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

[Excidium]

"Might not be real"

 

[Infinitron]

Disk space of some other recent RPGs:

Full games:

Blackguards: 24035 megabytes
Might & Magic X: 11123 megabytes
Shadowrun Returns: 3603 megabytes
Legend of Grimrock: 720 megabytes

Early Access:

Age of Decadence: 1299 megabytes
Dead State: 1883 megabytes

Basically at high ends, the size of 3D graphics skyrockets, and the more "diverse" your game is, the more of them you'll have. It might be that some of these games have higher quality models than they actually need, but hey, nobody wants to be like DA2 and have people zoom in to point out the blurry faces if they can avoid it.

 

[Excidium]

lol @ Blackguards.

Basically at high ends, the size of 3D graphics skyrockets, and the more "diverse" your game is, the more of them you'll have. It might be that some of these games have higher quality models than they actually need, but hey, nobody wants to be like DA2 and have people zoom in to point out the blurry faces if they can avoid it.

No it's just incompetence, remember when people found MMX stored their shit in horrible formats

 

[Kem0sabe]

Another source for the system requirements:

http://guides.gamepressure.com/pillarsofeternity/guide.asp?ID=25637

If those are to be believed, then its quite refreshing to see someone try and optimize unity for something else than burning out graphics cards.

 

[Excidium]

2GB RAM is what the game will eat by itself loading those beautiful maps

 

[Hormalakh]

i'm hoping they're working on the loading technology as much as they are on the game graphics technology. IT isn't necessary to load the map completely during transitions. Some time can be saved in that way. there are probably other tricks that they can use as well to solve these problems.

another thing would be to have the smaller maps that a player be in for 5-10 minutes not completely erase the previously loaded map so that it's still in cache. for example, entering a house/shop map shouldn't clear the previously loaded map cache.

 

[Excidium]

i'm hoping they're working on the loading technology as much as they are on the game graphics technology. IT isn't necessary to load the map completely during transitions. Some time can be saved in that way. there are probably other tricks that they can use as well to solve these problems.

We can at least rest at ease that they can't do worse than MMX in that department

 

[Sensuki]

i'm hoping they're working on the loading technology as much as they are on the game graphics technology. IT isn't necessary to load the map completely during transitions.

They stream the map in 512x512 tiles. So yes it should be very quick.

 

[Hormalakh]

there are always more tricks they can work on and implement. i'm hoping sawyer is smart enough to realize that it's not always about the content of the game, but its delivery and presentation that can make/break a game.

 

[dukeofwhales]

It was always going to be big - unlike a 3D game (which intuitively "should" be larger) where you can have 3 grass textures and 5 tree textures and use them all a million times. RAGE was notable for not reusing unique textures and that came in at about 50GB IIRC (and still looked pretty bad for a AAA shooter).

Still as long as there's a week to preload before release I doubt anyone really cares about the difference between 10 and 30GB, when you can get a 2TB HDD for ~$100. I might have to shuffle some stuff around on my SSD, but I can deal.

 

[Brzęczyszczykiewicz]

Witcher - 13,3 GB
Witcher 2 - 22,7 GB

 

[Gozma]

On other boards do they talk specifically about how this is going to be different from Dragon Age: Origins, because I've been playing DA:O for the first time just recently and it seems like exactly the same thing as the PoE pitch? Just not having '90s Cinemax sex cutscenes to hammer esc during? No EA buyout midproduction making them do stuff like whore masses of shamelessly overpowered/p2w DLC?

I was amazed by the amount of mutually exclusive C&C DAO is able/willing to do even with low end 2009 AAAish production values including full NPC voice acting; seemed like a much bigger mass of stuff than 4mil could buy of Obsidian even just with BG2 dialog. Just the origin stuff by itself was pretty damn expansive.

 

[Infinitron]

On other boards do they talk specifically about how this is going to be different from Dragon Age: Origins, because I've been playing DA:O for the first time just recently and it seems like exactly the same thing as the PoE pitch?

I assume that by "how is this going to be different" you mean in terms of C&C, because in terms of combat mechanics etc the answer is "a lot".

In that case, faction reputation, disposition, scripted interactions with stat checks, and all sorts of other by-now-familiar Obsidian/Sawyer C&C mechanics.

 

[Abu Antar]

Plus six characters in your party. Oh, and hopefully we do not get abilities that are actually broken. (I still like DA:O.)

 

[Ninjerk]

On other boards do they talk specifically about how this is going to be different from Dragon Age: Origins, because I've been playing DA:O for the first time just recently and it seems like exactly the same thing as the PoE pitch? Just not having '90s Cinemax sex cutscenes to hammer esc during? No EA buyout midproduction making them do stuff like whore masses of shamelessly overpowered/p2w DLC?

I was amazed by the amount of mutually exclusive C&C DAO is able/willing to do even with low end 2009 AAAish production values including full NPC voice acting; seemed like a much bigger mass of stuff than 4mil could buy of Obsidian even just with BG2 dialog. Just the origin stuff by itself was pretty damn expansive.

Well, IIRC this is the first game that broke the fourth wall with regards to in-game characters encouraging you to buy part of the story as DLC for xx.99 (Warden's Keep is the first DLC that comes up when I search "dragon age fourth wall dlc"). Visionary.

 

[The Fish]

On other boards do they talk specifically about how this is going to be different from Dragon Age: Origins, because I've been playing DA:O for the first time just recently and it seems like exactly the same thing as the PoE pitch? Just not having '90s Cinemax sex cutscenes to hammer esc during? No EA buyout midproduction making them do stuff like whore masses of shamelessly overpowered/p2w DLC?

I was amazed by the amount of mutually exclusive C&C DAO is able/willing to do even with low end 2009 AAAish production values including full NPC voice acting; seemed like a much bigger mass of stuff than 4mil could buy of Obsidian even just with BG2 dialog. Just the origin stuff by itself was pretty damn expansive.

I thought they looked about as different as a single player RPGs could. One's designed for consoles, the other isn't. One has thoughtful combat mechanics (seemingly) the other just ripped off generic mmo mechanics. One's "cinematic", fully realised with badly animated 3D characters, ugly environments and bad cutscene editing. The other is isometric, with some static illustrations thrown in. Did you actually believe the "spiritual successor to baldur's gate" pr bullshit surrounding Dragon Age?

 

[Infinitron]

DA:O was not exactly "designed for consoles", it was a PC-exclusive that got ported in the last year of its development

 

[FuriousGamer87]

Plus six characters in your party. Oh, and hopefully we do not get abilities that are actually broken. (I still like DA:O.)

It's Obsidian and this time its a combat system that they build from ground up.
In short, let's us kept the expectation on balance very very low.
At the very least, it would be fun.

 

[Gozma]

^Yah DAO is PC as fuck as far as that goes.

I thought they looked about as different as a single player RPGs could.

Why would you type this dumb sentence, they're Rtw/P BG style games.

Have they been playing up the "PoE is against using MMO mechanics" angle explicitly?

 

[Infinitron]

Have they been playing up the "PoE is against using MMO mechanics" angle explicitly?

Not really, but they have explicitly sworn off aggro mechanics, which are an MMO staple.

 

[Gozma]

As long as I'm in this thread have they talked about formation stuff lately? That seems extremely necessary to get the typical Rtw/P clusterfuck to be sensible. DAO has made me remember that 90% of Rtw/P gameplay is figuring out a playstyle where you limit the amount of pathing as much as possible.

 

[Infinitron]

As long as I'm in this thread have they talked about formation stuff lately? That seems extremely necessary to get the typical Rtw/P clusterfuck to be sensible. DAO has made me remember that 90% of Rtw/P gameplay is figuring out a playstyle where you limit the amount of pathing as much as possible.

What sort of formation stuff? There's the same sort of functionality as in the IE games. You can also create custom formations.

 

[Sensuki]

In short, let's us kept the expectation on balance very very low.

I dunno ...

 

[The Fish]

DA:O was not exactly "designed for consoles", it was a PC-exclusive that got ported in the last year of its development

That makes the crappy overhead camera even more surprising. I always got the feeling that games are often designed with other platforms in mind even if they're not explicitly stated to be for those platforms. For instance, the banner saga is a pc game, it's going to be ported to tablets well after its release but the ui was absolutely designed with the intention of porting.

^Yah DAO is PC as fuck as far as that goes.

I thought they looked about as different as a single player RPGs could.

Why would you type this dumb sentence, they're Rtw/P BG style games.

Have they been playing up the "PoE is against using MMO mechanics" angle explicitly?

fuck off mate.

 

[Roguey]

That makes the crappy overhead camera even more surprising.

Console versions don't even get that camera.

The reason you can't scroll as much as you like is memory-related. Overhauled Infinity Engine with a 3D renderer sucks.