 What's up everybody I'm the Mangus you are awesome of the day I'm going to be talking about the recent playtest I did with Predecessor. If you somehow don't know Predecessor is a Paragon successor in development by Omata Studios that uses the assets released by Epic to make a prequel to Paragon. Check out their socials linked in the description below. I recently had the opportunity to playtest the game with some of the devs, a few influencers and some members of the community that had alpha access. This was the first time I've been able to get my hands on it since August of last year. We were not allowed to record and I don't have footage of the playtest so unfortunately I'll just have their old trailer and some random assets stuff playing in the background. My experience during this playtest was overwhelmingly positive. There were a few small things here and there that I didn't like but I'm being really nitpicky with the cons. They probably aren't even worth mentioning but what I find to be insignificant may be a deal breaker to you so I'll cover them anyway. If you enjoyed my content please leave a like and subscribe if you haven't done so already. Let's start with what's the most important? Gameplay. The game was extremely responsive. That's probably the best word I can use here. And I'm not just comparing it to the laggy shit show that the original alpha turned out to be. I'm comparing it to a fully finished game. Abilities went exactly where I wanted them to and when I wanted them to, basic attacks fired off as soon as I expected. The characters pivoted, stopped and started in a very fluid manner. It was just an overall joy to play. I've often talked about how something is missing with a lot of these games and I really think it's this responsiveness. I'm not saying that Fault and Overprime won't get to this level soon, hell they may already be there. But when I've played those games or the past versions of Predecessor, they all lack a bit of responsiveness. At first I was chalking it up to misclicking or maybe my buttons were sticking, hell I even bought a new mouse because I thought maybe that was why I wasn't always firing basics when I clicked. However, when I play other pre-alpha and beta state games like Project Stamina or Revenblade, I don't have that problem. I have so much fun in those games because the controls are snappy and I always feel like I'm in, you know, control. That's the feeling I had when playing Paragon and that's the feeling I had when playing the most recent version of Predecessor. Omega has been able to truly bring that feel of Paragon back. As I've said before, none of these companies should strive to recreate a failed game. They do need to make some changes, but bringing the feel of Paragon back is an absolute must. We all love Paragon for a reason and that was the visceral nature of duking it out in a gorgeous three-dimensional map with exceptionally well-made heroes. If Predecessor can bring that back and leave behind the multi-shot gems and loot boxes and gated item system, well then they're doing good things in my book. The movement speed for the game seems slow at first. I think that's because Fault has boots and Over Prime has travel mode and is just fast as fuck anyway, but it was a bit jarring to come from those games and have to plod down to the lane. After playing for a bit, it seemed fine, but I imagine many people will find themselves breaking their W key when they play. The speed is tuned for the map which is smaller than the original one they had. This one looks like legacy, but is more the size of Monolith. Movement speed is adjusted so that rotation times are in line with most other MOBAs. I played Narbash and Gadget for the tests. The new lineup is Muriel, Murdoch, Severog, Fengmiao, Gadget, Chimera, Narbash, Gideon, and Sparrow. Both felt great, but Gadget seemed a bit more polished to me. One of the small things that stood out was when traversing steps with Narbash, it seemed like he was stepping on air at times. Paragon had this too, where it seemed like there was a sheet of glass over the steps. Not a huge deal, I probably wouldn't even mention it, except that I'm pretty sure it'll arc Ruba that I noticed, and he was mean to me during the play test. Isn't it funny how when you play with a friend, they're helpful and supportive, but when you play against a friend, they will go out of their way to straight murder you. Windu killed me quite a few times as well. Ace went kinda easy on me, but Briddick tried to delete me. As I was recording this, I noticed in the Pred Discord that the footsteps on stairs has been fixed, so this isn't even a problem anymore. Anyway, I really liked Daddy Bash's particle effects. I didn't play much in Rbash and Paragon, mainly because I always personally found it difficult to tell when his heal, Song of My People, was active and I would end up wasting the shit out of my mana. I'm 100% aware that this is probably a me problem and not a game problem, but in any case, Predecessor solved it. Everyone else's effects were also great. Not quite on the level that In-State Paragon was, but definitely well on their way. Hit indication was really good. Both when taking and dealing damage. Sound Engineering played a big part in this. You got a different sound effect for a hit than a miss. Seems small, but it makes a world of difference when you're in-game. You knew when you were getting hit too. When I was playing Gadget, Briddick ganked me with 7 and damn near destroyed me. I didn't see him coming, I didn't know what was hitting me, I don't even remember what my screen did. I just remembered knowing instantly that I was getting rocked and it was time to lube that tower up and give it a good humpin'. The item system was pretty standard. They had placeholder artwork, but all the items were available to everyone. I personally had trouble deciphering costs. You could sell stuff back for 70% of the purchase price which is simple, but for whatever reason upgrading didn't seem all that intuitive to me. There also wasn't much indication of when you used a mana or health pot. They only had one charge and then they were just gone and I really couldn't tell when they were active. I'm sure there was some sort of indicator for it, but I didn't notice it and there will probably be others that don't notice it either. The minion AI was great. That seems to be a big problem amongst these para-zombies, getting the minions to behave. From everything I experienced, they worked exactly as intended. You didn't have them randomly running through the jungle or suddenly focus firing you for no apparent reason. They just walked down the lane and hit people when they were supposed to like good little minions. The menu screen and character selection screens were clean and well made. Not everything was functional, which is expected for an alpha, but something kind of glaring was the inability to adjust your settings from the menu. You had to wait until you're in game to do that. No one wants to spend the first 30 seconds of a match fucking with your audio and making sure your resolution is good. Hopefully they fix this before they release it to the public. The menu music was notably good. Oak Al did a great job there. However, they still have Countess front and center on the menu screen when she's not playable. This is another nitpicky thing. I just think it's kind of funny that they don't have one of their playable heroes front and center. I mean, I get it, Countess is hot. She makes for something pretty to look at when you're on the main screen. But if I want to fap to Countess, there's literally hours of Paragon porn out there. I would prefer someone playable take that front position. So there you have it folks, my thoughts on the current state of predecessor. The good things are great and the bad things are almost not even worth mentioning. I really hope for the best for Omeda. It's a group of really good people making a really great game. Smokey often goes out of his way to offer his assistance to other developers, which is just awesome. It's possible that the other devs do this too, and I just haven't seen it. But I have personally witnessed collaboration between Omeda and Undying. And more recently, Smokey used me to get in contact with Project Stamina so those teams can compare notes and work together a bit. That shit is just kind of good to see. Xenu is always extremely helpful with the notifying me of tests. Ruba is of course a great friend of the channel. And during the playtest, Ace offered to answer any questions for anyone or do any interviews or any kind of content creation thing, which would be really cool of him. I don't know man, I just get a good vibe from Omeda. I hope they release their alpha soon, and I hope to see as many of you there when it happens as possible. For now, this is the Mangoes signing off. You guys have a good one. Mango!