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Preview Blackguards 2 Feature Demonstration at Gamescom

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Tags: Blackguards 2; Daedalic Entertainment

A German YouTube channel called Orkenspalter TV has this footage of a 28 minute gameplay demonstration of Blackguards 2 with producer Kai Fiebig.



The demonstration offers a very comprehensive look at the game's new features, which include:
  • The new strategy game elements, such as attacking and defending towns and recruiting various types of mercenaries.
  • A more informative user interface, that reveals more of the underlying statistics of characters and equipment.
  • The ability to select your party's starting positions in a battle, within limits.
  • A stamina mechanic.
  • A leveling mechanic inspired by D&D(!). Apparently, they received express permission from the Dark Eye license holders to do this.
  • Cover mechanics.
  • Overhauled hit/miss mechanics, making missing far less probable when an enemy is cornered.
  • The introduction of a unique race of demons to the game world, with a variety of nasty abilities.
  • A travelling army camp that serves as the player's home base, with merchants and also the ability to interrogate captured prisoners.
  • A non-linear storyline, with choice and consequence based on what territories you choose to conquer and which objectives you achieve in battle.
  • An overwatch mechanic that lets you fire at enemies when it's not your turn.
  • Weapon Talents represented as percentiles in the character sheet, to make them easier to understand.
  • An intuitive line of sight display on the battlefield.
  • The option to plunder, brutalize, or be kind to the cities that you conquer, with appropriate consequences.
  • Separation of active and passive Special Abilities in the character sheet.
All in all, it looks very Sawyer-Approved™.
 

felipepepe

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:lol:

I think that the "adventure bits" of the first game were great, the unique aspect of the game, and I would expand on that. More interesting dungeons, customizable party menbers and a flexible story.... closer to Realms of Arkania, not HoMM.
 

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:lol:

I think that the "adventure bits" of the first game were great, the unique aspect of the game, and I would expand on that. More interesting dungeons, customizable party menbers and a flexible story.... closer to Realms of Arkania, not HoMM.

Well, I don't know if there will be dungeons, but there's nothing here that rules out that other stuff. The story sounds like it might be more flexible.

The more important difference IMO is the loss of the personal journey/"road trip" aspect of the first game. But hey, like Roxor said, everybody loved Chapter 3, so Chapter 3 they get...
 
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Still kind of wish they hadn't toasted the player character, but I guess it doesn't matter.

Not everything has to be the same and all that.
 

Darth Roxor

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I think that the "adventure bits" of the first game were great, the unique aspect of the game, and I would expand on that. More interesting dungeons, customizable party menbers and a flexible story.... closer to Realms of Arkania, not HoMM.

Wait for my writeup :M

I'd rather not post anything now or Kai Fiebig might send hitmen after me due to bad* feedback :(

*dis is a joke
 

Gruia

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Hated it then, and it seems to be going down the same road

Who wants a huge combat map, with tons of units?

I think its ideal to have some units .. 4-5. who you can develop in diferent ways.

And I'm not even a combat gameplay kinda guy - its forte

Flexible story > all ). Flexible - at least 2 story streams
 

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A leveling mechanic inspired by D&D(!). Apparently, they received express permission from the Dark Eye license holders to do this.
WTF?!? Why?!?
The rest sounds good, but this... If you want to steal from D&D steal from combat-options and feats. Those are aspects where I think TDE could be tweaked. Otherwise the system is clearly superior to D&D... It's like a 3 star restaurant putting McDonald's trash-food on their menu.
 

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A leveling mechanic inspired by D&D(!). Apparently, they received express permission from the Dark Eye license holders to do this.
WTF?!? Why?!?
The rest sounds good, but this... If you want to steal from D&D steal from combat-options and feats. Those are aspects where I think TDE could be tweaked. Otherwise the system is clearly superior to D&D... It's like a 3 star restaurant putting McDonald's trash-food on their menu.
Yeah... wtf, indeed.
Point based systems are so much more believable and easier to handle than level based ones. And believability is exactly where TDE shines. And not few say it is too believable, and thus its rules too complex to enjoy PnP, something which I partly agree with.* Thankfully, a computer game takes care of most annoyances a very complex ruleset has.

There is no need to "dumb down" a point-based skill system. Just save points until you can buy what you desire.

*We once sat there for fifteen minutes doing nothing as we had one player playing a spellcaster. It took all that time to get the rules of a spell right. As each spell has its own rules (even rule set, one might say). Combine that with a DM that is pretty much a rule nazi and wants to do everything by the book and you get some pretty annoyed players.
I really do think that a lot of stuff in TDE (especially spells) is just too simulational, causing to much RTFM instead of just playing the goddamn game. Shadowrun shows that you can get pretty much the same level of "everything is possible" with far easier rules (which are still too complex for some, so you can still feel elitist ;) ).
 
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Probably to make the char progression system more familiar to the average player. A dangerous route to take.
 

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It obviously still has points. I'm guessing the levels are some kind of abstraction on top of that. Like maybe every N points you gain a level (and possibly only then you can use the points).
 

Shannow

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Drakensang had levels. But all they did was restrict the max points you could put into stuff until the next "level". I'm ok with that. But that'd be a leveling mechanic inspired by Drakensang. Which is clearly not what they anounced.
Thankfully, a computer game takes care of most annoyances a very complex ruleset has.
Which is what I've been argueing since forever. As long it is made clear what modifiers make up the final value, computer games are fine with vastly more complex systems than what we usually see. (I'm looking at you D&D.)
 

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Drakensang had levels. But all they did was restrict the max points you could put into stuff until the next "level". I'm ok with that. But that'd be a leveling mechanic inspired by Drakensang. Which is clearly not what they anounced.

More people know what D&D is than what Drakensang is.

Anyway, watch the video, the char screen UI is all there. I couldn't even see where the level was displayed (though I didn't look super-closely).
 

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:lol:

I think that the "adventure bits" of the first game were great, the unique aspect of the game, and I would expand on that. More interesting dungeons, customizable party menbers and a flexible story.... closer to Realms of Arkania, not HoMM.

Yes, same here. I mean I will play it and probably enjoy it, but I actually liked the "RPG" aspects of the first part, even if it was just very shallow. Also I suck at HoMM games and defending cities and stuff :M

Aaaand a leveling mechanic inspired by D&D?!

/e:

Ok just took a look at the character weapon skills screen, looks quite the same, phew.
 

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I didn't quite understand the ESL word salad when he described the changed to-hit mechanics, or watch the whole video, but it sounds like it's getting far more hit-heavy (looks that way too but I'm assuming they used buffed-up characters for demo purposes).

Should be interesting to see how the grogs handle that. :cool:
 

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Enemies in the first game already had a level for the purpose of knowledge checks, but I'm VERY suspicious of that.
 

Doctor Sbaitso

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I think he was saying that outright failures are gone, which I think is silly. What bothered people was the failure rate without communication as to why. To the very end my mages were failing to cast spells quite often with no indication of why it happened. For all I know someone's parry check passed and so instead of showing someone parry a fireball my mage fizzles. I have no way of knowing..

I'll just have to play it to see what's what. I see here though that they have not brought feedback to the characters & grid. I shouldn't have to speed read the 5 lines of battle log to understand the results of what has happened. Quick floaty texts like they use for damage indication over the player would help A LOT. Parried, Tripped, Flanked, etc. I could attack someone at point blank range, whiff and see Parried float up above me or my target and instantly understand what calcuclations were made and the results. If I have to parse the battle log in real time to see this then they need to fix it IMO.
 

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I think he was saying that outright failures are gone, which I think is silly. What bothered people was the failure rate without communication as to why. To the very end my mages were failing to cast spells quite often with no indication of why it happened. For all I know someone's parry check passed and so instead of showing someone parry a fireball my mage fizzles. I have no way of knowing..
I'm playing BlackG1 right now, and now it gives you the chances of spells succeeding. There is a battle log and if you fail your spell checks you can see which of the 3 attributes failed. I guess they patched it in later, not that that helps you...
 

Doctor Sbaitso

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I think he was saying that outright failures are gone, which I think is silly. What bothered people was the failure rate without communication as to why. To the very end my mages were failing to cast spells quite often with no indication of why it happened. For all I know someone's parry check passed and so instead of showing someone parry a fireball my mage fizzles. I have no way of knowing..
I'm playing BlackG1 right now, and now it gives you the chances of spells succeeding. There is a battle log and if you fail your spell checks you can see which of the 3 attributes failed. I guess they patched it in later, not that that helps you...

Yeah that came later, when I was at least 1/2 way through. Still, the battle log font and line spacing does not allow for more than a handful of lines to be displayed which is not enough. I suggested changes to line spacing and log window size options to help with that issue but it was not adopted.

The percentages you are seeing in the log in showing the character's chance to perform the action before mitigating factors are applied. Even still, in TB tactical play I would prefer to see the net result displayed above the action rather than read 10 lines of battle log (not all of which are displayed) to divine what happened. I guess it's a personal preference, but games like KoTC, ToEE and D:OS get this part of it right. I don't need to read the battle log because I get feedback right on the grid.
 

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