Which is a pity because while I have more than enough games to play, it still looked really neat. Oh well, such is life.

...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The
Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-
Covered Balls!"

Just to note, you can turn the periodic monster attacks off (there's a slider in the settings for "shark frequency", and you can set it to zero).

The sensation of being off the train is weird at first, but I got used to it pretty quick, and I don't really get a sense of height from it because there is no falling. There's only gravity aboard the train, in depots, and on the occasional island, and if you walk off an island you automatically rope up and float, just as if you'd left the train. It's very forgiving that way.

Mind you, it's not completely safe out there, even with the shark turned off, but the rest of the risks are a lot more manageable. I'd say give it a try if you can do so without paying for it.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Got the Proper Victorian Adventurer bit in hand, I see. "What's this? My depot is infested with Notzis? Trifling bother that is!"

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

Sometimes they even turn up on another train and try to board! The bloody cheek of it.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

IIRC from watching a couple people stream the early access version, your character's Russian. So the "speaking English" is almost certainly being done as "your character understands this, so we'll use a language the player understands."

There's no indication I can remember in the opening of the game as to the Engineer's nationality, but he/she does start out by being assigned to a long stint at an impossibly remote location somewhere in the frozen north, which does feel a lot like being posted to Siberia.

>So the "speaking English" is almost
>certainly being done as "your character understands this, so we'll use
>a language the player understands."

Now that I have 30+ hours in the full game, I can report that I was wrong about that part. The soldiers' voices are heavily filtered, like the HECU marines in Half-Life or PubSec agents in HL2 (they even make a sound similar to the "flatline" noise PubSec guys make when you kill them), and at first I thought they were speaking barely comprehensible English, but they're not. I don't think they're speaking any real language; more likely it's the devs' idea of the vocal equivalent of the made-up alphabet all the in-game signage is written in.

The story is slowly getting deeper and stranger. I'm digging it, although one of the most recent revelations I ran across was disturbing and made me very sad. Not in an "I'm going to ragequit" sense, though. It makes sense within the context of the game, it's just... upsetting.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Along with the update, the game's first DLC is also releasing on the 19th. Owners of the base game can claim the DLC for free from the 19th to the 23rd, after which it'll be $7.99 or your local equivalent.

More info here!

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.