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Editorial RPG Codex Report: A Codexian Visit to inXile Entertainment

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Lurker King

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While it would be nice to have more devs posting here

Why? The design stuff is common knowledge you can acquire by playing games and analysis, and they are never willing to gossip about the backstage.

AFAICT nobody here is deliberately undermining or sabotaging them

You don’t speak for every one of us.
 
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Also kind of bullshit to say the Codex was asking for walls of text. A few people were, others were saying that that was fucking stupid.

There has definitely been a shift in Codex preferences. Case in point: written descriptions. Used to be the best thing since sliced bread, now suddenly you have the retards spouting their "show don't tell" lines and asking why they put those stupid, tedious descriptions in there instead of visual effects.
Same thing with CYOA bits. I remember before the release of PoE everyone was fapping about those cool, Darklands inspired little episodes, now they are some kind bullshit nobody in their right mind would consider including in a video game.
Voice acting used to be something we could gladly do without, now we bitch about there being to little of it in ToN.
Different approaches to quest-solving that you will only notice on multiple playthroughs? Who the fuck cares, I ain't playing games more than once.
Realistic female armor? Fuck you, are you some kind of SJW or what? (that last one has litte to do with ToN or wiriting though)

The list goes on.
 

undecaf

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Chris has a point. I wouldn't bet for many other studios inviting for an interview like that; especially for a site like Codex. Kinda telling too of how much InXile must actually need&want the good relations with the 'dex.

Anyway, good interview. Well written, sensible and easy to read despite the length.

If InXile didn't make niche games and was as big as Bethesda, they wouldn't be doing this.

True. But like I said, it's a nice gesture. Even if not much else. They could've very well not do this and be none the wiser.
 
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Lurker King

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Cool interview, thanks. TToN has its problems, but it's a solid story-driven RPG, with moments of brilliance. The user reviews paint an ugly and simply untrue picture; I feel sorry for inXile, they really didn't deserve this much of a backlash.

Also, asking about releasing on consoles and that somehow hampering the quality of the game? Seriously, it's not 2003 anymore, developing for consoles isn't as hard as it used to be... this issue has been milled over a thousand times and it still makes it into the interview.

Deserved credit to inXile too. They didn't need to do this.

I also fully agree with that they said about the shift in tone at the Codex. This placed is becoming filled with retards, and all Kickstarter related topics are especially bad.
:fallout3:
 

commie

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Don't know why all the howling about game being a 'failure' to sink inXile. Was never going to sell a lot, neither day 1 or day 100 since the vast majority of the audience were already with the KS which mostly paid for itself. The at least 30-40k new sales at $45 (at least according to steam spy, compared to the 75k that backed it)paid for pretty much the remaining costs. Then there's whatever Techland gave. The fact that inXile have decided to keep going with it instead of writing it off suggests that there are hopes for it to be a slowburner in the future and most sales from here on in would be a small profit.

I think Brian is deluding himself being 'disappointed' with the sales given the type of game it is and the price point for it. Clearly overestimated the market demand. It was praised by the mainstream mostly so can't say it was bad press. Given the fact that they didn't notice excess verbosity or 'missing content', then it's a fair bet the average gamer reading the review would not have cared. Those that were on the fence or never played this sort of game still pretty much stayed away. Maybe the price point had something to do with it as well. If they were selling it for 30 bucks more would try it out. It's a type of game where the fanatics will really tear you a new one if it's not on a par with the 'classic', yet which doesn't sell much as that type of gamer is rare in the first place. Lot of trouble for little reward.

Biggest problem for inXile is the length of time it took, time that would have been utilized for other projects. That's the problem regarding TToN for them, not the financial cost but the cost in time.
 
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Roguey

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Case in point: written descriptions. Used to be the best thing since sliced bread, now suddenly you have the retards spouting their "show don't tell" lines and asking why they put those stupid, tedious descriptions in there instead of visual effects.

The argument I remember seeing is that they like it when the text describes small details or motions you can't see in the art, but they hate-hate-hate it when the text describes things that are shown through the in-game graphics, a portrait, or both.

Don't know why all the howling about game being a 'failure' to sink inXile. Was never going to sell a lot, neither day 1 or day 100 since the vast majority of the audience were already with the KS which mostly paid for itself. The at least 30-40k new sales at $45 (at least according to steam spy, compared to the 75k that backed it) for pretty much the remaining costs.

Check your math again and remember that they need to cover $8.5 million and that Wasteland 2, in two years, has covered only 11 million and it's sold a lot more.
 

Jarpie

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Brian: I can’t talk about an employee’s specific performance, but what I can do is to provide you with a factual history of things. Kevin left the project in late 2015, right? At that point, we were roughly two years into production.

This...simply isn't true. Torment didn't really start production until then end of 2014 at the earliest, and much more likely later (they were still hiring people in early 2015, and Fargo mentions in the interview that they didn't bring in some people until after WLDC came out - at the end of 2015). Would have been nice to have had some firm numbers for when the team was what size, but the interviewer kind of dropped the ball there (and still not clear when InXile moved from a 1.5 person team to a 2.5 person team).

Anyway, good to have confirmation that Saunders was let go because Fargo wanted to rush the game out rather than because of quality issues; seems to suggest this theory was correct:

Possible scenario: Wasteland 2 delay ended up delaying the full production of Torment (they pretty much said this), which only really got started at the end of 2014. Fargo thought that with all the pre-production and using an already built engine, they could churn out the actual game in a year (Fargo made similar comments about Wasteland 2, if you recall). July 2015, Bard's Tale IV fails to being in $4 million. Fargo tells Saunders that they need to release Torment this year, because "It's almost been three years since the Kickstarter." Saunders says that they haven't even been in full production for a year and he's not comfortable pushing out a half finished game. Fargo replaces Saunders with a "closer" who will push out Torment ASAP.

Also nice to have Fargo's confirmation that the extended pre-production period was a waste. Not sure how accurate Fargo's "It wouldn't come out until 2018 if we do this" line is; it's quite possible that he initially said "It wouldn't come out until 2017 if we do this." When Keenan came on, he said his main goal was to get the game out in 2016. Of course, if Fargo said "I fired Saunders and cut content because I didn't want to have the game delayed until 2017" now, it'd probably look a bit foolish.

Also kind of funny how predicable their answer about the cut stretch goals was.

As for this:

Brian: Now, one of the things we like about industry publishers, at least the ones we work the best with, is that they are agile, that they don’t hold us to the specifics of the contract, that they kind of trust our judgment to do the right things in order to get the product complete and to hit the main beats we want to hit.

Yeeeeah....no. You don't sign a contract with a publisher saying that you're going to include multiplayer, then release the game without multiplayer, say, "Hey, we thought it was for the best!" and have the publisher say "All good, no problem man." I mean, hell, in all of the "Kickstarter is awesome!" vids Fargo did, he specifically talked about how it was great that he didn't need a publisher because publishers would force them to do things that they didn't want them to do. Now publishers are often because they don't? Yeah...

Also kind of bullshit to say the Codex was asking for walls of text. A few people were, others were saying that that was fucking stupid.

Anyway, nice of InXile to let the Codex talk to their PR manager. I laughed at the way he was trying to win the Codex over with "You guys really are tier 1!" bullshit - they can't possibly think such a stupid ploy would work, can they? But looking at some of the responses here it seems it did, so hats off to them.

Looks like my theory that TToN was either made in or scraped together in way less than two years was correct, so they practically wasted at least two years after the kickstarter on doing practically nothing, also lol that publishers would be more agile and would actually let them waste two fucking years doing pre-production. No, any publisher would've told them to get their fucking act together after a year instead of wasting fucking time and money, and Fargo has balls to imply that backers are at fault to actually hold them up to their promises?

Fuck you Fargo, fuck you, the investors and the customers should be the first two interest groups they should listen to or be loyal toward, because they both pay your fucking bills and without the customers, guess what, you don't have a fucking company to run! Especially when those two groups are the same, you piss off enough of them and they won't give you the money next time.
 
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Lurker King

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There has definitely been a shift in Codex preferences. Case in point: written descriptions. Used to be the best thing since sliced bread, now suddenly you have the retards spouting their "show don't tell" lines and asking why they put those stupid, tedious descriptions in there instead of visual effects. Same thing with CYOA bits. I remember before the release of PoE everyone was fapping about those cool, Darklands inspired little episodes, now they are some kind bullshit nobody in their right mind would consider including in a video game.

That is like saying that people stop liking shoes because they bought an uncomfortable pair. People still enjoy well writen walls of text, well implemented CYOA bits, etc.
 
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felipepepe

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There has definitely been a shift in Codex preferences. Case in point: written descriptions. Used to be the best thing since sliced bread, now suddenly you have the retards spouting their "show don't tell" lines and asking why they put those stupid, tedious descriptions in there instead of visual effects.
No, the issue is that execution matters more than concept.

For example, in general people here prefer turn-based combat over RTwP. But then inXile makes a TB combat that's a extremely slow and boring. Is not a shift in preference to say that even a dumb Diablo clone would be better than that. Same thing with stuff like descriptions... they are amazing when done right, but they must ADD to the game. In Numanuma most of the time is just pointless filler.

What you're doing is like looking at the Codex's reaction to Fallout 3 and going "guess they hate Fallout now". No, it's what Bethesda did with Fallout that we hate.
 

FeelTheRads

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Same thing with CYOA bits. I remember before the release of PoE everyone was fapping about those cool, Darklands inspired little episodes, now they are some kind bullshit nobody in their right mind would consider including in a video game.

Just like with much of the rest of the writing in this game, the meres are overly-written, boring and don't add anything to the game. They're rather used as an excuse to not create actual game areas.


Used to be the best thing since sliced bread, now suddenly you have the retards spouting their "show don't tell" lines and asking why they put those stupid, tedious descriptions in there instead of visual effects.

Because often they're stupid and tedious. I really don't need to be told a machinery is floating (and have it described as it's some amazingly weird feature) if I see it floating. Describe things that add to the experience or that are relevant to the interaction with that object or person.
I also don't need to know some random NPC has a smile like the moon in a hot summer night when the air is musty and dank or whatever the fuck other stupid shit was there.
 

Infinitron

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Looks like my theory that TToN was either made in or scraped together in way less than two years was correct, so they practically wasted at least two years after the kickstarter on doing practically nothing

Fuck you Fargo, fuck you, the investors and the customers should be the first two interest groups they should listen to or be loyal toward, because they both pay your fucking bills and without the customers, guess what, you don't have a fucking company to run! Especially when those two groups are the same, you piss off enough of them and they won't give you the money next time.

That includes the investors and customers of Wasteland 2, which is what inXile worked on during those two years.

Just go ahead and admit it, folks - Torment should not have been Kickstarted in 2013 in the first place.
 

CryptRat

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I like walls of text. Neo Scavenger was pretty good.
Big descrpitive texts are still the only way to describe weird situations at cheap cost. About descriptions about what you can already see, it just depends, sometimes it's cool to read, sometimes not, and sometimes it also serves a purpose.
 
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Strap Yourselves In Codex+ Now Streaming!
There has definitely been a shift in Codex preferences. Case in point: written descriptions. Used to be the best thing since sliced bread, now suddenly you have the retards spouting their "show don't tell" lines and asking why they put those stupid, tedious descriptions in there instead of visual effects.
No, the issue is that execution matters more than concept.

For example, in general people here prefer turn-based combat over RTwP. But then inXile makes a TB combat that's a extremely slow and boring. Is not a shift in preference to say that even a dumb Diablo clone would be better than that. Same thing with stuff like descriptions... they are amazing when done right, but they must ADD to the game. In Numanuma most of the time is just pointless filler.

What you're doing is like looking at the Codex's reaction to Fallout 3 and going "guess they hate Fallout now". No, it's what Bethesda did with Fallout that we hate.

No sorry, that's not the impression I got. More often than not, critique of the execution seemed to turn into dismissal of entire concepts. With the Kickstarter craze the Codex seems to have attracted a large new crowd whose preferences are vastly different from the Codex of old. Doesn't help that they are encouraged by some older members who either hold those believes as well or just turned cynical.
I'm too lazy to prove my point by looking up quotes though. I guess discussions about the Hivemind's preferences are ultimately futile anyway because boils down to individuals having different opinions, but the shift of tone is noticable imho.
 

Jarpie

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I don't think it's wall of texts being problem as such, and like I said in the shitbox earlier today, "The great writing is almost never too long, and shit writing is never too short". If the writing in TToN would be better I don't think people would be complaining about having to read them. One of the problems is IMO that they have wall of texts on everything, if they would've hired editor (or listened to one), they would've told them to cut out the fat, and have long texts in where it pays off.
 

Roguey

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That includes the investors and customers of Wasteland 2, which is what inXile worked on during those two years.

Just go ahead and admit it, folks - Torment should not have been Kickstarted in 2013 in the first place.

inXile-as-ponzi-scheme people will say they needed to do that to fund Wasteland 2 through 2014. :M
 

mondblut

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Editorial RPG Codex Report: A Codexian Visit to inXile Entertainment

The wrong way:

It's been a month and a half since the release blah blah blah dripply drobbly i like to write really much zzzzzz tl;dr

The right way:

Burning-House-Later-495x3291.jpg
 

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