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

[DarkUnderlord]

This enough information for you, DarkUnderlord?

Yes, we finally know that we're getting Dragon Age: Eternity.

What do you mean, "finally"?

 

[Clockwork Knight]

...wait, I don't get it.

 

[Lockkaliber]

If you've ever worked in a kindergarten, you've probably noticed how one child sometimes begins to chant something, such as "all bears are toys, all bears are toys", then other children will join in with him, so that after a while every child in the room is chanting, "all bears are toys, all bears are toys." You might put in, "No they are not. That one in the picture, for example." They would continue, "all bears are toys, all bears are toys."

That really happens, and quite often too. It's also exactly how adults in academia think and behave most of the time

 

[fizzelopeguss]

Obsidian doesn't scale to your shitty 3rd world resolutions Excidium.

it's a proper PC resolution, not a TV cast off.

 

[Jaesun]

In case people missed it, for our Codex fund-drive, some new stuff is available. Read it here.

 

[Whisky]

Kind of worried that they didn't mention cool-downs. Of course, this was probably planned in advance, but considering the bombshell that was, I would have hoped they would have gone into detail. Perhaps they're not quite done making the system yet?

Either way, the information about classes and what-not is a nice distraction. I'm not re-raising my pledge just yet, but I'm feeling more confident.

 

[Jaesun]

Kind of worried that they didn't mention cool-downs. Of course, this was probably planned in advance, but considering the bombshell that was, I would have hoped they would have gone into detail. Perhaps they're not quite done making the system yet?

Yes. Tim and Josh are still working on tweaking the combat system. There will also be some combat info on Saturday from Tim.

We DO Know there is no retarded WOW cooldown spell shit like DA however.

 

[Dexter]

And though any wizard may prepare several tomes, an inexperienced caster is not capable of channeling power through the log-thick, anvil-heavy, dog-eared grimoires of wizened archmagi. Such novices must alternate between more modest selections, relying on their less demanding spells and talents when they are unable to call upon their tomes.

Hmmm. Multiple spellbooks?

There are your "spell suites"!

Kinda sounds like they're trying to go with different pre-prepared spell-lists similar to "Loadouts" in DCUO or "Skill Deck" in Chronicles of Spellporn to me, you got a lot of spells learned and are able to use them, but can only equip and use a single "suite" comprised of however many the designer decides at one time:

Spoiler

They seem to be advertising on /v/ btw.: http://archive.foolz.us/v/thread/157214035/

So, I generally despise writing companion romances (I think unrequited and/or doomed ones are ultimately more dramatic), but there are some techniques I've accumulated over the years that I try to incorporate into writing and designing romances in RPGs.

A lot of these things came out while writing Gannayev-of-Dreams in Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer, and I suppose it could hold true for other inter-party romances in games. What follows is a summary of some points we kicked around for how to foster romances with the PC.


Any suggestions or examples of other techniques that work would be welcome because us Obsidian folks (or at least me) aren't the romantic types.

Note: I'm going to cite examples from Season 1 of Lost a lot, so if the character examples below don't make sense to you, watch that and come back - although there's no spoilers below. I think. It's hard to tell with Lost what's a spoiler and what's not. Also, I haven't watched Lost past Season 2, so it's possible all the examples below are overturned in Season 3.

Anyway, here's how to foster romance between characters - part one, and subject to iteration.

First, the NPC romantic interest must be good in combat or contributes effectively to a mission. It is much easier to like/love someone who fulfills an effective combat role in the party (Final Fantasy VI/Final Fantasy III was always my model for this). Kate from Lost, for example, pulls this off - she's a good tracker, good with a gun, and can handle herself in a fight for the most part.

The NPC is not subservient to the player, but either equal or not quite his or her equal. Kate from Lost does not feel she's worthy of Jack, but she can compete with him and give him a run for his money.

Intelligent and/or cunning. Witty. Again, Kate from Lost. Booksmart is fine, but you need someone you can banter with, not just recite physics formulas.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T, not just for the PC for the NPC, but vice versa. The NPC doesn't behave condescendingly, doesn't throw games to let the player win, subdue their own abilities to make the player shine - they respect the player enough to not treat them subserviently. At the beginning of the romance, this may not be the case, but later on, it should be clear the NPC feels the PC can stand on their own two feet, and the NPC respects them. They don't have to agree all the time, but they don't think the player's a dummy.

Good VO, as I'm sure you know. The right voice actor can make or break a romantic interest immediately.

This is personal preference, but I would always err on keeping "the chase" going, and have no consummation until the end of the game, if at all - again, I advocate no consummation (I've seen it kill Cheers and Moonlighting among others), but that gets some players pretty upset. Keep the player guessing as to the NPC feelings, even if the hints seem pretty obvious - this makes for good drama.

Some admirable quality in the romantic NPC. For example (and not to say that I'm in love with Dr. Doom), Dr. Doom in the Marvel Comics, for all his bad guy megalomania, is obviously (1) smart, (2) is devoted to the people of his country, and (3) is constantly looking for a way to save his mother from hell. For a bad guy, these are some pretty admirable qualities beyond just conquering the world.

The romantic NPC should be picky, it's obvious he/she has high standards. In Planescape: Torment, we made it pretty clear that Annah and Fall-From-Grace didn't express interest in just anyone, and the player was the only one out of thousands that ever piqued their interest.

Attractive. Note that this is hard to do (we've had to constantly iterate romantic visual concepts, and it's just as hard as finding the voice actor), so what I've found is best is (1) let the player make the call, but even better, (2) make sure you seed the world with people who remark on how attractive/intelligent/witty the female or male NPC is - the power of suggestion and rivalry can reinforce to a PC that the NPC is an object to be desired. For example, AGAIN WITH THE FUCKING LOST, Sawyer fulfills this role with Kate (and he is a romantic rival as well).

That's all I got for now. Any advice on what you guys think works and doesn't is welcome - I could use it.

- MCA

I got my first game development job when I was sixteen, on my birthday, the same day I got my driver’s license. Playing and making games on computers has always been one of my primary activities, so doing it professionally has just made sense. I tried to go into academia, briefly, but I left to come back to games.

As to why I stay, I guess I don’t know what else I’d do after all these years. I still love games. I’ve been making them for 31 years, and I still go home and play a few hours every night after dinner.

I am a senior programmer at Obsidian, but one of the nice things about this company is that you can perform any kind of work here. They are more than happy to let people wear different hats, so on Project Eternity, I get to do design and programming. Right now, I’m doing design with Josh, so I get to explore ideas on various combat modes, non-combat skills, and even the basic stats in the game. Very little is locked into stone…yet. We’ve made some big decisions, such as setting, perspective and basic combat rules, and soon we will finish the rest and start the full-swing production of the game.

We were really excited about the launch of Project Eternity, and almost immediately the funding began to pour in. It seemed that every monitor at Obsidian has a window open to the Kickstarter page, including the big monitors in the conference rooms and lounges. Towards the end of the day, Feargus let everyone go home early, since we had put in a lot of time getting the Kickstarter launch ready. We all wanted to celebrate, and many of us went to a pub across the street. That first day felt very special, and it still does. We are excited about seeing where the campaign will end, and what stretch goals we will reach.

We feel a lot of pride and a lot of responsibility. The pride comes from knowing that so many people like and trust us, and the responsibility comes from knowing that we now have to show those same people that their trust was well placed. We always had the goal to make the best games we can, and we feel that responsibility stronger than ever now.

Until now, gamers were restricted to mostly playing games that a publisher thought was worthwhile to make. That meant that smaller genre, like niche games and “classic” games, were simply not being made, because no publisher wanted to fund them. From their point of view, why spend a million dollars to make back two million, when you could spend 20 million dollars and make back 100 million? Like the movie industry, the blockbusters absorb most of the big studio’s budgets, leaving little money for the rest.

We like that there is no publisher to get approvals from, so development can proceed more quickly and with more confidence. And we are also making a mature themed game, something a lot of publishers frown on. And by mature, we do NOT mean sexual references or boobs or blue jokes. We mean we want to tackle more than linear stories with a black-and-white villain at the end or quests that are simple “run and fetch” deals. We want the player to think about how his actions affect the world and more than just himself, and we want to introduce scenarios that might not have a “right” answer. If we make the writer for the walkthrough portion of our strategy guide pull his hair and cry that it can’t be done, our job will be accomplished.

I'm really happy to see game developers like Double Fine and inXile making high profile Kickstarter-funded projects. I think these are great opportunities to give smaller groups of motivated fans niche products that would have difficulty finding publisher or venture capital funding. Great. This is why every fan loves it, really.

A semi-rhetorical problem I've seen folks propose is, "How do you deal with fans when they're direct investors in the product's development? Fans don't know what they want." Should forum posters define the parameters of a game's systems? Its story? Should fans be allowed to design a new ending for a game via crowd-sourcing if a bunch of people are mad about it? How do you reconcile fans' conflicting interests?

This seems like an odd problem to propose, as though now, suddenly, the wants and needs of a diverse paying audience become problematic because they're kickstarting the game's development. They're still the endusers; that hasn't changed. What's removed are random staff members -- production, marketing, PR -- at the publisher shifting the project around in the pitch phase, pre-production, and during development. Even though we're in the defining moments of this nascent trend, I have to forecast this as purely beneficial for everyone directly involved.

I started my career as a web developer for Black Isle Studios. I was the moderator for a number of high-traffic message boards. Facilitating interaction between the developers and community has always been important to me. You can't make everyone happy, certainly, but you can help the community understand what you're doing -- and why. When the community gains this understanding, their expectations can be framed in a way that appreciates the process the developers go through. Not everyone will agree with the decisions developers make, but that's fine -- you can't make everyone happy, whether you're being funded by a publisher or the endusers. We shouldn't try to. But we should all try to engage our audience in the spirit of genuine interest, listen to what they have to say, give honest feedback, and formulate an experience that they will enjoy.

Design isn't about asking a client what he or she wants and then doing it, verbatim. It's not about trying to make everyone happy. It's about understanding the myriad, often conflicting wants and needs of a defined, diverse audience and developing a product that brings them satisfaction. Satisfaction can come after shock, after frustration, after disappointment. These moments of pain and fear don't detract, but add to the richness and enjoyment of the final product. Like anything worth our love and devotion, the process to achieve it is often a struggle. The worst we can do is disappoint our fans -- but that's always been the case. For crowd-funded games, it's just gamers and game-makers. It may not be the way all games can be (or even should be) made, but I'm so glad it's an option, and I hope that everyone involved embraces the potential for sincere collaboration and feedback it presents to us.

At Obsidian, we would often reminisce about the Infinity Engine games, but it was hard to come up with a way to get one started. However, as the Kickstarter momentum got going, it brought the conversations back and we were all sitting around one day and said “Let’s do it!”. It’s not as if people stopped wanting games like Icewind Dale or Baldur’s Gate, it was more that BioWare moved on as a studio and Black Isle went away. I hear from people all the time that they run out of the newer games to play and go back and play Baldur’s Gate 2 or Torment for the fifth or sixth time. What Kickstarter does is let us make a game that is absolutely reminiscent of those great games, since trying to get that funded through a traditional publisher would be next to impossible.

We want to bring back what was great about the Infinity Engine games. While we plan to improve some things based upon what we think fans of the older games expect now-a-days (like the interface), Project Eternity is going to play and feel like an Infinity Engine game.

When it comes to not fitting into the traditional developer/publisher arrangement, it is probably going to sound like we are giving publishers a really bad rap. In some ways that’s true, but in other ways – this kind of project is just not one that fits in the traditional model. The big publishers are built around making games that cost millions of dollars to make, millions of dollars to promote and market and millions more to build the units that get shipped to stores. Their organizations are built around that model. To make the same amount of revenue on games like Project Eternity, they would have to ship hundreds of games a year instead of ten or twenty. They are just not built that way. Plus, with Kickstarter, Steam and social media – we can fund, distribute and promote our games entirely ourselves. In a way, we just don’t need them for a game like Project Eternity.

On the development side, (beyond Josh Sawyer, Tim Cain, Chris Avellone, and Adam Brennecke) we have a few other people working on technology and an entirely new rendering method that should surprise everyone when we are able to show it off. The ultimate size of the development team is going to be dependent on how the Kickstarter campaign goes – the more money we get in, the more people we are going to bring over onto the team.

We've all talked a lot about the genre and to be honest we kept on coming back to fantasy. With all the experience we have had with a lot of varied fantasy settings, we are really looking for to taking our unique approach with factions, characters and mature themes to the setting. Ultimately, we really feel that what an RPG is about is the characters and the story – not the setting. Hit points are hit points whether you are killing past, present or future zombies. What engages and what keeps you going in an RPG are characters that you love and hate and story lines that tug at your emotions.

Adding on to what Tim said about "mature games", I think Chris Avellone said it best when he talked about how we want tackle the subject matter. We are already getting to make South Park which gets all of the “dick and fart jokes” out of our system. In Project Eternity, we want to tell a story that treats players like adults. Does that mean sensationalistic topics – potentially. It means more that if a story is going in a direction our designers don’t need to shy away from how it concludes.

The core to a great RPG is having all matter of quests and that’s what we are going to do in Project Eternity. If every quest was a Fed-Ex quest then that isn’t fun, but having some quests like that round out the types of quests we can offer and I know I appreciate the occasional easy quest. That’s really the other aspect of a well-crafted RPG. There are the intense times where the quests are deep, every choice matters, and the fallout from choosing one way or another spider webs across the game. While others are lighter, fun, but less earth-shattering. Both types are needed to keep the ebb and flow of the game fun. Ultimately though, we are going to walk the line between quality and quantity – tons of single step delivery quests makes an RPG feel shallow, while only a few super complex quests leaves the world feeling empty. We are going old school here. We don’t just want the world to feel unique but everything in it as well. That means creating unique items that fit into the world and have their own descriptions, histories, and potentially, their own personalities.

When we looked at whether to go the Icewind Dale route or the Torment / Baldur’s Gate route, we felt the latter tied much better into the focus we are going to put into the story and character development. We want the central character to be one that players will hopefully not just play through Project Eternity with, but into sequels as well. Like Torment and Baldur’s Gate, players will find companions to join their party – crafted by the incredible talents of Chris Avellone and Josh Sawyer. When it comes to how they will improve – that is something we are still considering and would love to hear what fans out there think. We invite anyone that is interested to come on over to our forums at [URL='http://forums.obsidian.net. [/quote']http://forums.obsidian.net[/URL].

 

[Volourn]

Smack down has occured evrsus the fukkin' piece of shit on the Obsidian boards who trolled about ATHIEST PRIESTS. I was nicer there but fuck that piece of crap.

 

[wormix]

All those quotes are just copy pastes from other sources. Gamebanshee interview, JE Sawyer's blog, etc.

 

[suejak]

"Atheist priest" doesn't really make sense. That isn't even interesting.

 

[Jaesun]

suejak confirmed as retard.

 

[Digital Monocle]

"Atheist priest" doesn't really make sense. That isn't even interesting.

Maybe a fallen priest? Doesn't believe in the religion but bides by his own rules than the dogma?

 

[suejak]

If he were a class-bender who could only be called a "priest" because of the artificial limitations of the system, I'd accept it.

 

[Commander Xbox]

Damn are the guys developing this game really a load of real life fags?

wtf

 

[suejak]

It most certainly was not. It's as much a copy of GURPS as the UNO card game is a copy of Magic: The Gathering, basically.

Stop talking out your ass. It was supposed to use GURPS, but didn't. Using seven stats (among these Charisma and Luck) and using percentile rolls is basically as far from GURPS design as you can possibly be.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPECIAL_System#SPECIAL

I'm awaiting your link that says Magic is based on UNO...

Since you've read and understand GURPS, I'm sure you can tell me how they are similar?

Or are you, as I suspect, just quoting Wikipedia who says "based on GURPS" because the game was initially supposed to be based on it, and because the devs said that's where they took their inspiration?

Right, I thought so.

I'll be happy to discuss how a bell-curve-based system with 4 main statistics and an incredibly deep interconnectivity with all elements of the system is in any way like a 7-stat system with magic stats, percentile rolling and a handful of arbitrary skills and cinematic traits.

It will certainly be fun to watch you invent the reasons they are alike.

Yeah, honestly, I just relied on all of the times that the developers and others have said "SPECIAL is based on GURPS." I'm no nerd so I don't know nothin in-depth about no pnp rules system

Last time I pnp'd I was 12, lol.

 

[J_C]

This enough information for you, DarkUnderlord?

Yes, we finally know that we're getting Dragon Age: Eternity.

 

[SwiftCrack]

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60905-stick-to-your-guns-devs/page__st__80#entry1221973

It does have to do with sexual repression, most minorities are sexual repressed, because they are minorities, not many people want to have sex with them. This is one of the reasons, IMO for all this parades and fights for rights, they don't like that there aren't many people with the same sexual desires as them.

Wat?

This should be put on wikipedia as an example of a logical fallacy/circular logic .

 

[Grunker]

It most certainly was not. It's as much a copy of GURPS as the UNO card game is a copy of Magic: The Gathering, basically.

Stop talking out your ass. It was supposed to use GURPS, but didn't. Using seven stats (among these Charisma and Luck) and using percentile rolls is basically as far from GURPS design as you can possibly be.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPECIAL_System#SPECIAL

I'm awaiting your link that says Magic is based on UNO...

Since you've read and understand GURPS, I'm sure you can tell me how they are similar?

Or are you, as I suspect, just quoting Wikipedia who says "based on GURPS" because the game was initially supposed to be based on it, and because the devs said that's where they took their inspiration?

Right, I thought so.

I'll be happy to discuss how a bell-curve-based system with 4 main statistics and an incredibly deep interconnectivity with all elements of the system is in any way like a 7-stat system with magic stats, percentile rolling and a handful of arbitrary skills and cinematic traits.

It will certainly be fun to watch you invent the reasons they are alike.

Yeah, honestly, I just relied on all of the times that the developers and others have said "SPECIAL is based on GURPS." I'm no nerd so I don't know nothin in-depth about no pnp rules system

Last time I pnp'd I was 12, lol.

Sorry for being an ass, by the way, but in case you haven't noticed yet I'm the resident motherfucking GURPS fanboy. In any case, Alex is right in that there are other reasons they are not alike (though the bell-curve is a pretty huge one, Alex - rolling probability is perhaps the most central part of any system's base).

 

[Spectacle]

"Atheist priest" doesn't really make sense. That isn't even interesting.

Why don't you head over to Japan and tell this guy that his existence doesn't really make sense:

I could easily see a place in Project Eternity for a religion that preaches that the gods are not truly gods, but merely powerful spirits, and that the path to salvation is not worship but personal enlightenment and strengthening the soul by discipline and meditation. Different sects of this religion could either ignore the "gods", actively oppose them or consider them as potentially useful allies.

 

[suejak]

"Atheist priest" doesn't really make sense. That isn't even interesting.

Why don't you head over to Japan and tell this guy that his existence doesn't really make sense:

I could easily see a place in Project Eternity for a religion that preaches that the gods are not truly gods, but merely powerful spirits, and that the path to salvation is not worship but personal enlightenment and strengthening the soul by discipline and meditation. Different sects of this religion could either ignore the "gods", actively oppose them or consider them as potentially useful allies.

Yeah, I didn't realize that "atheist" meant the belief in no God, gods, or supernatural beings.

I live in Japan, btw

 

[DwarvenFood]

What happened to the Eternity Forum Vigilance Thread ?!

 

[Infinitron]

What happened to the Eternity Forum Vigilance Thread ?!

Merged by Jaesun.

 

[catfood]

Atheist priests did exist in Romania in commie times. They were called "Activiști de partid" (party activists). They would travel from village to village and preach to the peasents the glorious achievements of socialism and how if they embraced this new idea their lives would improve.

So yes, the concept of atheist priest could work if done right.

 

[Captain Shrek]

Atheist priests did exist in Romania in commie times. They were called "Activiști de partid" (party activists). They would travel from village to village and preach to the peasents the glorious achievements of socialism and how if they embraced this new idea their lives would improve.

So yes, the concept of atheist priest could work if done right.

 

[asper]

To be honest I am bit relieved and a bit disappointed. So I am about to commit some sacrilege and some Blasphemy. When I joined this place I always thought that Cain and Sawyer were really the creative kind, that took dangerous and novel steps to make games. I thought that the only reason they could not make something as great as Fallout again (Cain) because they were not having the resources to do so. Now that they have the money they keep regurgitating the same DnD crap all over.

The setting, the classes are so generic that I can't see why I am buying this game if not for MCA's writing. I am now very cautious about the mechanics too. It seems that Sawyer was potentially considering crippling the challenge in the game for the casual ADHD audience so that they would attract the audience of COD. Now where have I heard that before?

I am relieved too.

Since these guys have fallen from their high stations in my regard I dare not trust them doing something innovative. They probably neither have the guts or the talent to see it through. I am happy that I will get another IE like game (hopefully). At least I know that Obsidian can reproduce stuff quite well and MCA is always there to rescue it.

The intention of the project is a Baldur's Gate style game, not the successor to Torment. This basically places it well in the centre of more or less standard fantasy.

Moreover, a more original setting would never gather 2 million on Kickstarter. Not many people enjoy pushing the envelope, least of all RPG players. This Kickstarter is just as shackled and limited as development with publishers, except the role of the suits is now filled by the needs of the common BG player, which must be catered to. Actually, perhaps developing with a publisher would mean more freedom than Obsidian has now, as their every move - even every sketchy idea - is scrutinized by thousands of entitled fans. The point is not that with Kickstarter they have more freedom, but that it is the only way to make such a game at all nowadays.