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

[Sensuki]

I'd say that's a given as well.

Would be nice to get a mini vertical slice update soonish to see what they've been up to between the last one and now.

 

[tuluse]

And we're back to http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...t-eternity-thread.75947/page-791#post-2772492

It's been nine months so I better see a vertical slice video this month. One that will no doubt blow Wasteland 2's and Shadowrun Returns's away.

Well Shadowrun Return's vertical slice was more impressive than their final product, let's hope that doesn't hold true with Wasteland and PE.

 

[Ninjerk]

And we're back to http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...t-eternity-thread.75947/page-791#post-2772492

It's been nine months so I better see a vertical slice video this month. One that will no doubt blow Wasteland 2's and Shadowrun Returns's away.

Well Shadowrun Return's vertical slice was more impressive than their final product, let's hope that doesn't hold true with Wasteland and PE.

Let's face it, we all had fun with SRR but a video of my butt would make a better vertical slice.

 

[Lancehead]

Slow motion is something I'd be very interested to see in the vertical slice video. It may help with RTwP control problems.

 

[Sensuki]

There are no RTwP control problems (Dota 2 player here)

 

[Grunker]

There are no RTwP control problems (Dota 2 player here)

P:E is A LOT more complex. 6 times the amount of characters and probably 10-20 times the amount of actives. Like we've discussed before, BG usually had 3 auto-attackers + 3 casters in a party. If P:E offers active complexity for all classes, control issues have a good chance of occuring. ESPECIALLY since Sawyer is focusing on positioning as an important concept.

 

[Sensuki]

That was a joke. FixT post with enough emoticons to make that obvious.

There are however various heroes in DotA which require the micro management of multiple units with active abilities and positioning is extremely important in that game too (it also requires constant input unlike P:E).

 

[Roguey]

P:E is A LOT more complex. 6 times the amount of characters and probably 10-20 times the amount of actives. Like we've discussed before, BG usually had 3 auto-attackers + 3 casters in a party. If P:E offers active complexity for all classes, control issues have a good chance of occuring. ESPECIALLY since Sawyer is focusing on positioning as an important concept.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/48339-josh-is-the-creative-leadlead-designer-now/#entry813393

Poindexter games can be satisfying on an intellectual level. ToEE was a very satisfying game. BG2 also had some very challenging combats that were intellectually satisfying to overcome. But they aren't viscerally satisfying -- at least not for me. I get a certain excitement out of rolling in tabletop (last night my cleric got 12 on 2d6 for a very important turn attempt) because of the risk and the fact that I'm actually rolling physical dice. I don't get that in CRPGs where I'm sitting back and watching my dudes standing in place, cycling through attack animations over and over.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/48339-josh-is-the-creative-leadlead-designer-now/page-2#entry813463

As I wrote, that can be fun, but it's not moment-to-moment fun or satisfaction. The same applies to most of the games I've worked on. You can coordinate your characters well, but a lot of the time is spent watching what they're doing instead of giving input on what they are doing -- or the results of the input are synchronized in such a way that you don't typically feel the impact of them. De-synched, generic hit reactions that have to handle combat between dozens of enemy and weapon types, actions that take place after monumental pauses where the characters need to queue up in the game's constructed combat round, etc.

I know a lot of people enjoyed the combat in the Infinity Engine games and NWN games, but did it ever put you at the edge of your seat? Did it ever make you jump up or reflexively shift your body during gameplay? That wasn't my experience. Cerebral vs. visceral satisfaction aren't in opposition to each other, and neither is inherently more virtuous than the other, but I think it's important for us as developers to think hard about what sort of experience we want the player to have given a variety of expectations.

IE-style gameplay gets visceral. The right way, not the Bioware way.

Also he said you can make any given character as passive or as active as you want, though spellcasters skew towards active and weapon-classes skew towards passive.

 

[Delterius]

Wrong emoticon, should have gone with .

Really Sensuki, there's no comparison between an RTwP RPG and a RTS/The War3 module that ruined everything. Its not just that the most passive characters (that aren't a bore) are likely to be more complex than the individual heroes from DotA, but also the rules clusterfuck.

Making things worse is how party members simply can't be expendable in a RPG. Otherwise the game is so easy its boring. Sure, dying isn't good in DotA, but if you sacrifice one or two to kill the other 5, then whatever, the damage is done and your guys will be back just in time. In RPGs, including P:E, this implies long term consequences.

 

[Sensuki]

Not if you are simply talking about character control / inputs required. Because that's all I meant. IE games are RTS like in their controls, I don't think it's that much of a stretch to compare them to controlling units in a game like Warcraft 3.

 

[tuluse]

Let's face it, we all had fun with SRR but a video of my butt would make a better vertical slice.

The vertical slice video showed a complex alert and reaction system that didn't make it into the final game, and hinted at a stealth system.

 

[Ninjerk]

I meant that a video of my butt as P:E's vertical slice would be proof of improvement over SRR (despite how good the game looks and that I had fun playing it).

 

[Frusciante]

And we're back to http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...t-eternity-thread.75947/page-791#post-2772492

It's been nine months so I better see a vertical slice video this month. One that will no doubt blow Wasteland 2's and Shadowrun Returns's away.

Vertical slice is probably allready finished, but a lot of things probably still have placeholder art/animations/mechanics. Whatever you tell them, people will still judge the vertical slice video as if it were a finished product. So I would wait a couple of months more untill you can polish the vertical slice areas some more and have more final art/animations in place.

I would guess that they show the vertical slice video late september/early october. Since release is about a year away, I would also release the video in three parts. No sense in spoiling everything you have in one video. One video about combat and UI, one about world map travel, exploration, non-combat skills and resting and a final video about dialoque, crafting, companions and towns/merchants.

 

[Sensuki]

Actually I don't think the Vertical Slice is finished yet. I believe the team wanted to get ALL the game features in before they commenced Production. Currently they're working on the Stronghold stuff atm. Also not 100% sure if they've finalized their environment art rendering pipeline yet, they said they were thinking about moving to Octane which is faster than the current fairly slow method.

Dynamic Cloth and Hair was another one on the to do list. Josh also mentioned that some of the armor was not finalized/modelled (Brigandine and Leather)

We're going to look into using Octane for our final and diffuse renders because Octane is GPU-accelerated. We could build a render machine specifically for those and even if artists shared it, Octane would likely shred through the renders in no time. 1:40 for a full-res render of all passes is acceptable but we're still going to look into ways we can speed it up without losing quality.

Tim's implemented tax collection, everyone. Let the good times roll.

We have most of our base armor types in the game now (still working on leather and brigandine).

Edit: As a side note I will continue the quest for brofist farm

 

[Frusciante]

Sensuki, why does Geroge Ziets always say something like ''when I last saw PE, the story looked like X and Y''. Is he not involved at all anymore in writing the story/companions? Was he ever really involved in writing the story?

Could be my imagination but it seems like there is a slight undertone of dissatisfaction in his posts about PE.

 

[Grunker]

George isn't involved in the main narrative. That's why he doesn't follow its progression closely.

 

[Infinitron]

Sensuki, why does Geroge Ziets always say something like ''when I last saw PE, the story looked like X and Y''. Is he not involved at all anymore in writing the story/companions? Was he ever really involved in writing the story?

Read the comments: http://www.formspring.me/GZiets/q/482994227865740111

George isn't involved in the main narrative. That's why he doesn't follow its progression closely.

Don't think that's true: http://www.formspring.me/GZiets/q/473207365924057979

He was involved, but he's not followed it since he moved on to working on Torment.

 

[Rake]

Sensuki, why does Geroge Ziets always say something like ''when I last saw PE, the story looked like X and Y''. Is he not involved at all anymore in writing the story/companions? Was he ever really involved in writing the story?

Could be my imagination but it seems like there is a slight undertone of dissatisfaction in his posts about PE.

He was involved in the start.(lore,narrative etc.) Now that PE is focused on their vertical slice he is not needed any more, so his involvement is on hiatus (they don't have enough money to pay him while he will do nothing.At this point of development it wouldn't surprise me if not a single writer is actively involved in PE.) When they need him again they will contact him.

Grunker
I think the main narrative for PE is a mix of George and Eric Fenstermaker's plot ideas.
http://www.formspring.me/GZiets/q/473207365924057979

 

[Sensuki]

Sensuki, why does Geroge Ziets always say something like ''when I last saw PE, the story looked like X and Y''. Is he not involved at all anymore in writing the story/companions? Was he ever really involved in writing the story?

Could be my imagination but it seems like there is a slight undertone of dissatisfaction in his posts about PE.

George Ziets is doing contracted work for P:E

During the Kickstarter many of us thought he would be just working remotely, but he's been kept fairly out of the loop. George does not have access to the Obsidian Unity builds and has never played the prototype. I believe George worked on P:E from somewhere late last year to during the prototype this year mostly doing High Level Design and contributing ideas to the narrative.

Obsidian have not given him any new work since somewhere around Prototype 2? (at a guess, but perhaps before) and so he has been working on Torment instead. From the way he writes his responses (and emails I've had with him) it seems that even he is not sure what else he is going to be working on for Project Eternity.

I think that once they enter Production they will probably get George to come back in and do some non-cNPCs, story, dialogue etc, but I am not 100% positive.

George isn't involved in the main narrative. That's why he doesn't follow its progression closely.

George was involved in the main narrative.

Josh Sawyer had a 'basic outline' of what the narrative was going to be and told the designers to go off and do their own draft of what the story should be. I am not sure how many designers did a take on the story but we know Eric Fenstermaker, George Ziets and Josh Sawyer all did a draft among others. Chris Avellone probably didn't do one but contributed to some of the design meetings.

Eric Fenstermaker's draft was the one they liked the most, but they also used elements from George's and Josh's drafts and some minor elements from others (NPCs, antagonists etc). Eric came onto the team once South Park wrapped up and appears to have become the lead narrative designer and over time the story draft has changed and even the main theme has changed. George has stated that he collaborated with Eric in writing some of the earlier stuff after the design meetings.

For example, the seed of the narrative and the broad outlines of the world were developed by Josh Sawyer (as seen in the Kickstarter updates), and what the story is “about” was determined in a series of very productive design meetings that included me, Josh, Jorge Salgado, Bobby Null, and others. After each meeting, I’ll go off and write a story draft, and then we come back to the table and discuss, edit, iterate.

For the main story arc, we actually combined elements from three designers' stories: Josh's, Eric Fenstermaker's, and mine. And we used ideas from the other designers too.

So a narrative update related to companions... Eric Fenstermaker has been hard at work on the narrative, and it’s reached the point with the arc and themes that now seemed like a good time to introduce the companion supporting pillars to the process to take the story higher (...not necessarily in a “Can you Take Me Higher” Creed sort of way, since it’s not really a question, it’s more like, “yes, we will take you higher.”)
...
On Eternity, Eric has a strong theme for the story already. While not the original theme, Josh was accommodating and we all recognized that if another theme came to the forefront naturally through the writing process, it’s fine to alter it to make a stronger design

 

[Duraframe300]

Sensuki, why does Geroge Ziets always say something like ''when I last saw PE, the story looked like X and Y''. Is he not involved at all anymore in writing the story/companions? Was he ever really involved in writing the story?

Could be my imagination but it seems like there is a slight undertone of dissatisfaction in his posts about PE.

He's a freelancer and the core team is finishing the vertical slice at Obsidian. As such they just don't need him currently.

Edit: Man I'm slow.

 

[Grunker]

Sensuki, why does Geroge Ziets always say something like ''when I last saw PE, the story looked like X and Y''. Is he not involved at all anymore in writing the story/companions? Was he ever really involved in writing the story?

Read the comments: http://www.formspring.me/GZiets/q/482994227865740111

George isn't involved in the main narrative. That's why he doesn't follow its progression closely.

Don't think that's true: http://www.formspring.me/GZiets/q/473207365924057979

He was involved, but he's not followed it since he moved on to working on Torment.

Sensuki, why does Geroge Ziets always say something like ''when I last saw PE, the story looked like X and Y''. Is he not involved at all anymore in writing the story/companions? Was he ever really involved in writing the story?

Could be my imagination but it seems like there is a slight undertone of dissatisfaction in his posts about PE.

He was involved in the start.(lore,narrative etc.) Now that PE is focused on their vertical slice he is not needed any more, so his involvement is on hiatus (they don't have enough money to pay him while he will do nothing.At this point of development it wouldn't surprise me if not a single writer is actively involved in PE.) When they need him again they will contact him.

Grunker
I think the main narrative for PE is a mix of George and Eric Fenstermaker's plot ideas.
http://www.formspring.me/GZiets/q/473207365924057979

I stand corrected.

 

[Duraframe300]

Over at Neogaf they got an e-mail for their Project: Eternity Inn.

 

[Sensuki]

Hello. My name is Brandon and I am the producer on Project Eternity. I am contacting you because, now that we are entering production, we will need to collect info from you regarding your inn design. This info would normally be collected from our backer site, but we are still in the process of revamping it.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=495718&page=3

 

[Duraframe300]

Yep.

Does that mean todays update was spoiled?

 

[Sensuki]

Might include fulfillment information as well.