Expeditions: Rome - the final Expeditions game from Logic Artists

[Infinitron]

Oh right, the devstream:

 

[Jrpgfan]

I gotta agree with the people saying it's a little weird that you're a legatus getting involved yourself in such small scale battles. It would make a lot more sense(and be more interesting also) if the PC was a Titus Pullo or Lucius Vorenus kind of character, unknown soldiers caught in the middle of all the shit going on in Rome and receiving orders from higher ranked people, doing shady businesses for nobles etc.

Actually, if they followed HBO's rome script faithfully, it would end up being more true to the franchise's premise than the way it is now(those two went to all the places present in the game(gaul, greece, egypt) in epic fashion, were involved and often had a big impact in many key historic events, even if unintentionally, and would've probably gone to more places if the series didn't get cancelled).

 

[Infinitron]

Just noticed they uploaded the devstreams to YouTube:

 

[Infinitron]

Coming to GOG: https://af.gog.com/game/expeditions_rome?as=1649904300

 

[Dodo1610]

And the third dev diary
This time about the story and the party




https://community.expeditionsseries.com/index/dev-diaries/devdiary-3-story-r9/

Spoiler

DevDiary 3 - Story
Ave! Welcome to our third DevDiary for Expeditions: Rome. In previous DevDiaries, we’ve laid out the broad strokes of our vision for the game, and we’ve delved into detail about the combat system and given you a hint of the myriad tactical opportunities introduced by our skill and item design. Today, we want to focus on what makes Expeditions: Rome a role-playing game: the story, the characters, and the way you interact with them.

The story of Expeditions: Rome is built on three major pillars: its authentic historical setting, deep and compelling characters each with their own personality and agenda, and the choice and consequence that is crucial to the role-playing genre. While the historical setting has provided the foundation for our writing, we’ve introduced our own fictional characters to drive the plot forward, and we’ve put great effort into allowing the player to change the course of history in major ways.

To us, history isn’t a set of events that must be experienced the way they actually happened, but rather a backdrop for a complex plot that may borrow countless elements from history but must not be limited by it.



The historical backdrop of Expeditions: Rome is, as the name suggests, Ancient Rome – specifically the late Republic, somewhere around the middle of the first century BC. You will be cast in the role of the scion of a patrician family, who are forced to flee Rome when your father dies. Joining the Mithridatic Wars in Greece, led by the Consul of Rome, who happens to be a friend of your family, you quickly rise through the ranks thanks to your military talent and the favour of your powerful patron.

As your victory draws near, you will be faced with a momentous choice: secure the evidence you need to take your rivals to trial before the Senate or strike a decisive blow in the war effort that will save the lives of many Roman legionarii. This is just the first of the major choices you will be faced with in the game, which will keep branching the plot and affecting scenes throughout the rest of our story.




After the war, you return to Rome to regain control of your family and property. Rome is where you really get to see the effects of your war-time choices, and as the story skips forward in time, the long-term consequences become clear. You will soon find that you have made a powerful and dangerous enemy in a Senator by the name of Vitellius Lurco.

This leads us naturally into our second story pillar: the fictional characters we have introduced to drive the plot forward. Vitellius Lurco – your primary antagonist in Rome – is not a real person, but represents an amalgam of many different real-world people who lived at the time. He is a ruthlessly ambitious and frighteningly intelligent man with great plans for the Republic… plans that you are standing in the way of. As our plot begins to diverge more and more from historical events, these changes are driven by his schemes, your own reactions to them, the influence of your friends on those reactions, and the choices you make along the way.




A word on those friends. Expeditions: Rome is a party-based RPG, meaning you do not go into combat alone – you fight alongside a group of companions, each of whom has his or her own reason for following you. This is a motley crew, ranging from your old family servant and mentor Syneros, over the freed gladiator slave Bestia Tabat, to the Scythian amazon warrior Deianeira. Every companion has their own part to play in the main story, and they all have their own personal quest to deal with. Sometimes you even get to play as them! And, yes, as many of you have asked: you will have the opportunity to form a romantic relationship with most of them.

In addition to these companions, which are critical story characters who stand by your side through thick and thin across the entire span of the story, you will need to recruit legionarii from your legion to fill out your praetorian guard. These praetorians are mainly used in randomised pacification missions where leadership must be delegated to one of your companions (as a legatus, you do not have time to handle every little thing yourself), but they are not just filler – as in previous Expeditions games, every character in your party has a set of personality traits that determines how they feel about your decisions.

A Conciliatory character approves of peaceful overtures but responds poorly to aggressive actions. A Hedonistic follower wants you to make time for recreation and revelry and objects when you fail to make time for such needs. The Approval of each praetorian determines their morale in combat, meaning disapproving praetorians may disobey you or be more likely to panic when things go poorly. If you manage to anger a praetorian enough, they will eventually leave you – and the manner in which they leave will depend again on their personality traits. But don’t worry, your closest companions at least will never leave your side, no matter how gravely they disapprove of your actions.



Approval is just one of the many ways – large and small – that your choices influence the direction of the story and even of the gameplay. As we set about realising our vision for this grand, sweeping story of Expeditions: Rome, opportunities kept presenting themselves to let you, the player, decide the fates of major characters or the outcomes of missions. To us, the most important thing is that these choices should feel organic rather than contrived, and that they should have major consequences and knock-on effects, both clearly sign-posted and unforeseen. Some choices may seem small and insignificant at first, but then come back to haunt you in surprising ways later.

If this seems intimidating to you, rest assured that there is no wrong choice in Expeditions: Rome. There are no perfect endings, nor are there any entirely bad ones. For every character you make an enemy of, another will join your side. We encourage you to make decisions based on what kind of character you want to play, and then see how the story reacts to that and unfolds before you.



We hope this has given you some insight into what kind of story we’ve created for you in Expeditions: Rome, and that you’re excited to see what kind of mark you can make on this fascinating corner of history we’ve carved out for you. In a later DevDiary, we’ll go into more detail about the characters you’ll fight besides in Expeditions: Rome, and if you’ll join us for our DevStreams, you’ll gain even more insight into the process of creating this expansive RPG and how we’ve brought our world and our characters to life.

In fact, please join us for our third DevStream on Wednesday, June 23rd at 1:00 PM Eastern / 5:00 PM GMT on the THQ Nordic Twitch Channel: http://twitch.tv/thqnordic, where our Senior Producer Brad Logston will be talking with Creative Director Jonas Wæver and Lead Narrative Designer Fasih Sayin about the incredible work of writing Expeditions: Rome. As always, we will take questions directly from this DevDiary to answer on-stream, so be sure to get your questions in early and catch the stream to hear the answers directly from the development team!

We hope you’ve enjoyed this third DevDiary and that you’ll join us in a few weeks when we talk about the visuals and art of Rome.

Until then, Valete!

 

[Nm6k]

It's a bit worrying that the non custom companions are yes man

 

[Lacrymas]

This is a bit more worrying:

And, yes, as many of you have asked: you will have the opportunity to form a romantic relationship with most of them.

Also, I can't wait to play a black legionnairess.

 

[Shrimp]

I hope it won't be a rerun of Expeditions Vikings where you had the main cast as your party members and then a handful of hirelings whose sole purpose was to level up campsite skills like cooking and crafting

 

[likash]

Let's hope they are not going from Titus Pullo to female legionary Tatiana Vagina. The gaming industry needs to pump the breaks on the warrior woman nonsense.

 

[Ibn Sina]

There is nothing more historical than a woman legatus and woman roman senators. The same level of historical as having a Frankish Caliph. Excellent.

 

[Nahel]

Never managed to get into vikings.... Don't know why but found it boring really fast. This one looks better

 

[Larianshill]

Scythian

Oh, so that's how they explain it.

 

[vazha]

So, token blackie and a womyn to boot. I wonder whether there'll be an option to sell her back to slavery / sacrifice / do away with

 

[Readher]

Where are you getting the black woman from? Pretty sure Bestia is a male name and the black person in the image looks like a man to me. The woman is clearly the one on the left, since she's supposed to be Scythian and looks the part.

 

[Dwarvophile]

Never managed to get into vikings.... Don't know why but found it boring really fast. This one looks better

me too, although they got the combat and choice&consequence right I got bored pretty fast, no idea why

vikings are overrated anyway, just a bunch of cunning opportunists

 

[Larianshill]

Whenever I think about replaying Vikings, I immediately remember the loading times in Ribe, and change my mind.

 

[Dwarvophile]

why not an "Expeditions First Crusade" ? I would play this one !

 

[vazha]

why not an "Expeditions First Crusade" ? I would play this one !

Fourth. The Latin Empire is where it's all at.

 

[Tigranes]

{Video Game Dev Diary}
{Every single Codex post: IS THERE A WOMAN? IS THERE A BLACK? IS THERE A TRANNY? }
{Repeat ad nauseum}

The real problem with how they're using history might be coming from this:

Joining the Mithridatic Wars in Greece, led by the Consul of Rome, who happens to be a friend of your family, you quickly rise through the ranks thanks to your military talent and the favour of your powerful patron.

Oh sure, give us a historical RPG and then turn it into a power fantasy where you become the Knight-Legatus-Detective-Superhero within 3 months. And then you have to come up with mechanics to explain how your small party tactical combat game also has you command legions and manage regional wars. We'll see just how they navigate this without turning the MC into a deus ex machina of the Empire's fate.

It could have been accidental 'deserters' in the Black Forest, it could have been Roman auxiliaries abandoned after a defeat in Persia trying to make their way back home, or even you are with the British legions when they are cripplingly ill-reinforced, given some special missions as a centurion at most because you happen to know the lingo or whatever. Lots of interesting things that would suit the mechanics without being a magic kingmaker.

 

[RegionalHobo]

eh, expeditions is a undrrated series, conquistador was good and vikings was great. i want to believe this will be even better

i just hope they don t use the same plot a third time, sure vikings plot had more flavor but they reused a lot of the choices/conflicts of the first game

 

[The_Mask]

Also, I can't wait to play a black legionnairess.

Were any black people allowed to be in anything other than auxiliaries? In fact, weren't ~95% straight up sent to fight as gladiators best case scenario?

...

I'm getting upset.

 

[Infinitron]

Devstream #3:

 

[Infinitron]

Spoiler

 

[Infinitron]

https://community.expeditionsseries.com/index/dev-diaries/devdiary-4-visual-style-north-africa-r10/

DevDiary 4 - Visual Style (North Africa)

Ave! Today we have a special, fun treat for our 4th DevDiary. Up till now, we’ve been talking about game mechanics, story, and characters, but in each of these posts we’ve been showing off cool concept art and beautiful screenshots. For DevDiary 4, we’re going to be focusing on the Visual Style we’ve been building for Expeditions: Rome. Since the game is so big, we’ve decided to focus on the challenges we faced in recreating the environment of North Africa in ancient times specifically.

We consider the Expeditions series of games to be a kind of historical fiction in game form - a fictional story and series of unusual dramatic events set within the framework of real-world history. This means that while the narrative and the events of the game can be entirely fictional, we always try to keep it grounded, and if not realistic per se, within the boundaries of historical plausibility. We try to never go too far, too over the top, or create elements that are truly fantastical.

This was also the basis for the artistic vision of the game. The previous game in the series ‘Expeditions Viking’ represented a step up in visual quality for us, and when we started work on the project that would become Rome, improving the visuals of the game was on top of our list. The basic overall concept was the same; we wanted to create an exciting and appealing visual representation of the adventures and exploits of legendary generals and explorers, that will be perceived as authentic and immersive, but without being subjugated to absolute historical accuracy.



Creating this kind of authentic historical setting in a top-down computer game, which is inherently unrealistic in nature, is a core challenge of working on Expeditions: Rome. Compromises had to be made, but we always aimed at making the visual design naturalistic and grounded - enhanced with a measure of stylization and idealization, but not fantastic exaggeration. Stylized pseudo-realism, if you will.

One of the visual aspects that seem quite common in historical games is that they tend to overall not be very visually exciting, but instead rather drab, or even colourless. It is as if visual blandness equals realism, and this is something we wanted to avoid at all costs. We wanted our game world to appear as vibrant and appealing as any fantasy setting; something that will excite and immerse the player and make them want to explore our world. In Expeditions: Viking we were fairly strict about historical accuracy, but in Rome we have loosened up on that a little bit to make room for more of the fantastic and extraordinary.



A huge challenge for us was tackling the visual design and presentation of the Northern African region in the game, a sizable part of which is barren desert. One of the risks we faced was that the environment could end up appearing boring and repetitive, and without much color variation or other elements to visually please and excite. This could potentially be very counterproductive to our goals of creating a vibrant world that the player would want to explore and become immersed in.

The first stage in this process started with a lengthy period of research, to gain an overview of the North African landscape, it’s flora and fauna, and finding out just how varied and interesting deserts and their surrounding areas can really be. On top of that North Africa was a lot more fertile two thousand years ago, but since there are unfortunately no photos available from that time, we had to rely on written sources and artistic discretion instead.

Once we had gathered enough material that we felt we had a good basic overview, we started translating it into simple concept sketches to explore the visual opportunities that the limitations and properties of the natural environment afforded us. We asked ourselves “how much can we push this visually and how interesting and magical can we make it look, while still depicting a believable real-world environment ?”



After this initial stage, the next step was designing the specific environments and locations in the game. We realized early on that lighting would be a critical factor and that we could use it to infuse the desert environments with some much needed color, vibrancy and ambience.

Levels can be explored at different times of day, and we wanted the lighting to be distinct and to almost transform each level; creating a different visual experience depending on the time of day the player visits it, despite everything else in the level staying the same. This can be directly traced back to the early explorations we did, but revised and refined to find a balance that would work for us.





An example a game location is the Court of Heaven, which is an oasis settlement of the Nasamones - a mysterious tribal people, about whom very little is known. This afforded us a lot of freedom in the visual design of the faction and inspired by present day Bedouin and Berber peoples. We settled on a very colorful style which would not only provide an interesting visual contrast to the Romans, but also allow us to infuse their desert settlements with vibrant colors that provide yet another layer of contrast to the natural desert environment.





Attempting to create the most exciting and cool visuals, while simultaneously keeping it grounded and authentic is a constant challenge, but it’s one we’ve put a significant amount of effort towards. At the end of the day it is up to the players to judge if we did a good job or not, and we hope that they will enjoy exploring the world that we have created.

Love art and want to hear even more? Join us for our fourth DevStream on Wednesday, July 7th at 1:00 PM Eastern / 5:00 PM GMT on the THQ Nordic Twitch Channel: http://twitch.tv/thqnordic where Senior Producer will spend the entire stream chatting with Art Director August Hansen about the visuals of the game. We’ll be going into more detail on topics from this Diary, as well as showing off even more art, and possible some sneak preview behind-the-scenes footage captured directly from the art team. And don’t forget, any comments posted here on the DevDiary will always be top of the list for being answered live on stream.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this DevDiary on our visual style. We have a super exciting Diary coming up on Music next, which we think you’re REALLY going to love, so get hyped!

Until then, Valete!

 

[Infinitron]

Devstream #4: