Larian General Discussion Thread

[BEvers]

In the wake of recent Baldur's Gate 3 thing:

Note the people spamming "Baldur's Gate 3!" in reply. That might be Larian's version of New Vegas 2 from here on out.

 

[Incendax]

Now I want a new DOS2 main character that is literally just a German Shepard.

 

[LESS T_T]

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathleendecock

Director Of Operations
Company Name Larian Studios
Dates Employed Sep 2018 – Present
Employment Duration 2 mos
Location Gent Area, Belgium

Larian is an independent game developer founded in 1996 in Gent, Belgium. Our latest game,Divinity: Original Sin 2 received universal critical acclaim with 93/100 Metacritic rating and 94%user rating on Steam.

My main tasks will be streamlining the Finance, Legal and HR department and handling M&A.

handling M&A

 

[Infinitron]

Just noticed that Colin McComb is giving a talk at Sweden Game Conference next week: http://swedengamearena.com/conference/#speakers

Talk: Kittens on Fire: Designing immersive storytelling

In this presentation, I’ll talk about storytelling (from text blocks to dialogues to environmental art) and narrative design. Drawing from games like Dark Souls, Night in the Woods, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, and various isometric RPGs that I may or may not have been involved in developing,. I’ll talk about how narrative designers help shape the overall experience, and how we can improve our craft and build living worlds for our games. At the conclusion, I’ll outline tips and techniques to help fledgling designers find the right voice and the right direction for their games.

Short bio: Colin McComb has been a professional writer/game designer since 1991. He’s co-owner of 3lb Games, which offers VR development and software services consulting (most recently working with a successful indie developer to bring their smash hit to VR). He was Creative Lead for Torment: Tides of Numeneraand a narrative designer for Wasteland 3. He’s currently working with Larian Studios on a couple of projects he cannot yet name. He started his career at TSR Inc. (publishers of Dungeons & Dragons), where he wrote and developed award-winning adventures and supplements for a number of campaign settings. Later, he worked for Interplay Productions’ Black Isle Studios on Fallout 2 and the narrative classic CRPG, Planescape: Torment. He lives just outside of Detroit with his wife, kids, and yes, cats.

 

[LESS T_T]

Director of Publishing:

 

[Feargus Jewhart]

Well Divinity 2 (Dragon Knight Saga) probably has sold pretty well, but in terms of core fan base with strong expectations, I think D:OS series has one much larger than the one of the original Divinity games. I think Divinity games probably continue to be turn-based.

I too wish we would get a continuation to the original Divinity 2, aka Ego Draconis. It has been such an underrated game and the story was great. Especially since Larian has the money for it now. I miss flying around as a heavily armed juggernaut of war, now I just need Avellone to write it.

Why can't we have turn-based and action Divinity games? What's wrong with nice things?

Divinity Dragon Commander is another gem that I wish got a sequel.

 

[abnaxus]

Larian finally restored their old forum layout

 

[SniperHF]

Larian finally restored their old forum layout

Yeah the old "new" one was awful. Colors didn't work, tons of wasted space.

If you had an account you could select the old old one though before they changed it back.

 

[Bohr]

Workers chained to the production line do occasionally dream of sampling the wares

 

[Roguey]

Stop pretending you're low-value, Sarah.

(for bonus laughs, check out the reply)

 

[Infinitron]

Huh, the Larian forums got hacked: http://larian.com/forums/

The board is currently closed while we address a security issue.

And five days later they still haven't cleaned it! I still had the option to log in and was redirected to some phishy site when I did: https://www.google.com/search?q=gs.artltoken.com

 

[Infinitron]

Random interview with Colin McComb. No mention of his current employer oddly: https://www.pcgamesn.com/torment-tides-of-numenera/crpg-and-tabletop-games-writing

The difference between CRPG and tabletop games comes down to pie, according to one Fallout writer
Colin McComb talks to us about the differences in writing for a tabletop game and CRPGs, and it starts with an orc and a pastry

“You enter a 10×10 room. There’s an orc here. It’s guarding a pie.” This scenario is how Colin McComb begins his answer to how writing for PC games differs from writing for tabletop. McComb is best known for his work on the Planescape setting for Dungeons & Dragons, which led to his position as creative lead on a number of critically acclaimed CRPGs, like Torment: Tides of Numenera – a science fantasy RPG set on Earth around a billion years into the future.

He continues. “What material is the room made of? What does the orc look like? What’s its armour set? What about its weapons? How does it react in these specific situations? What about the pie: what colour is it, how big, what flavour, is it hot or cold? What kind of furniture is in the room? What other exits? This isn’t even an exhaustive list of questions.”

The point McComb is trying to make is that a dungeon master in a game of D&D will be able to answer all of those questions, and more, on the fly. However, as Colin points out, “as a CRPG designer, I must answer those questions before they’re even asked.”

And he would know – Torment was hardly the first game he worked on. McComb’s portfolio not only includes extensive work within D&D’s Ravenloft, Dark Sun, and Dragonlance settings, but also PC classics such as Planescape: Torment, Fallout 2, and Wasteland 2. He’s about as veteran as you get when it comes to narrative in CRPGs.

However, the differences don’t end at orcs and pies. “In a tabletop game, a player can just say, ‘Hang on, remind me about X’, and the GM can quickly sketch in the reminders,” McComb explains. “But a CRPG designer doesn’t have that luxury… we don’t know when someone puts our game down, or how long it’s been since they picked it up last.”



McComb is part of the old school of CRPG design. Like many of his peers, his formative years began in a time when a PC simply wasn’t capable of containing a vast amount of story. Even 1988’s PC classic Pool of Radiance had to come with a good chunk of the dialogue printed in the manual to save space on the disk. Consequently, most of McComb’s early writing wasn’t on videogames but on campaign books for Dungeons & Dragons.

His work on the second installment in the Fallout series came at a time when narrative was beginning to be seen as more crucial to a PC game’s creative process. “The transition was definitely daunting,” McComb says, “way more technical than book production.” But his involvement didn’t come out of the blue, as he explains: “I was always interested in playing computer games, and was curious about the process, but had never really pictured myself as a computer game designer. It had a host of constraints.”

McComb soon discovered that those constraints were what define a CRPG from its tabletop counterparts. “A CRPG’s narrative is, by definition, tightly focused,” he explains. “You’ve got to define a critical path through the game and you must have the world planned, in exhaustive detail. If you do this in a tabletop game, chances are better than 50% that your players are going to latch onto a throwaway line from a passing sailor, and the next thing you know, you’re throwing away the evening’s notes as your players travel around the world to reach the Far Empire.”



It’s this choice that, by the very nature of PC gaming, has to be limited in a CRPG. As McComb points out, “by defining the acceptable questions a player can ask an NPC, we also define the boundaries of what the player thinks is possible. This is true also of the painted doors and windows and gates of our games – when they’re visibly part of the boundary of the screen, players no longer think to themselves, ‘What’s beyond that door? Why can’t I break that window?’. The boundaries of the game’s space become ingrained in players’ heads.”

Ultimately, McComb defines the difference between tabletop and PC via the PC’s use of smoke and mirrors. “We offer the illusion of choice,” he states. “We can overwhelm players with eight topics to ask an NPC, but the truth is a tabletop player has thousands of possible questions.” Anyone who plays a lot of CRPGs will know exactly what he means by this. I’ve personally lost count of the number of times I’ve re-loaded a save, just to see what other dialogue trees I could explore, only to discover that they all lead to the same conclusion.



Yet for all their differences, McComb draws attention to one thing that these two formats have in common, “the game is always about the players,” he says. “It’s about their experiences, their imagination, their memories.” McComb understands this better than most as he’s written thousands of choices into games, putting people in dilemmas, letting them thrive in the sheer vastness of possibility. But ask him a question with only two options and you’ll see him flounder: tabletop or PC?

“I love tabletop game design,” he says. “It feels closer to pure writing and it has been ingrained in me since around age ten. I also love computer game design because it’s a tremendously complex, delicate mechanism, and doing it is a huge and rewarding challenge. They’re two extraordinarily different beasts!”

 

[Fairfax]

It seems the interviewer thought that was an original answer. That's Monte Cook's parody/tutorial thing:

DATE: July 27, 2001

The World's Shortest (Yet Technically Complete) Adventure: A Parody

"The Orc and the Pie"
by Monte Cook

Adventure Background: An orc has a pie.

Adventure Synopsis: The PCs kill the orc and take his pie.

Adventure Hook: The PCs are hungry for pie.

Room 1: The Orc's Pie Room

You see an orc with a pie.
The room is 10 feet by 10 feet.

Creature: An orc.

Treasure: A pie.

Concluding the Adventure: Pie tastes good.

Further Adventures: Somewhere, there is a bakery making these good pies. Perhaps it's guarded by more orcs.

 

[Bohr]

Guess it's not just the Codex who missed Bubbles

Spoiler

 

[abnaxus]

She's his sister breh.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

She's his sister breh.

They're into some freaky stuff

 

[Haba]

I wonder is she would like to be woulded

 

[LESS T_T]

Michael Douse (Director of Publishing, Defender of Video Games, Protector of Content) and Kevin VanOrd (Writer) on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Cromwelp/status/1058816983343550464

MD:
A good videogame protagonist doesn’t have an opinion

KV:
Oh Michael.

MD:
A protagonist is a paintbrush. A game is a canvas. The player is the artist.

I stand by it.

KV:
I don't personally think we can apply such broad announcements to every genre, every game, and every creator. I believe the player is a collaborator - but not the artist - and that a game, if it is a canvas, is one with most of the lines and shapes already drawn on it.

Sometimes players get to fill in more than most. (I would say that the majority of games are more paint-by-number sets as opposed to canvasses.) But I don't think a player character needs to be a blank slate to be amazing!

Manny Calavera is LOADED with opinions and one of the best game protagonists of all time, and I will hear NO objections to it.

MD:
Visiting angel archetype is so good because it can’t conflict with the player. If it doesn’t have views then its views can’t clash with yours. You’re therefore more immersed and more important in the world, as a player. Observing is more interesting, in a game.

It means that your views are defined by actions, and they’re your actions since you decide what to do. More emphasis on action is always gonna be more interesting in a game than the game deciding what you think.

KV:
I don't really need or want to play as myself or as someone with my exact values in every game. I don't really think that's unusual? A lot of classics have very specific protagonists with very specific values. I think that's pretty neat

MD:
A value isn’t the same as an opinion. Geralt has values but rarely in a situation does he overtly give an opinion. And it’s because he’s so grey that you can explore a cast of very versatile and varied characters and decide how to approach every situation.

It’s not about playing as yourself but about ensuring that you can - as a player - approach any situation as *you* see fit without your character - for no good reason - clashing with an action

I’m enjoying it a lot in RDR2 as well because most of the time Arthur is like “well, shit, I don’t know anything about that” and so you get to think your own thoughts

KV:
Shrug. I don't really want a world where games are limited like that. I don't believe a game or a protagonist must embrace a specific design philosophy to be considered worthy.

MD:
You’re taking it too far, didn’t say they’re not worthy, said that as a vehicle to explore a world this archetype is great. It makes good protagonists, functionally.

KV:
Sure. I just wanted to veer you away from being too dismissive. I think there are lots of ways for games to exist. And what works for our games and other games may not make sense for others. And I think it's OK if the player is not projecting themselves. It can be a good thing!

MD:
I’m never dismissive and always celebratory about games

 

[LESS T_T]

They're hiring more writer?

 

[Roguey]

I hope they're working on multiple games at once because all these writers on one title sounds incredibly bloated.

 

[Alienman]

Anyone played that game in school where you write one word each? You need to be a couple for that.

 

[Infinitron]

Just noticed that Colin McComb is giving a talk at Sweden Game Conference next week: http://swedengamearena.com/conference/#speakers

Talk: Kittens on Fire: Designing immersive storytelling

In this presentation, I’ll talk about storytelling (from text blocks to dialogues to environmental art) and narrative design. Drawing from games like Dark Souls, Night in the Woods, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, and various isometric RPGs that I may or may not have been involved in developing,. I’ll talk about how narrative designers help shape the overall experience, and how we can improve our craft and build living worlds for our games. At the conclusion, I’ll outline tips and techniques to help fledgling designers find the right voice and the right direction for their games.

Short bio: Colin McComb has been a professional writer/game designer since 1991. He’s co-owner of 3lb Games, which offers VR development and software services consulting (most recently working with a successful indie developer to bring their smash hit to VR). He was Creative Lead for Torment: Tides of Numeneraand a narrative designer for Wasteland 3. He’s currently working with Larian Studios on a couple of projects he cannot yet name. He started his career at TSR Inc. (publishers of Dungeons & Dragons), where he wrote and developed award-winning adventures and supplements for a number of campaign settings. Later, he worked for Interplay Productions’ Black Isle Studios on Fallout 2 and the narrative classic CRPG, Planescape: Torment. He lives just outside of Detroit with his wife, kids, and yes, cats.

Forgot about this:

 

[LESS T_T]

We talk to former Gamespot reviews editor, Kevin VanOrd, about making the move from games journalism to actual game development.

 

[Bohr]

T levels have risen steadily since McComb came on board.... feminine tweets nuked, transition complete

Spoiler

 

[LESS T_T]

It was likely smoke-screen only to remove the clit tweet.