Cain on Games - Tim Cain's new YouTube channel

[0sacred]

Tim says he put any idea anybody had into Arcanum. It speaks to Troika's gathered talent that Arcanum still ended up as great as it did, apparently there weren't many stupid ideas put forth. Still would have been a better game without feature creep, of course.

 

[Bohrain]

Their designers were good enough that there weren't really any bad ideas. Now Obsidian has geniuses who want to get rid of weapon degradation and ammo. Should've just reduced the scope of Arcanum enough for a balancing and revision, tech playthrough is such a chore compared to magic one.

 

[__scribbles__]

I talk about my thoughts on how games can use both procedural and handmade content, based on how I have used it in my past games and how I have wanted to use it in those games.

 

[Roguey]

Tim Cain is Reading my Posts: the video. My dislike of procedural content has been frequently reinforced in this thread.

"I do not like the word bespoke." Nice.

He wanted benign encounters in Arcanum like they had in Fallout but couldn't get it to happen.

He wants procedural content in his games to enhance replayability. I find this kind of content hardly interesting the first time around.

He likes new kinds of creatures spawning in cleared out areas to simulate a living breathing world, but to me this feels gamey.

Finally, his ideal is that RPGs should be forever-playable. Radiant quests forever. Though he acknowledges that procedural content is not quite there yet in making this content truly compelling.

 

[Bohrain]

He seems strangely ignorant about games that actually rely mostly on procedurally generated content, like roguelikes. He just speculates that a Bethesda game would be infinitely replayable if it had procedurally generated NPC's, dungeons and factions. It's like he has never experienced how stale that kind of shit gets after you see a few permutations.

 

[Bulo]

Tim ought to play Kenshi

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

I prefer a shorter game with a handcrafted content rather than a game with a 1000s of bland and samely quests. Even some handmade games can be too long for their own good, there is no need to add some subquality content to the mix. The only way procgen can improve the gaming experience is when it enhances the simulationist aspects, like mentioned in the video factions wars.

 

[Infinitron]

Oh boy:

I talk about the development of Pillars of Eternity at Obsidian.

 

[Roguey]

Tim did the first pass on ciphers, monks, crafting, and strongholds.

The stronghold was originally less abstract and included procedurally generated dungeons (here we go again) your companions would run through to complete quests.

He also wanted to include player-generated companions you could level up through procedurally generated dungeons. Starting to get the idea that he's obsessed with putting procedurally generated content in RPGs.

He wanted to add a bunch of annoying Watcher-oriented animations to skills (like a ghost springing a ghost trap, a ghost opening a secret door instead of those things just popping up as colors when detected). Like Fallout but worse. Felt so strongly about this that he advocated for it once more after it was rejected the first time.

They moved him to Tyranny immediately after Pillars shipped. Lotta work to be done.

 

[Redshirt #42]

So in Pillars of Eternity, you really do cast "fist" huh.

 

[Late Bloomer]

Made me want to play Pillars again.

 

[0sacred]

More abilities for the Watcher would have been great, I was always hate when single character games make your character just like one of the companions. It was great in e.g. Fallout that your PC was way more capable than any companion.

 

[Bohrain]

They should've either ditched the cipher class or made the protagonist special with some other way than the watcher stuff.

 

[Infinitron]

I talk about the development of Tyranny at Obsidian.

 

[Roguey]

Tim says Chris Avellone started as the game director of Tyranny. A story that Chris didn't tell during the May of Rage about why he quit?

One of Avellone's mandates was that Tyranny was a world without religion (tips fedora). Tim told him that religions exist in every culture, but was fine with him going with this idea. One of his ideas that didn't make it into the game was that god existed in a cave but didn't want to be worshiped, so he used an edict to remove religion from the world and lock himself in the cave for eternity which distributed the edict powers elsewhere.

Anthony Davis convinced Tim to go to Obsidian's New IP meetings. Tim pitched one that started as fantasy but becomes science fiction. He gave up on these meetings because every single one got shot down by the owners, who privately revealed to Tim that they were expecting someone to pitch an idea that aligned with something they already had in mind. Just wasting everyone's time.

Tim did a bit of work on coding a few of Deadfire's spells (but not enough to get credited).

 

[Egosphere]

Interesting to hear that Avellone started as director.

Would have been interesting to see the original vision for the game he had in mind.

 

[Grauken]

Anthony Davis convinced Tim to go to Obsidian's New IP meetings. Tim pitched one that started as fantasy but becomes science fiction. He gave up on these meetings because every single one got shot down by the owners, who privately revealed to Tim that they were expecting someone to pitch an idea that aligned with something they already had in mind. Just wasting everyone's time.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

That's just office politics 101.

 

[PanickedTushkano]

Slight correction:
The idea for god in a cave was by Brian MacIntosh as Tim Cain does mention.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Anthony Davis convinced Tim to go to Obsidian's New IP meetings. Tim pitched one that started as fantasy but becomes science fiction. He gave up on these meetings because every single one got shot down by the owners, who privately revealed to Tim that they were expecting someone to pitch an idea that aligned with something they already had in mind. Just wasting everyone's time.

This sounds, so much like something Feargus would do.

 

[Bohrain]

Yeah there's probably a good reason why Avellone absolutely hated Feargus and Parker.

 

[Forest Dweller]

I talk about the development of Tyranny at Obsidian.

Some juicy things in this video.

 

[Infinitron]

I talk about my most fulfilling game development experience, which led to the hardest lesson I had to learn about game dev.

 

[Roguey]

The lesson Tim has to keep learning over and over again: People lie.

 

[Grauken]

The lesson Tim has to keep learning over and over again: People lie.

He's probably lying