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

[felipepepe]

Deal with it.

No, being butthurt is more fun.

 

[Grunker]

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was making the Codex hate Sawyer. It's funny. There's so much to love about that man's design philosophy, but mainly because of one controversial Codex poster's successful trolling attempt everybody's decided to hate the guy

 

[IDtenT]

What exactly is to love about his design philosophy?

 

[evdk]

What's controlling about it?

The reason why he does it.

 

[felipepepe]

mainly because of one controversial Codex poster's successful trolling attempt everybody's decided to hate the guy

Makes more sense when you know that Roguey IS Sawyer.

or should be.

 

[Infinitron]

What's controlling about it?

The reason why he does it.

How can a reason be "controlling"?

Your characters aren't being controlled. They can still do whatever they want. You're just not getting rewarded for it in the way that you've been trained to expect.

You should be thankful. Plenty of games, including games that the Codex loves, just don't flat out don't let you kill quest givers or any non-hostile NPC. Torment might not let you kill anybody.

 

[Grunker]

What exactly is to love about his design philosophy?

That he has a tight focus on gameplay mechanics and that he's one out of very, very few cRPG designers who see the underlying character system as one of the most important aspects of an RPG. We have so many RPGs where character systems are a foot-note, and it shows. He's wildly in love with documentation, another area where cRPGs are generally very lacking. He thinks the most important part of the game he is making and the games it is based on is engaging gameplay, and he is fixated on making that great. He's incredibly willing to discuss game mechanics and "put himself and his ideas out there." Unlike most of his colleagues, he seems deeply concerned about how his game plays, and he obviously has a deep understanding of P&P systems even though I disagree with a lot of his conclusions on them.

I may disagree wildly with many of the man's opinions, but I'm not about to discard someone's effort based on disagreement alone. Unlike many of his colleagues, he doesn't spew forth market-speech or empty phrases when engaging his audience. The reason it is so easy to disagree with Sawyer is that he actually formulates concrete opinions and states his ideas in specifics, and I admire that. Most of the game designers and even the Kickstarter profiles I like (like Fargo) are not nearly as bold, and only present vague ideas of what they want to achieve.

For better or worse, Sawyer is willing to discuss and state his opinions, and he is always well-researched. Furthermore, his focus is almost Mondblutian in the way he sees gameplay, character system and mechanics as being the most important part of an RPG. With all the LARPing simulators and focus on story mechanics (like C&C) we've had in both AAA and indie game production these last couple of years, this shift to oldschool gameplay-focus was sorely needed.

 

[felipepepe]

Yes, I agree on that. But it also makes hiim a optimal target for butthurt.

 

[IDtenT]

The raising of opinions are commendable, but mean nothing positive for the product if they are shit.

 

[Cosmo]

What's shit ? New Vegas ?
Or maybe you've been given the gift of prophecy and you KNOW that Project Eternity will be bad game ?

Yes, I agree on that. But it also makes hiim a optimal target for butthurt.

A statement that gets confirmed everyday here on this fine forum...

 

[IDtenT]

What's shit ? New Vegas ?
Or maybe you've been given the gift of prophecy and you KNOW that Project Eternity will be bad game ?

Reread what I wrote. I was referring to the opinion being shit.

 

[skuphundaku]

...but I'm not about to discard someone's effort based on disagreement alone.

Only losers want recognition for effort. Making an effort and coming across like a control-freak douchebag is worse than just being a a control-freak douchebag and being all "deal-with-it!" about it. Fuck that loser for all I care. I only hope he won't fuck up P:E completely, and, along with it, Obsidian's any chance of a MCA/Tim Cain Kickstarter.

 

[Grunker]

If you think every opinion he's stated on P:E is wrong so far, I disagree with you very much. In fact, I find the majority of what he's said positive, but there's no reason to raise awareness of that on a forum. There's a few points where I disagree completely with the man, and those are the ones I've discussed here.

 

[Mrowak]

What's shit ? New Vegas ?
Or maybe you've been given the gift of prophecy and you KNOW that Project Eternity will be bad game ?

Reread what I wrote. I was referring to the opinion being shit.

Exactly which of his opinions are shit?

 

[Roguey]

You didn't get bored by having to annihilate hordes of lizardmen, hordes of undead and hordes of Yuan-Ti? Oh and that weird filler level with the beetles and clerics of Talona.

Sure, there's too much trash combat. But there's fun on every level. The first has the lizard king fight with his two shamans and underlings. The second has that group of four clerics with their troll bodyguards plus that long hallway full of acid-bursting beetles with that neat prize at the end. The third has the novelty of a couple of battles where an exploding corpse shows up mid-way and you have to nail it before it reaches you, plus the end fight with Presio, all those poison zombies, and those magic missile-ready imbued wights. The fourth level eases up on the difficulty in favor of attrition-tension where you first have to kill all those false priests who come after you, and then fight past those unlimited summons to kill that damned summoner. There's a fight at the top but it's pretty meh. The fifth has a room with a bunch of un-kitable powerful archers mixed with melee guys (who can be kited), then the fight before Yxunomei with those four clerics and their melee bodyguards, and finally Yxunomei herself along with her cleric and regular back-ups.

The Severed Hand at least had a coherent theme and interesting architecture.

But boring gameplay and writing.

Dragon's Eye is the absolute shittiest, most grindy piece of boring filth in any Infinity Engine game ever.

There wasn't a single interesting fight in chapter 5. Chapter 1 had one and it was at the very end, I already mentioned the only good things about chapter 3 (but a reminder that Arnedo thought it would be fun to spawn undead right on top of your party all the time much like NWN2 and Dragon Age 2), chapter 4 only had one (but it was a damn good one), chapter 6 was more trash sprinkled with Sawyer-brilliance but there wasn't as much of it as there was in Dragon's Eye (pretty much just the archers in the tower, Malavon, and the temple Idol)

 

[Blaine]

sprinkled with Sawyer-brilliance

 

[Jaesun]

Obsidian ‏@Obsidian8m
#ProjectEternity Update 53: The Man Who Makes Monsters with designer Bobby Null! http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/63796-the-man-who-makes-monsters/ …

Update by Bobby Null, Designer and Beast Master



Greetings, everyone! I'm on update duty this week, and while this will relatively brief, I'll give you a little insider info I hope you find interesting. Today we will be talking about the bestiary. Yeah, that's right... it's time to talk about monsters.

One of my responsibilities has been creating the bestiary for Project Eternity. I'll admit, it's been a lot of work, but it's also been a lot fun. Like most of the things we do here at Obsidian, the process has been very collaborative. We have a few high-level goals regarding this process on Project Eternity.

• Creature Variety - The goal is to have a large library of creatures to use for the final game. Thus far, we're on track to meet this goal. The concept artists, modelers and animators have been tearing through the bestiary and delivering quality assets at a rapid pace.
• Recognizable is Good - We don't want to try to reinvent the wheel with every single monster. As we've shown in an earlier update, we feel some classic monsters, like the ogre, are essential to capture the adventuring feel we are aiming for. Moving forward, we are committed to including monsters that we feel fans will appreciate, while giving the beasties flavor appropriate to the world of Project Eternity.
• Different if Cool - We've already shown one of the unique creatures for Project Eternity in an earlier update, the skuldr. We will continue to create other unique, and often times bizarre, creatures to populate our world, but unique doesn't always need to feel bizarre. Different because it's cool is the goal.

So now that I've briefly discussed our high level goals, let's talk about a new creature: The Cean Gúla (KEN GOO-lah, "Blood Woman", Glanfathan), and the pipeline we use to get it through the concept phase.

• The creature idea is added to our bestiary document.
• Members of the team can comment on the document and share their thoughts/concerns on any given creature.
• The bestiary is updated based on feedback from the team. Some creatures get the thumbs up, while others get cut.
• An approved creature is then assigned to a concept artist. In the case of the cean gúla, Polina Hristova was in charge of this crucial step.
• The concept artist does a first pass, creating a series of thumbnail sketches (image below).
• The leads of the project review the thumbnails, choose a favorite, and provide the artist with feedback.
• The artist creates a final concept based on the feedback received (image below).

Once approved, the creature continues down the pipe as it is now ready to be modeled by one of our character artists. We'll save the rest of the creature pipeline for another update.

That's all for this week. As always, let us know what you think on our forums. See you in two weeks with an update from Rob Nesler. He'll be talking about the entire art team and what they've been up to.

 

[Zed]

finally some tits in this game

Looks good. I like wights and "im pretty lol jk im a monster"-women. Very Scandinavian folkloreish.

I'm glad they are going for a big beastiary. Creatures are 53534532x times more fun than "guard in red colors".

 

[Sensuki]

My body is ready to get fucken booked by Incorporeal creatures

 

[Space Satan]

Ghosts remind me of Clay Golems from BG 2 and all "WTF with this shit! Damn bastards are immune to everything I have!"

 

[Mangoose]

finally some tits in this game

Looks good. I like wights and "im pretty lol jk im a monster"-women. Very Scandinavian folkloreish.

I'm glad they are going for a big beastiary. Creatures are 53534532x times more fun than "guard in red colors".

Eh, my favorite type of encounter is an adventuring party that is similar in build as yours. Along with some nice AI to put it on equal footing.

 

[dunno lah]

Aren't those unique encounters? I think he meant fighting monsters is better than fighting a group of generic humans/goblins etc.

 

[Mangoose]

Aren't those unique encounters? I think he meant fighting monsters is better than fighting a group of generic humans/goblins etc.

Ah okay.

And at your sn

 

[dunno lah]

what is sn?

 

[Sensuki]

Screen name?