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Tim Cain didn't want to do FO2 and thought PS:T was a JRPG

Double Ogre

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I've been rereading some old articles related to Troika and found a few interesting bits in an interview with Tim Cain by Electric Playground.
EP: Let's get right back to the basics. How did the idea for Arcanum come about?

TC: Well, it's funny. The way it worked was... we were talking about what we wanted to do. We knew we wanted to do an RPG. I said I wanted to do a fantasy RPG, which I think surprised Leonard and Jason [Anderson] a bit because when we worked on Fallout, I said, "We're not doing a fantasy RPG. I will entertain ideas for anything except fantasy, because there are too many fantasy games on the shelves." But when we were done with Fallout, I was kind of tired of that genre. I didn't want to do Fallout 2.

I really wanted to do a fantasy RPG because I thought, "Well, I've earned the right to do a fantasy game." I know there's a bunch on the shelves, but that's really what everyone's prime RPG is in their minds. And I wanted to do one. Leonard didn't want to do one. Most of the RPGs you play are technologically 14th Century. You don't really have machines of any kind, but you do have some metallurgy and stuff like that. And Leonard's idea was to move it up to the 18th Century. And I said, "That's going to be weird because we're going to have technology and we're going to have magick, and I'm not sure how to get it together." It was Jason's idea to have the Magick/Tech aptitude scale, and have magick and tech actually be diametrically opposed. It kinda grew out of all that. It took a few weeks of us talking until we were all happy with how it sounded like it would work. Then we started writing. Jason started working on interfaces, I started working on the system design, Leonard started working on the background system and environment. That's pretty much how we got started.

...

EP: Not that I'm ask you to slag off the competition or anything like that, but what's your impression of RPGs today?

TC: I find a lot of the times that I'm playing RPGs I feel forced to play a certain way. I liked Planescape: Torment a lot, but the biggest complaint I gave Chris Avellone, even before it shipped, was I really hate the fact that you're giving me just one person, and I can't play anything else. But of course, the power that give him was that the story was incredibly intense. Of course, I couldn't play it any other way. I was the Nameless One and I was going to progress to the end, and everybody was pretty much going to discover the same thing.

That's the other thing. I feel that a lot of RPGs...The way I played, if I talked to someone else, they had the exact same experience. And that's what I loved about Fallout . I often found people would be coming to their friends, "Yeah, I played Fallout last night. I found this crashed flying saucer and I got this really cool weapon and it let me go into this base and then I found this, this, this..." [And the friend says] "What are you talking about? I never saw that. I never had that encounter. I never had that follower. How do you get that follower? He won't join me." That's the kind of experience I want in an RPG, and I don't see it as much.

Someone just asked me recently why I don't like what they call the "Eastern-style" of RPG, like Final Fantasy . And I think that was one of my biggest complaints. I feel too constrained. To be given a character and play it the way the designers expected me to play through.
 

Jasede

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If you had bothered to read the manual of Planescape Torment, I swear it somewhere lists Final Fantasy 7 as one of the big inspirations. (Why do I remember this? I recently looked through the .pdf of the manual and couldn't find it...)

And we - or at least I - have always said that PS:T is pretty much a good jRPG. It even retains the typical jRPG flaw of too much shit combat.
 

Qwinn

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Jasede said:
If you had bothered to read the manual of Planescape Torment, I swear it somewhere lists Final Fantasy 7 as one of the big inspirations. (Why do I remember this? I recently looked through the .pdf of the manual and couldn't find it...)

At the end of the "Credits" section (page 37), there's a "Thanks To:" section where each of the major designers gets to give their personal thanks. The last one, "Ken L.", said:

"Ken would like to thank Mom, Dad, Rob, Sab for supporting him all these years; and SFZ3 for stress relief, and FFVII and VIII for inspiration.

That's probably what you're thinking of. I wouldn't say that one designer saying that equals a "big inspiration" for the entire team, but yeah, it's in there at least in some form.

I like the fact that MCA thanks Roger Zelazny. His influence on TNO's story is obvious - Zelazny never met a main character that he didn't think would be better immortal and often amnesiac.

Qwinn
 

Texas Red

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In Arcanum you can play wildly different characters from a skill perspective but in PS:T you had way, way more options in handling everything minor or major in chaotic, lawful, good and evil ways(evil done right). But I agree with him that PS:T pretty much sucked in character skill building part, leaving you with a mage class if you wanted all the dialogs. At least they could have added in the cleric class(which was already available) or multiclassing. I'd love to play a fighter/mage multiclass.
 

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yar. the alignment was a welcome addition but the combat was as weak as Bethesda's coffee.
 

Texas Red

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TwinkieGorilla said:
yar. the alignment was a welcome addition but the combat was as weak as Bethesda's coffee.

Nah, the combat was much better than in Bethesda games. You still had a party, had to use skills and growing in power as a mage with acquiring knowledge from others characters was just great. Probably the best mage class in any RPG just because of that.
 

Jasede

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Qwinn said:
Jasede said:
If you had bothered to read the manual of Planescape Torment, I swear it somewhere lists Final Fantasy 7 as one of the big inspirations. (Why do I remember this? I recently looked through the .pdf of the manual and couldn't find it...)

At the end of the "Credits" section (page 37), there's a "Thanks To:" section where each of the major designers gets to give their personal thanks. The last one, "Ken L.", said:

"Ken would like to thank Mom, Dad, Rob, Sab for supporting him all these years; and SFZ3 for stress relief, and FFVII and VIII for inspiration.

That's probably what you're thinking of. I wouldn't say that one designer saying that equals a "big inspiration" for the entire team, but yeah, it's in there at least in some form.

I like the fact that MCA thanks Roger Zelazny. His influence on TNO's story is obvious - Zelazny never met a main character that he didn't think would be better immortal and often amnesiac.

Qwinn

Good find, thanks. I thought it was a more general special thanks section I remembered, but I stand corrected. It's been a long time since I saw that.

Edit: No, the combat was shit. Morrowind had more fun combat. The combat in PS:T made me sick and bored. Morrowind's wasn't "good", but at least I didn't get sick from the strong forces of suck.
 

Micmu

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Yes, PS:T is jRPG-ish in a way, but it's still pretty much of "western" flavour and comes with C&C (tm), great story and UNIQUE ART.
 

TwinkieGorilla

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Dark Individual said:
Nah, the combat was much better than in Bethesda games. You still had a party, had to use skills and growing in power as a mage with acquiring knowledge from others characters was just great. Probably the best mage class in any RPG just because of that.

be that as it may, the combat is the single thing preventing me from ever playing it again.
 

Double Ogre

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micmu said:
Yes, PS:T is jRPG-ish in a way, but it's still pretty much of "western" flavour and comes with C&C (tm), great story and UNIQUE ART.
Nah, it's mostly linear.

They don't even give you a choice in rather obvious situations. E.g. I was really disappointed when I've found out that there's no way to escape the battle with Ravel after that long conversation. Why? They could make it an option for charismatic characters, TTO still kills her in the end, so it wouldn't even affect the railroaded main quest much, if at all. It's just stupid.
 

Rosh

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TwinkieGorilla said:
yar. the alignment was a welcome addition but the combat was as weak as Bethesda's coffee.

Ever since Todd Howard stopped doing that and started working on design, Bethesda's coffee has gone downhill. Perhaps that is why their games haven't been that well-designed lately, and why Fallout 3 was released as the biggest over-hyped Oblivion mod. The developers couldn't stay awake through all that crap, and the QA dept. was certainly asleep. Take a look at Daggerfall and how they tried to cram in a lot of stuff, with that development time. Then it takes them about the twice the amount of time to come up with an official Oblivion mod.

Bethesda's coffee bitch has moved on.
 

Darth Roxor

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funny thing is, all of my playthroughs of PS:T were done with a fighter character...
 

Black

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Darth Roxor said:
funny thing is, all of my playthroughs of PS:T were done with a fighter character...
Simple minds, simple pleasures.
 

TwinkieGorilla

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Rosh said:
Ever since Todd Howard stopped doing that and started working on design, Bethesda's coffee has gone downhill.

heheh, indeedy. fucking guy still talks like an overly-eager intern trying to fit in though. "hey doooods! wouldn't it be ttly kewl if all these shits blew up, lol!!!"
 

Micmu

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OgreOgre said:
They don't even give you a choice in rather obvious situations. E.g. I was really disappointed when I've found out that there's no way to escape the battle with Ravel after that long conversation. Why? They could make it an option for charismatic characters, TTO still kills her in the end, so it wouldn't even affect the railroaded main quest much, if at all. It's just stupid.
True; it is. Story is a railroad. At least there are some options there for replayability (from party members to factions, aligment, different outcomes in some situations, etc...). IMHO quite a bit more than a typical jrpg. It has no less "C&C" options that the revered Witcher (*yawn*).
 

inwoker

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OgreOgre said:
micmu said:
Yes, PS:T is jRPG-ish in a way, but it's still pretty much of "western" flavour and comes with C&C (tm), great story and UNIQUE ART.
Nah, it's mostly linear.

They don't even give you a choice in rather obvious situations. E.g. I was really disappointed when I've found out that there's no way to escape the battle with Ravel after that long conversation. Why? They could make it an option for charismatic characters, TTO still kills her in the end, so it wouldn't even affect the railroaded main quest much, if at all. It's just stupid.
IT IS TOTALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO AVOID COMBAT WITH RAVEL IN PLANESCAPE TORMENT
 

Double Ogre

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It is true that PS:T resembles jRPGs in a couple respects -- the predefined main character, the pronounced boss battles (which are now common in western RPGs, but were not at the time), and the high level spell effects. In fact, when I first played it I noted that it seemed more Japanese-ish than other computer RPGs at the time. But on balance, the differences between it and jRPGs outweigh the similarities.

Notably: dialogue trees; meaningful choices; ability to interact with companions at times of your choosing, rather than only when the game chooses; real-time tactical combat (even if awful); low levels; non-combat skills and spells; relatively high non-linearity within a given area (even if high linearity at a macro scale); most of the game spent in non-combat situations; dense areas, rather than lots of areas; relatively low amount of scripted sequences / cutscenes (though higher than most western RPGs).

The worst two design aspects of jRPGs -- endless grinding combat when you simply press a single button (to select "attack"), and endless cutscenes when you also only press a single button (to advance dialogue) -- are absent. And the worst story-telling aspects (the juvenilia, the random symbolism, the save-the-world-from-ancient-evil quest, etc.) are also pretty much absent. (Though I guess there is a bit of the angstiness of those games.)

I think it is fair to call it a western-style RPG with jRPG influence, though. That said, one of the preeminent western RPGs, Ultima, had a predefined character -- one who loved Renaissance Faires no less! -- so I'm not sure you can blame that all on the Japanese.
 

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Re: Tim Cain didn't want to do FO2 and thought PS:T was a JR

OgreOgre said:
Tim Cain didn't want to do FO2!!!!!

But when we were done with Fallout, I was kind of tired of that genre. I didn't want to do Fallout 2.
Oh noes! Tim Cain - my hero! - didn't want to do Fallout 2! How can I live after this horrible, heart-breaking revelation?

OgreOgre said:
Tim Cain thought PS:T was a JRPG!!!

Someone just asked me recently why I don't like what they call the "Eastern-style" of RPG, like Final Fantasy . And I think that was one of my biggest complaints. I feel too constrained. To be given a character and play it the way the designers expected me to play through.
PST is a western JRPG minus spiky hair, emo characters, and other crap. The question is, is it a bad thing?
 

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