Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity [BETA RELEASED, GO TO THE NEW THREAD]

[Jaesun]

In reading between the lines, and other various bits I'm thinking the game as originally intended is the player meeting specific NPC's who can be in the party, that will become more of the story as it unfolds. Similar to say PST. Which is fine.

I don't think the concept of this game was with the type of IWD approach. As much as I DO like creating all of my own party members, I'm fine if that isn't a part of this game. I'm hoping it is successful and then they could do a similar IWD create your own party spin-off.

 

[DraQ]

Actually it seems she didn't kill them, merely injured one (she still won, though).

No, that's the first duel against 3 guys. I was talking about the second one.

Ah, ok.

 

[CappenVarra]

Full party creation is one of the best features a rpg can have. Often, creating the party is more fun than the actual game.

 

[octavius]

Full party creation is one of the best features a rpg can have. Often, creating the party is more fun than the actual game.

I don't agree with that at all.

All of my favourite RPGs are single-PC. From Fallout to PS:T.

I actually quickly tire of full-party-creation RPGs, especially making the party. I used a premade party in IWD because I found the process so tedious.

I do love making a single character, though.

There's room for both.
Full party creation is "cheaper", though, since the devs don't have to make up personalities, background stories, personal quests and the all important romances for all the characters-

 

[suejak]

Full party creation is one of the best features a rpg can have. Often, creating the party is more fun than the actual game.

I don't agree with that at all.

All of my favourite RPGs are single-PC. From Fallout to PS:T.

I actually quickly tire of full-party-creation RPGs, especially making the party. I used a premade party in IWD because I found the process so tedious.

I do love making a single character, though.

There's room for both.
Full party creation is "cheaper", though, since the devs don't have to make up personalities, background stories, personal quests and the all important romances for all the characters-

Hmm, maybe.

Yeah, I kinda really like fully-fleshed-out joinable NPCs. My favourites have been in games like Fallout 2, PS:T, and Arcanum.

 

[Regvard]

Or you could select at party creation the "personality package" for your henchman like you choose their portraits. With all different dialog/immershun files and stuff.

For example when you make a human wizard ----> you get to choose between evil cocky wizard with x background that joined you for y reason or good nudist wizard etc.

Kinda like picking npcs at the beginning but you get to do their stats/spells etc.



I still prefer a fully automaton party that communicates among themselves via punchcards though.

 

[Infinitron]

UPDATE - another Tim video + Reddit Q&A: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/posts/318515

Update #12 - Reddit Q&A with Tim Cain

Update #12 · Sep. 29, 2012



This update is going to be a little different. Instead of doing an update on a topic that we chose, we asked readers on reddit to submit questions and vote them up or down, and on Friday we took the five highest scoring questions to answer here.

You can visit the Project Eternity reddit group here:
http://www.reddit.com/r/projecteternity/

and the Q&A subgroup is here:
http://www.reddit.com/r/projecteternity/comments/10j4eu/heres_a_chance_to_have_your_questions_answered_by/

Let us know if you like these Q&A updates, and we can look into doing more of them.

Tim.

AtheistBots asks...
Class vs. Classless systems You're most famous for classless systems involved in Fallout and Arcanum. It sounds as if Obsidian will be using a class based system. What do you see as being the advantages of a class based system that you're hoping to leverage in Project Eternity?

Answer: We are designing a class-based system because we want the different characters in your party to fill different roles, and classes are the best way to achieve this goal. In a skill-based game, it's harder to tell if a companion gives you the skills you are looking for, especially before you recruit them. In a class-based game, you know what each class can do, so you can decide that you want a particular class even before a potential companion offers to join you. And when you have a lot of companions and can choose which ones you want to take on a particular adventure, classes make it easier to form the group and be assured that you have your skillsets covered.

Bonus question: Are you considering multiclassing?
Answer: Bonus questions are cheating…but yes, we are considering adding multi-classing to the game. A better way to put this answer is that we are not ruling them out at this time. If they work well with our final system, we will offer them.

Kaaaboom asks…
I was a bit discouraged when I heard that the combat was going to be RTwP (real time with pause), myself being a big fan of TB (turn based) and the possibility of tactical combat that it lends to a game. My question is then: how are you going to make the combat in P:E tactically interesting despite it being RTwP?

Answer: Hmm, this is a bit of a loaded question, as it implies that real-time games aren't tactically interesting while all turn-based games are. Believe me, I have played plenty of dull turn-based games with very few options on what to do on each turn, and there are lots of real-time games that are incredibly tactically rich. Look at all of the real-time strategy games out there!

So to answer your question, we are going to make sure that the distinct abilities that our classes will have will each provide different roles to those characters in combat, and that you will always have choices to make in combat about how to best position yourself and use your attacks. In addition, we are going to design the enemy encounters to be ever-increasing challenges, so that one way of fighting won't carry you through every encounter. You will be forced to mix it up a bit, tactically speaking, and use all of your combat skills to make it through to the end of the game.

Let me add that as an Infinity Engine inspired game, our pillars of design include isometric exploration of a fantasy world, a reactive storyline with interesting and believable characters, and real-time with pause combat. Those elements are expected in our game, and we feel strongly about providing them.

Elthosian asks…
How much reactivity can we expect from the world based in our character's race and sub-race?

Answer: We will provide a lot of reactivity in our game to your choice of race. We are planning on giving each race a set of traits that the player can pick from, and those traits affect everything from dialogs choices to skill bonuses to what kind of options you will have to finish some quests. There probably won't be quests that are just for one race, but one thing we are not going to do for certain is make race-restricted items. While many items have a cultural connection to some races, they will still be useable by members of other races. It might be unusual to see humans in elven chain, but they can wear it.

NeuroArcanist asks…
What aspect of cRPGs missing from modern games do you most want to recapture with Project Eternity?

Answer: I can answer that in one word: parties. I like playing cRPG's that allow the player to control big parties of characters, and by control, I mean you can pick the actions of each party member if you want. We will have lots of pause conditions in our combat, and if you want to have the game pause whenever a party member can perform a new action, you can do that. Most modern games only let you control one character, or if they give you a party, you only control one member of that group. In this game, I want to control all of them.

Zinicel asks…
Will there be modding capabilities for this game? I know it's a tall order for this style of game, but I've wanted a definitive answer to this question. Knowing Unity, I know it's somewhat unlikely to offer this. But it'd still be nice to know for sure.

Answer: That is a very good question, but unfortunately, I don't have an answer for you. We are still looking at Unity and how it bundles up content in the shipped game, and we will have to see how much of that we can make available to the player. I can say that we want you to be able to mod the game, and if it's possible, we will allow you to do it. It's not our primary focus, which is to give you an amazing single player experience with our game, but we know a lot of people will want to tinker with the game and make their own content, so we will let you know how this objective is faring when we are further along in development.

FORUMS: Join the discussion for Update #12!

 

[Black]

That shirt.

 

[tuluse]

I actually prefer going around and recruiting my party, and I like it when I can't get a full party until some time into the game. The way Fallout 2 did it is almost perfect for me.

 

[suejak]

Love his comments about TB v RTwP combat. People are such obnoxious nerds on this topic.

 

[octavius]

NeuroArcanist asks…
What aspect of cRPGs missing from modern games do you most want to recapture with Project Eternity?

Answer: I can answer that in one word: parties.

Tim's gonna fight for our right to party!

 

[Black]

NeuroArcanist asks…
What aspect of cRPGs missing from modern games do you most want to recapture with Project Eternity?

Answer: I can answer that in one word: parties.

Tim's gonna fight for our right to party!

Sill goy, you have to read between verses.
If you re-arrange the letters, he says: I can answer that in one word: pirates.

 

[Duckard]

Or you could select at party creation the "personality package" for your henchman like you choose their portraits. With all different dialog/immershun files and stuff.

For example when you make a human wizard ----> you get to choose between evil cocky wizard with x background that joined you for y reason or good nudist wizard etc.

Kinda like picking npcs at the beginning but you get to do their stats/spells etc.



I still prefer a fully automaton party that communicates among themselves via punchcards though.

I like the Wizardry 8 eccentric personality that narrates the game in third person. Still, it's not the same as having an NPC companion with a detailed story to learn about.

That being said, I love character creation and prefer party creation being an option. Hell, I sometimes roll up parties in IWD2 or Wizardry 8 and then just stop playing the game.

 

[Murk]

I don't understand why this is a concern. They are clearly making a BG/PS:T style game where you make one char and recruit the rest, but they can very easily implement a work around similar to BG so that you can create your own full party.

 

[DraQ]

I don't understand why this is a concern. They are clearly making a BG/PS:T style game where you make one char and recruit the rest, but they can very easily implement a work around similar to BG so that you can create your own full party.

Wouldn't really work in PS:T, would it?

 

[Shadenuat]

The answer to TB vs RTwP does't make any sense.

 

[Murk]

It could, it would just be a much more boring game.

Anyway, they said Eternity can be solo'd meaning that companions are not a big deal in it, and are more for optional fun --- in the vein of BG 2. If it fits that mold, then having an optional "make your own" party or even making most of your own party but taking on NPCs as well.

In BG 1 or 2 I would usually make 3 chars and take on NPCs to do their quests as I went.

Draq, you're an intelligent person, just apply a basic level of logic to my post. One of Torment's strong points was the NPCs, so if this is Torment 2 or Mask of the Betrayer 2 then yeah, soloing or making your own party potentially deprives you of some or all of that goodness, but it also means you can play the game however the hell you want. Clearly if you can make your own char then they have a working char generation system and so allowing an extra option of "make your own party" is not that hard.

 

[suejak]

The answer to TB vs RTwP does't make any sense.

What part doesn't make sense?

 

[Shadenuat]

All but the latter ("We make it like Infinity, people liked that combat" - okay, fair enough).
One can't just compare RTwP to RTS, because of different scale and pace. In RTS, combat areas are massive, troops are numerious, and the life of single trooper does't mean much. And if there are special characters, they can be revived without effort in some time, usually. It's basically your resourse bloat vs. enemy resourse, and APS capability. So, if you made a mistake in, say, Star Craft and siege tank wiped your ten hydralisks, you just make more of them. If you made a mistake in RPG and your cleric got down, you can't make five more in your barracks.
Usually, the whole "mastery" of RTS is about APS anyway... and you know what, RTS does not *usually* have pause!
Then he goes authority and all, like, he played a lot. Well, so did we. Would be nice to hear some examples, because I can't name any party-based RTwP game which is more tactical and difficult than turn-based ones.

For the second part, he just says - you will have a lot of options, and classes will be cool. How does that answer question of "what exactly are you going to do to RTwP so it would be tactically interesting?". Or rather, that just does't answer what is their system *exact* advantage over any other. You would have a lot of options and would need to use positioning. Cool, more time in pause mode. There will be more and more options opened, and you have to combine them with basic ones. Cool, even more time in pause mode. You will have to use every combat skill to make it to the end of the game... which is *exactly* the reason why overcomplicated systems like D&D3 work so bad in RTwP.

What I really want to know, is what is that thing that would make PE combat worth it to actually be in real time from the start. Just randomly out of my head - if he'd say "Well, if turn-based games when spell is cast, you can't do anything to it to react, but in our system, you can react to enemy spells when they fly, counter-spelling them or even make them change their direction or targets".
You know, something like that. Design features which make continious combat in real time with pause better for that game than turn-based.

 

[Infinitron]

Shadenuat I'm not sure if Starcraft is the kind of RTS Tim was thinking about.
Besides, the guy was complaining about the real-time, not about the pause.

 

[Murk]

Did you expect his interview, which is as much marketing as it is information, to actually go into depth on the merits of one system over another? People don't want to hear that shit, they want to hear "more good stuff, less bad stuff".

 

[Shadenuat]

Shadenuat I'm not sure if Starcraft is the kind of RTS Tim was thinking about.
Besides, the guy was complaining about the real-time, not about the pause.

I don't have enough Psionic ranks either, and my Knowledge(GoodRTSwithPauseWhichActuallyWorked) is very low.

Did you expect his interview, which is as much marketing as it is information, to actually go into depth on the merits of one system over another? People don't want to hear that shit, they want to hear "more good stuff, less bad stuff".

I was just answering that troll over there is a sudden gust of passion. But it would be good to get some information on their "Well all THOSE games in RTwP sucked because they were made from turn-based pnp, but OURS won't be, so it would be cool!".

 

[Dexter]

I kinda like Polina's art.

I checked that page (actually, even before I made all that noise about armor) and she is sure an experienced artist, even if her art just does't "tick" for me. I respect people who can draw.
However, no matter how experienced or good artists are, they can't have experience in *everything*, so we continue to get armor which just won't work or move in real life, and mail which does't look like mail for some reason. Just a few weeks ago I argued hard with a pretty cool artist about making characters for some game, and I just could't get through his "artistic vision", which was - "real armor is ugly and looks like a barrell, yeah okay I will change armor for a male knight to real one, but I will never draw ugly barrell armor on a female character, thus metal boobs!".

Ugh, I didn't really want to get into this anymore, but since everyone seems to keep bringing it up xD

How does that look like World of Warcraft? I don't particularly like those exaggerated, pointy, spiked etc. armors either but I don't see any of that here.

I also don't really get some of the complaints of something not being "realistic" enough when they are making a fantasy world where there likely will be fire-spitting giant lizards, orcs, walking dead, the concept of "magic" and magic items etc. in this particular instance apparently people can draw power from a concept like "souls" and they know they'll be reborn, ignoring and rationalizing all of that, but then complain about small things in otherwise completely functional armor design. I can't really help myself but think that it still stems back to the sexual nature and perceived "social justice" more often than not.

In regards to the "realism", I'd rather this not be a "middle ages" simulator, if they were actually going for the middle ages there wouldn't be much fighting womenfolk at all and minorities would either not exist or be in chains in the first place, but they wouldn't want that.

I'd rather they use their brains and think of new cultures and concepts they can use instead of what we've already had and seen a few hundred times before. For instance I don't think the same armor design or weapons that were used in the middle ages would be very helpful in killing some fantasy beasts and would quickly lose their purpose against them since they were largely designed for human on human combat with sharp pointy things. It would for instance likely be retarded to fight dragons with a sword and shield in full armor and depending on what other kind of creatures can do and magic they encounter there'd likely be different ways of fighting those.

There's a nice BBC documentary called "Human Planet" going into a lot of different cultures and hunting that even still exist today on earth, and depending on where they live, what they hunt and how far along technologically they are there are still to date lots of different ways of going about it. From bush people ingesting drugs to make them faster and sharpen their senses and then going hunting with 2m blow-pipes using frog poison, others that are employing trained eagles and other animals to hunt or cultures that are almost exclusively hunting and eating whales with big spears the year over.

Heck go crazy, your fantasy world doesn't even have to have basic minerals or resources available on earth like iron or gold and metallurgy might be a secretly coveted craft.

They basically and practically have every possibility to follow their imagination and create an all new fantasy world and somehow what they come up with is yet again, hey lets recreate the middle-ages but with social justice and stuff and while we're at it lets put some Tolkien in there, Planescape was a rather fresh different kind of world and did this rather well with a variety of new factions, concepts and other things I wasn't familiar with before playing it. It was fun exploring and "discovering" that and certain philosophies, there will be none or a lot less of that if they just try to replicate the "middle ages" down to the last armor design like some people apparently want them to yet again. Oh look... it's the church, oh look, the inquisition etc.

Getting back to female armors, even the US army by now recognized that women appear to indeed be different than men and also have a different body-build, after years of studious research they apparently also found out that most women have tits and want to make more form-fitting armor, resident expert opinion seems to agree with lots of documented proof.

And regarding "realism", many aristocrats and royals did custom build their armors in places like Augsburg, Vienna or Milano and almost all of them let the blacksmiths custom-design them to better their physique and come off as more imposing (bigger than they are, more musculous, and as I was saying before many of them even felt the need to highlight their amazing manlihood with cock-armor), there's a great many different ones displayed in the royal armory in Madrid.
Who's to say how they'd have designed female armor if they actually got to have any say in the process? The few women who did wear armor were never in the position to make any demands, so we wouldn't know.

...cock armor

Pics or it didn't happen!

Spoiler

 

[Nigro]

So, is Josh sawyer gay? I just read a thread on /v/ with quote from a guy named "rope kid" that they said its him
the quote is:
"This is extremely important to me and I still push for it(sometimes literally yelling at people) whenever it comes up"
it's a response to a guy saying that he wants the most LGBT friendly game ever made
this is the pic:

 

[Hobz]

"most LGBT friendly RPG"...

Do gays and lesbians really need recognition through video games ? Should disabled ask for a companion in wheelchair ? Maybe we could make sure there is a deaf and a mute character also, and a blind one maybe.