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The rendering is the best about this prod, and as usual, I can't give props for a renderer you didn't write :-) But the rest is also worthy of a thumb; I liked especially the music when watching this on the stream.

Don't know if Truck does professional voice-over work, he definitely should.

Possibly first story driven demo from (B) since The Beginning (Amiga, 1990). :)

Some of the stuff feels a bit dated but overall very entertaining. Trucks. VO def pushes it to a thumb tbh. Amazing job.

quite a theatrical production. unfortunately had some bugs; some of the visuals were far less polished than others which diminished the viewing experience a bit. overall well deserved top3 placement

Quite buggy, rendering was really disappointing, was missing a lot of story line consistency and wasn't really that enticing of a story.
But on the other hand a lot of the assets looked lovely and I quite enjoyed the music.

Loved it! The narration is great, and probably makes this more interesting than it has a right to be. Some of the models look surprisingly dated, but overall I really enjoyed it and what it conveys.

Tons of work was put on to this, there are some good parts, Truck’s VO was great and I really liked the roman dodecahedron gag.

At the same time feels like someone tried to do 100 million game trailer with budget of 1 million. Buggy and some things are clearly unfinished.

As a story demo stupid embarassing, but I have soft spot for that so it’s a plus.

And then there is thumb

I thought it was lovely. my fave from the compo, bugs n all - tho me top two ended up being the top two, so not a huge issue :) especially love the v/o by truck and the fantastic soundtrack <3

The narration by Sir Truckenborough is excellent and makes this demo stick with me a lot longer.

Very entertaining even if it has its flaws.
Truck's voice-over makes me give a thumbs up.

6 minutes of demo (+ credits) went by quickly. And 6 enjoyable minutes it were! Truck's VO was excellent. So, when will you start doing voice overs for the BBC? :D

This has a strong "massive game trailer vibe" without much of the massive. Somehow a lot of it seems to be really static, the action inconsequential, the camera paths make the whole thing feel like it's a looking at a bunch of objects instead of the camera moving in a world and the whole thing sits tightly deep in the uncanny valley. There's beauty in many of the parts and the composition (like the exploded lab) that would make for a fantastic screenshot, but all of the action feels like it's weightless. The explosing city has nothing on the gritty shaking camera of Debris that would make it it feel real, the side character researcher person in the lab vanishes into thin air like she was cut and pasted away from an image, and the volcanic eruption meant to be the massive climax feels like a bunch of particles and meshes and has zero impact. The tech here might be 30 years more modern, but if you look at Tribes from 1997, it got allof this right.

Although, maybe that is kind of the point and it's made to look inconsequential, because that's the viewpoint of the mystical Roman dodecahedron narrator. I don't know. But this looks like a modern version of a slightly cringey 3ds player. Thumbs up for the narration, the rest is not going down for me at all.

Good work with the narration Truck! Some cool scenes, but also some extremely offputting and seemingly unfinished stuff. Those PS2-era human characters really took me out of the mood this was going for. Respectable attempt at a storytelling demo, but can't lie and say I enjoyed it, at least in its current form.

For Truck's VO

Meh. My thoughts are much like what Preacher said above. The presentation is made to seem "bombastic" while actually just feeling unnecessarily pompous instead.

Of the quality I can only say that it feels .. uneven. Some of the stuff looks quite nice, but some of it looks very dated and unfitting, especially the character models. The soundtrack is good and serves its purpose, though I cannot say that it was very memorable.

Unlike several other commenters, I am not a fan of the voice-over. Not because of lack of quality, it is indeed very good - props to Truck (I couldn't have guessed it was him), but rather just the existence of it. VO-storytelling just does not suit me.

All of this is exacerbated by the whole "hey, look! it's (B) + DSD + FC production", which feels a bit like "we got the big names back together for this" in an attempt to fish for attention or something .. but perhaps I am reading too much into it.

Generally I am on the verge of a thumbs-down, but somehow that feels just slightly too harsh.

I'm just gonna dote on truck, didn't realize it was him to later in the demo where I recognized his voice. Incredible work and should be utilized more! <3

I agree with Preacher and ccr. It's like a low-budget Mass Effect 1.5 trailer and tries too hard to be epic but it swings from good to meh like crazy. It has good looking scenes followed by bad ones and vice versa. The VO is a nice gimmick but the slow narration ruins the pace by dragging certain scenes way too long. Maybe a tighter 'less is more'-director cut next time ;)

dodecahedron is my favourite platonic solid, so i'm tempted to give it a thumbs up but the demo itself was a bit much. Notch has good rendering.

I agree with what SunSpire said about it being 6 minutes, it didn't feel like that long at all. Anyway, it was clearly not quite finished but still very impressive and had some excellently-composed shots. I actually appreciate the "Hollywood" approach and I really like the ambitious use of Notch here too.

"which feels a bit like "we got the big names back together for this" in an attempt to fish for attention or something"

How would you propose the groups that actually created the demo should present themselves?

A truly epic and different demo. Its bit unfortunate that there was clear difference in quality levels during the demo, especially the human faces which dropped the atmosphere a little bit. Even with small flaws, it is still just brilliant demo and I cannot wait for part 2.

Big thumb up for Truck as well. Impressive voice acting!

I fluttered between a lot of the previous emotions for this demo. After digesting it a bit I do commend if for trying something different in a demo style, and I think with such talent and this brilliant VO there is great potential for this type of demo. With some polish, tweaking in direction and some other x-factor I am excited to see part two, thanks for being refreshing.

boring and notch

In a way, this has the air of a cute oldschool storytelling megademo, but on the other hand, it could have been much more polished. Still a thumbs up, though.

Why didn't the camera path dodge the accelerator tube?

Enjoyable! Lovely music!

As much as I like visuals and music, the pacing and the narration concept is just meh

I just don`t get it.

Great story demo.

It's a somewhat unreal (pun intended) feeling to see a new Future Crew demo released.
But of course no new demo can ever live up to that name. And I usually don't like story demos, so this is not for me.
Still makes me happy that it exists.

Hm, didn't like it as much as I wanted. The rendering was kind of Kasparov era looking tech (but less interesting movement of camera) and music very average. There is some message about god or something which I didn't quite follow (not the demo's fault, but the visuals were so uninspiring that didn't grab attention).
Still, the second best demo from this year.

what break said

Just gonna leave a thumb here because it has Truck Attenborough.
Have to agree the presentation is weirdly uneven, but I essentially second everything sauli said.

meh

I agree with others that the quality is very mixed, but I genuinely liked the voice over and attempts to make it look like an epic trailer or something. Kudos for trying something new.

feels more like a trailer for a late 2000s videogame that doesn't know what it wants to be than a demo, and absolutely dragged on. couldn't hold my attention.

Nice one. I enjoyed it quite a lot. Has some rewatching value. Interesting to have couple of big names from the past. However, there is still much potential left for a even greater demo and with a little more polishing, the quality would improve by several levels.

Future Crew there! Waiting 30 years! With Purple Motion and Marvel!
Great history, great music! Loved the narration by Sir Garbagetruck!

I wondered if it was David Attenborough AI voice or perhaps they got a pro actor from their game jobs or something. I was stunned when I saw Truck in the credits! Hidden talent revealed!

The sand dune particles looked really great! Overall the demo is impressive as hell to me.

MORE PLZ! <3

Loved this. weridly enough my voting crashed. so i was not able to vote on this at asm..

Not bad. :)

Interresting one.
But 1.2 Gigabytes... Well...

This demo is actually pretty good if you watch it with your eyes closed.

The final boss of the demoscene

Enjoyed it...

I get the feeling that this was a to ambitious of a project that failed a little bit to deliver on its own vision. But i still enjoyed it.
I didn't realize that was trucks voice until i read the comments here, well done! :)
And now we finally know what an dodecahedron was used for... i guess..?

I enjoy how incredibly ambitious this was, and agree with velo.

Also,

Nice

No, just no.

Can't wait to see (and fry my hardware) with the final & next part. Superoptimization could also be a nice name btw ;-)

Exe, 1.1 GB, size of 4K/60p YouTube stream: 625 MB
Peak RAM utilization by the .exe, after a clean boot: 42 GB
Happily eats up 16 GB VRAM

The thumb-up goes to the audio department.