About This Game Inspired by both the original CONSORTIUM and old-school sci-fi first-person shooters, Consortium: The Tower is a role-playing experience with an unparalleled degree of player freedom.GAME DESCRIPTIONWe here at iDGi have invented a satellite capable of opening a rift through time and space. Travel with us through this rift to the year 2042, and take first-person control of Consortium agent Bishop Six on his first official mission. The result is a highly unique, fourth-wall shattering role-playing experience where you essentially play YOURSELF in full control of another human being.While the game presents you with a seemingly straightforward mission to rescue hostages, you have complete freedom to approach all situations as you see fit. Decisions are remembered, and can drastically change the outcome of the story. Follow the Consortium mandate and work with your team to accomplish their goals, choose to work directly against them, even fully joining the other side, or skirt the line and play both sides for as long as you can. Both sides have their own truths, and it’s your job to sort them out and decide for yourself who to believe and why. In the middle are a host of characters from all sides of the conflict, each complete with hundreds of lines of dialogue, as well as interconnected backstories and motivations.We aim for Consortium: The Tower to become the ultimate sci-fi action immersive simulation. Absolutely everything in this game has a narrative or world-building explanation behind it, including all of the game mechanics. In other words our goal from the very beginning was to ensure there are no “gamey” elements, allowing for maximum immersion.BACK STORYLondon, England, December 21st 2042. Terrorists have seized control of the Churchill Tower Power Facility, located in the center of the 1.5 km high Churchill Tower, and taken all of its civilian employees hostage. The global para-military police agency, The Consortium are being brought in to subdue the terrorists and rescue the hostages, and YOU are the principal agent in charge of the mission.In the weeks prior to this incident industrial nanites, the primary workforce behind the construction of vast sections of The Churchill Tower, have mysteriously gone haywire. The building’s construction was ground to a halt just days before your arrival. Vast sections of the Tower are unfinished and reshaped, making navigating to where the hostages are a serious challenge.Due to the unusual nature of the situation, this highly connected society of 2042 quickly become enamoured by your actions. Within hours billions are glued to their VR-decks, hanging off every move you make. Watch as news reports alter based on your actions, and an ever present “public opinion meter” determines your overall standing in their eyes.Besides the specific story unfolding on the tower, the Consortium Universe is extremely vast, encompassing over ten years of development and worldbuilding. Every nook and cranny of every character and event has been meticulously planned, and allows for a completely optional rabbit hole to delve into for those looking to get lost in an alternate future from our own.KEY FEATURESPlay this game entirely on its own or import your universe from CONSORTIUM and continue your story seamlessly! Playing the first game is NOT required to fully understand the narrative.Imported games include alternate dialogue and situations stemming from your choices in CONSORTIUM.New Players unfamiliar with CONSORTIUM will also be given unique dialogue and situations based on having NOT played the first game!Explore hundreds of pages of optional backstory and lore through an in-game Information Console (our version of a codex) A semi-realtime element allows for events to trigger based on playtime, and for world events outside of The Tower to pop periodically. Keep an eye out on these events, and piece together an interconnected narrative that spans well past the confines of The Tower.SURVIVE!The Churchill Tower is a highly dangerous environment, with extreme temperatures, security turrets, potentially hostile soldiers, great heights, deadly air vents and more making simple survival a real challenge.Utilize a classic drag and drop RPG inventory system and manage a wide variety of gear and ammunition that turns you into the world’s ultimate super soldier - a Consortium Bishop. Make deals with combatant squad leaders for better gear, or take them down and loot their bodies.All of your technology requires Utility Energy to function. Get more Utility Energy by “recycling” dozens of everyday objects scattered throughout the world. Even garbage and litter can yield you vital Utility Energy! If it’s a loose object in the world, it can be recycled.Find and unlock the Engineering System and gain the ability to upgrade all of your gear to suit your playing style. More than 50 currently available upgrades, with more to come.TALK!Choose to talk your way through most of the story, and never even raise your weapon.Every single NPC found in Consortium: The Tower, including all of the “bad guys,” are there for a narrative reason. You have the choice to try and strike up a conversation with everyone you can find using our realistic, and heavily upgraded waterfall dialog system.All combatant squad leaders include full backstories along with believable motivations for their actions, and a path toward alliance. You can also speak to the members of the various squads… some may not want to speak with you, but many will and may offer up useful information for your mission.Non-linear storytelling. Most of the narrative moments can be triggered in any order, and the game will remember what you've done previously and customize your encounters to account for what you've actually done so far in the story. This seamlessly allows for a ridiculous level of replayability.As of Early Access Alpha 1.0, there is already over 2,500 lines of fully voiced interactive dialog to discover. Our characters are portrayed by top notch voice talent, including Mark Meer (Commander Shepard from the Mass Effect trilogy) as “The Voice”.Dialog choices truly matter and can cause major changes to occur. Be aware of who you’re talking to, learn their particular biases, and always be careful what you choose to say, or not say!Forge friendships with individuals and alliances with various factions and decide for yourself who is to be trusted. There is no “right and wrong,” only differing perspectives.Manage incoming messages and conversation requests from your colleagues and advisors (Consortium or otherwise!) with your Conversation Manager.FIGHT!Choose to pit yourself against AI driven mercenaries and soldiers that will flank you, take cover and have a genuine sense of self-preservation - they will surrender to you if they are clearly losing. They can also fall unconscious, but be sure to inject them with incapacitating nanites or they will eventually wake up and re-join the fight! Battle against a variety of deadly security turrets that are challenging to destroyUtilize SIX different weapons and a total of TEN different fire-modes with differing tactical value. Your equipment will take damage from incoming fire, so you’ll have to deploy repair nanites to keep your gear in working order.Multiple lethal and non-lethal solutions to resolving combat. If you want to avoid being kicked from the Consortium, you’ll need to try for non-lethal solutions when you can. Learn to switch between the Freefall Suit and Battle Utility Suit, and understand the pros and cons to each.Deep and realistic player damage system. Manage shields and armor to avoid taking any damage. If you let your defenses down you may start bleeding out or incur serious organ damage, meaning you’ll have to deploy expensive medical nanites to stay alive. EXPLORE! You have complete freedom to explore the completely non-linear and interconnected sections of the Churchill Tower as you see fit. Early Access Alpha 1.0 includes roughly half of the finished gameworld at a minimum, with plenty of space to expand the scope of the environment in the future:the roof with currently 6 different ways into the Tower interior you can find.a massive park entombed by construction nanites and transparent titaniummultiple vent mazes and elevator shaftsmultiple floors of the hotellarge mysterious water filled pipes and multiple industrial areasthe spacious and open Hotel LobbyNo movement restrictions and no invisible walls! Use your freefall suit to FLY anywhere you can see as long as you have enough utility energy. Seamless first-person parkour. Super jump and ledge grab your way into dozens of hidden areas and secret ways into and around the building.Use a fully 3D automap to keep track of where you are in the Tower.SNEAK!The more AI sees you, the more agitated they get which in turn increases their chance of engaging in combat with you. If you wish to avoid gunfights, you will need to manage how much the AI sees and hears you.Use the engineering system to upgrade your gear’s acoustics and become a truly silent prowler!Use the Tactical View to see potential combatants and recyclables through solid surfaces and plan your approaches.Sneak up behind combatants and use your Taser to take them down without drawing the attention of their squadmates.Find and use the Stealth Shield node to make yourself completely invisible to pass in front of turrets and enemies with ease. Beware that you will still make sound, which can be mitigated through engineering upgrades!When sneaking around potential combatants, listen in on their conversations to learn more about the world and situation you find yourself in. 1075eedd30 Title: Consortium: The TowerGenre: Action, Adventure, Indie, RPG, Simulation, Early AccessDeveloper:Interdimensional Games IncPublisher:Interdimensional Games IncFranchise:Consortium iDGi1Release Date: 21 Sep, 2017 Consortium: The Tower Hacked The first Consortium game was great. The graphics were practically PS2 levels, but it made up for it with interesting characters, detailed dialogue trees, and good voice acting. The combat felt like low level source engine, but you never actually needed to fire a single shot to get through it. The entire game took place on an airplane that often felt claustrophobic, but every inch had something important, something to interact with or see. It was exactly as large as it needed to be.This game however...the graphics have been upgraded, it's notably better, but it's mostly the scenery that looks good. The character models still look like they came straight out of the PS2 era, problem is, there's less of the amazing dialogue to distract from it. The voice acting is still on point, the old VAs are still doing good work, there's just a lot less of it. Also, not all of them have done all of their lines, leaving several to be done by a very hard to understand robot voice. Presumably they'll get that fixed later but it should still be mentioned. Moving on to the combat. Dear lord, the combat. It's still as bad as before, but while you can walk past quite a bunch of enemies with little more than a "Hey, how's it going" (not kidding, you can totally do that) if you do get into a firefight then you'll be up against Far Cry 1 type enemies. Complete with binocular vision and laser accuracy. The turrets are particularly annoying as the only way to destroy them, is to expose yourself to their fire, soak up some rounds while you get a few off, drop back into cover for your shields to recharge, and then restart that process. If you're lucky you can destroy them without them dropping back into the floor. If they do, then you're playing the waiting game. The last game had multiple points where you could recharge your energy, but you could also recycle random objects in the world to get some in an emergency. Although you never had a need for most of the energy you got in the last game. Jumping from an overabundance to scrounging for scraps to recycle in this game was a massive shift. Which doesn't help as you need that energy to do pretty much anything with your suit. It heals you, repairs your suit and items, charges your shields, and powers some weapons and items. You're constantly looking for stuff to recycle, it feels like that's half of my play time, just looking for stuff to recharge my suit.Finally, the world. Honestly, this might be the biggest problem for the devs. The world is huge. Not anything like GTA5 huge, but a major increase than the Zenlil of the first game. Big enough that you can free fall for several seconds in a few parts of the game. But with that hugeness is a need to fill it up, or risk leaving it feeling empty. That's exactly what this game feels like at the moment, empty. Even with all the enemy AI walking around, the game feels like a bunch of interconnected football fields with one or two small table's worth of interesting or relevant stuff.One last quick nitpick. You can only save at save points now, and you only get one save slot. No more multiple saves in a single universe. If you messed up and saved, you're staying messed up. The game is still in early access so much of this will (hopefully) be improved. When, or if, it does I'll change my review as necessary. I still have hope for this game.TL:DR Feels like the devs bit off more than they could chew. Wait for a decrease in price or an increase in content\/quality.. The first Consortium game was great. The graphics were practically PS2 levels, but it made up for it with interesting characters, detailed dialogue trees, and good voice acting. The combat felt like low level source engine, but you never actually needed to fire a single shot to get through it. The entire game took place on an airplane that often felt claustrophobic, but every inch had something important, something to interact with or see. It was exactly as large as it needed to be.This game however...the graphics have been upgraded, it's notably better, but it's mostly the scenery that looks good. The character models still look like they came straight out of the PS2 era, problem is, there's less of the amazing dialogue to distract from it. The voice acting is still on point, the old VAs are still doing good work, there's just a lot less of it. Also, not all of them have done all of their lines, leaving several to be done by a very hard to understand robot voice. Presumably they'll get that fixed later but it should still be mentioned. Moving on to the combat. Dear lord, the combat. It's still as bad as before, but while you can walk past quite a bunch of enemies with little more than a "Hey, how's it going" (not kidding, you can totally do that) if you do get into a firefight then you'll be up against Far Cry 1 type enemies. Complete with binocular vision and laser accuracy. The turrets are particularly annoying as the only way to destroy them, is to expose yourself to their fire, soak up some rounds while you get a few off, drop back into cover for your shields to recharge, and then restart that process. If you're lucky you can destroy them without them dropping back into the floor. If they do, then you're playing the waiting game. The last game had multiple points where you could recharge your energy, but you could also recycle random objects in the world to get some in an emergency. Although you never had a need for most of the energy you got in the last game. Jumping from an overabundance to scrounging for scraps to recycle in this game was a massive shift. Which doesn't help as you need that energy to do pretty much anything with your suit. It heals you, repairs your suit and items, charges your shields, and powers some weapons and items. You're constantly looking for stuff to recycle, it feels like that's half of my play time, just looking for stuff to recharge my suit.Finally, the world. Honestly, this might be the biggest problem for the devs. The world is huge. Not anything like GTA5 huge, but a major increase than the Zenlil of the first game. Big enough that you can free fall for several seconds in a few parts of the game. But with that hugeness is a need to fill it up, or risk leaving it feeling empty. That's exactly what this game feels like at the moment, empty. Even with all the enemy AI walking around, the game feels like a bunch of interconnected football fields with one or two small table's worth of interesting or relevant stuff.One last quick nitpick. You can only save at save points now, and you only get one save slot. No more multiple saves in a single universe. If you messed up and saved, you're staying messed up. The game is still in early access so much of this will (hopefully) be improved. When, or if, it does I'll change my review as necessary. I still have hope for this game.TL:DR Feels like the devs bit off more than they could chew. Wait for a decrease in price or an increase in content\/quality. Early Access Alpha 1.5 is here: Combat re-balanced + Demo updated + 212121: Greetings Seekers,We have just made v1.5 live for you all. We’ve also updated the demo to include all of the latest fixes and polish. Click HERE to see a complete list of all the updates and fixes we’ve made to the game for you. The biggest change/improvement revolves around combat balance - the early game is now much easier, giving new players more time and space to understand the game’s mechanics and systems. We aren’t declaring that the game is completely free of issues, but it is now quite stable and we’re continuing to fix and polish things as quickly as we’re able to.Here is a complete list of the things iDGi is working on right now:-Continued polish, fixing and improving all Act 1 content (i.e the game you all have access to now).-Act 2 content development ongoing, screenshots coming soon!-A secret partnership centered around a brand new feature for The Tower that no-one is expecting. Fig Backers will be learning about this first, but watch for a big official announcement in the coming weeks!-A FREE Consortium choose-your-own-adventure digital prequel story is coming to Android and iOS devices! We haven’t truly announced it yet, but we’re quite close to a first release to our Fig Backers. A PC version will be coming to Steam sometime afterwards...We have largely been silent over the past few months, and we apologize for any misconceptions that may be floating around out there as to WHY. Please always remember, this is a pure passion project for us, and we will never stop working on it until it’s done… even if it kills us, and we have to reincarnate ourselves!That being fact, in true indie developer fashion, we are all juggling various life responsibilities and contracts along with working on The Tower, so we need to maximize the use of our time. There’s still a lot of game to get done here, and creatively we very much need to be able to work on the game in our own way, without any time pressure or outside influences.So, we deeply appreciate all of your continued patience and understanding, even if we appear to go dark for long periods of time. We hope you like the latest, more to come soon!Sincerely,Gregory and the iDGi team212121. Early Access ALPHA 1.7 - Now with more Norwegians!: Greetings Seekers,We have just pushed Consortium: The Tower Early Access ALPHA 1.7 live. The complete list of the changes made can be found HERE.We're working on many other things in addition to The Tower. So to reward everyone's ongoing patience, we have decided to give everyone access to two brand new Act 2 levels - the rather large OfficeHub5, and the very unique SideVents. Both require some stalwart exploration to uncover...can you find them?While these two new levels are still relatively early, they are at a stage where we would benefit from additional feedback and comments, so as always please swing by Discord.[discord.gg] and let us know if you have anything to report. Thank-you!In addition, there are now over 350 new lines of V.O dialog in the game - the hotel mercs are robots no more! We proudly welcome Magnus Tranum and Anders Tranum to the cast of The Tower. This is a big step towards replacing all of the "robot voices" in the game.Finally, we wanted to call everyone's attention to a really cool video about immersive sims that Logitech G put out a few months ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDIZparwlh0&feature=youtu.be&platform=hootsuiteWe loved what they said about our project.We hope you enjoy the changes/additions,-iDGi. Early Access ALPHA 1.8 is live! Now with AutoTalk...: Hello again Seekers,Consortium: The Tower Early Access ALPHA 1.8 has just been made live. A complete list of the changes made can be found HERE. This update includes a smorgasbord of fixes and updates.Today's biggest improvement: AutoTalk. The "T" button to bring down talk options is now a thing of the past. Talk options will now automatically present themselves as they become available. We've also just released a new trailer for The Tower on the store page and on YouTube.https://youtu.be/-kueeAR9VhcTwitter users, consider retweeting? https://twitter.com/iDGi_1/status/1104599230759358465 To try and keep this update brief but informative, here's a quick bullet point list of important things we want to say: We are zeroing in on finally reaching BETA for Act 1 of Consortium: The Tower. There are still issues to clear and a lot of work to be done, but the goal is clearly visible now. This project is not cancelled. This project will NEVER be cancelled. We are just moving at our own pace to complete it. We deeply appreciate everyone's ongoing patience and support as we slowly but steadily work towards the finish line. :) TO ALL FIG BACKERS READING THIS: Your version of the game will be getting updated very shortly. Also a new Fig update with a big surprise gift for all of you is coming! Watch for this to drop within the next two weeks... We have two BIG surprises in store for all fans of iDGi and Consortium. There is also the previously mentioned secret feature for The Tower still coming. (currently only Fig backers have access to this...) The new version of CONSORTIUM is on it's way to GOG and Humble. Those of you waiting for this, sorry for the delay! Watch for it early next week. Just a heads up: Other than some new screenshots of in development stuff, we may be going a little dark again for the next few months or so, as we work away in our development caves on a number of things. In the meantime we hope you enjoy the latest version of our game, and as always please feel free to swing by Discord.[discord.gg] to directly interact with us and the iDGi community. We especially always want to know about any game breaking bugs you encounter with ALPHA v1.8! That's all for now. Until next time, safe interdimensional travels to you all!-iDGi. Early Access ALPHA 1.10 is live. More immersion!: Greetings Seekers,Consortium: The Tower Early Access ALPHA 1.10 has just been made live. A complete list of the changes made can be found HERE. This is mostly a "quality of life" patch, where we fixed some of the most glaring immersion breaking bugs. We also made some more significant balancing changes based on some playtest data.The biggest improvement - Odin's section of the Lobby has received the same optimization and level design/art polish pass that the Hotel rooms got last month. The entire Hotel is now quite close to beta, in terms of it's completion level...To all of our backers reading this - there is a recent backer update on our Forum.[interdimensionalgames.com] that explains the additional delay. New Fig update with a surprise gift is only a few days away...As always, please feel free to swing by Discord.[discord.gg] to directly interact with us and the iDGi community. Until next time, happy interdimensional travels!-iDGi. New development stream: Greetings seekers!We are internally testing V1.5 now. It will be in your hands soon.One of the things you can look forward to in this version is a major combat re-balancing. This is coming from a lot of feedback we've received, and should make the early game much more fun and interesting for new players. It is also going to be more in-line with the narrative itself.If you're interested in how combat balancing is done, check this out:https://youtu.be/fa0Y4Jy-dZoUntil next time,Gregory and the iDGi team. Halloween hotfix - Early Access ALPHA v1.6.1: Seekers,Just a few fixes as a result of the recent major level changes.FIXES[Fix] Various level geometry and art fixes across hotel levels.[Fix] Major fixes to elevators, formerly offline elevators now online.[Fix] Fixed single soldier getting wasted by turrets.UPDATES[Update] As a consequence of additional optimization of the lobby, a new secret level has been added…Enjoy!-iDGi. Mini update...: Seasons greetings interdimensional travellers!This is the first annoucement we've made without a new version having just been uploaded. The reason is simple - we're still working on the roadmap and getting things done for EA Alpha v1.4, including new Steam achievements! We very much want to try and make sure that v1.4 kills as many of the bugs and issues that currently exist in the game as possible, so we're not rushing this one. There's also been a slight delay on getting the achievements working. Speaking of not rushing things... we know many of you are impatient for us to finish this game. However, it's going to take us as long as it takes. We're taking our time developing the remainder of the game. When we do drop the roadmap for you all, it won't include a schedule. We're not making this game on a schedule, we're realizing our vision of what we want the final game to become, and that's going to take as long as it takes.Also, after EA Alpha v1.4 releases there will likely be a period where releases will appear to have fewer changes than you've become used to seeing. They will mostly be fixes and improvements to Act 1 based on continuing feedback from you all, but will eventually include new voice over for things like the hotel mercs, once their lines are finalized.This is because our tiny team is going to be settling into largely only working on the remainder of the game's levels and content. This will eventually lead to series of a big "Act 2" update drops to all our "Earliest" access Fig backers, and then here. The rough timeframe for that to start happening is mid-late spring of next year.In the meantime, there are more Steam achievements for Act 1 of The Tower than there are in the entire first Consortium game, and easily double if not quadruple the amount of total raw gameplay time. A reminder - if you want to engage with us and Consortium fans, the best ways are via our iDGi Discord channel[discord.gg] and forums[interdimensionalgames.com]One final note: I've started twitch streaming[www.twitch.tv] again, and will probably continue to do more. The next time I start a stream I will be sure to post an announcement here on Steam!Until next time!Sincerely,Gregory and iDGi team
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