RWS the original company who developed Postal1/2 isn't directly developing Postal3, the job is being done by a Russian company named Akella.

Yes, but RWS has frequently stated that they would never have a Postal game that was not designed by them. Akella also seems to have been mostly called in to help finish the game after it had been delayed for so long as well when it was being done internally at RWS, or at least that is what I seem to have gathered from the situation. At any rate, I have generally had a good experience when interacting with Russian gamers in the past, as subjective as that assertion may be. ;)

Postal 3 is made also for consoles, and most games that made for consoles as well aren't as good as they could be. The graphic capabilities of most consoles are much weaker then what the PC can get. The gameplay is different on the consoles (there aren't many RTS and good non action oriented RPG's games on consoles), so the games need to be a little "screwed up" to fit them.

Hey, I am as knee-jerk anti-console as anyone can be, but I am actually not that worried about this. RWS is still primarily PC oriented, and they are just reaching out to consoles because they a true believers in multi-platform. They are NOT doing it because of the myth that you can make more money on Consoles than on PCs or the FUD that states that that your games will never be pirated if you develop on Consoles. RWS simply wants to enable everyone to go postal in whatever way they see fit, whether on a Linux box or an XBox. And when it comes to that I really can not complain. And in response to your comments on features, it sounds to me that their strategy primarily is to develop the game for PCs, and then beat it up to work (technically and politically) on Consoles. :rolleyes:

I recently learned that the great Postal Dude voice actor named Rick Hunter who voices the main character in Postal2 won't be coming back to postal3 and instead we got a new guy named Corey Cruise who imo (from what I heard of on the trailers) isn't nearly as good as the original :( .

Yes, I only heard that recently, and it is disappointing. I can understand why that may be a concern, after all, a game without Stephen Weyte's Caleb or Jon St. John's Duke Nukem would have been disastrous. But that being said, I have not had a chance to hear the new guy yet, so I not will pass judgement until then. Makes me wonder what happened to Rick Hunter though. :(

The gameplay is in 3rd person and it's supposed to have a LOT of shooting with ranged weapons, I never got used to that pov in shooters, aiming is much different.

You are not the only person who has been worrying about this, and I can understand that, and apparently they was some division amongst RWS's own ranks about this, but the implementation of the perspective in the game managed to win them over. Maybe they will surprise us.

Anyways, I still can't wait to try this game and I hope it will be better the Postal2, but I doubt it.

Yeah, well, that is the attitude I always take when I see a sequel to something great, that way when your expectations are exceeded you can be pleasantly surprised. But I do like some of the things I am hearing about the game, the "good" and "evil" plot lines sound like an interesting addition, and come on: It has a bloody BADGER SAW! :D

At any rate, for now lets hope for the best, okay?

Here is the link to the trailer in which the Postal 3 Dude speaks :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ST8JrMUb-1s

Judge for yourself.

Sounds fine to me.

Fine yeah....but not Great.
Not even close to what it used to sound in Postal 2.

Well, I downloaded the trailer as it actually seems to use less bandwidth to download it than to play it straight. Yes, I say again, my ISP sucks considering I have to worry about that. 

As for the new guy, he will do. He is not as good as Rick Hunter was, but he manages to pull of the lines fairly well. I certainly do not think it would be enough to ruin the whole game.

And the writing seems pretty good, especially the bit about one of the characters Halliburton pension... 

Well let's hope this one doesn't take another year to come out!

Hamish promised it will come out in a few months tops ;)

Just found out the sad news that the real life Champ died on May 25 of Cancer at the old age of 12: :(
http://www.runningwithscissors.com/rip-champ

He is still to appear in all later Postal works, including Postal III, which still is not released yet. :rolleyes:

To anyone who has been reading the recent Phoronix article, do not be alarmed, we are still in their thoughts. Here is the response I got from Vince:

Thanks for writing.

Yes, I said that recently, because its true, the Source engine doesn’t support it

But we want to do it, so it’s a question of finding a way

V

As long as they have not given up on us, there is no reason for us to give up on them.

I also suggested Alternative Games to them, as they have experience with more graphically intense titles (Shadowgrounds and Trine) and are based in Finland so they would hopefully be able to get a good working relationship with Akella in Moscow. So we will see what we will see. :)

Another interesting quote I receieved from Vince:

Ryan [Gordon] is the best, period. He’s been a big supporter and dear friend. The world would be a lot better if more people acted in good faith like him.

So they still have a fairly good relationship. The only problem I can think of is that Ryan has for the past little while effectively become an employee of the Humble Indie Bundle, though that could just be because it has generated so much interest in our platform, and it appears from his Twitter feed that he has a kid on the way to. Still, it is good to know. :D

Thanks for finding us the info Hamish it would be interesting if they could keep you up to date on it in the future to see what happens.

Postal III was released in Russia, and they have got it out on Steam and some other online sources. They also have a boxed version available from their website, all Windows only at this point, as even the console ports have been delayed due to none of the porting houses offering a reasonable price for the port.

A nice video of some of the gameplay in the Russian release:
http://www.youtube.com/EhS8oGl3CuQ

Unfortunately it has not gotten a lot of press, so that is not good for them. The only detailed review I could find was from this forum thread:
http://www.resurrection-studios.net/smf/index.php?topic=8324.0

Still, Akella is still doing a lot of post release development work (including some speculation that they are adding a proper free-roam mode) so waiting a little bit for things to cool down might be a good thing when it comes to Linux/Mac and the console ports.

I am thinking I will contact Vince again in January after things cool down a bit, I have a few things I want to ask him.

So it looks like Postal III is dead in the water - everywhere.

Akella have laid off TM, they have not released the SDK either to the public OR RWS (as much as we want it) due to various reasons I'm yet unable to elaborate on. They are not going to patch out the DRM despite all this. Things look pretty bleak ... The SDK could have really given this game future and prolonged it's sales well into the future, not releasing it is frankly retarded ... Akella have really hurt RWS and fucked over the entire Postal community. Even as someone that works with RWS, I'd just rather forget Postal 3 happened.

If they can not even get the Windows version up to scratch, Linux and Mac now certainly look to be out of the question. Things seem to have spiraled out of control even from all of the chaos last year, and it looks like the game is basically dead.

To make matters even worse, RWS has even been having others giving them headaches.

Just wanted to check in with everyone to update you on what happened to our site. We were hacked by some fucking ass holes at Anonymous and we have since put up an interactive forum. So make sure you register and participate on our forums!

The good news?

With the new site launching, the only thing worth talking about is Postal 2.

Well, as was reported earlier, all of the Linux friendly Postal titles are now up on Desura, with Postal 2 itself getting an updated port (thanks to Ryan Gordon again) with better widescreen support and sound fixes. And with all the recent Kickstarter fever, people have even been trying to push RWS to go down that route for their next title.

It's being considered, there is just debate on if there would be even close to enough support for it.

And if there is a new game coming up, it will probably be a remake of the orginal Postal:

It's all being discussed. The possibility of a Postal 1 remake is the main focus at the moment ... No news as such, other than it's been decided that a Postal 1 remake would be a very good thing and a kick starter is one of the funding options that's being looked into. It would be isometric, and would use another control system other then what the original did, about all that can be confirmed for now.

So, if you think this is a good idea you can give them some encouragement in this forum thread:
http://runningwithscissors.com/main/index.php?topic=155.msg848#msg848

As someone who has derived many hours of fun from their games and has had the honour to correspond with Vince Desi (one of the most open and patient people in the entire industry) on several occasions, I sincerely wish RWS the best of luck in their future efforts.

It is only a shame that Postal III had to end this way....

I may want to turn the above into an actual news article - I just keep finding new little details to add to it. :)

Thanks Hamish ! nice investigation.

I love kickstarter but I hate people using it for remakes.
If I want to contribute and help your project I want an original game and not something that I've played 10-20 years ago but with better graphics.

Thats the main reason I didn't pledged to "Larry 1 with better graphics".

Shame they use the source game engine, it smelled bad from the start.

Well there first problem was going with an engine that doesn't support us :/

Hey their others games do which are awesome and on Desura so i don't hate them, i will be picking up Postal 2 to play through someday since P1 was awesome.

About a year ago I've bought Postal 10th Anniversary Collector's Edition (even trough I've pirated it years ago ;) ), just to support the developers.

But now if they want to make a remake of Postal1 I would probably won't donate.

Do something original.

It seems that even if they will try to go for Postal1 remake, they will choose a non-Linux friendly engines Linux UDK or Unity :(
http://runningwithscissors.com/main/index.php?topic=155.msg1133#msg1133

P.S
Hamish, aren't you a little too young (under-aged) to post in RSW forums ;) ?

Eh, I will be eighteen in a few weeks... :rolleyes:

I can understand that they want to work with an engine they are familiar with, especially since they are a bit in the hole. It is really Epics fault more than anyone elses.

Still, I hope they can decide to change their tune. If I was them, I would not want to be licensed or involved with anyone.

Everybody tries to screw them... which is why they made Apocalypse Weekend. ;)

On the other hand I didn't like Postal1 so much (maybe because of the poor graphics, or maybe because I can't get used to the controllers and suck at this game), so it's not a big loss for us.
But the sounds are very cool "kill me, I'm dying" ;)