Tyranicon
A Memory of Eternity
- Joined
- Oct 7, 2019
- Messages
- 6,978
Yeah. Shouldn't we call the firefighters? This could be serious.*sniff sniff*
Anyone else smelling dumpster fire?
Nah, how else are we gonna cook our popcorn?
Yeah. Shouldn't we call the firefighters? This could be serious.*sniff sniff*
Anyone else smelling dumpster fire?
It's a classic big-brain take. If players don't like something, it's not because the implementation was faulty, it's because the players just didn't grok the brilliance of your approach. You were TOO subtle in your clearly monocled design/narrative.loool"One of the fun challenges with design, particularly around consequences or even sometimes around player options that are reactive to either the kind of character you've built or choices you've made earlier in the game is over the years I've learned that that stuff is always a lot less obvious to the player than to the designer," Patel said. "And so I think sometimes you have to be a bit more direct in tying those options and those consequences to content that's come before, because if it feels too natural and too understated, it feels like a thing that's happening, not a thing that's happening because of what you did."
This woman would make a great politician. That's 110 words for saying "player stoopid, game need to point out cool shit."
now they are tripling down on this way of design? ffsI noticed that even in pillars & deadfire; whenever there is a reactivity or something, its way too deliberate, screaming: "HEY I AM REACTIVITY, I AM HERE BECAUSE YOU DID THIS REMEMBER, HOW REACTIVE THIS GAME IS! RIGHT? WINK WINK", subtlety goes out the window, a different version of Kojima-exposition/revelation dump but more often + repeated same expositions through different NPCs so dumbfuckest of us all shouldn't miss a thing. In the end it feels cringeworthy and that we're being treated like children yeah.
They need to shift-del their RPG writing guideline doc that has accumulated over the years; they may be thinking its sophisticated but its too stale and predictable at this point and didn't evolve for the better over the last 10 years. Quests in TOW plays out exactly the same as in pillarses, in terms of structure, I can recognize an Obs quest from a mile away
Avowed Developers Confirm Game Has Multiple Endings: 'It's an Obsidian Game'
"If everything plays out exactly as you expect, it could feel a little boring."
During the recent Xbox Developer Direct, we were treated to a deeper look at how Obsidian's upcoming RPG, Avowed, will handle player choice via a close look at a certain sidequest. But that left us wondering: what's the natural endpoint of a game emphasizing choice? Will Avowed have multiple endings?
I was able to learn the answer to that by speaking to game director Carrie Patel not long after the direct, where she confirmed that yes, Avowed will indeed have multiple endings. Obviously! "I mean it's an Obsidian game," she said. "What else would we be if we didn't have a few different endings?"
Patel didn't specify further about how many endings there would be or how different they would be from one another, but we did talk further about how player choice could be expressed in the game, and how players will experience it. Patel tells me that it's not just about pushing dominos - one event happens somewhere every time the player does something. What matters more is player expression, and how the player understands and interprets the world reacting to them, especially in a game where parts of the world are open and players may not see every single reaction or interaction.
"You have to approach it with a degree of range, both in the spread and placement of those consequences and also the nature of those consequences," she says. "Some things need to have surprising but believable outcomes. If everything plays out exactly as you expect, it could feel a little boring. And at the same time, not every quest needs to have world-ending consequences. Some absolutely do have huge impacts for the characters in the world around you, but sometimes the story you're experiencing is just a very deeply personal one for the characters involved. And that's okay too.
"I think the great thing about RPGs is there's a lot of room for that spread in terms of the tone and type and scope and nature of content. And so you're giving players a big world where they can find a lot of very different experiences that all sort of add up to their experience as the protagonist of this game."
It won't be much longer before we'll get to see exactly what choices Obsidian has in store, as Avowed got a 2024 release window recently. It was first teased back in 2020 with more footage shown at a 2023 Xbox showcase. We also spoke to Patel about why Avowed is foregoing romances to focus on different kinds of companion relationships, and why players can only pick an elf or a human in the character creator.
I finally found someone praising Avowed:
The thing is, it's not necessarily untrue, not that their solution is an improvement imo. But they also use that sort of thing as an excuse for anything that doesn't land--oh, they didn't get it, we were too clever--when often the truth is something didn't land because it sucked.Yeah I vaguely remember Fargo talking in post-WL2 interviews that "subtle" reactivity doesn't work because it's just too low level to be interesting, so with WL3 they went with in-your-face approach and the game was better for it.
I finally found someone praising Avowed:
holy shit what a massive fucking faggot
"Hmmm attractive young women? kinda weird, where are the used up hags/lesbians that TOW provided us?!?!"
I finally found someone praising Avowed:
That guy has issues. He's sperging about Stellar Blade a lot because the main character is too attractive.
With Avowed we wanted to take that same approach ... one of the things that's core to Pillars games is having a political story that's running alongside this very deep, divine, metaphysical story, all around the player who has one foot in both.
And yes, there are towns as well.
[Companions] are all either originally from, or they've lived in the Living Lands for a long time.
Companions do have individual personal quests, and they [companions] are also tied to specific points in the crit quest
But one of the things that's very interesting and different about writing for an RPG like this is leaving room for the player character. You know, one of the things that can make writing books a little bit easier in some ways - and this is true of some games as well - when you know exactly who your protagonist is, and exactly what they are going to do, you can kind of craft a very specific journey around them, because you can anticipate in any moment what they are going to do. With RPGs like the kind that we develop, one of the things difficult but also very exciting, is wanting to leave this player-shaped hole in the story, so that there is still enough structure there, so that players are really experiencing a story and not just sort of muddling through a world, but also leaving enough room for players to express who they are, who their character is, what direction they are growing in, and just who they want to be.
one of the things that's core to Pillars games is having a political story that's running alongside this very deep, divine, metaphysical story, all around the player who has one foot in both.
I finally found someone praising Avowed:
I also found it ironic that what Josh once called "lack of direction" after PoE, has been adopted as a core design pillar of the games in this setting.one of the things that's core to Pillars games is having a political story that's running alongside this very deep, divine, metaphysical story, all around the player who has one foot in both.
How many times do they have to fail at this before realizing it doesn't work?
Little girls aren't young attractive women."Hmmm attractive young women? kinda weird, where are the used up hags/lesbians that TOW provided us?!?!"
Did you see the body on the Stellar Blade protagonist? That is no little girl.Little girls aren't young attractive women."Hmmm attractive young women? kinda weird, where are the used up hags/lesbians that TOW provided us?!?!"
Ever heared of Fallout or Arcanum?Classless system? That's the worst to me. Has it EVER worked out in an RPG where you didn't just become a blob jack-of-all-trades even if you tried not to?
Classless system? That's the worst to me. Has it EVER worked out in an RPG where you didn't just become a blob jack-of-all-trades even if you tried not to?
I don't think Fallout is a good example, considering that all you need to do is tag one weapon skill and speech since science and repair can be raised by books while others skills have no real use (although those two don't have much usage either).Ever heared of Fallout or Arcanum?Classless system? That's the worst to me. Has it EVER worked out in an RPG where you didn't just become a blob jack-of-all-trades even if you tried not to?
I can't wait to hear more about what this game won't have.