendering techniques and, while it sticks to the aesthetics of ‘90s shooters, the aim is for it to otherwise match the quality of their modern descendants.
I love that we’ve got a bunch of these retro-style shooters popping into existence that all reference broadly the same games while still being remarkably different in their aesthetic and systems. It speaks to the versatility and diversity of the originals, but it also says a lot about what key ingredients really fired up the developers. The relentless speed and the cranked-up-to-11 levels of violence are always there, but how these things translate through each developer’s unique filter varies widely.
Prodeus is due out in 2019.
