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Daedalic Daedalic's The Pillars of the Earth

Rahdulan

Omnibus
Patron
Joined
Oct 26, 2012
Messages
5,099
Interesting to see Daedalic Entertainment GmbH listed as developer and publisher instead of old Daedalic Entertainment we've seen so far. Just some internal branding shenanigans?
 

CryptRat

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Sep 10, 2014
Messages
3,535
I don't know about that, but unless I need a quest compass I can't consult the description of their previous and ongoing games on their site (at first I assumed the site was just in maintenance, but it's been a while so it's not) like I did before.
I need my regular dose of sadness induced by the absence of release date for The devil's men.
 

Boleskine

Arcane
Joined
Sep 12, 2013
Messages
4,045
The decline of Daedalic away from puzzle-oriented games breaks my heart. Silence, State of Mind, The Pillars of the Earth... No sight of The Devil's Men, either. Maybe it's canceled. If there isn't enough money in doing traditional point and clicks I can't fault the business decision, but Daedalic was one of the last mainstays of the genre and managed to get mainstream exposure.

All we have left is Wadjet Eye Games, but Unavowed also will have less emphasis on puzzles. These can still be great games, but not quite what we old guard of adventuring hope to see.

:negative:
 

Sceptic

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 2, 2010
Messages
10,871
Divinity: Original Sin
If there isn't enough money in doing traditional point and clicks I can't fault the business decision
There was enough money to keep them thriving for over a decade. This isn't a business decision motivated by survival, it's motivated by greed. More power to them, but since I'm no longer their target audience I don't care what they do or what happens to them. I do wish they'd released Devil's Men before throwing the towel, this game had so much potential.
 

Boleskine

Arcane
Joined
Sep 12, 2013
Messages
4,045
RPS preview
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/05/11/pillars-of-the-earth-game-preview/

Pillars of the Earth takes on Telltale at their own game

By Adam Smith on May 11th, 2017 at 5:00 pm.

pillarsheader.jpg


The Pillars of the Earth [official site] is doing a lot of difficult things and based on a brief play session earlier this week, I reckon it might be doing most of them very well indeed. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, having never been a fan of Daedalic’s previous point-and-click output, but I came away impressed by both the tone and the design of this upcoming adaptation of Ken Follett’s novel about that raciest of topics: cathedral construction in 12th century England.

Let’s look at the difficulties. This is a point-and-click adaptation of an enormous novel, so there’s an editorial job up-front, deciding precisely which subplots and scenes to include across the three ‘books’ that will make up the entire game. Then there’s the content of those scenes, many of which touch on matters of faith, the brutality of life in 12th century England, a complex political situation, and sacred architecture.

It’s weighty stuff and could ask a lot of players who don’t have a grounding in the period, or indeed in the novel itself. All that said, the trickiest task of all might come from the introduction of choices that can change the story. Adaptation always requires rewriting, because each medium has its own strengths and limitations, but adding branching narrative elements to a plot that already fills a gargantuan novel, and covers several decades, creates obvious complications.

In the half hour chapter of the game I played a couple of days ago, at Daedalic’s offices, there were signs that the team behind the game (the largest the studio has ever produced) are handling all of those difficulties well. Though the game controls like a traditional point and click adventure (though there’s a joypad scheme as well as the mouse cursor), it’s quietly innovative. The decision-making resembles Telltale’s take enough that it doesn’t strike me as particularly novel, though narrative designer Valentina Tamer told me about a few examples of long-term consequences that sound impressive.

It’s impossible to say how well those aspects of the game will work until it’s in our hands though. What does work is a simple change to the way something as simple as looking at things works.

John has said before that adventure games without a look button are missing many opportunities for character-building, jokes and storytelling. I think he’s absolutely right and one of the small tweaks to the usual formula that the Pillars team have implemented involves a change to that verb, ‘look’. Right clicking items, people or locations causes your character to ‘think’ about whatever is under the cursor rather than to ‘look’ at it.

pillars1.jpg


That serves two purposes. Primarily, though the game is entirely voiced when characters speak, the thoughts are presented as text on the screen. That means thoughts don’t interrupt the flow of the game, and you can cycle through thoughts quickly by clicking around the screen. For most hotspots, thoughts are delivered in fragments, so a series of clicks will reveal several phrases. It’s a small adjustment to the usual manner of looking at things, but it works well, both as an expression of inner monologues, doubt and fears, and as a way to communicate the details of the world in text.

That text is a supplement to some beautiful background art. It’s detailed and well-researched, the cloisters and half-finished cathedral particularly dramatic. During a studio tour, I saw artists’ desks stocked with books on medieval architecture but it’s not just the design of the building that has been put on screen, it’s the light and shadow that give life to Kingsbridge. It’s a place filled with people and with a authentic layers of grime on top of all the artifice.

pillars2.jpg


The people were the least convincing part at first glance. They’re animated well and somewhat reminiscent of the characters in The Banner Saga, but I wasn’t convinced that they fitted with the backgrounds, thinking they were perhaps a little too stylised to gel with the world. That feeling faded quickly though. The animations and expressions add to their personalities, and the overall art style is an exaggerated realism rather than a pure recreation.

I’m curious to see how the puzzles will develop. Based on what I’ve seen and what Tamer told me, ‘puzzles’ isn’t really the right word. There is an inventory, which contains both items and abstract clues and pieces of knowledge, and these can be used on objects in the world, or people. Rather than combining a piece of string with a rubber chicken, you’ll be bargaining and plotting, figuring out how to move the story forward, and in what direction.

pillars3.jpg


The chapter I played took place in the woods outside Kingsbridge and I was playing as a young boy, raised by his outlaw mother in a cave, beyond the reach of the monks and other men who might control them. I killed a deer, which involved a very simple QTE, failed to save the meat of that deer from spoiling, found an abandoned baby, and encountered a few characters who I failed to befriend.

If the rest of the game plays out in a similar fashion, it’ll be more Telltale than traditional point-and-click. That comparison snuck up on me because I was expecting something that, mechanically if not tonally, would fit more with Daedalic’s past. It looks like a traditional adventure game but the story takes precedence, and there were no challenges to gate progression. Instead, the choice to take back a stolen book, and the manner in which to attempt the theft, led to different scenes and changed the nuance of relationships between characters.

It’s impossible to say whether the game will come together as a whole. I’ve seen a few scenes from a story that covers many years, and several playable characters, but I’m hopeful. And even though I don’t remember the novel all that well, having read it as a teenager, I’m happy to see an adventure game that strays away from sci-fi, fantasy and comic books. Historical fiction has its own rewards and medieval Europe is a wonderful setting for intrigue, as well as complex questions of faith and vocation.

pillars4.jpg


There’s a scene within monastic grounds where two monks are salting fish in the foreground while Philip, a later playable character, follows a lead relating to a potentially sinister plot. It was that detail, these people working at one of the mundane jobs that keeps their cloistered society running, that I enjoyed more than any of the actual interactions.

The history around Europe’s great cathedrals is as fascinating as the mythology, both localised and spiritual, that these incredible works of architecture and labour stemmed from and provoked. Kingsbridge is a fictional place, but its concerns were real and if Daedalic can depict the setting and the people who inhabit it, this might be a step toward a much more mature and interesting phase in their decade-long history of adventure games.
 

Cromwell

Arcane
Joined
Feb 16, 2013
Messages
5,443
"I won't talk too much" proceeds to yammer on for 3 minutes fucking polygon.

Looks like Bioware-style dialog: Pick whatever you like, it doesn't actually matter.

thats a bit unfair of you. Bioware doesnt do oldschool adventures only oldschool immersive rpgs, for adventures its telltale style dialogue.
 

Boleskine

Arcane
Joined
Sep 12, 2013
Messages
4,045
https://adventuregamers.com/articles/view/33003

Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth

Turning Ken Follett’s well-known historical novel The Pillars of the Earth into an interactive graphic adventure is no small feat. With a tale that spans about fifty years, featuring several major characters whose stories are constantly weaving in and out, and to then expand player agency to actually control the outcome of certain events from the book, makes it all the more challenging. Daedalic have had a team hard at work at doing just that, and I had the chance to sit down with none other than the game’s writer, Kevin Mentz, as he laid out the details for me.

The game is set in and around the fictional town of Kingsbridge, England, during the 12th century. With source material of over 1,000 pages, the game has been split into three episodes, which will release separately. In this first episode, covering chapters 1-7, players take control of three of the book’s main characters: Jack Jackson, who is a still a young boy during these early chapters; Philip, a monk of Kingsbridge; and the noblewoman Lady Aliena, with the game handing off the reins from one character to the next at predetermined points.



Kevin describes the novel as “the spine”, with events of the game loosely woven around it to create an intriguing narrative all its own. Though it is scaling back some of the more adult content in the book, there will still be violence and mature situations in the game. As a whole, it focuses on characters, relationships, and politics, but will not include any puzzles, combat, or the like. Instead, there are moments built in where decisions must be made or actions successfully completed that have lasting consequences, both big and small.

An early scene I was shown featured the young Jack, a boy living in exile in the forest. Having to depend on the hunt to obtain food, Jack attempts to take down a deer using a sling. An on-screen meter appears, requiring a timed button press as the indicator hits the right spot to succeed. If Jack kills the deer, he will need to deal with curing the meat in the next scene; if he fails, he goes hungry. This is an example, albeit a small one, of the extent of action players can expect to deal with, which is to say not much. The game prides itself on delivering a straightforward narrative, without other things detracting from it.

pe13__large.jpg


One thing that was immediately apparent as we started up Jack’s scene in the forest is the care that has gone into the game’s artwork. A gorgeous, vibrantly colorful hand-drawn 2D scene spills across the screen, consisting of multiple fore- and background layers to create a pseudo-3D look. The attention to detail didn’t change when we switched over to a later scene in Kingsbridge, featuring the monk Philip. Rather than a peaceful, snowy forest scene, I observed a lush medieval town courtyard filled with throngs of people. The characters can be controlled in classic point-and-click fashion, or organically with a controller, with interaction icons popping up contextually when the current protagonist is near a hotspot in the environment. The game is fully voiced, and will feature both English and German voice tracks, with subtitles in a wide variety of languages available.

Mentz concluded our demo with an estimate of each episode being approximately six hours long, but reminded me of the lack of puzzles or other things that pad out other games, pulling players away from the ongoing narrative. The first episode of The Pillars of the Earth is planned for release on August 15th, and will be available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Windows, Mac, and Linux.


The new Daedalic philosophy: puzzles are just padding. :decline:
 

Darth Roxor

Royal Dongsmith
Staff Member
Joined
May 29, 2008
Messages
1,878,377
Location
Djibouti
l0tePb.gif


That Mentz guy was IIRC the lead designer of Chains of Satinav and Memoria. And he was supposed to be the lead designer of Devil's Men.

i just dont even
 

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