Editorial RPG Codex Report: A Codexian Visit to inXile Entertainment

[Abu Antar]

CHBWD-IH45K-XPA2T

 

[Excidium II]

I knew the codex would send someone spineless, InXile folks dodge questions and he just jumps to the next one.

George: She does have a portrait. What we tried to do was to make sure the critical story characters did have portraits. As far as I know, they do. Colin, does that sound right to you?

Colin: Originally, yeah. I don’t know that they made it into the game though.

Jim later checked for me and the major NPC portraits that made it into the combat are those that you see during Crises. There were none during dialogue.

Not even playing their own game?

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

spending 20% of an entire budget on a console port and they dont even know sales numbers yet....what a mess indeed.

I thought his comment was implying that of the money they got from the console deal (Techland) only 20% was directly for the port and the rest was added to the overall dev budget, not that 20% of the overall budget was spent porting it.

 

[Kem0sabe]

But then the Codex reacted negatively and put some things up there, I don’t know what, and that made some people upset.

Brother None is such a whiny little effeminate cunt...

Inxile is on the defensive for most of the interview, they are truly dumbfounded about why the game failed sales wise and why the community seems to have responded poorly. Doesnt bode well for their yet to be released games.

 

[Roguey]

They should have focused on PC, and despite the costs, they should have let the game in the oven and released it in 2018 if that is what it took. Had they delivered an overall more polished experience, sales would probably have followed.

They spent over 8.5 million to release this in 2017. You think they would have had enough sales to recoup millions more?

 

[Infinitron]

I'm thinking a possible way to "save Torment" would have been to take a risk and invest in developing it simultaneously with Wasteland 2, rather than waiting for WL2's production to conclude. I feel like a reason why the game failed is that it just took so long to make that it sort of lost its place in public awareness and by the time it finally came out people didn't care anymore. Even its own backers didn't seem to care, with tons of them refusing to unlock their beta keys.

But of course that could have turned out very badly.

 

[Abu Antar]

They should have focused on PC, and despite the costs, they should have let the game in the oven and released it in 2018 if that is what it took. Had they delivered an overall more polished experience, sales would probably have followed.

They spent over 8.5 million to release this in 2017. You think they would have had enough sales to recoup millions more?

I think that releasing a product that wasn't complete, (and fully out of early access), and did receive bad word of mouth, during a quarter in the year that was busy as fuck with new releases, and a new console release that made the media have no focus on this game, would have been a good thing in the end.

Everything surrounding the release of this game was either negative from some places or not enough coverage from some places.

As my man Shigeru Miyamoto once said:

“A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever.”

Of course, they shouldn't have bothered with Wasteland 2 on consoles either. They became greedy.

 

[Black Angel]

As my man Shigeru Miyamoto once said:

“A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever.”

That quote has to be changed/revised or something. There's some shit like Duke Nukem Forever, you know?

Although.... we did had Age of Decadence.... but maybe until Grimoire ACTUALLY released For Sure™, we'll see how true that quote is.

 

[Roguey]

I think that releasing a product that wasn't complete, (and fully out of early access), and did receive bad word of mouth, during a quarter in the year that was busy as fuck with new releases, and a new console release that made the media have no focus on this game, would have been a good thing in the end.

Everything surrounding the release of this game was either negative from some places or not enough coverage from some places.

As my man Shigeru Miyamoto once said:


Of course, they shouldn't have bothered with Wasteland 2 on consoles either. They became greedy.

To keep in mind the scope of this, they would have had to outperform two years of Wasteland 2 sales just to break even.

 

[Abu Antar]

I think that releasing a product that wasn't complete, (and fully out of early access), and did receive bad word of mouth, during a quarter in the year that was busy as fuck with new releases, and a new console release that made the media have no focus on this game, would have been a good thing in the end.

Everything surrounding the release of this game was either negative from some places or not enough coverage from some places.

As my man Shigeru Miyamoto once said:


Of course, they shouldn't have bothered with Wasteland 2 on consoles either. They became greedy.

To keep in mind the scope of this, they would have had to outperform two years of Wasteland 2 sales just to break even.

Maybe they shouldn't have waited until 2018, but for a calmer period in the year and with a more stable version and with less content. Let's say they would need to spend an overall $10 million on the game. I would still have done it. But I get your point.

 

[Abu Antar]

By the way, why does the interviewer want to be anonymous?

 

[Saduj]

I didn't participate in the kickstarter/beta so I don't know what kind of feedback they were getting. But Fargo's focus on number of words in response to questions about content seems strange to me. As if much of the positive feedback they were getting boiled down to "more words", which seems unlikely.

 

[Outlander]

I think my guys still read the Codex, and I think they still post on it sometimes. Sometimes they come back and they’re upset.

 

[flabbyjack]

Watch it sell 100,000 more copies when the price dips to $30. Sales is all about market timing, bros. Everybody is still playing Age of Fear. ... next time try for a Christmas release? I for one love the idea of Mere-like cutscenes. Insert more dissonant thoughts here.

 

[felipepepe]

Colin: The people who are open to enjoying this game are enjoying the hell out of it. There's a reason the professional reviews are just ecstatic. I saw some guy claiming today: I started playing Planescape: Torment again and I have to admit I'd rather be playing Torment: Tides of Numenera right now. This is a subjective thing, people enjoy the things they like and there's no accounting for taste.

Sadly, Colin comes across as someone still deep in denial... like he actually thinks he made a game that's better than PST and people don't see that because they aren't "open to enjoying it".

Watch it sell 100,000 more copies when the price dips to $30. Sales is all about market timing, bros. Everybody is still playing Age of Fear

Age of Fear, that game that only sold 20k copies? Much people, very success.

And lowering price will of course increase sales, but nowadays there are so many games being released with prices all over the spectrum that that alone won't cut it. I can go to Steam right now and buy PST:EE, Bayonetta AND Cosmic Star Heroine and it would still be cheaper than Numanuma alone. And a thousand times more enjoyable.

 

[MRY]

By the way, why does the interviewer want to be anonymous?

Because when he joins inXile he still wants to be able to post here without you guys knowing.

I thought that was a very nice interview, great questions and meaty answers. Maybe it will lead to a hudna.

 

[Irenaeus]

Not good enough. Colin needs to bend the knee.

Hate to agree with this faggot.

 

[Crispy]

Enjoyed the interview. It needs/needed better editing, though. Where is Crooked Bee?

- The comment about not counting QA as part of the team made me lol
- Fargo seems genuinely contrite and I like the fact that inXile seems to be generally a humble and ultimately honest organization

But he needs to remember on his way out that no matter what he says, no matter how many apologies are issued (and accepted), the quality of or lack thereof his work speaks far more volume. If you hit a home run with Bard's Tale IV, Brian, and I suspect you will, you could tell Codex to fuck right off and we'd still love you. But put out another clunker like T:ToN and you'd better move to some foreign country when you retire. Wait, that sounded like a threat. We're not like that. Seriously.

I'll shut up now.

 

[himmy]

And I doubt this relationship can be repaired. Being dissapointed can be forgiven. Not being spat on.

As much as the Codex seems to hate relationships in games, as much does it seem to love having made-up relations with devs they never met. Don't get me wrong, it's perfectly legitimate to have a critical attitude towards a studio, but some people here read way too much bad fantasy for their own good, too the point whey the imbue franchises with a human qualities like honour and purity and get mad when a certain game series they like gets *defiled*.

For real, if I were to work in a game studio and see the sort of rapport the Codex is trying to have with me I would avoid that with the same vehemence that I avoid the sexual advances of drunk people with fresh vomit on their shirt in nightclubs.

 

[Shilandra]

Im not sure why pain casting didn't make it into the game. From what im reading about it in the interview it sounds like it would have reinforced what the sorrow was talking about in a more immediate and visceral way since it affected you companions. Maybe tidal surges hurting people is more pronounced in the game itself but I never used them because of rhin and the effort system rendered the option pointless.

Also with regard to wordy lore dumps there may be actually entertaining ways of doing them. of the games mentioned I liked torments and tyranny's lore dumps but pillars put me to sleep. Even numenera, at least when talking about the tides or the world, was interesting. There were plenty of writing plummets throughout the game (Changing god first reveal, everything about the sorrow, several companions, ect) But I still feel they have the ability to write interesting stuff. General wordiness isn't much of a problem here.

And I believe Im one of the people colin keeps talking about. I didn't back the game and didn't really follow any news about the game until it was released and I do seem to have a more positive opinion of the game than most I see around here. But even to me I think its just a perfectly serviceable rpg. Ultimately worth the money I spent on it but with very noticeable room to grow and improve. After all, a game that gives me about 3 or 4 different opportunities to just off myself for non-standard endings is good, but if it doesn't actually give me actual reasons to view those options as legitimate and meaningful alternative paths to take its still got some major work to do.

 

[Repulsive]

Nice interview, Fargo seemed pretty sincere here in his apology.

 

[Valky]

I expected inExile to treat our ambassador to a steak dinner as a minimum apology.

 

[Fry]

Nice interview. Thanks, mystery SoCal man.

I think the uncomfortable truth is that T:ToN's poor sales have little to do with the Steam reviews or angry Codexians and more to do with broader trends. I don't expect future isometric RPGs to sell much beyond their backer numbers, as Obsidian is likely to discover next year.

MRY is a great example. I worked with him and the guy is smart as hell, he's a district attorney

Now I'm curious which county he works for. I need someone to yell at the next time I get stuck on jury duty for a month.

 

[Tigranes]

Good interview, and all in all I think it was open and frank. It's good to get some AFAIK previously unknown details on just how barebones the game was by late 2015, such and such.

I think most devs of underperforming games all over the world tend to think "mistakes were made, but the game isn't quite as bad as some people think it is." Honestly, I think TTON was hurt more by bad decisions on how to disclose what aspects of the story to the player when, than mere 'wordiness'.

Torment was never going to make POE/DOS numbers, but yeah, when you end up putting in 9m, it's going to be tough to break even on a project like this.

 

[DemonKing]

PS:Torment was never a huge seller and I imagine that a lot of people that bought it "back in the day" based on the Dungeons & Dragons license/infinity engine expecting a Baldur's Gate style adventure never finished it. Bringing out a new game and trying to replicate "the magic" of the original was always going to be a tough ask, given that those that loved the original would have impossibly high expectations and those that didn't wouldn't buy it anyway. Inxile will probably be lucky to break even (eventually) on this one. Console sales will be negligible.

Interested to read his thought on the creative process and that IWD was the only time the whole thing went smoothly and according to plan. Probably explains why the end product is so cohesive.