Codex Interview Swen Vincke talks to the Codex

[MetalCraze]

A terrible interview. I've stopped reading when bullshit about choices & consequences started. FFS you spend like half of an article talking about that bullshit in a fucking action/strategy game. What the fuck?
I want to know more about the gameplay.

 

[mondblut]

The frightening bit was the revelation that only 7-17% of a developer's group works on gameplay, and I won't be surprised if I find that this percentage is a lot smaller in larger studios. This really is a strange industry. Can you imagine a car manufacturer where over 70% of the developing team only focused on making the body look nice?

Well, vidiyagames are obsessed with having a happy marriage with the movie industry, and in the movie industry only 7-17% of a film cast are, well, acting, and the rest are out there with lights and cameras and mocap suits to make it look nice.

What's more disturbing is that only 7-17% of this interview dealt with gameplay, while the rest was about this "C&C" nonsense. It's like 2007 before mondblut joined all over again. Gather in arms, my minions, the time is nigh for another purge of storyfags!

 

[Darth Roxor]

Well, vidiyagames are obsessed with having a happy marriage with the movie industry, and in the movie industry only 7-17% of a film cast are, well, acting, and the rest are out there with lights and cameras and mocap suits to make it look nice.

What's more disturbing is that only 7-17% of this interview dealt with gameplay, while the rest was about this "C&C" nonsense. It's like 2007 before mondblut joined all over again. Gather in arms, my minions, the time is nigh for another purge of storyfags!

YOU HAVE MY TORCH

 

[Kraszu]

A terrible interview. I've stopped reading when bullshit about choices & consequences started. FFS you spend like half of an article talking about that bullshit in a fucking action/strategy game. What the fuck?
I want to know more about the gameplay.

C&C is a decision making that influences your standings with important NPC > influences what you will have to your disposal during combat, how is that not part of the gameplay?

 

[SerratedBiz]

It's, say, less important than the actual gameplay, how the character system works, what the skill / talent trees are like, and so on. The stuff that doesn't make you want to SKIP through terrible VOs.

 

[mondblut]

Funny how the holy C&C turns, 7 men are making a game, 70 men are talking in funny voices and finetuning facial expressions.

Embrace your DAO, bitches, it is everything your beloved Fallout and PST dreamed of being 15 years ago. A typical wretch from bioware social = C&Cfag par exellence.

 

[Kraszu]

Funny how the holy C&C turns, 7 men are making a game, 70 men are talking in funny voices and finetuning facial expressions.

VA isn't counted into that, nor does it cost that much. Gfx, and animations cost so much, and not having any dialogue wouldn't change much there.

Embrace your DAO, bitches, it is everything your beloved Fallout and PST dreamed of being 15 years ago. A typical wretch from bioware social = C&Cfag par exellence.

What c&c DAO have?

"That’s very theoretical so here’s an example. If the variable is, how angry is the girl at you, then you can put in several situations in which you can make her angry. If you made her angry enough, then the plot develops along the lines of her leaving you. Otherwise, it progresses along the track of you still being in a relation with her.
To make matters more interesting, you then make it so that the girl being angry at you is also used to drive forward another plotline, e.g. your relation with her father. This relation can also be affected by e.g. how much money you are making for him. If she leaves you, but you make tons of money for him, he’ll still be happy about you, progressing along his “I’m happy with you” track. But if you don’t make enough money for him and you leave his daughter, then you might go down the other track. Etc… etc… etc…"

" "My princess is an elf vegetarian - shall I force her to join me to a dinner offered by the dwarves where there'll only be meat, knowing that they will take offense if she doesn't eat the boar killed by their king for this very occasion ?". Well, even for that specific occasion, there's a bifurcating arc that further develops on whatever choice you made."

That is some interesting c&c, real gameplay consequences to your decisions ftw.

 

[MetalCraze]

C&C is a decision making that influences your standings with important NPC > influences what you will have to your disposal during combat, how is that not part of the gameplay?

It took you one sentence to explain this. It took 50% of the interview to dance around this same crap.
Why not talk about available tactics? Like formations, manoeuvers? What weapons are there or are there just dragons blowing shit up with fire?
I don't give a slightest fuck if I can feed a vegetarian princess with meat in a strategy game where I'm supposed to engage in battles commanding my armies. What is this bullshit?

Maybe my knowledge of what strategy games are is outdated but I always thought they were about commanding armies and killing shit with them, not engaging in a cinematic experience of eating virtual food.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

I asked for skilltrees and so on but got quite evasive answers which was predictable at that point being quite far from release still. He started to advertize C&C for this game, so it was appropriate to ask for examples, yes?

 

[Phelot]

Hey, nice Codex content! Thanks, VoD for the post.

Also:

"Do I consider abortion an evil or a right ? And if I consider it evil, at what point does it become evil ? From the moment of conception, or at a later stage ?"

WTF? Does dragon life begin in the egg?

 

[Darth Roxor]

Hey, nice Codex content! Thanks, VoD for the post.

Also:

"Do I consider abortion an evil or a right ? And if I consider it evil, at what point does it become evil ? From the moment of conception, or at a later stage ?"

WTF? Does dragon life begin in the egg?

But then what was first? The dragon or the egg?

so much c&c

 

[mondblut]

That's, again, kinda disturbing that elf vegetarianism is already in while skilltrees aren't. I predict in 20 years all genres will be "C&C" dating sims, the only genre differences being whether the prospective brides wear chainmail bikinis, power armors or soccer uniforms.

And no, there is no point of asking for "C&C examples". Every single instance of "C&C" is absofuckinglutely identical. An event fires, you get to pick a line out of 2 or more - and then you get more hostile to faction A and more friendly to faction B or the other way around; or you get more evil or more good which might even end up with a special evil or good final cutscene; or you lock yourself out of a bit of optional content while naturally unlocking preciseily equivalent other bit of optional content. It's all the fucking same from Fallout to GalCiv to Gothic to King Arthur - select an option, see something awesome happens. Asking about it is like asking what kind of controls the game will have, maybe keyboard or even the mouse. When it's there, you know what it is, end of story.

 

[Phelot]

Well, I can't say I'm impressed with the idea of navigating my Elven princesses delicate vegetarian tastes or dealing with abortion. I tend not to like to tackle modern issues in a fantasy setting. It always seems very glaring. Perhaps there will be some C&C regarding a dwarven super PAC financing my campaign.

I kind of get the impression this will perhaps be like King Arthur's campaign system? Wish we could get more details on combat, but I guess it's too early.

 

[MetalCraze]

I asked for skilltrees and so on but got quite evasive answers which was predictable at that point being quite far from release still. He started to advertize C&C for this game, so it was appropriate to ask for examples, yes?

No? You kept on yapping about C&C way beyond that. Also what mondblut said.

Man it's an action/strategy game. It's about blowing shit up with your army. Don't you think plot-related stuff should be the least important in this genre and stuff like whether you can do something more but select "follow me/attack" by pressing A on a gamepad while facing the enemy is much much more important?

Even asking the question whether it won't be too boring controlling a small squad of flying units that just shoot and how are they planning to make such limited combat more interesting using tactical means - would already be a massive incline.
But instead you ask about voiceovers and cutscenes. In a strategy game. For fuck's sake man.

I kind of get the impression this will perhaps be like King Arthur's campaign system? Wish we could get more details on combat, but I guess it's too early.

The only reason why we didn't get more details about the combat is because VoD didn't give a fuck about it.
At least we now know that while devs have no idea how their skilltrees look - they already have a lot of ideas about storyfag shit.

 

[Kraszu]

That's, again, kinda disturbing that elf vegetarianism is already in while skilltrees aren't.

I don't see anything strange about it, they are probably trying different ideas out so he doesn't want to talk about what they have now because it can change, but there is no reason to remove vegetarian princess you tweak the balance and consequences to the end.

That's, again, kinda disturbing that elf vegetarianism is already in while skilltrees aren't. I predict in 20 years all genres will be "C&C" dating sims, the only genre differences being whether the prospective brides wear chainmail bikinis, power armors or soccer uniforms.

And no, there is no point of asking for "C&C examples". Every single instance of "C&C" is absofuckinglutely identical. An event fires, you get to pick a line out of 2 or more - and then you get more hostile to faction A and more friendly to faction B or the other way around; or you get more evil or more good which might even end up with a special evil or good final cutscene; or you lock yourself out of a bit of optional content while naturally unlocking preciseily equivalent other bit of optional content. It's all the fucking same from Fallout to GalCiv to Gothic to King Arthur - select an option, see something awesome happens. Asking about it is like asking what kind of controls the game will have, maybe keyboard or even the mouse. When it's there, you know what it is, end of story.

They are always the same yet you had named 3 different ones yourself.

 

[Phelot]

Questions 7-10 appear to be related to combat. The guy was just being dodgy.

 

[DraQ]

"self-respecting"

Yeah, what an odd way to misspell "butthurt".

 

[hiver]

On a core team of about 40 guys not counting the outsourcing (which brought the total at times over 100), we on average had only 7 guys busy with the actual gameplay, so that gives you an idea of how much effort the production values take. Too much if you ask me, but that's the industry we're in.

No comment.

 

[mondblut]

I don't see anything strange about it, they are probably trying different ideas out so he doesn't want to talk about what they have now because it can change, but there is no reason to remove vegetarian princess you tweak the balance and consequences to the end.

Strange? Not at all. Treating your game as a mere excuse for telling a story has been a staple of the industry for at least a decade. Games come and go, ideas are tried and being discarded, and only the vegetarian princesses stand paramount as a sole reason to develop.

They are always the same yet you had named 3 different ones yourself.

All 3 had been opened and closed about the time the first 4x game with diplomacy had been released. Since that day, inquiring about "but what happens if I'm asked to pick one of the two stuffies, sirrah" is completely and utterly redundant.

 

[Captain Shrek]

C&C is a decision making that influences your standings with important NPC > influences what you will have to your disposal during combat, how is that not part of the gameplay?

It took you one sentence to explain this. It took 50% of the interview to dance around this same crap.
Why not talk about available tactics? Like formations, manoeuvers? What weapons are there or are there just dragons blowing shit up with fire?
I don't give a slightest fuck if I can feed a vegetarian princess with meat in a strategy game where I'm supposed to engage in battles commanding my armies. What is this bullshit?

Maybe my knowledge of what strategy games are is outdated but I always thought they were about commanding armies and killing shit with them, not engaging in a cinematic experience of eating virtual food.

a) C&C CAN be a gameplay element. The way its described here precludes that though.
b) Core Gameplay is more important than core C&C undoubtedly.

 

[DraQ]

On a core team of about 40 guys not counting the outsourcing (which brought the total at times over 100), we on average had only 7 guys busy with the actual gameplay, so that gives you an idea of how much effort the production values take. Too much if you ask me, but that's the industry we're in.

No comment.

Sounds about right actually.

Gameplay is not models, sounds, texts, textures, animations and all that stuff that requires a lot of menial work.
It requires a lot of coordination from group and heavy communication between people involved to be any good, and I'd guess it's the part of the game that's lightest on menial work, but hardest on brainwork.

 

[hiver]

It wasnt a criticism at all. I just quoted that part because it shows whats it all come up to.

 

[Phelot]

Yeah, Swen Vincke seems pretty depressed about what is required to make a game that can compete on the market. Considering that quote, I don't blame him.

But still... vegetarian elven princesses and abortion?

 

[deus101]

OK! for fucks sake this is getting annoying.

I was taught by the codex that we used the phrases C&C as an euphemist to having choices in directions within an RPG and the outcomes that the character is give by what is chosen.(yeah something like that)

And that storyfags turned it into a solely a "save" or "harvest" plot ending shit.

 

[The Vanished One]

I'm of the "shit until proven otherwise" school of thought, but Larian are cool guys and it's tempting to hope that they'll actually manage to come come up with something of its own kind. Still looking forward to DC, if it's good I might even buy it in the first month instead of waiting two years as I do for most games.