Wadjet Eye Unavowed - Dave Gilbert's RPG-inspired urban fantasy game

[Infinitron]

wtf DaveGilbert, did you specifically seek out voice actors who sound like your old ones? I was sure they were the ones who voiced Madeline and that punky Italian-American-sounding roommate chick from the first Blackwell.

 

[DaveGilbert]

Heh. You probably recognize Arielle because she played Max Lao in Technobabylon. She's become one of my heavy hitters, and a real pro. Sandra I've worked with before, but I doubt you'd recognize her. She played child Anna in Resonance and had a few small parts in Primordia (where she was heavily processed and sounded nothing like her real voice). I've been wanting to work with her again for years but our schedules never aligned until now.

 

[MRY]

What's funny is that Sandra as Mandana sounds uncannily like Sarah as Clarity.

 

[SilverSpook]

Nice! That conversation kind of has a Luke / Han from Star Wars IV vibe, like when they're debating lightsabers vs. blasters.

 

[DaveGilbert]

Sarah's (unprocessed non-clarity) voice is MUCH deeper than Sandra's, although the characters do have similar disaffected ways of speaking.

 

[Boleskine]

https://www.tomsguide.com/us/unavowed-gdc-hands-on,news-26816.html

Unavowed Plays Like a BioWare Game, Minus the Combat
by Marshall Honorof Mar 21, 2018, 7:44 AM

SAN FRANCISCO – A few years ago, former BioWare writer Jennifer Hepler just about split the Internet in half when she said she'd like to play through RPGs without combat. Her reasoning was that building up relationships among her party members and the world around them could be a lot more interesting than simply trading blows with enemies.

BioWare hasn't given up combat just yet, but Hepler's comment got adventure game designer Dave Gilbert thinking: What if it could?

The result would probably look a lot like Unavowed: Gilbert's latest point-and-click adventure title, which I got to try for myself at GDC 2018. It has all the hallmarks of a modern Western role-playing game: a diverse, interesting cast of party members; multiple ways to customize your protagonist's identity and backstory; and a story that can change considerably depending on your choices.

What it doesn't have is combat and leveling up your characters' abilities – an omission that some gamers will find liberating, and others will find irritating.

From the moment I started, I saw the similarities to a BioWare adventure. You start by choosing your character's sex and name – easy enough – but you then choose one of three distinct backstories. Depending on whether your character used to be an actor, a police officer, or a bartender, the first level of the game plays out very differently, as you discover the circumstances under which you became possessed by a demon.

Yes, the main thrust of Unavowed is a conflict with the supernatural. Your character was, up until recently, under the control of an otherworldly power, and forced to commit atrocities in its name. As soon as Unavowed's prologue ends, you start dealing with the fallout right away.

Since the game doesn't feature any combat, your protagonist will have to rely on his or her wits instead. However, while you'll need to hunt for useful items and solve a few devious puzzles, Gilbert wants to keep the focus on character interactions and story choices, not on the mind-bending brainteasers from adventure gaming's heyday.

"I'm not a puzzle guy," Gilbert told me. "I never have been."

Even so, I admit that the game's first major puzzle took me a while to figure out. When two of my party members (a well-dressed demon hunter named Eli, and a sword-wielding acrobat named Mandy) found themselves at odds with a skinless demon, I had to sneak up behind it and rig up an elaborate system involving a breaker box, a spool of copper wire, two drainpipes and a puddle of water in order to shock it into submission. It was a clever puzzle, and, thankfully, more thoughtful than frustrating.

Later on in the game, choosing which party members to bring with you can have significant effects on how levels play out. One character, Logan, can speak to ghosts; Mandy can climb to high places. Gilbert assured me that no matter which characters you take with you, though, you'll always be able to solve the puzzles, even if you have to undergo some extra steps. He didn't like the idea of forcing a player to take certain characters on specific quests.

Buoyed by solid writing and some decent voice acting, the characters in Unavowed have already piqued my interest. I think I could spend an entire game with them – even though I would admittedly miss the combat and character-building that usually goes along with party-based adventures. For those who feel like combat is a necessarily evil for a good character-driven narrative, on the other hand, Unavowed might be just what they've always wanted. The game will be out on PCs before the end of the year, but there's no price information available yet.

 

[CryptRat]

Gilbert wants to keep the focus on character interactions and story choices, not on the mind-bending brainteasers from adventure gaming's heyday.

I hope that's wrong, or at least a huge exaggeration.

 

[DaveGilbert]

I've always been pretty consistent when it comes to puzzles. The puzzles in Unavowed are about on par with those in my previous work. So if you had no problem with those, then you'll have no problem here!

 

[Aeschylus]

"I'm not a puzzle guy," Gilbert told me. "I never have been."

And that pretty much sums up why I never really loved the Blackwell games, in spite of them objectively being of very good quality. Still, I'll inevitably buy this as I am a sucker for any decent adventure game.
Aside from that, the main conceit of the interview (Wow! An RPG without combat!) strikes me as kind of funny, since that is essentially what adventure games have always been. Party members are less common I suppose, though not unheard of. It makes me wish you were more of a puzzle guy, as it sounds like the general design framework of the game could lend itself to some really cool and creative puzzles. Well, hopefully I'll be pleasantly surprised.

 

[V_K]

(Wow! An RPG without combat!) strikes me as kind of funny, since that is essentially what adventure games have always been

Yeah, and every adventure with combat is an RPG. So fucking tired of dumb argument.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I can't imagine playing a game without some form of combat.

 

[DaveGilbert]

Oof. For the last three years I have been trying to come up with a sexier, more PR-friendly way of describing the game without mentioning Bioware, but since I need to speak in easily-digestible soundbites for interviews and social media, saying "it's the Bioware narrative structure with no combat" is a nice quick shorthand for what I'm trying to say. The downside is that inevitably everyone starts talking about RPGs which is exactly what what the game ISN'T. Oh well. Messaging fail! This is why I'm less successful than I could be. Hopefully this will self-correct itself as we get closer to release and preview builds (and word of mouth) start going out.

ERYFKRAD: You are definitely in the wrong forum section!

 

[MRY]

Tell Tale design with a Lucas Arts look?

 

[Aeschylus]

Oof. For the last three years I have been trying to come up with a sexier, more PR-friendly way of describing the game without mentioning Bioware...

I dunno, urban fantasy is pretty popular as a genre these days so it seems like there's ample references you could make. Though who knows how much they'd resonate with the gaming public (and lazy gaming journalists, more importantly).

Yeah, and every adventure with combat is an RPG. So fucking tired of dumb argument.

Well I was employing hyperbole -- obviously there's differences between the genres, and slapping combat onto a PnC game doesn't make it an RPG. I do believe, though, that the two genres share a lot of fundamental points of design; they're both focused around exploration of a large world and interaction with NPCs, are both (usually) story-driven, and contain a basic design flow where you encounter gated obstacles to progress which are conquered via 'keys'. In adventure games these keys are more limited and generally only include environmental interaction, conversation with NPCs, or the good old inventory puzzle. RPGs have all these same keys, but additionally add combat and skill use. The smoothness with which that additional RPG layer fits over the classic adventure game formula (e.g. QFG, Heroine's Quest, QFI) illustrates how similar the genres can be.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

You are definitely in the wrong forum section!

Probably. I've never played even an adventure game that was like 100% pacifist. I don't mean combat system per se, just some form of violence.

 

[V_K]

Have you played Tetris? Or Sokoban?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Sokoban

Nope. Or maybe I have. Tetris is an adventure game now?

 

[V_K]

Well, your original post said

I can't imagine playing a game without some form of combat.

Not necessarily an adventure.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Fair enough.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/03/28/unavowed-rpg-adventure/

Unavowed aims to be an adventure that borrows the best of RPG narrative

It really doesn’t feel like it, but it’s been five years since Dave Gilbert released one of his splendid point-and-click adventure games, and twelve years since he worked on a brand new story, following his series of Blackwell games. Unavowed is that brand new story, due out later this year, and it’s ambitious in ways I wasn’t expecting: it’s a very traditional-looking adventure, that belies a depth of narrative RPG ideas.

The reason it doesn’t feel nearly so long since we last heard from Gilbert is that his Wadjet Eye Games has been publishing other adventure games made using Adventure Game Studio (AGS), with his hand in their development. Really superb games like Shardlight and Technobabylon. He’s also voice-directed for other great games, like Kathy Rain. Which is to say, if you see a good commercial AGS game, there’s a strong chance Gilbert’s had a hand in it. And all the while, he’s been quietly working away at Unavowed, pushing at the boundaries of what’s usually a very traditional genre.

Unavowed has you playing as someone, from one of three backgrounds, living with the after-effects of a demonic possession. Over the last year your character (male or female) has been waging horrific terror on New York City, and now, finally exorcised, it’s time to try to put things right. So you head around the city, accompanied by chosen NPCs, attempting to make good in the fight against the darkness that previously consumed you.

In that preceding paragraph there are a few statements that might have stood out, if you’re familiar with the traditional constraints of old-school adventures. AGS is an engine that sees developers tend toward that mid-90s style of point-and-click, a cursor, an inventory, and puzzles to solve. But while Unavowed certainly features all of those, here Gilbert is pushing to include the narrative elements of RPGs, bringing the strengths of two storytelling genres together. Or, as Gilbert puts it himself, tongue-in-cheek: “Ripping off BioWare.”

So yes, three different origin stories are available here, setting a subtle form of ‘class’ for your character. You can be an Actor, Bartender or Cop, each with a unique playable opening tale of how they came to be possessed, and then later influencing their approach to situations and puzzles for the rest of the game. The Actor is adept at lying, convincing people of untrue versions of events. The Bartender has a knack of getting characters to open up and talk about their feelings. The Cop is authoritative, capable of having characters do as they’re told.

Further drawing from the BioWare model of RPGs, during the game you’ll also be able to choose from a collection of characters to be in your ‘party’. There are four others in total, and you can choose two for any particular mission – the game is broken up into distinct sections, each with a character select at the start. Who you bring will, says Gilbert, directly affect how you can approach the puzzles therein. One is a former accountant, now a fire mage (fairly typical career progression), another is an athletic djinn. Then there’s a disgraced cop, friendly with members of the police you might meet, and a chap called Logan Cunningham who can talk to ghosts. Everyone in your gang can see ghosts, but only Logan can be heard by them.

So say you’ve taken the djinn and the cop, and you encounter a ghostie in a park, you’ll not have the information and options that would have been available to you had you brought Logan on this trip. But then again, if you’d not brought the djinn then you’d not have had anyone who could leap to reach that ladder, and thus scale that wall. Of course, all of this is played out as a 2D pixel adventure, not requiring any actual athletics. Gilbert’s goal is to introduce a lot more variation in how a trad adventure is delivered, importing some of the best RPG tricks, and indeed creating a game that would still be interesting to play after watching someone’s stream of it. And for those who’ve worried just at the sight of the letters “RPG”, no, there’s no combat at all.

Gilbert’s essentially made a number of differing paths through the same game, opening the adventure to genuine replayability, with so many factors affecting how you may approach any given situation. If you’d chosen a different origin, and different companions on that mission, you’d have played parts of it in very different ways. And it will apparently be even more involved, with key decisions made at various points having an impact later on in the story. Do you kill or set free this baddie? That’ll have an effect later on.

It sounds an awful lot, and of course all of it will depend entirely on the quality of the story and the writing. But then this is Dave Gilbert, and he’s yet to let us down in those areas, so there’s good reason to hope. What I’ve seen certainly suggests good things, with strong voice acting, and even background banter between the NPCs in your party.

It’s a fascinating prospect, taking all the best story elements of the RPG and working them into an adventure. And thanks to some desperately needed advancements in AGS, it looks much lovelier too – twice as many pixels are now available to artist Ben Chandler, and he’s done what looks like might be his best work yet.

Due out some point this year, hopefully sooner rather than later, there are a lot of reasons to be very interested in Unavowed, beyond simply that it’s a new Dave Gilbert adventure. Although that alone would already have been enough.

 

[LESS T_T]

Another GDC interview, mostly on business and production: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/artic...-make-the-game-that-ive-always-wanted-to-play

Wadjet Eye: Streamers "pushed me to make the game that I've always wanted to play"
With Unavowed, founder Dave Gilbert aimed to make a point and click adventure game that can't be spoiled by YouTube videos


For devotees of point and click adventure games, the name Wadjet Eye carries a great deal of weight. The New York City-based studio has been developing and publishing some of the finest work in the genre for the last 12 years, but its next game, Unavowed, will be altogether more ambitious than anything that has gone before.

That much is clear, founder Dave Gilbert tells me, from the amount of time it takes to compile the build he's been showing around GDC.

"It's at the stage where it takes a long time to compile, because it's so darn big," he says as we wait for the game to load. "It's the biggest game we've ever done - by a lot."

Unavowed is bigger in terms of sheer scope, its 125 unique locations towering above the 70 found in Blackwell Epiphany, the fifth game in the series, which launched in 2014. It's also there in the resolution, which is twice that of any game made by Wadjet Eye to date. More than anything, though, it's there in the structure, which borrows the party dynamics and branching narrative structure from role-playing games to create a point and click adventure that Gilbert believes will be distinct from almost any game in the genre.

The idea came from an interview given by Jennifer Hepler in 2012. At that time, Hepler was a writer at BioWare, and she lamented the absence of an option to skip fighting and combat sequences.

"What Jennifer said in an interview was that, in combat-oriented games, they usually let you skip the story in the cut-scenes to get back to the combat, but you can never do the opposite," Gilbert says. "This is the opposite. She got a lot of awful, unnecessary flack for that statement, but I thought it was a wonderful idea... Unavowed has the narrative aspect of those games, without the combat."

Unavowed has three possible origin stories for its protagonist - actor, police officer and bartender - each of which has a unique opening sequence and a distinct ability that can help with solving the game's many puzzles. Additionally, Unavowed has a party system, which allows the protagonist to take one character from a small group with them, all of whom have unique strengths, weaknesses and abilities, and situational dialogue of their own.

"Each of these missions have to be re-done five different ways. [The amount of extra work] was insane, Gilbert says. "This is a game that can't be small, because not only do I have to design each section five different ways, there needs to be quite a lot of them in order to justify the mechanic of having different party members."

While the end product may ultimately justify the effort, Gilbert makes no secret of the difficulty involved in creating Unavowed - or his reason for breaking away from the more traditional, linear point and click adventure.

"There's a lot of different ways to do things," he adds. "My main goal with it was streamer culture, really. It's no secret that, if you watch a stream of one of my games, you've pretty much got the full experience. My thinking was if you have something like this where you don't get the full experience from watching a stream, that might make you want to still buy the game afterward.

"This isn't something that's going away, so it's something that you have to work with. At the very least, it's got me out of my comfort zone, and in a way it's pushed me to make the game that I've always wanted to play... I've been thinking about this for a very long time. When Jennifer Hepler gave that statement, which was before streaming culture, really - before Twitch, at the very least - there were YouTubers doing Let's Plays, but they weren't that big of a thing then.

"I knew I wanted to mix things up a little bit. I've been known for doing a very specific thing, and I wanted to do something new. This was a huge challenge - and maybe too much of a challenge, because it's taken way too long - but it was something I know I can do."

While it has several unique qualities, Unavowed is still very much in Gilbert's area of expertise, "but with more layers." Those layers will help provide value that cannot be captured in a single video, and help the game to stand apart in the increasingly crowded PC market. The business has "gotten harder and gotten different" in just the last five years, he says, to a degree that makes traditional point and click games tougher and tougher to sell.

"I rode that wave after the Double Fine Kickstarter, where suddenly everyone was talking about point and click adventures, so everyone suddenly wanted to talk to me. It was cool, and I rode that wave towards Blackwell Epiphany coming out in 2014.

"A year later, towards 2015, some of those Kickstarted games started to come out, and they kind of came and went. Suddenly I'm having to work my butt off to get people talking and writing about Technobabylon... Especially in this genre, it was harder to get noticed. And I consider myself as someone who's paid their dues. I've been around. I'm hubristic enough to say that."

Unavowed may prove to be just the first Wadjet Eye game to employ a branching narrative. Gilbert is reluctant to commit to pushing the idea further due to the amount of work involved - "It's probably a little above my pay-grade at the moment" - but he recognises the need for the studio to adapt in order to stay creatively relevant and commercially viable. The next game will be a sequel to Technobabylon, for example, and it will mark Wadjet Eye's first step into 3D graphics.

"I sometimes wonder 'Have we taken this as far as we can? Have we reached a plateau? What else can we do?'" Gilbert ponders. "It's no secret that I sorta resent it when people call our stuff a love-letter to Nineties adventure games, or a nostalgia-fest. That bothers me, but I can't deny that it looks like that. It does look like that. Those are things that I can't really reconcile.

"I have all of these ideas and theories about narrative and how it should work in an interactive way, and I was straining with it in this game. I would love to have that focus, but maybe with a different type of gameplay style. I don't know. Normally I have something waiting in the wings after a project is finished, but aside from Technobabylon 2, I don't have that here. Because this has just taken up too much of my mental energy.

"I'm curious to try new things, and prototype for a while... Unless Unavowed makes a million dollars, in which case I'll, y'know, do the next one.

"I'll make the sequel. Alright. Done."

 

[Boleskine]

 

[Boleskine]

 

[Boleskine]

Greek preview: https://ragequit.gr/specials/item/proti-matia-unavowed/

Translated text:

First Look: Unavowed
Does the demons out tonight?
Stephanos Koutsoukos 5 hours ago

Boogie, Regular Reader.

We are dynamically restoring the retrospective preview of the preview (for the Latin insiders) and we could not think of a more suitable title for this purpose than the upcoming Unavowed, the favorite retro-adventure-o-man, Wadjet Eye Games.

Having seen about a third of the adventure (the preview build we had at our disposal included our first four hour play, so if the final set reaches twelve hours, we're talking about a decent life) we are very optimistic and intrigued for full traffic of this particular adventure title.

Does anyone hurt?

Our adventure unfolds in the dirty, recently metaphysical, streets of New York. We come together during our exorcism. Two steel hands hold us while a rather agitated gentleman exorcises the demon to leave behind us. Trying to bring our souls back to the surface, we are asking questions that shape our character. Was we a man or a woman? What profession did we follow? Do we want to remind him where his mother is now and what is his mother doing now?

By choosing gender and past for our character, we are moving to the corresponding starting vignette, which we certainly are not used to seeing point and click adventure games and is very well implemented for the three different professions we have at our disposal (actor, policeman, ) For purely encyclopedic purposes, we set up a bartender who, while preparing to open the shop for the evening, is approached by an older ... good customer, now sober, who, obviously agitated, with his brother from the bar's toilet, where he is locked in a rash state. Despite our capsity, things will quickly get a nasty turn. Not only does a demon possess our mortal body, but we run cool the unfortunate Jonah as well as our owner and owner of the store, Sammy.

Culture, Poetry, Demonstration.

We come to our meeting a year later, during our exorcism when our saviors Eli and Mandana inform us that for a year we sowed havoc and death on the streets of New York. We are looking for every possible prosecution authority and, incidentally, we stand on the roof of a building full of the overwhelmed bodies of our last victims.

This is an impressive introduction sequence, which is quite different (always ending with our demonism) depending on the past we choose. We are being arrested, wishing not to the secret organization of Unavowed, people-and not only-endowed with a variety of supernatural powers, who are called to act as an informal Metaphysical Police for our world. Not only do they protect mundanes in the language of the game and we have found you, Bill Willingham, by the wicked entities that reside beyond the Veil but care to hide their very nature from all in order to preserve balance and the logic of our fellow citizens.

If you think that Gabriel Knight meets The Wolf Among Us , wait for the first chills when you hear the musical investment in the Unavowed haven where you start the adventure. Infuriated synthesizers play almost baroque melodies, reminding us of the amazing soundtrack that was enormous by Robert Holmes for the first Gabriel Knight. Honestly, starting the adventure, I was going from room to room, reading the short and well written descriptions of the objects and enjoying the music. I was trying to stop the band "Schloss Ritter, Schloss Ritter, Schloss Ritter" playing on my head, but it was not possible. And then I met Eli and Mandana and I got a first taste of the game's dialogues. And I was sure that when it comes to releasing it, it will be, as every Wadjet Eye release, one of the adventures of the year.

Talking to Eli in his room.

We are dealing with a police mystery of supernatural horror, which is aimed at a clear adult audience. Do not let the 'nostalgic' graphics or the slightly ... smiley faces in the poster of the game create a feeling of being more 'sweet' in the Blackwell series. I was delighted to find that the game effortlessly creates an extraordinary atmosphere of gray, lonely Neo-Moroccan death. The rain and discreet leads to the saxophone accompany us to beautifully designed locations, while we try, with the help of our comrades, to initially answer the calls coming from various parts of the city and from one point onwards, to find out who the demon was which has captured us and what it really wanted to succeed using us.

The ... Journey AGS has received a particularly welcome retouch for the needs of the game, giving twice the resolution to the past (the title now runs at 1080p, incredible and yet true) and even incorporating three-dimensional effects. The visual result that the talented Ben Chandler has achieved is easily at the top of the creations of the company and can now comfortably "talk" to anyone, breaking the narrow boundaries of the "golden-eyed" living to tell us how to stop playing adventure somewhere in 1999.

In the burning homeless shelter

Particularly impressive are the 'modern' touches introduced into the action of adventure. We are given the opportunity, by completing missions, to recruit additional members of the Organization, each of which has its own special strength. In all our excursions, we choose two of them to accompany us. The action is designed in such a way that each possible combination of comrades can cope with any puzzle, offering even different outcomes, depending on its peculiarities. In other cases, three or more characters are required. For example, trying to communicate with the phantom hanging over a lifeless deck, we are constantly finding a 'wall' as we do not know his name and therefore the spirit denies any communication with us. We should use a member of the team who has the ability to identify the body of the unfortunate man in order to obtain information about his earlier life, which our spiritualist, Logan, can then use to communicate with him.

The above engineering is implemented intelligently and effortlessly and is combined with logical and beautifully structured inventory based puzzles. Without ever having a high level of challenge (do not wait for the grandeur of Primordia or Technobabylon ), it provides a brain-filled experience full of suspense that constantly makes us wonder what team members we should have with us. More often than not, we will be called upon to take final decisions about the course of our action and the way we handle situations that in theory have an impact on the later stage of adventure. Do not imagine big changes now, but the illusion of choice was preserved nicely and effectively in the first three hours of the game we had at our disposal.

The General did not get too hot the whole "Look, I was another, I do not remember any deal" phase.

The way that Unavowed connects with the Blackwell series is a close-up of the eye to the old fans of Dave Gilbert without alienating the uninitiated. Completing the preview version of the adventure, I was very pleased with the advent of the full game. Atmosphere, mystery, interesting innovations and one of the best soundtracks I have heard this year. Put it in your calendar and keep track of your favorite half-hearted jerk (or the upside down?

 

[MRY]

"grandeur of Primordia" -- those sweet Greeks!

Game looks great, but no surprise there!