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Game News Expeditions: Rome Dev Diary #1 - Game & Vision

Infinitron

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Tags: Expeditions: Rome; Logic Artists; THQ Nordic

Logic Artists and THQ Nordic have launched a new community site for the recently announced Expeditions: Rome, where they will be publishing development updates in the run-up to its release later this year. The first dev diary published today is a broad overview of their vision for the game. Its four major pillars are narrative & choice, turn-based tactical combat, an overarching strategic layer, and the historical setting.

Expeditions: Rome is a single player Turn-Based Tactical Role Playing Game set during the Roman Republic era roughly between 100BC and 40 BC, around the time when Rome was slowly starting to turn into an empire. At its core, Rome is an RPG, where you play the role of either the son or daughter of a patrician family, leading your Praetorians and Legions in battle across multiple regions while navigating the intricacies of Roman politics.​

This leads us to our first vision statement. With Rome, we want to create an immersive, story-rich RPG with player driven choices. Right out the gate, you can choose to play either a male or female hero, and that choice has a major impact on how the story unfolds. That is just the first of many decisions you’ll make, many of which can alter how your missions unfold, what types of quests you can take, and much much more. For anyone who’s played previous games in the Expeditions franchise, you’ll have some taste of what we’re talking about here, but for Rome, we’ve really aimed to take the impact of choices to the next level. Expect to hear much more about this in upcoming DevDiaries.

We also wanted to bring an even more immersive experience when it comes to how we tell our story, and a big part of that was going for a fully voiced experience this time around. We can’t even tell you how much time and care went into casting each character and making sure we can get the best performances we can, but we think you’ll be excited about the outcome.

Our next major vision statement is about our turn-based combat. We feel we’ve learned a lot from our previous games. With Rome, we really focused on bringing exciting turn-based combat with a wide range of tactical options, driven by loot and character growth. There’s way more variety in the weapon and class based skills this time around, not to mention a wider selection of items to use. We’ve also gone through countless iterations on the core combat system and encounter design with a focus on keeping combat fresh as the game progresses. And wait till you hear about our epic Siege missions, which we’ll talk about later! There are almost limitless options for you to explore as you level up and equip your party to fit various playstyles.

This also connects with our next vision statement. While turn-based combat is at the center of how you play Rome, we also wanted multiple meta-game systems focused around growing and leading your legions in conquest of foreign lands. While you personally engage in turn-based combat with your Praetorian squad, you are also leading an army of Rome, growing your forces and ordering your troops to conquer new territories.

We’ve brought back the world map that some may remember from Expeditions: Conquistador, where you can both actively explore with your party as well as dispatch your legions to conquer new territory and unlock new resources. As your conquests expand, you can use these new lands for many different purposes, like improving your legion’s warcamp or crafting new weapons and equipment for your party to use during turn-based combat. We want you to enjoy both the visceral, tense excitement of leading your troops in turn-based combat while also providing the strategic fantasy of leading the roman war machine. We think we’ve struck a fun combination between the two, and we’ll share more about each as our DevDiaries continue.

The last major vision statement really comes down to style. While we are making a game, it was very important for us to use a historically inspired framework to create a believable, fun world. We did a monstrous amount of research on Rome that we leveraged across every aspect of the game. To start, our visuals reference library is filled to the brim with weapons, historical locations, armors, and more, to help provide a solid grounding for the visual games. At times we took liberties to bring the art to life, but we made this decision carefully to help keep ourselves grounded.

We also looked into many historical figures in Roman history and tried to bring them to life in a way that both worked for our game while still reflecting some of their key traits. We don’t want to divulge too much now, but some of you probably already picked up on some of this from our first trailer, where you’re debating philosophy with Cato, otherwise known as Cato of Utica, a famous orator known for his integrity and strength of character. We’ve done our best to weave historical figures into our narrative in a way that enhances the story and brings a level of reality to the game. We want you to feel like you're in a living, breathing alternative version of Roman history, one where your choices shape how Rome’s future is forged.

So, to quickly recap, we have 4 primary vision statements we’ve talked about so far:
  • Immersive, story-rich RPG with player-drive choices and fully voiced dialog
  • Exciting turn-based combat with a wide range of tactical options driven by loot and character growth
  • Multiple meta-game systems focused around building and leading your legions in conquest of foreign lands
  • Historically inspired framework to create a believable, fun world
These vision statements are guideposts for us, goals we keep in mind while navigating the complexity of making a game of this size and magnitude. Each one is critically important, informing our decisions and helping us keep our eye on the game we’re trying to make.
The esteemed Jonas Wæver of Logic Artists along with THQ Nordic producer Brad Logston plan to host a dev stream on May 12th, where they'll be taking questions from viewers. The next dev diary will go into more detail about the game's combat and class systems.
 

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The "feature bloat meta" is a defining element of the Expeditions series. Actually Expeditions: Conquistador was more like a meta-game strategic layer with RPG stuff tacked on than vice versa.
 
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I sincerely hope they ditch the entire "search every settlement's nook and cranny for 4 different generic resources ad nauseam" thing. It was my primary gripe with Vikings.
 

Serious_Business

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I'm excited for Rome setting but everything about this communiqué will make you fall asleep. Just work on the game men. Ideally without words, in darkness and silence
 

AwesomeButton

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Full VO is only as good as the writing and acting are. In a world of high demand for VO in games, the average quality ends up at the level of "better if they hadn't voiced it".

Also, a reminder that full VO is a defacto requirement for releasing on the console market.
 

gerey

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With Rome, we want to create an immersive, story-rich RPG with player driven choices.
Right out the gate, you can choose to play either a male or female hero
leading your legions in conquest of foreign lands
female hero
While we are making a game, it was very important for us to use a historically inspired framework to create a believable, fun world. We did a monstrous amount of research on Rome that we leveraged across every aspect of the game.
female hero
At times we took liberties to bring the art to life, but we made this decision carefully to help keep ourselves grounded.
female hero
lol
 

cvv

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With Rome, we want to create an immersive, story-rich RPG with player driven choices.
Right out the gate, you can choose to play either a male or female hero
leading your legions in conquest of foreign lands
female hero
While we are making a game, it was very important for us to use a historically inspired framework to create a believable, fun world. We did a monstrous amount of research on Rome that we leveraged across every aspect of the game.
female hero
At times we took liberties to bring the art to life, but we made this decision carefully to help keep ourselves grounded.
female hero
lol

If you were a game developer wouldn't YOU want to make the world a better place?

Wouldn't you?

WOULDN'T YOU?!!
 

Alphons

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we’ve really aimed to take the impact of choices to the next level

a fully voiced experience

One of my favourite moments in Conquistador was finding out right at the end of the game that I can't betray Aztecs, because I got Noriega killed during the first part of the game on Hispaniola and I have no allies left.

Will they be able to pull off such level of C&C with a fully voiced game?
 

karoliner

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Were people really that annoyed by the looting in Viking? It didn't bother me too much. My problem was the crap performance and how you can get early on the game locked out of the alliance with Mercia.
 

Shrimp

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I honestly don't remember it at this point, but I think I eventually just stopped looting random containers since I had enough medicine and rations for the journey. While I don't mind the camping it felt redundant in Vikings since supplies came in abundance and the game literally gave you free throwaway characters that you could use to max all the camping skills.
That being said I'm not too fond of games having 50 lootable containers in every map or instance you enter. Either you ignore it all and risk missing out on valuable items or you play a janitor that systematically sweeps through every nook and cranny just because there might be a single gold piece in a crate.
 

krist2

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Right out the gate, you can choose to play either a male or female hero, and that choice has a major impact on how the story unfolds.

The biggest impact being if you choose a woman you have to stay home, all things decided for you by the pater familias :D
 

cvv

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Right out the gate, you can choose to play either a male or female hero, and that choice has a major impact on how the story unfolds.

The biggest impact being if you choose a woman you have to stay home, all things decided for you by the pater familias :D
OMG imagine developers actually drawing inspiration from history for their historical games. How outdated and quaint.
 

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