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Development Info Colin McComb on Narrative Design in Torment at EGX Rezzed 2015

hiver

Guest
One solution would have been to make the entire story from the point of view of a female protagonist (of course too late at this stage).
And what would that be from your PoV?

I agree with the developer wanting to avoid additional costs (at least at this point),
At what point?

but I also have zero issues with the main character being male or female, as long as they don't dilute the story into an easily digestible soup with interchangeable placeholders for whatever he/she does.
That would happen only if you were writing it.

The premise of the entire story is you (as a player) being the new-born conscience of an abandoned body/vessel, so NPCs are already bound to react somewhat different towards you. The entire world of Numenera is so far removed from anything resembling contemporary society that it's hard to even tell what would be a meaningful difference in the way characters react to a male as opposed to a female character.
So why worry about it?

At the end of the day,
It is what it is.

you can role-play with whatever set of tools and premises you have, but special snowflakes will always want
Paranoid imagination rarely helped anyone.

their playable characters to be infinitely customisable from the very start.
Already settled. Long ago.

You'll never see serious writers changing the gender of the protagonist after the fact just because his/her publishing house got angry letters from privileged teens with too much disposable time and/or money.
Since you are too lazy to go and check what you are writing about before speaking i have to inform you that my suggestion and the team consideration of the same feature that happened earlier, happened well before Kickstarter campaign.
 

tuluse

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Serpent in the Staglands Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Why not?? Avellone for example only did New Reno for fallout 2 and it was one of the best locations in the game. Mitsoda already proved on many occasions that he can write some really memorable texts.
I'm pretty sure on that list only McComb is going to be writing dialog for the game.[/QUOTE]
What exactly makes you think that? There is like a dozen writers there, what are they going to do?[/QUOTE]
You didn't name a dozen writers, you named 4. If those 4 I believe only mccombe is writing actual dialogs in this game.
 
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I.... think I'd like to punch the guy making the first question and claiming "The combat in Torment was so bad it almost ruined the game".
No, it wasn't and it didn't. We could argue it wasn't the most accomplished part of the product nor an absolute highlight, but it was absolutely serviceable and generally better than a lot of garbage popular these days, so claiming it almost ruined the game is just idiotic.
 

tuluse

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Serpent in the Staglands Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Shadorwun: Hong Kong
generally better than a lot of garbage popular these days
No not really. Final Fantasy style animations which really broke the flow, total lack of stakes in 95% of combat, uninteresting enemy composition, positioning never matters. It's about exactly garbage.

It avoids just about anything BG2 did with the IE that was fun.
 
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generally better than a lot of garbage popular these days
No not really. Final Fantasy style animations .
We may have played vastly different Final Fantasy games.
And yes, encounter design is not as good as BG or even IWD, but still, it's the D&D ruleset applied roughly with the same principles.
What a bunch of nonsense.
 

tuluse

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Serpent in the Staglands Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Shadorwun: Hong Kong
We may have played vastly different Final Fantasy games.
And yes, encounter design is not as good as BG or even IWD, but still, it's the D&D ruleset applied roughly with the same principles.
What a bunch of nonsense.
Long spell animations that stop combat for no good reason.
 

tuluse

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Serpent in the Staglands Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Oh, so you meant that handful of really high level spells with a FMV animation you used barely a couple of times each in the very late game and were completely skippable?
Yep, totally a Final Fantasy clone.
Starting with chromatic orb, the spell animations are unnecessarily long.

"handful of really high level spells with a FMV animation"

This sounds exactly like FF7 bro
 
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"Unnecessary long" is a weird complaint, when their animations are tied to their casting time anyway.
And yes, that very minor detail may VAGUELY sound like FF, IF we were going to ignore the "you can skip it" part, which I'm not.
 

tuluse

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Serpent in the Staglands Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Shadorwun: Hong Kong
"Unnecessary long" is a weird complaint, when their animations are tied to their casting time anyway.
And yes, that very minor detail may VAGUELY sound like FF, IF we were going to ignore the "you can skip it" part, which I'm not.
Cast chromatic orb in PST and cast it in BG. You will immediately see the difference and if you're like be me annoyed by the PST version. This only gets worse with other spells.
 

StaticSpine

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Shadorwun: Hong Kong
I.... think I'd like to punch the guy making the first question and claiming "The combat in Torment was so bad it almost ruined the game".
No, it wasn't and it didn't. We could argue it wasn't the most accomplished part of the product nor an absolute highlight, but it was absolutely serviceable and generally better than a lot of garbage popular these days, so claiming it almost ruined the game is just idiotic.
He just wanted to say a cool phrase "ludonarrative dissonance" in the microphone:lol:
 
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Lurker King

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Going into stalker mode for a second. Colin recently went out for a drink with Mike Laidlaw from BioWare. He's the lead designer of the Dragon Age series. If they are friends, it makes sense for Colin to give the DA series a shout out, however minor it was.

But yeah, it doesn't make that much sense considering the phenomenal difference in attitude between BioWare and everyone else now. I'm not talking about SJW, I'm talking about basic game design principles. The dumbed down mechanics and the offensively awful sidequests that dominated my experience of playing DA:I have no fucking place in a Torment-inspired game.

It makes perfect sense if he is desperate to get a job after the game finishes, want to impress publishers in a vain hope of receive funding for the next cRPG, expand his network, etc. I’m aware that the reality of professional developers is disheartening, but they don’t have to pander with triple-A bullshit in our faces, is humiliating.
 

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