Hellwalker
Animmal
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2015
- Messages
- 98
It sounds like much but really the root of it is in-game design approaches. Putting the immersion, freedom, open-ended design, and "hand-crafted" content forward. (Probably more accurate would be "bringing stuff Ultima gifted the world back together into one game").
Seriously?
Baldur's Gate, i get it but Gothic?/5
Legends of Zelda?
I believe they forgot to call-in for Tetris, Arkanoïd, Minecraft, World of Warcraft and GTA fans...
It's inspired by everything!
Imagine Gothics' small hand-crafted opened world, with party-based combat and branching quests, and more complex encounter/level design. (Think Thief/Deus ex).
When you have 2 sentence marketing blip, you have to rely on stuff like that :D But during Kickstarter, I'll have more detailed updates to explain each mechanic and choice. A short overview of why those games:
Gothic:
#1)A smaller, hand-crafted open world with a lot of lessons from Gothic. The more complex and vertically rich levels. Meaningfully and consistently placed pick-able plants and other world elements.
#2)The unique and memorable area approach. For example, if one cave is in a forest, and we need another cave we'll place it in a completely different area like a mountain top, or behind the waterfall. What happens in each area will also differ. It's a small thing, but stuff like that made me remember by heart each bridge, cave, or piece of forest.
#2) Immersion elements. We have detailed hunting, cooking, crafting and focus on these elements being immersively animated.
#3) Faction and Community system. Each faction has its own internal structure, social structure, and relationships.
#4) You'll definitely need to earn a "hero status", or whatever comes close to it in our setting :D
#5) Interesting interactions and quests. Where one seemingly random thing can lead to an unexpected encounter. To keep exploration rewarding.
#6) Making stuff like plants, or resources you pick up meaningful. By this I mean, rare plants will have more substantial bonuses to give you and the more common ones you'll need in quantity as you have to manage a whole fort-load of people.
#7) Curiosity should be rewarded, make it worthwhile for players to seek out hidden nooks and crannies.
#8) If there are plants in the world, a man should have the means to smoke them.
Baldur's Gate:
#1) If there is a piece of land, you gotta put something interesting for players to do in there.
#2) Companion stories should emerge during gameplay and you co-experience their defining story moments. So you can bond and have shared adventures. (VS modern trend of interactive autobiographies)
We actually pushed this to a whole new level. Where each character is a unique NPC. And even your enemies will be more than one-off the encounter. You can make deals with them, play them against each other, blackmail etc.
#3) More open-ended main quest and side content that helps you advance the main quest. (Get 20k for a ship) This makes the game feel more like an adventure, and less like a bookkeeping experience. Where you advance X main quest, Do all the side quests you can. Advance main story, repeat. All the tentatively avoiding points where MQ moves the story forward and locks out of side content.
The concept is that you are trapped in a frozen valley, and you have few days to prepare for a massive siege. So everything you do feeds into this idea. You recruit allies because you need people to fight for you and build defenses. You need to hunt to craft equipment and feed your allies. If you go out to fight, that will mean fewer enemies in a siege, if you go hunting or fishing, you need those resources to feed your allies. If you spent the evening playing mini-games with characters, this will increase their morale and fight and work better. Everything you do will give an edge. The side content, which is often more fun than the main one, now stops being a side content and take rightful place in front.
#4) Again, less is more approach. Tie the combat and other elements to quests as much as possible and avoid repeating the same themes and patterns in player experience. Make stuff unique.
#5) Ability for the player to roleplay chosen origin, and personality.
Zelda)
#1) The feeling of the open-world adventure.
#2) The mechanics and the world interactivity to come together more dynamically and be more thought out to create emergent gameplay effect.
#3) Use the world interactivity to give players ways to make their own path and come up with their own solutions to problems.
Thief/Deus ex/Underrail
#1) Just because it's an "isometric-ish map" does not mean each encounter should come down to go in there, trigger dialogue, fight, repeat. It's possible to create more elaborate "strongholds" where you have multiple layers and multiple ways to solve things.
We want a more complex story quest, where the enemy camps are really powerful and you through exploration and discovery gain an edge. For example, if you are a shaman, you can spy on enemies, learn what they are afraid of, and work on their fears and superstitions to destroy their morale. Or let them capture a batch of your alcohol, and attack them when they're drunk.
#2) Environment and level design should tell a story, and they should reflect the personality of characters who inhabit game areas.
#3) Areas should be more open-ended, with multiple entry points and to support different playstyles. (Combat, Stealth, Diplomacy)
There's a lot more to talk about, and I will in KS updates :D
We are very close to having all of this come together really nicely. The main theme of the core concept makes everything easier to integrate meaningfully.
With Kickstarter stretch goals we'll have the ability to add tactical depth to AI. By improving the character controller(Increase environment traversal options. (Climb, sneak, jump)) and Add more situation altering skills, like pushing people off the ledges, more advanced traps, ambush spots. And hire more team members for visual effects, music, text editing stuff like that. Which will mean more core time spent on quest and gameplay polish. And a lot of other stuff that I will also share in updates and on KS page.
