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Fallen Gods - upcoming Norse saga-inspired roguelite from Wormwood Studios

V_K

Arcane
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at a Nowhere near you
WTF are you talking about? It's essentially stuff that should be in the manual.
 

Binky

Cipher
Joined
Nov 17, 2015
Messages
453
MRY's about to make you his bitch:
You'll enslave nations with necromancy!
600 hours of gameplay!
Over a million words!
Nubile maidens!
And more, much more!

A game made with tender loving care by passionate and dedicated developers who live and breathe originality. A once in a lifetime opportunity for all and sundry to play the pinnacle of gaming. Dare to hope, dare to dream, dare to play... FALLEN GODS.
 
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Darth Roxor

Royal Dongsmith
Staff Member
Joined
May 29, 2008
Messages
1,878,405
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Djibouti
MRY's about to make you his bitch:
You'll enslave nations with necromancy!
600 hours of gameplay!
Over a million words!
Nubile maidens!
And more, much more!

A game made with tender loving care by passionate and dedicated developers who live and breathe originality. A once in a lifetime opportunity for all and sundry to play the pinnacle of gaming. Dare to hope, dare to dream, dare to play... FALLEN GODS.

Trump-Youre-Hired-002-1.jpg
 
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MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
5,703
Location
California
Fallen Gods Update #8: Violence. It's a shorter one, more about the game's philosophy than its mechanics, though there is some discussion of mechanics too.
Fallen Gods Update #8: Violence


Wounded and weary, a young man sits beside his battered axe and shield. All about are fallen friends and foes who, unlike this youth, have lost their lives but kept their hope. His empty, guilty hands hold no gold to atone the dead and end this gruesome feud, and his doom resounds as if the Nine sang here aloud: blood begetting blood, kith upon kin, a red wave washing away all those bound by love, oath, and wrath to war until the end. He stares at you, shaking, speechlessly beseeching.


I want you to imagine a world in which meeting your brother’s murderer on the road is sufficiently likely that a wise man might pause in his practical advice to give you suggestions as to how to handle such an encounter. That’s how the Hávamál, a kind of Norse Ecclesiastes, goes, and the suggestion (reasonable enough) is not to trust such a man-slayer. To the Hávamál’s skald, such a danger is no more or less worth warning about than rootless trees (which might tip over in a wind) or too much drink (which could lead to public embarrassment). A man should not trust in any of these, the poem warns. Everywhere is man against man, man against nature, and man against himself, and death hovers above all things like a hungry raven.

When reading the Norse sagas, what stands out to me about the violence is not so much its quantity—which is much less than in the Iliad, for instance—but its quality. The variety and specificity of wounds, along with knowledge of their consequences and the ways of trying to treat them, bespeak the skalds’ firsthand or at least secondhand experience with killing and maiming. We often think of modernity as violent, but in truth most of us will have the good fortune never to be caught up in the kind of bloodshed these sagas describe: battles, burnings, and butchery. The sagas’ authors, particularly whatever skald composedNjal’s Saga, are by no means desensitized to this mayhem. This is not the proverbial water in which a fish swims, blissfully unaware; it seems more like water in which the author isdrowning, fully and fearfully conscious. A whole nation can be dragged down by such bloodshed: “by lawlessness, laid waste.”

This image of men sinking into a bloody mire of their own making has been a key part of my own writing and design for Fallen Gods.

Like many kids drawn to fantastical settings, I grew up taking comfort in the way fantasy situates violence within a moral plan. Fantasy novels are chock-full of bullied young protagonists, last survivors of near-universal slaughter, and heroes who seem helpless and hopeless against villainous might. This suffering is not just a preamble to, but a prerequisite for, later salvation. It is not merely that the wicked are punished and victims avenged; those who have been wronged find themselves, Job-like, even richer than before. (As a boy, I entirely believed that, say, Luke Skywalker could somehow be more than compensated for the trauma of coming home to the still-smoldering corpses of his murdered family. But it turns out that old wounds only ache worse as the years go on, and there is no psychic currency with which early losses can be offset by later gains.)

In typical fantasy novels, when a villain tortures a brave young woman or torches a helpless town, the bitter herb of his evil is mixed with the sweet confidence that he is merely sowing the wind. Even in ostensibly “grim-dark” series such as A Song of Ice and Fire, the long arc of history bends in favor of “breakers of chains” and once-bullied bastards. I mentioned earlier that “the noblest aspect of fantasy” is “its ability to train us to view doing good as the proper exercise of power.” Here I’ll add that its capacity to comfort, even if a kind of deceptive opiate, is no small virtue either. Run-of-the-mill childhood bullying is hardly the worst thing in the world, but it’s still rough, and that roughness is at least a bit diminished by books like The Once and Future King or any of a thousand other stories. But here, too, our game offers something different.

Unlike such fantasies, neither Fallen Gods nor the sagas that inspire it promises a moral plan for violence. When the strong use their might to hurt the weak, that does not necessarily set in motion a Rube Goldberg device by which the aggressors will ultimately suffer a comeuppance at the hands of their victims. The bloody slaughter of a people does not imply that the lone survivor will one day become king over a just, prosperous, and fecund realm; he may simply wind up an outlawed murderer meting out a measure of revenge until the day he’s caught and killed. Or he might not even make it that far. Perhaps, weak and weary, he’ll be run down a few days later and speared where he sleeps.

Our game’s setting is a world already whirling in the cyclone of such violence, and its story is that of a powerful, selfish fighter who sees others merely as a means to an end (or, we might say, a means not to end). To tell that story in that world means not flinching back from its ugliness—one must heed the cry of Aldonza in The Man of La Mancha when she is at last pushed to the brink by Don Quixote’s refusal to see the fullness of her suffering: “Won’t you look at me, look at me, / God, won’t you look at me!” As in the sagas, violence in Fallen Gods knows few limits, and it falls on the weak and undeserving no less than on the mightily wicked. Their suffering deserves to be seen and told.

That’s not to say that Fallen Gods features nothing but ugly violence or that its depictions of violence are especially gory or torturous. By the standards of modern video games and or R-rated movies, the violence is sparing and its depiction is restrained. But it is designed to have a bit more heft.


As with other aspects of Fallen Gods, that heft is conveyed mechanically. Because HP are so limited (typically single digit, even for a powerful warrior), every wound is serious. Healing is painstaking—in the field, resting restores a single HP per day, and time is valuable. There are no healing potions; rapid recovery can be achieved only by the godly skill of Healing Hands, which costs precious soul-strength, a resource the god gains only with difficulty, as previously discussed. Sickness (which encompasses both poison and disease) causes a person to grow weaker, rather than healthier, with each passing day, and unless you are strong enough to outlast the ailment, only Healing Hands or a priest’s craft can help. So too with crippling, a condition that halves the might of the injured, leaving him or her vulnerable in combat and much less helpful in events.

The seriousness of violence is also conveyed visually. Our attack and death animations avoid majestic or balletic movements. Though blood and gore is minimal, blows are meant to convey force; we want the player to wince when he sees a churl club a wolf’s skull. Illustrations likewise show battle not as glorious but in its rough-and-tumble grit.

Finally, Fallen Gods uses its narrative to drive this point home. The vignettes told through events involve not only battles in which the god participates, but also the aftermath of battles he’s missed, the weary despair that comes from the anticipation of battles that have not yet materialized, the economic drain of feuds, and so on. These events rely in part on the differences in perspective among the god (who is largely oblivious to others’ suffering), the narrator (who is aware of that suffering but takes it as a fact of life), and the player (whose values are likely very different from either the god’s or the narrator’s). The parallax effect of these overlapping perspectives is meant to be disconcerting and in some instances even dizzying, as when the narrator grumbles about surly thralls going about “unbeaten by their betters.”


Fallen Gods is an adventure in which the player has the opportunity to slay foul creatures, wield magical weapons, win powerful allies, and earn the admiration of many. But it is not unalloyed heroic fantasy, for beneath and within this quest is a frank and cautionary look at the uglier side of a world in which meting out death is viable way of life and perhaps the only way back to the heavens.
NEXT UPDATE: Anatomy of an Event


* * *

To my taste, Cormac McCarthy is the best modern skald of violence and its awful price, and his most compelling work in this regard is Blood Meridian. In a similar vein are Brian Hart’s The Bully of Order, Ian McGuire’s The North Water, Philipp Meyer’s The Son, which is probably the least agonizing of the bunch.
 

Quantomas

Savant
Joined
Jun 9, 2017
Messages
260
Again, short it is not but you have definitely produced another high quality update. As a recommendation to all readers, always go for the original at www.wormwoodstudios.com.

It can be said that in our modern "civilized" society exposure to violence has become commonplace. Not first hand, but the newspapers and media present you violent deeds every day, with a high frequency, let alone movies or even relative "benign" video games like PoE, in which you easily loose count of how many intelligent creatures you have killed.

This level of exposure was not present in the medieval ages. It is no coincidence that back in these days a book could be described as evil or having a bewitching influence on a person, and locked away. It says something about a civilization like the Norse that they cultivated a literature about heroic deeds that dealt with the theme of violence.

The fact that we have such a high exposure to violence today says something as well. It's a bit like in The Matrix that proposed that people would not accept a perfect (virtual) reality in which everyone is happy because humans define themselves by struggle and coping with challenges. But then this may be a subconscious reaction to the wholesale destruction we see today, that entire ecosystems and pristine forests are burned away to make place for plantations, or the threat of nuclear holocaust as a "viable" strategy.

What you describe as the concept behind the treatment of violence in FG is ultimately a bold call to step beyond the heroic and moral view of violence, and make the people see it for what it is.

If you see violence as a means to shape reality, and refrain from casting it in moral terms, you are one step closer to see the reasons why the societies within living memory have always defined themselves by the way they treat violence. And yes, much of this comes down to the people's love of Justice and Peace.

But there is one more thing, there is a reason why people readily believe in chains of events that restore justice and peace that goes beyond their love for it. They doubt that reality is simply shaped by cause and effect but that there is a higher intelligence that shapes reality.

Last but not least, that's an absolutely brilliant piece of music!
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
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Messages
5,703
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California
where's muh blud?

e: looks great but why minimal blood and gore?
For some weapons (the bashing ones), blood would not necessarily make sense. Since we use only one death animation, I thought it was better to skip blood. Also, I think gore is sometimes a crutch (my adolescent love of Vandal Hearts notwithstanding), and sometimes a turn off.
 

Infinitron

I post news
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Messages
97,232
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Wait, wasn't this month's update supposed to be about events?
 
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MRY

Wormwood Studios
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Yes. But last month's was supposed to be about combat. Sometimes things shift. In this instance, it's because I wanted to finalize the text for the event I plan to use in the event update, and I haven't gotten around to it yet.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
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Messages
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California
Again, short it is not but you have definitely produced another high quality update. As a recommendation to all readers, always go for the original at www.wormwoodstudios.com.

It can be said that in our modern "civilized" society exposure to violence has become commonplace. Not first hand, but the newspapers and media present you violent deeds every day, with a high frequency, let alone movies or even relative "benign" video games like PoE, in which you easily loose count of how many intelligent creatures you have killed.

This level of exposure was not present in the medieval ages. It is no coincidence that back in these days a book could be described as evil or having a bewitching influence on a person, and locked away. It says something about a civilization like the Norse that they cultivated a literature about heroic deeds that dealt with the theme of violence.

The fact that we have such a high exposure to violence today says something as well. It's a bit like in The Matrix that proposed that people would not accept a perfect (virtual) reality in which everyone is happy because humans define themselves by struggle and coping with challenges. But then this may be a subconscious reaction to the wholesale destruction we see today, that entire ecosystems and pristine forests are burned away to make place for plantations, or the threat of nuclear holocaust as a "viable" strategy.

What you describe as the concept behind the treatment of violence in FG is ultimately a bold call to step beyond the heroic and moral view of violence, and make the people see it for what it is.

If you see violence as a means to shape reality, and refrain from casting it in moral terms, you are one step closer to see the reasons why the societies within living memory have always defined themselves by the way they treat violence. And yes, much of this comes down to the people's love of Justice and Peace.

But there is one more thing, there is a reason why people readily believe in chains of events that restore justice and peace that goes beyond their love for it. They doubt that reality is simply shaped by cause and effect but that there is a higher intelligence that shapes reality.

Last but not least, that's an absolutely brilliant piece of music!
A typically thoughtful and nuanced take. I guess the one thing I'll say (and this is also in some ways a reaction to Infinitron's description of the game as having an "amoral" take on violence) is that I ultimately wouldn't say that a "heroic and moral view of violence" is necessarily wrong, though it may be incomplete. The use of violence is hazardous, and one hazard is the hardening of your own heart and sullying of your soul, but many times it is a necessary hazard. I think we need moral boundaries, and for boundaries to be real, they must be guarded. "If you go past this point, we will meet you with force. And if you go past that point, we will meet you with ultimate force," is, I think, a message that society has to be willing to send lest it disintegrate. I count myself fortunate to live in a world where not many people are put in the position of delivering that force. But I think those who help guard the boundaries of decency at the peril of their own physical, mental, and spiritual well-being are heroic, at least the ones who aren't do it because they're closeted sadists or whatever.
 

AdolfSatan

Arcane
Joined
Dec 27, 2017
Messages
1,871
These updates are always an amazing read. It's reassuring to see how much love and care you put into your craft, I've no doubt this will be an amazing game.
There's only one point of criticism I'd like to bring up, and it's for you to be wary of being overly descriptive in your flavour texts-/descriptions. I've noticed many redundancies that are working in detriment to the general effect of your writing... And this is coming from an avowedly verbose man!
Perhaps they're recent and missing a couple passes yet, but make sure to approach them with a cooler head later on and iron them out; it'd be a shame to let some minutiae muddying up your writing.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
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Messages
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California
All the texts that I've posted are final, so alas you should temper your expectations for the game accordingly. You should see what they looked like before the cooler heads!

EDIT: That's not to say your criticism isn't valid; it probably is. But ultimately, there are three factors here that prevent revisiting: (1) it is time consuming to revise, finalize, and record texts, so redoing recorded texts is out of the question; (2) it is time consuming just to write the texts, and I have so little time that over the years there has been stylistic drift (requiring wholesale revision), so to the extent I can just keep things at the current style, I sort of need to do that to see the game finished; and (3) I like enjoy writing like this and ultimately the only way to finish an expensive, time-consuming hobbyist game is to enjoy doing it. Hopefully some people will like the writing as is, or at least tolerate it.
 
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Quantomas

Savant
Joined
Jun 9, 2017
Messages
260
All the texts that I've posted are final, so alas you should temper your expectations for the game accordingly. You should see what they looked like before the cooler heads!

EDIT: That's not to say your criticism isn't valid; it probably is. But ultimately, there are three factors here that prevent revisiting: (1) it is time consuming to revise, finalize, and record texts, so redoing recorded texts is out of the question; (2) it is time consuming just to write the texts, and I have so little time that over the years there has been stylistic drift (requiring wholesale revision), so to the extent I can just keep things at the current style, I sort of need to do that to see the game finished; and (3) I like enjoy writing like this and ultimately the only way to finish an expensive, time-consuming hobbyist game is to enjoy doing it. Hopefully some people will like the writing as is, or at least tolerate it.
IMHO the samples of your writing that you have presented here are outstanding. It is a rare treat for a video game to feature prose poetry throughout. Plus artists have to enjoy creative freedom to realize their vision, with critics helping in the process. The voice overs are also great. The one problem I have, for example with the VO in this update, is that it is sometimes hard to take the gravity of it all, particularly if it is delivered so expertly. But with a piece of art of this complexity it is practically unavoidable, and as the consumer you have to learn to navigate it. It is part of the process to get to grips with the thematic undercurrents.

A typically thoughtful and nuanced take. I guess the one thing I'll say (and this is also in some ways a reaction to Infinitron's description of the game as having an "amoral" take on violence) is that I ultimately wouldn't say that a "heroic and moral view of violence" is necessarily wrong, though it may be incomplete. The use of violence is hazardous, and one hazard is the hardening of your own heart and sullying of your soul, but many times it is a necessary hazard. I think we need moral boundaries, and for boundaries to be real, they must be guarded. "If you go past this point, we will meet you with force. And if you go past that point, we will meet you with ultimate force," is, I think, a message that society has to be willing to send lest it disintegrate. I count myself fortunate to live in a world where not many people are put in the position of delivering that force. But I think those who help guard the boundaries of decency at the peril of their own physical, mental, and spiritual well-being are heroic, at least the ones who aren't do it because they're closeted sadists or whatever.
Thanks a lot. The key problem in a society's treatment of violence is that what is decent is blurred by policies and command & order. Many books have been written about the conflicts that burden those tasked with using force, but the regular citizens are not free of it neither. Because technically it's the entire citizenry that backs for example the US $700 billion annual war bills, with all that that entails. In principle there is a risk that our current society is slowly tearing itself apart, because we are not understanding sufficiently what the consequences of our projection of force are. Or how policy blurs the line. Thus the hardening of hearts is not something the common citizen is immune to.

Fallen Gods - upcoming roguelite from Wormwood Studios inspired by Norse sagas
Good call to change the presentation. It makes more sense to see FG as a roguelite. As an RPG you have a stronger identification with your avatar and there is a fair chance that the harsh world and themes get you. In contrast in a roguelike you are up against the odds and it's easier to take an antagonistic approach.
 

AdolfSatan

Arcane
Joined
Dec 27, 2017
Messages
1,871
All the texts that I've posted are final, so alas you should temper your expectations for the game accordingly. You should see what they looked like before the cooler heads!

EDIT: That's not to say your criticism isn't valid; it probably is. But ultimately, there are three factors here that prevent revisiting: (1) it is time consuming to revise, finalize, and record texts, so redoing recorded texts is out of the question; (2) it is time consuming just to write the texts, and I have so little time that over the years there has been stylistic drift (requiring wholesale revision), so to the extent I can just keep things at the current style, I sort of need to do that to see the game finished; and (3) I like enjoy writing like this and ultimately the only way to finish an expensive, time-consuming hobbyist game is to enjoy doing it. Hopefully some people will like the writing as is, or at least tolerate it.
Hell if I'm gonna temper my expectations, I'm still furiously:bounce: about this. What I pointed out are minor nitpicks, the writing is great as it is right now.
I fell your pain in trying to keep a style consistent for a project that ends up drawing longer than expected; knowing when to stop revising and call it a day is an art on itself.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
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Messages
5,703
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Quantomas "Good call to change the presentation." That was Infinitron's doing. He, not I, controls the subject of this topic.

AdolfSatan Well, you'll only have yourself to blame for the inevitable disappointment. :) As the poet says, the world is a world of tears.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
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Messages
5,703
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California
Ha! We’re so slow that by the time we release, maybe the flood of Norseana will be done. But we are making progress!
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
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Messages
5,703
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California
Notwithstanding the total lack of updates for over a year, the game has actually made great strides. For the first time in seven years of development, I actually won!

Here are some highlights from my runs with the recent builds:



Ugly screenshot at the end of the second one.
 

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