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Interview Shadowrun: Hong Kong Kickstarter Update #15: Arvan Eleron and Rock Paper Shotgun Interviews

Infinitron

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Tags: Andrew McIntosh; Gregory Wilson; Harebrained Schemes; Jordan Weisman; Mitch Gitelman; Shadowrun: Hong Kong

So, that Twitch interview with Mitch Gitelman and Andrew McIntosh took place last night, as recounted in the latest Shadowrun: Hong Kong Kickstarter update. The streamer was a gentleman who calls himself Arvan Eleron, and he did a pretty damn good job of an interview. It was about two hours long, with one hour of questions from Arvan and another hour of questions from viewers. Rather than summarize it myself, I'll just point you at our Shadowrun: Hong Kong thread, where user GarfunkeL helpfully transcribed many of their most interesting responses. But you can also watch it yourself:



In other news, Rock Paper Shotgun posted the second part of their two-part interview with Mitch and Jordan Weisman yesterday, in which they too passed on various questions from their readers. Here are a couple of the more pertinent questions and answers:

RPS: Darkheart says “Haven’t had the chance to play Dragonfall, yet, so I don’t know if it changed by now, but what greatly irked me was the lack of a loot system. That’s kinda half of RPG fun missing for me at least. Will this be rethunk in the Hong Kong iteration?”

Mitch: So we’re not just revamping a loot system or something like that, because it’s really not part of the Shadowrun setting. First of all, you don’t get experience points for killing people, you get what we call Karma for completing objectives or doing things cleverly. For example, in Dragonfall, there are more things to find, more things that drop during the game, but one of the things we’re adding in Hong Kong is the ability to when you pick up something that’s been dropped, you can assign it to any one of your team members. The ability to swap inventory items between your team mates, we’re giving you much more control of that as well.

Jordan: In Shadowrun, we don’t think picking random stuff up off the floor is a lot of fun. So everything that drops on the floor is actually useful in some more significant way.

Mitch: There’s stuff to find though in the game. By searching you can find things, which is more of a Shadowrun thing.

RPS: VexingVision says “Please ask them about branching plotlines. Will the new plot be as rail-roady as the other SR Modules?”

Jordan: One of the things we’re extremely focused on is more content. One of the reasons we’re careful about responding to requests for more feature sets is we want more content, and more content means less linearity. With Dragonfall we took that next to step to less linear, and with this one we’ll take that step even further to less linear. It’s not an open world game, it’s never going to be GTA, but in terms of more branches and choices for a player to move down, we are incrementally getting better and better.​

Also, props to Mitch for smacking down that guy who asked for the game to be made easier.
 

LeStryfe79

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Pay no mind to that mullet wearing fuck who called out RPG Codex on the YouTube video.
 

imweasel

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Mitch: [...] in Dragonfall, there are more things to find, more things that drop during the game, but one of the things we’re adding in Hong Kong is the ability to when you pick up something that’s been dropped, you can assign it to any one of your team members. The ability to swap inventory items between your team mates, we’re giving you much more control of that as well.

Jordan: In Shadowrun, we don’t think picking random stuff up off the floor is a lot of fun. So everything that drops on the floor is actually useful in some more significant way.

Mitch: There’s stuff to find though in the game. By searching you can find things, which is more of a Shadowrun thing.
:greatjob:


Pay no mind to that mullet wearing fuck who called out RPG Codex on the YouTube video.

I was expecting drama, but then I read what he wrote on the Youtube comments:

"Awesome! Glad to have the fine people at RPG Codex checking the interview (and my channel) out--feel free to stop by my Twitch channel, where we play a whole lot of RPGs!"
I disappoint.


EDIT: Okay, Arvan doesn't have a mullet. I guess you meant that Nathan Robinson dude.​
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Wizfall

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The interview is nice.
I'm very happy with the engine they use, i find the isometric view is perfect and i'm also pleased by the combat system ( it works well, HBS "just" need to make better oppositions and improve the AI a bit).
If they could add latter the Astral Plane and a stealth system it would be the "perfect" engine for me.
So it's a bit disappointing that Mitch seems to suggest they will need a better engine (and a much more expensive one) in the future to go much further.
 

set

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I think they will need a better engine in the future, even if I agree it sucks. I don't want them to waste money re-inventing the wheel like some devs do continuously. But Unity's memory limitations I think will prevent big overhauls to what they have thus far.
 

naossano

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They should announce some localizations.
There is so many people that don't undestand english but loved Dead man Switch.
They would certainly enjoy DF & HK, given the opportunity to understand those.
 

GarfunkeL

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Unfortunately localisations are quite expensive to make but do not make them much money at all. That's what pretty much every Kickstarter-project has said afterwards.
 

naossano

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I would say that HBS got cold feet to almost everything that would cost them a few nuyens.
No boxed version, almost no physical reward, no localization, etc...

They should have make the base game as an higher backer reward. They would have got more money and invest in those.
Seriously, 15$ for acquiring a game of that category right on release is way too cheap.

They should have priced it 25$-30$. This would be much more cheaper than AAA trash, but more understandable for a whole new game.
BUT, it would have also meant an interesting backer reward at 15$.

Here there are 20 000 backers, but most of them only paid 15$, because 15$ is acquiring the game, and most subsequent rewards are more rewards for shadowrun universes fans, not necessary interesting for Shadowrun Returns fans, so they aren't enough interesting for a lot of people.
 

Jaesun

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I would say that HBS got cold feet to almost everything that would cost them a few nuyens.
No boxed version, almost no physical reward, no localization, etc...

Do you understand the logistics and the total waste of time they have to put into shipping and resolving orders? They learned their lesson last time, and that is why they chose not to do that. And if you notice, most all other newer Kickstarters are doing the same thing. Shipping physical goods is a huge amount of resources that is basically wasted time and money. I sure don't blame them.


They should have make the base game as an higher backer reward. They would have got more money and invest in those.
Seriously, 15$ for acquiring a game of that category right on release is way too cheap.

Actually $15 is a very effective price point.
 

tuluse

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Serpent in the Staglands Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Shadorwun: Hong Kong
If anything they should have priced the expansion mini-campaign to a higher tier like Obsidian did.

Of course they got silly amounts of grief for announcing an expansion in the first place so who knows.
 

undecaf

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Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2
They should've just gone for some extra content, quirks and polish to the core game rather than trying to stretch for that post ending mini-campaign.
 

zero29

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I would say that HBS got cold feet to almost everything that would cost them a few nuyens.
No boxed version, almost no physical reward, no localization, etc...
Do you understand the logistics and the total waste of time they have to put into shipping and resolving orders? They learned their lesson last time, and that is why they chose not to do that. And if you notice, most all other newer Kickstarters are doing the same thing. Shipping physical goods is a huge amount of resources that is basically wasted time and money. I sure don't blame them.
...
digital distribution of games over steam/gog/etc. made kickstarter successes possible in the first place. would have never happened if indie devs and studios still needed to put all their games into boxes and distribute them via retail or mail. i think physical rewards were an important part of the initial kickstarter boom phase - when nostalgia was still the most prominent selling argument -, but i doubt that anyone intended to bring back the good old times of boxed copies. it was meant to bring back the good old times of great games. well, the boom phase is over and now kickstarter is seen much more pragmatic by many, namely as a viable business option for small to medium indie projects. i don't miss the boxes, they surely don't miss the hassle.

If anything they should have priced the expansion mini-campaign to a higher tier like Obsidian did.
...
i like how they stated with this approach: "nice, we already got more money than we anticipated, bonus round is additional content for everyone!"

They should've just gone for some extra content, quirks and polish to the core game rather than trying to stretch for that post ending mini-campaign.
some extra content? instead of just stuffing some filler content into the main campaign they will add a high level karma mini campaign, probably with additional weapons, tech, magic, cyber and skills. it will allow for interactions with higher skill/stat checks and some brutal enemy encounters, what's not to like?
 

undecaf

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Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2
They should've just gone for some extra content, quirks and polish to the core game rather than trying to stretch for that post ending mini-campaign.
some extra content? instead of just stuffing some filler content into the main campaign they will add a high level karma mini campaign, probably with additional weapons, tech, magic, cyber and skills. it will allow for interactions with higher skill/stat checks and some brutal enemy encounters, what's not to like?

I dunno. I've never liked DLC type mini-content packs. Always seems like a wasted effort when the core game is not ever really without need of some fixes/tweaks. On top of which it seems kinda pointless... a couple-of-hour sidequestline as a separate feature. It's not really something to bitch about, but... hey ho.
 

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