Path of Neo design doc

Interesting find by angry-gamer.net: the design document of Path of Neo by Shiny. It does seem legit, apart for a weird document apparently written by the Wachovskis (and dated as of today) sure has a weird ending.

The last section of gameplay pits the player against a thirty story tall, fire-breathing Smith. At close up it is apparent that Smith-zilla is made up of thousands of the normal sized Smiths. If the player is able to deliver significant chunks of damage to Smith-zilla, Smith’s should shake from his body like sprays of blood.

When at last Smith-zilla is beaten, the player will either get an incredible visual animatic that explains their path to higher consciousness or a medal.

The end.
And I haven't seen the reference, but there are talks that it was based on Seraph instead of Neo. Anyway, enjoy the read!

Harpalos-mxo wrote:

When at last Smith-zilla is beaten, the player will either get an incredible visual animatic that explains their path to higher consciousness or a medal.

Swap that for The Kids ugly face and "We are the Champions" and we're onto a winner

Interesting.

I'm still reading, but 2 interesting tidbits:

The Wachowski Brothers' arc for Neo is that the character has four general mindsets.

Self-PreservationProtecting OthersRisking Your Life for OthersSacrificing Yourself for the Greater Good.

This one makes no sense, but is also in the brothers' document mentionned earlier. I hope this is a joke, or they want to make sure people read the whole thing...

The chateau fight should be a high flying aerial duel. And the player must be reliant as ever to their newly acquired skills in order to beat the gang of heavy metal goons. [...]

After the fight is over, the Merovingian will smirk, assuring Neo that while he has bested his bodyguards he will not be able to defeat his “hounds.” When the door closes behind him, the player must race through the seemingly endless chambers of the chateau, fighting off the Merovingian’s “hounds,” a host of long forgotten root-programs. Vampires, werewolves, witches and warlocks, leprechauns, ant-men, and big-headed aliens, that carry ray-guns and intimidating, looking probes.

.

I didn't read much of it, I was sort of.... distracted

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Harpalos-mxo wrote:

And I haven't seen the reference, but there are talks that it was based on Seraph instead of Neo. Anyway, enjoy the read!

First off, awesome find.

In the revision notes, for 2-11-04, it says:

"Intranet is completely revamped with new design, navigation and content to reflect change from Seraph game to Path of Neo."

Seeing all this information got me stoked about the game again; I thought about picking it up when I get home, but then I remembered the targeting system which made me feel like throwing my PS2 through the wall.

Well, it's gone now.  I can't view the actual document.

ZaneZavin wrote:

Well, it's gone now.  I can't view the actual document.

nuts. er.....oh yeah, page 42 said "The Matrix is bigger than one city too, and Paperghost rocks".

honest.

Bah, it's really taken down. Surely someone downloaded all the content offline and we'll see it somewhere one day. Until then, I have as a memory the cache versions of all the pages I read and the delicious Wachowskis storyline document.

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   It's legit.  A lot of the Wachowski notes listed in this thread were reproduced in PoN's gaming guide, which I think was made by Prima.

   And the Seraph game is also a true story.  It was mentioned by both Joel Silver and a Shiny dev.  Once I get the time, I'll hunt down both articles and post them here.  But according to the Shiny dev, they were in the pre-planning stages of the Seraph game when the Wachowskis called them up and told them to make PoN instead.  Sad, really.  I was more interested in the Seraph game because it was apparently going to reveal his backstory.

   Edit: Here are the two Seraph game articles.

   Joel Silver mentions the Seraph game.

   Shiny dev "Benjamin Cholewinski" mentions the Seraph game.

however, we would suggest that one of the skills
be called something like “awareness” or “atman” and that the selection of these tiles would seem to give you nothing more than
meaningless koan-like expressions such as, “you can hear the sound of one hand clapping,” but in fact, this skill secretly gives
enormous bonuses to your other skills.

You guys are too funny.  Yes, I miss those OS days, too.

Anyone found any other download links for this yet?

flecky wrote:

Anyone found any other download links for this yet?

Err..it's confidential info. so I doubt you'll see it any time soon.

Why the heck would stuff like that be confidential?

Joakim wrote:

Why the heck would stuff like that be confidential?

Because it is a business document. R&D work such as this one, yes, even for a game, isn't public domain unless the developpers decide to allow it. Companies usually don't like having their processes known by the public.

RainKingX wrote:

flecky wrote:

Anyone found any other download links for this yet?

Err..it's confidential info. so I doubt you'll see it any time soon.

Someone must have saved a copy of it tho.............surely??

Harpalos-mxo wrote:

Joakim wrote:

Why the heck would stuff like that be confidential

Because it is a business document. R&D work such as this one, yes, even for a game, isn't public domain unless the developpers decide to allow it. Companies usually don't like having their processes known by the public.

I kinda thought that since they're way done with the game already it wouldn't matter. But of course, they wouldn't like to have their processes known by the public. So i get your point.

Joakim wrote:

Harpalos-mxo wrote:

Joakim wrote:

Why the heck would stuff like that be confidential

Because it is a business document. R&D work such as this one, yes, even for a game, isn't public domain unless the developpers decide to allow it. Companies usually don't like having their processes known by the public.

I kinda thought that since they're way done with the game already it wouldn't matter. But of course, they wouldn't like to have their processes known by the public. So i get your point.

   Though as I mentioned earlier in this post, there are a few bits from the document that are available to the public in the Path of Neo strategy guide.  I don't have the book, but I flipped through it some time ago.  I recognized some of the document quotes earlier in this thread from that book.  I'm just pointing that out in case anyone was interested.

So much for it to be secret.

PoN was a great game I wish some of the game stuff was in the movies but oh well +1 for the find I still love playing that game and mastering the one!

I thoroughly enjoyed PoN and still load it up occasionally for a few levels of true Matrix-style combat.  Those who panned the game were mostly without sufficient hardware to run it well at any decent level of detail and resolution.  Enter The Matrix has over 5000 moves in the combat move tree, yet most who played it never bothered with more than the basic fighting and shooting.  You get out of a game what you put in to a game (yes, even MxO you posers.)  PoN has many times the number of combinations possible and I've loved teasing every last one of them out of the engine.  The targeting system is cake on the PC, hitting 2, 3, 4, 5 or even 6 opponents in one combo is so satisfying, especially when Smith says, "You can't fight us all, Mr. Anderson" and then they all get owned.

"Mr. Anterson"

"Mr. Anterson"

Yes, it's very easy to change any of the game's models to any of the other models, which makes flying around the city as the Leprechaun (see the Zion Archive in PoN) or fighting the Burly Brawl as an APU hilarious fun, as was changing the dojo scene so that Morpheus was fighting himself.  Back in Enter the Matrix we would play as the pigeon model - there is nothing funnier than a pigeon going Matrix-style on a guard, throwing him across the room and then whipping out a shotgun to finish him off.  "That's one pissed-off pigeon!"

The W. brothers' cut scene in the middle of the final fight of PoN is also very entertaining.  Isn't it always funny when people make fun of themselves and their fans?