My group is just getting into playing some of the Sentinel Comics RPG. Is there a sequel issue to Off the Rails?
Thanks in Advance,
DDTWilson
Not to date, Iām afraid.
Depending on how your play through went it could go in a lot of different directions. I could see your heroes winding up getting asked to go to the Moon with the remaining prisoners to make sure they donāt get away en route (the train ride having been a bit of a debacle), or pursuing any of the minor baddies who did escape (maybe with a tight time limit so they can get sent off in the next rocket launch), or there could be some weird time shenanigans with a temporally unstable Friction showing up and causing some kind of time loop or stutter involving recent events, or maybe the Baron got away and you need to find him before he starts another doomsday machine up.
Or something completely unexpected could happen.
Welcome to the forum, regardless.
Hello and welcome.
The issue itself is a prequel to the Sentinels of Freedom video game by Underbite Games, at which point I believe weāre caught up with the current RPG timeline. The game does answer some question the issue leaves open (for example what some of the prisoners are up to). Without going into spoiler territory, thereās also a ton of plot points you can use in there.
Edit: Itās a prequel, not a sequel, my bad. >_>
Rich, Thanks for the plot ideas, I have passed them onto our GM.
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Faralis, Thanks for the background information about the Issue and the tie-in to the video game.
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I was going to ask earlier how it was connected, but then I remembered the very first tutorial bit of the game.
Shame there was no direct sequel to the wonderful insanity that was the second chapter of the game, though. I want to see more of Obsidian, Mend, and Mangle in particular.
Oh, and also the aftermath to a certain sticky Expat/Setback situation that never got resolved.
Well, not just the tutorial, but yeah. Letās just say it also bridges the gap between what canonically happened to someone at the end of the Starter Kit and where they end up again doing stuff in chapter 2.
I actually enjoyed the game as well, if only for the lore and being able to run around in
spoilers
Mordengrad,
but I can see that it hasnāt been immensely popular so I guess a sequel is out of the question.
The game itself was fine, a sort of average quality gameplay TBT game with fun writing and VA, but Underbite themselves really dropped the ball on multiple levels. Even if they were inclined to try to pitch another game to GTG I personally would tell them to say no if I had any say.
I was more thinking Iām looking forward to seeing some of the plot threads in future RPG books or adventures, though.
We really should suggest a Sentinels of Freedom LP episode at some point, too.
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Just a reminder to everyone playing through the Sentinels of Freedom tutorial please make sure to save Chris Vogler outside of the bank, he seems like a decent fellow and his mother and grandmother depend on him.
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My understanding is that itās less that the game wasnāt immensely popular, and more that Underbite dramatically over-promised and under-delivered. The pitch for the gave was for a tactical strategy game using high-tier adaptive AI that someone should have told Underbite wasnāt really possible, launching with substantially more story content than we actually got and a free play mode which, to my knowledge, never materialized, and coupled with a shudder live play service model that only a tiny minority of games are able to sustain the kind of audience that you need.
If the game had been pitched with more reasonable expectations, I suspect it would have been a moderate success, and we would have seen the occasional expansion.
The problems with Underbite were actually much worse than that, honestly. Being too ambitious on features but still having a perfectly playable game is one thing.
But they also did things like promise various console and Mac ports that never materialized because their employee in charge of it spent months not working on it while the company had complete radio silence in response to customers asking for updates on it, then let themselves get sniped by another company, then Underbite further jerked people around who asked for refunds as a result (since they backed a game they now had no means to play).
Basically a lot of the things people used to wrongly accuse GTG of, Underbite actually did. Bonus for how I got viciously verbally abused by some people in the fandom for giving said criticism, as I guess youāre only allowed to criticize a company when itās not actually justified according to the facts. (And no Underbite did nothing to address that either.)
Hence why Iām glad Underbite seems to have just dropped off the face of the planet because while the game itself is fine, Underbite itself? Nope.
Thatās some interesting insight into what happened and reading this kinda makes me glad this was before my time as a Sentinels player. 
Itās a shame it did though because this couldāve been a great series and a way to get more RPG era lore, as was already pointed out. Also being able to experience the world in this way felt wonderful and offered a new way of interaction.
An editor to set up your own stories and scenario would have had so much potential. Ah well.
Yeah, despite the harshness of my post my feelings are more deep disappointment than anything.
I think if Underbite had correctly managed things overall then the underdelivering would have been recoverable, since there was still a perfectly fine complete game even without the overpromised features.
But when combined with things like the lack of communication and failing to deliver the non-PC ports, thereās just nothing there to work with any more at this point.
Iām especially disappointed that this is twice now that we had the possibility of a Prime Wardens tactical game and the universe ultimately denied it to me. Dang it.
Good points.
As someone who didnāt back the game due to a general policy of not backing video games without a hell of a proven track record (Handalabra, say) I hadnāt watched closely, so Iād filed ādidnāt manage the portsā into the over-promising part, but I missed the failure to respond to or refund people for that failure, which is immensely scummy.
Having taken a few years to hide from their fans, Underbite is still around, and currently trying to promote their next ābigā game, a fishing RPG called āWhisker Watersā that they plan to release next year, which I assume will be plagued by the same failures and will also collapse in short order.
Yeah. I think some people did eventually get refunds, but it took a lot of riding Underbiteās butt to get it to happen.
Ugh at hearing about them trying to sneak in a new game without really addressing all the issues with getting SoF out there.
What kills me is I played their first game Super Dungeon Tactics and it was fine? My only real gripes about it were the levels sometimes felt like marathons (a problem that SoF also suffered from imho) and the writing was kinda jank but Braithwhite doing all the writing in SoF fixed that issue. I canāt help but wonder what happened.
P.S. Also forever salty that we never got a darn voice acting list. The actor who played Unity and Ermine stopped by a Steam thread, but thatās about it for knowing the VAs outside of Guise and Setback.
(looks at the old physical copy of Freedom Force sitting over my computer)
Underbite managed to make a product inferior in every way to a game from 2002. Glad I let someone else bite the bullet on that one.