Announcing Van Helsing: Final Cut

[✪ megapull]

The title spoils the surprise, but before cutting to the chase, allow us to say a few words. We’d like to thank you all for your support and feedback over the last three years. The Van Helsing trilogy became big. Since its 2013 release, individual titles of the trilogy combined have sold over 1 million copies, and we can’t be anything less than grateful to our community and press reviews for any praise or criticism we have received – they were not taken lightly.

The trilogy, as we have discussed previously, was a really big project for a relatively small studio, and now we’re trying to deliver a refined, streamlined, definitive experience of all three games, combined in one big Action RPG title. It will be released as a standalone title on Steam, and it’s called

The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing: Final Cut

It merges campaign modes from all three games, takes away some of the redundant stuff, adds more exciting quests and creates an epic, long single player campaign. All the tower defense parts are in, all made optional now, but are highly rewarding nonetheless. The game will be playable from the beginning to the end as all six playable classes introduced in The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing III.

This means that you can reach level 80 with your character playing through over 50 hours of gameplay, but you can evolve up to level 100 and beyond with a Glory system in various other game modes, including multiplayer (4-player co-op mode, touchdown, arena, or battle royal), scenarios, daily quests, challenges and weekly events.

The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing: Final Cut will be available in September 2015. It will be a standalone title on Steam, priced $44.99. But here’s the twist: anyone who owns all three games in the trilogy already, will get this epic game for free!

Now, before saying anything else, we’d like to thank you guys again, for the countless posts, blog comments, reviews, feedback on various media, because this is what made further developments possible.

In the next posts, we will detail all the new content, game modes, perhaps assemble a small FAQ if you guys have any questions until then. So, go ahead! What would you like to know about the Final Cut?

http://www.neocoregames.com/2015/07/questions-and-answers-about-van-helsing-final-cut/

[EB64]

Truly awesome!
While I'm sure there will be some people who are ungrateful for this, I cannot wait!

[InKeNET]

I've been your loyal fan till now, surprise us with this Final Masterpieces.
I love all of you guys in Neocore, please don't stop here, the sky is not the limit.

[EB64]

Guess I should ask, does this include ALL the DLC as well?

[datguy13]

I think the obvious questions that are likely to be asked are these:

- Will any of this new game bleed into our old installs, changing aspects of the 3 separate parts?

- How will this affect the old classes?

- What happens to the price if a customer only has one or two of the Three-Part Trilogy? Will there be instated loyalty discounts for partial ownership, or just the free install for full ownership only? (bearing in mind that coupons are viewed with mixed responses)

- Will there be more than the base Skills already provided in Van Helsing 3?

- Can we haz it Tricks back plz?

- Are there going to be any tuning and changes to Katarina?

- Will there be refinement to Controller Support prior to release day?

- Russian Localization, and when? (They always ask. Might as well establish your answer in advance)

- What is the final difficulty curve going to look like? VH1 was always considered alot harder than the other two, will there be tuning to change that?

- Are we going to get actual narrative-based Cut Scenes and FMVs in this version? ("Final Fantasy did it, so why can't you?" is a oft-seen quote on games that are effectively viewed as remakes or "reboots".)

- Will Never-Ending Story still be just one extra play-through at an insane difficulty level, or is it going to be formatted similar to most traditional New Game Plus modes?

- Is Scenario Mode going to be incentivized better and tuned for difficulty? Is it going to be strictly End-Game, or will we be able to take breaks from the Story Mode to play some?

- Is PvP going to be better incentivized, or still just about the bragging rights? How is balance for it going to work?

Sorry for the extra work, Mega, but you know folks are gonna ask these things.

[👻™ Jon Obi-Jovi]

Originally posted by datguy13:

I think the obvious questions that are likely to be asked are these:

- What happens to the price if a customer only has one or two of the Three-Part Trilogy? Will there be instated loyalty discounts for partial ownership, or just the free install for full ownership only? (bearing in mind that coupons are viewed with mixed responses)

Was literally about to ask this exact question.

[ForevaNoob Wonemorturn]

Van who?

[josh]

Originally posted by datguy13:

- What happens to the price if a customer only has one or two of the Three-Part Trilogy? Will there be instated loyalty discounts for partial ownership, or just the free install for full ownership only? (bearing in mind that coupons are viewed with mixed responses)

Would like to know this as well

[✪ megapull]

Originally posted by datguy13:

I think the obvious questions that are likely to be asked are these:

[...]

Sorry for the extra work, Mega, but you know folks are gonna ask these things.

- Will any of this new game bleed into our old installs, changing aspects of the 3 separate parts?

This will be a separate, new Steam title. You can still pick up the old games and play them. In the Final cut, some sidequests will be removed, new ones will be added, etc. Shortly: No.

- How will this affect the old classes?

The 3 old classes won't be able to be imported, since the whole stat and ability system will be revamped. Of course, there will be a reward of some sort for "importing" old characters: Name will be preserved, endgame resources will be gifted, and you will be able to start a "veteran" level 80 character. (max level will be 100)

- What happens to the price if a customer only has one or two of the Three-Part Trilogy? Will there be instated loyalty discounts for partial ownership, or just the free install for full ownership only? (bearing in mind that coupons are viewed with mixed responses)

The free install only goes for the full trilogy owners. Essentially this means that you can get the Final cut for the price of, say, VH2 if you miss that from your collection.
However, we still need to arrange this with Steam so we can make this possible. What happens to this bonus after the release is still a problem to resolve. After this, we need to arrange the possible upgrade system with them.

- Will there be more than the base Skills already provided in Van Helsing 3?

3 skill tiers, the circular skill tree will remain, but much more skills/class, and the tiers will need to be unlocked.

AFAIK: 24 active skills per class, and 12 passive ones. This will include old ones, new ones, some tricks, etc.

The new classes are the old ones' "upgraded" versions, we took a step forward from them.

- Can we haz it Tricks back plz?

Some of the best tricks will be implemented into the skill tree.

- Are there going to be any tuning and changes to Katarina?

Katarina will have much more levels, but the skill leveling won't change too much as far as I know. This is still subject to change.

- Will there be refinement to Controller Support prior to release day?

We would like to do this, yes.

- Russian Localization, and when? (They always ask. Might as well establish your answer in advance)

This sadly never depends on us, but on the translating company, hopefully it will be included in the release version. This time we will be much more careful with it's release, and we also have a lot more experience with this process. This goes for all listed languages.

- What is the final difficulty curve going to look like? VH1 was always considered alot harder than the other two, will there be tuning to change that?

There will be brutal endgame. Daily Quests, Weekly events, Scenarios (loads of new ones), Challenges, new game modes, endgame currency, so much stuff ... This will be a really huge thing. 11 "invisible" difficulty levels that you can progress within, using a 5-level visible difficulty system, similar to Monster Power in Diablo games. Tune in to tonight's livestream if you want to hear more.

- Are we going to get actual narrative-based Cut Scenes and FMVs in this version? ("Final Fantasy did it, so why can't you?" is a oft-seen quote on games that are effectively viewed as remakes or "reboots".)

Cutscenes will be reworked so players will get an unified feeling. Think of the VH2-VH3 cutscenes, these will be similar ones.

- Will Never-Ending Story still be just one extra play-through at an insane difficulty level, or is it going to be formatted similar to most traditional New Game Plus modes?

As I mentioned, the endgame will be reworked, so the Neverending story will be gone. Instead, there will be fully different, reworked scenarios, and the Arena mode, where you can fight stronger and stronger enemies on campaign maps.

- Is Scenario Mode going to be incentivized better and tuned for difficulty? Is it going to be strictly End-Game, or will we be able to take breaks from the Story Mode to play some?

As stated above. New Scenario types will include Purification, Chicken Gauntlet, Boss Hunt, Caravan, and so on :) The "Endgame" will also be available from the start, so yes, you can take a break from the Story mode.

- Is PvP going to be better incentivized, or still just about the bragging rights? How is balance for it going to work?

As PvP game modes are not so popular in ARPG games (and nigh impossible to balance), we will focus on PvE game modes. The old PvP modes will be polished and remain in the game.

[✪ megapull]

Also, there will be an official FAQ released soon, these questions will be included as well, good ones :)

[datguy13]

Originally posted by Megapull_Neocore:

Also, there will be an official FAQ released soon, these questions will be included as well, good ones :)

After three years of trolling these forums, I've seen 'em all.

I suggest removing my "color commentary" that I put in parentheses before C&P'ing them into your nicely formatted FAQ though.

[nu1mlock]

I know this is just wishful thinking but what I would want the most is being able to play the game co-op with a friend where my friend play Van Helsing and I play Katarina. That would make me extremely happy! I wouldn't even care if my friend got to pick all the skills and whatnot (because we're friends and think alike), I just want to actually play Katarina!

[Nobukado]

Originally posted by Megapull_Neocore:

Also, there will be an official FAQ released soon, these questions will be included as well, good ones :)

My thanks for the comprehensive info you just provided!

My biggest question is about the character import you mentioned. I own all games, and want to continue playing, but I want to play in anticipation for the release of Final Cut. I presume we will import "one" of our characters, from one of the three games. Therefore, should I focus playing my high-level VH2 character only? If I continue playing my VH3 character, will my progress be irrelevant? In other words, I need some advice from the devs on which type of play will maximize my Final Cut character.
Thanks.

[EB64]

Originally posted by nu1mlock:

I know this is just wishful thinking but what I would want the most is being able to play the game co-op with a friend where my friend play Van Helsing and I play Katarina. That would make me extremely happy! I wouldn't even care if my friend got to pick all the skills and whatnot (because we're friends and think alike), I just want to actually play Katarina!

That's actually a neat idea!
No clue how feasable that would be, though.

[Koenig!]

N1 Love u guys!

[Denny Crane]

So I own only the first "chapter" of this video game, so if I was to buy the next two, I would get this "Final Cut" version for free? Does that mean my three games will change or morph into one game in my Steam Library, or will I have FOUR video games now instead of just three or idealy one?