If you're wondering what "more ambitious than intended" means then this is how it went
02/2018 No concrete plans.
Rough idea is that DLC codenamed NewHomes will be simple and will enable the player to buy, upgrade and embellish like 3-5 houses in existing villages. Next to no new VO. Maybe some new assets.
early 03/2018 actual proposed design:
- There will be a full-fledged quest preceding the main thing
- The main thing will be complete rebuilding of Pribyslawitz.
- With like 15 slots for buildings
- With exclusive building upgrades
- With complete renewal of the church
- With dependency/tech tree
- With a dynamic book which serves as UI for a light management sim
- With cutscenes
- And you'll be able to hire some known NPCs
- And you'll have to strike deals on some resources
- And you'll be able to resolve several conflicts as a judge
- And we need to release it shortly after E3
- Also no dialogs are written and most design details still remain unaddressed
Other departments a few meetings later:
- "Fucking what?"
- We're still fixing the game
- Several key people will be 'free' by late 03/2018 due to GDC
- The design is not complete
- You have no dialogs written yet
- We need to start recording VO within 1.5 months, not to talk about translation and non-English VO
- Pribyslawitz assets are totally not ready for this, changing stuff will likely break the battle there
- We mustn't affect the battle
- The whole thing requires tons of new assets, several new techs, major overhauls of some subsystems which were not built with villages popping into existence and growing in mind
- We will never make this in time
- It's a neat idea but fuck you
- Ok, let's get to work
21/06/2018 Done, yo!
(
And we only had to cut like 10% of the content all of which was expendable, and slightly simplify some parts)