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Let's be honest, the game's probably gonna suck harder than Trump at a kosher fundraiser.
Even if they manage to not fuck up the gameplay/engine (fat chance, lol) the writing's gonna ruin everything.
I don't see Carrie 'Pork-Me-Pajeet' Patel producing anything good, and the rest of the cuck squad will be too busy sucking off their new Micro$oft overlords to pitch in.
So that leaves us with a moderately engaging isometric game featuring pretty-but-bland maps, forgettable storyline, xir companions, reused music, 4-person party/combat, and dogshit writing.
Tyranny 2.0 anyone?
inb4 that filthy jew comes to defend his masters. I'm on to you!
So that leaves us with a moderately engaging isometric game featuring pretty-but-bland maps, forgettable storyline, xir companions, reused music, 4-person party/combat, and dogshit writing.
It's not going to be isometric dude. Obsidian have a 100 person team working on this, it's an AAA game.
Pillars and Tyranny have always been side gigs. The main part of the company was continually engaged in larger projects - South Park until 2014, then Armored Warfare until 2017, and now this. RPG players just didn't really notice because they didn't care about those games.
So that leaves us with a moderately engaging isometric game featuring pretty-but-bland maps, forgettable storyline, xir companions, reused music, 4-person party/combat, and dogshit writing.
It's not going to be isometric dude. Obsidian have a 100 person team working on this, it's an AAA game.
Pillars and Tyranny were always side projects. The main part of the company was always engaged in something larger - South Park until 2014, then Armored Warfare until 2017, now this. RPG players just didn't really notice that because they didn't care about those games.
Infinitron
Yes but both of those were funded through publishers. Who was supposed to be paying the 100+ people to develop this supposed AAA game? The Microsoft acquisition is, at best, 5 months old (behind closed doors).
There's a small chance you're right, but it's highly doubtful. More likely they'll try to Diablo-fy their CRPG, and put in as many casual elements as possible (ex: replacing text responses with DragonAge2-type icon mood replies).
I dunno, we'll see soon I guess. But it'd be suicide for them to tackle an AAA 3rd-person game. They don't have the chops for it.
Infinitron
Yes but both of those were funded through publishers. Who was supposed to be paying the 100+ people to develop this supposed AAA game? The Microsoft acquisition is, at best, 5 months old (behind closed doors).
Before the anti-triangle jihad goes into full swing, please remember that the triangle system Tim showed in his Reboot presentation last year is a numeric system.
As I said when the idea was revealed, I think the reason people have a particularly negative reaction to "geometric shapes" is that the words conjure up the vision of some kind of childish, Playmobil-esque user interface where words and numbers are literally replaced one-to-one with colorful shapes and symbols. Like instead of the number 3 there's a blue triangle and instead of 4 there's a red square.
Tim should have picked a cooler, more adult-sounding term to use instead of "geometric shapes".
Maybe this is why Tim always says he’s a terrible writer. I get where you’re coming from—the concept could’ve used better branding—and it’s unfortunate because a spatial representation of your build makes a lot of sense. The first time I watched that video my eyes glazed over for the triangle talk, but when I rewatched it a couple of hours ago something about it clicked. Perhaps because I’m extremely overworked and sleep deprived; with my brain at diminished capacity it’s like a vision quest that helps me get inside the minds of the numerophobic mass market crowd Obsidian’s (hopefully only partially) aiming for.
Seriously, though, the triangle conveys so much information for a three sided object with only three words on it.
Some speculation on how the mental builds may play:
Upside down triangle with CHA on the bottom? You’re a smart, perceptive character with the social skills of a toaster (kind of your classic high functioning autism spectrum sleuth). PER at the bottom? You’re oblivious to the world around you—maybe bad vision or too much self absorption to notice things or too short an attention span—but you manage to survive thanks to your keen wits and natural charm. INT at the bottom? Classic dumb but sexy golddigger. You’re extremely stupid (my guess: this will play like 2 or 3 INT in Fallout), but between your keen eye for detail and your personal magnetism, you can often avoid trouble or rely on the kindness of strangers.
Flip the triangle and you get specialist builds rather than hybrids. INT? The somewhat oblivious, socially aloof genius. CHA? When your mediocre intelligence and perception get you into trouble, your charm gets you out of it because you are the ultimate smooth talker and, gosh darn it, people just like you. PER on top? Another high functioning autism spectrum build: not too clever and a little socially awkward, but you are constantly hyper aware of your surroundings and nothing escapes your notice.
The six possible mental builds should look something like this if Tim sticks to the model he showed at Reboot. He seemed pretty enamored with it. Anyway, the triangle is a better way of conveying your stat distribution (and thus your build) to the player in an instant. Presumably they’ll have a brief description for each mental and physical build (which is really a description for each alignment of the triangle).
In terms of convenience and ease of processing, Cain’s flippable triangle makes it clear that you can either pump one stat to the max and neglect the other two or dump one stat to the minimum and boost the other two to good levels. There are builds for PER, INT and CHA and then builds for negative PER, INT and CHA. 36 total build permutations when you factor in the plus or minus STR, AGI, and END physical builds.
Again, if Cain’s presentation was at all representative, the cool thing about this system (which may be totally theoretical) is that there’s not a single balanced build. You’re either specializing in your favorite stat from the physical/mental pool, or you’re giving yourself a huge handicap in one stat in order to be pretty good with the other two. It’s almost like Tim wants your builds to feel like the trait system from Fallout or the more extreme backgrounds in Arcanum: everything is a fairly extreme tradeoff that locks you into a certain type of character.
The other thing. He didn’t say this outright, but it seemed implicit in a lot of his remarks: it sounds like, after character creation, your base stats will be pretty static like in Fallout or AD&D or AOD for that matter. Maybe this should go without saying, but since Indiana is supposed to be the BGS Fallout killer, it was heartening to hear that Tim believes you should be locked into your build.*
*In his friendly critique of F4's character creation/leveling, he was almost indignant about what BGS did to SPECIAL, or as close to indignant as I've seen the good natured Tim Cain in one of these videos. He noted that you're not really building a character in a game where you can boost every stat whenever you level up and ultimately have 10 points in everything.
Edit: He also said BGS may have gone too far by taking out the skill system, which doesn't sound like much, but he's pretty polite about other people's games. More importantly, I may be reading too much into this, but it would seem to suggest Indiana does have a skill system.
It's not going to be isometric dude. Obsidian have a 100 person team working on this, it's an AAA game.
Pillars and Tyranny have always been side projects. The main part of the company was continually engaged in something larger - South Park until 2014, then Armored Warfare until 2017, and now this. RPG players just didn't really notice because they didn't care about those games.
This got me thinking, what a gold mine CRPGs based on 80s kids shows would have been... Imagine a He-man crpg, or a transformers crpg. GI Joe rpg? Saber Rider CRPG? Robotech CRPG?
The only "rpgs" of 80s shows have been jrpgs of Dragon Ball, and those despite being 100% pure shit, they still sold based on the franchise alone...
This got me thinking, what a gold mine CRPGs based on 80s kids shows would have been... Imagine a He-man crpg, or a transformers crpg. GI Joe rpg? Saber Rider CRPG? Robotech CRPG?
The only "rpgs" of 80s shows have been jrpgs of Dragon Ball, and those despite being 100% pure shit, they still sold based on the franchise alone...
Unless they went and fired every Network Programmer they had working on Armored Warfare they should have people able to code multiplayer stuff into the game. Unfortunately the Armored Warfare credits on mobygames.com don't really specify which programmer did what on the game and I don't have the time to go and look through every name to check if there's still some Network Programmers left at the company.
They are currently looking for Network Programmers, but that could be for their next game.
Before the anti-triangle jihad goes into full swing, please remember that the triangle system Tim showed in his Reboot presentation last year is a numeric system.
As I said when the idea was revealed, I think the reason people have a particularly negative reaction to "geometric shapes" is that the words conjure up the vision of some kind of childish, Playmobil-esque user interface where words and numbers are literally replaced one-to-one with colorful shapes and symbols. Like instead of the number 3 there's a blue triangle and instead of 4 there's a red square.
Tim should have picked a cooler, more adult-sounding term to use instead of "geometric shapes".
Maybe this is why Tim always says he’s a terrible writer. I get where you’re coming from—the concept could’ve used better branding—and it’s unfortunate because a spatial representation of your build makes a lot of sense. The first time I watched that video my eyes glazed over for the triangle talk, but when I rewatched it a couple of hours ago something about it clicked. Perhaps because I’m extremely overworked and sleep deprived; with my brain at diminished capacity it’s like a vision quest that helps me get inside the minds of the numerophobic mass market crowd Obsidian’s (hopefully only partially) aiming for.
Seriously, though, the triangle conveys so much information for a three sided object with only three words on it.
Some speculation on how the mental builds may play:
Upside down triangle with CHA on the bottom? You’re a smart, perceptive character with the social skills of a toaster (kind of your classic high functioning autism spectrum sleuth). PER at the bottom? You’re oblivious to the world around you—maybe bad vision or too much self absorption to notice things or too short an attention span—but you manage to survive thanks to your keen wits and natural charm. INT at the bottom? Classic dumb but sexy golddigger. You’re extremely stupid (my guess: this will play like 2 or 3 INT in Fallout), but between your keen eye for detail and your personal magnetism, you can often avoid trouble or rely on the kindness of strangers.
Flip the triangle and you get specialist builds rather than hybrids. INT? The somewhat oblivious, socially aloof genius. CHA? When your mediocre intelligence and perception get you into trouble, your charm gets you out of it because you are the ultimate smooth talker and, gosh darn it, people just like you. PER on top? Another high functioning autism spectrum build: not too clever and a little socially awkward, but you are constantly hyper aware of your surroundings and nothing escapes your notice.
The six possible mental builds should look something like this if Tim sticks to the model he showed at Reboot. He seemed pretty enamored with it. Anyway, the triangle is a better way of conveying your stat distribution (and thus your build) to the player in an instant. Presumably they’ll have a brief description for each mental and physical build (which is really a description for each alignment of the triangle).
In terms of convenience and ease of processing, Cain’s flippable triangle makes it clear that you can either pump one stat to the max and neglect the other two or dump one stat to the minimum and boost the other two to good levels. There are builds for PER, INT and CHA and then builds for negative PER, INT and CHA. 36 total build permutations when you factor in the plus or minus STR, AGI, and END physical builds.
Again, if Cain’s presentation was at all representative, the cool thing about this system (which may be totally theoretical) is that there’s not a single balanced build. You’re either specializing in your favorite stat from the physical/mental pool, or you’re giving yourself a huge handicap in one stat in order to be pretty good with the other two. It’s almost like Tim wants your builds to feel like the trait system from Fallout or the more extreme backgrounds in Arcanum: everything is a fairly extreme tradeoff that locks you into a certain type of character.
The other thing. He didn’t say this outright, but it seemed implicit in a lot of his remarks: it sounds like, after character creation, your base stats will be pretty static like in Fallout or AD&D or AOD for that matter. Maybe this should go without saying, but since Indiana is supposed to be the BGS Fallout killer, it was heartening to hear that Tim believes you should be locked into your build.*
*In his friendly critique of F4's character creation/leveling, he was almost indignant about what BGS did to SPECIAL, or as close to indignant as I've seen the good natured Tim Cain in one of these videos. He noted that you're not really building a character in a game where you can boost every stat whenever you level up and ultimately have 10 points in everything.
Edit: He also said BGS may have gone too far by taking out the skill system, which doesn't sound like much, but he's pretty polite about other people's games. More importantly, I may be reading too much into this, but it would seem to suggest Indiana does have a skill system.
I can't brofist. So "brofist".
I saw the video yersterday. And IMO, it doesn't change anything of actual character building. Nobody wants an average character with 10 everywhere. Generally, we choose 2 excellent stats or 4 good stats (or 1 excellent, and 2 good stats) and that it's.
My main concerns are about character development and the setting. Not a post apo games, Tim. Enough of this shit.
