Development Info Wasteland 3 Fig Update #22: Building the Everest - From Concept to Design

[DeepOcean]

It could fit very well within Wastelands setting actually.

Because a setting is crazy, it doesn't absolve the writers of trying to make it a coherent thing. The nuclear monks were one of the few factions that were fun to play with and that because their crazyness actually made some sense, taking in consideration the world they lived on. If you aren't careful, things could take a sharp turn to awful, Megaton on Fallout 3, is an acute example of that. What can go wrong when you take crazyness on a setting, way, way wrong.

 

[Morality Games]

m-maybe this time it will be good. No it won't FFS. What will it take for your retards to learn?

"accumulated experience" of what? The InXile spirit entity? They recycle their staff all the time.

I'm grasping at straws here. When you're desperate and you are staring shitty games right in the face you'll do anything to stay hopeful.

 

[Lurker King]

It could fit very well within Wastelands setting actually.

Because a setting is crazy, it doesn't absolve the writers of trying to make it a coherent thing. The nuclear monks were one of the few factions that were fun to play with and that because their crazyness actually made some sense, taking in consideration the world they lived on. If you aren't careful, things could take a sharp turn to awful, Megaton on Fallout 3, is an acute example of that. What can go wrong when you take crazyness on a setting, way, way wrong.

I never cared about the crazy and humoristic stuff in Fallout Wasteland anyway. I would prefer a bleak and down to earth scenario every day of the week. Besides, if W2 was any indicator, they clearly are not qualified to do this. The combination of dong jokes and grey moral dilemas was weird, not fun at all. Really, a crazy setting is everything a hipster developer with artistic ambitions and a demeanor attitude about gaming hopes for. It can be used as a excuse for everything, including nonsensical writing and bad locations. I would not be surprised if an anti-Trump joke appears in the game.

 

[MRY]

Seems like a neat idea, though of course execution is everything. The only thing that I wonder is whether it is a little "inside out." Not sure how well I can articulate this, but I'll try.

The haunted luxury hotel concept rests on the idea that something that is outwardly, fairly expectedly, a place of comfort, security, and hospitality is, in fact, a place of peril. The fact that peril exists within a context where it shouldn't is disarming -- note that the Omen movies do the same thing, only the haunted thing is a child, rather than a luxury hotel. I mean "disarming" in two senses. The first is simply that it wrong-foots you -- your entire posture is one of relaxation and unguardedness, and thus you are vulnerable to attack. (So here, I mean "disarming" in the sense of like, "Infinitron had a disarming smile.") The second sense is that you are enforcedly disarmed in the sense that even once you perceive the attack (or peril), you are forbidden by convention from acting upon it. You can't just burn down the luxury hotel to chase off a ghost haunting it the way you could, if you really wanted to, chop down a haunted tree on your own property. (Again, this is true in the Omen movies as well.)

Within the Wasteland setting, though, peril is the expectation. The existence of a luxury hotel in the midst of that peril is the fluke; not the existence of peril within the hotel. If some elite military team sent into Raqqa should happen upon an intact, fully staffed luxury hotel, they might not object to enjoying its luxuries (though, then again, they might just call in an airstrike on principle), but they wouldn't go in with their guard down. If a strange shadowy figure should seem to emerge from their closet, their reaction wouldn't be, "This is a luxury hotel, it cannot possibly be that I am in peril." They probably would just open fire. "Actually, the hotel is run by ISIS!" would probably be greeted with, "Yeah, that makes sense" as opposed to, "Impossible! What fever-dreams have possessed me? If I shoot, I will find myself shunned by civil society if not imprisoned."

To use the Omen example, if instead of suspecting that a child in our world is actually the devil himself, if, say, Conan the Barbarian should come across a child with a forked snakes tongue and yellow eyes, I just doubt it would make for an Omen-like scenario. Not saying he'd just kill it out of hand, but he wouldn't be "disarmed."

So the challenge here is less justifying how a hotel staff could secretly be villainous and more justifying how, in the Wasteland universe, people could expect a luxury hotel to be anything other than a hive of villainy. Still, given the group, I suspect they'll make it work.

 

[Iznaliu]

Maybe all of inXile's talent and experience accumulated up until this point can add up to one decent game.

Talent and experience can actually be a bad thing in a way; people sometimes cannot take fame well.

 

[Kev Inkline]

I mean "disarming" in the sense of like, "Infinitron had a disarming smile."

 

[cherry blossom]

Game designers really ought to actually be gamers who play other games. Shortsighted homages without care for the context of gaming are poor design choices.

Somebody take this guy off of WL3.

 

[FritzedProcess]

And I put my money on Fig for this shit?

Goddamn it!

Well, at least there's ATOM RPG. Those guys have already proven in the alpha that they know how to write a good quest.

Sent from my SM-A500FU using Tapatalk

 

[Iznaliu]

And I put my money on Fig for this shit?

You have obviously been caught by the wild Fargo. Run while you can!

 

[Lurker King]

Game designers really ought to actually be gamers who play other games. Shortsighted homages without care for the context of gaming are poor design choices.

Somebody take this guy off of WL3.

Let’s repeat this out in the open for everyone to hear. People who don’t like the intricacies of cRPG systems and have a profound disdain for their target audience should not come nowhere near cRPG development. It should be obvious by now that they are creating a new culture inside cRPG development of people who don’t play the classics, despise cRPG mechanics, despise gamers, and want to use the medium to satisfy hipsters frustrated artistic ambitions. In the process they are creating a whole new culture of pseudo-cRPG gamers that enjoy pussified shallow isometric games. This is not the real article. Not even close. If you want good games, do not support these people. You are not only helping bad developers stay in business, but also encouraging bad development practices that will kill a whole culture. Don't let them pussify cRPG development.

 

[MurkyShadow]

I still haven't mustered the motivation to give Wasteland 2 a proper go
It's collecting dust in my steam library. Meanwhile Underrail was released
and the age of the Golden Baby has dawned upon us. I feel like it's more
likely Barkley 2 will Jam, before I get myself to play Wasteland 2. And by that
time even 3. Or I'll just die of old age meanwhile. Or Vodka. Or both.
Looking at the bottles above the kitchen cupboard, Vodka will
definitely be involved. What I'm reading about Wasteland 3 does
not increase my motivation. Anybody got an incentive for me to
give it a proper go, Wasteland 2 that is, or should I just wait for the
Beamdog Enhanced edition of the whole trilogy in 20 years? Which I won't
play too, apparently, as I haven't touched any of their enhanced editions.

 

[Iznaliu]

Let’s repeat this out in the open for everyone to hear. People who don’t like the intricacies of cRPG systems and have a profound disdain for their target audience should not come nowhere near cRPG development. It should be obvious by now that they are creating a new culture inside cRPG development of people who don’t play the classics, despise cRPG mechanics, despise gamers, and want to use the medium to satisfy hipsters frustrated artistic ambitions. In the process they are creating a whole new culture of pseudo-cRPG gamers that enjoy pussified shallow isometric games. This is not the real article. Not even close. If you want good games, do not support these people. You are not only helping bad developers stay in business, but also encouraging bad development practices that will kill a whole culture. Don't let them pussify cRPG development.

The original isometric games were never that deep.

 

[Wizfall]

Anybody got an incentive for me to
give it a proper go, Wasteland 2 that is, or should I just wait for the
Beamdog Enhanced edition of the whole trilogy in 20 years? Which I won't
play too, apparently, as I haven't touched any of their enhanced editions.

W2 is a good game.
It has flaws of course (a bit too linear and the damn camera) but in the end it is very enjoyable to play with good writing overall (not always great ideas though).
You should really give it a go.

 

[Outlander]

Seems like a neat idea, though of course execution is everything. The only thing that I wonder is whether it is a little "inside out." Not sure how well I can articulate this, but I'll try.

The haunted luxury hotel concept rests on the idea that something that is outwardly, fairly expectedly, a place of comfort, security, and hospitality is, in fact, a place of peril. The fact that peril exists within a context where it shouldn't is disarming -- note that the Omen movies do the same thing, only the haunted thing is a child, rather than a luxury hotel. I mean "disarming" in two senses. The first is simply that it wrong-foots you -- your entire posture is one of relaxation and unguardedness, and thus you are vulnerable to attack. (So here, I mean "disarming" in the sense of like, "Infinitron had a disarming smile.") The second sense is that you are enforcedly disarmed in the sense that even once you perceive the attack (or peril), you are forbidden by convention from acting upon it. You can't just burn down the luxury hotel to chase off a ghost haunting it the way you could, if you really wanted to, chop down a haunted tree on your own property. (Again, this is true in the Omen movies as well.)

Within the Wasteland setting, though, peril is the expectation. The existence of a luxury hotel in the midst of that peril is the fluke; not the existence of peril within the hotel. If some elite military team sent into Raqqa should happen upon an intact, fully staffed luxury hotel, they might not object to enjoying its luxuries (though, then again, they might just call in an airstrike on principle), but they wouldn't go in with their guard down. If a strange shadowy figure should seem to emerge from their closet, their reaction wouldn't be, "This is a luxury hotel, it cannot possibly be that I am in peril." They probably would just open fire. "Actually, the hotel is run by ISIS!" would probably be greeted with, "Yeah, that makes sense" as opposed to, "Impossible! What fever-dreams have possessed me? If I shoot, I will find myself shunned by civil society if not imprisoned."

To use the Omen example, if instead of suspecting that a child in our world is actually the devil himself, if, say, Conan the Barbarian should come across a child with a forked snakes tongue and yellow eyes, I just doubt it would make for an Omen-like scenario. Not saying he'd just kill it out of hand, but he wouldn't be "disarmed."

So the challenge here is less justifying how a hotel staff could secretly be villainous and more justifying how, in the Wasteland universe, people could expect a luxury hotel to be anything other than a hive of villainy. Still, given the group, I suspect they'll make it work.

Someone give this man a Goldfist™

 

[MurkyShadow]

Anybody got an incentive for me to
give it a proper go, Wasteland 2 that is, or should I just wait for the
Beamdog Enhanced edition of the whole trilogy in 20 years? Which I won't
play too, apparently, as I haven't touched any of their enhanced editions.

W2 is a good game.
It has flaws of course (a bit too linear and the damn camera) but in the end it is very enjoyable to play with good writing overall (not always great ideas though).
You should really give it a go.

I shall really give it a try then. Last time I started it up was shortly after release.
And I heard and read there have been a bag of changes been made to it then.

 

[SwiftCrack]

W2 just becomes tedious when you go to L.A. really, it's not a bad game and the director's cut fixed a fair bit of things while adding some good features.

 

[Lurker King]

The original isometric games were never that deep.

They are in comparison to the new ones.

 

[ciox]

As a secondary goal, I wanted to include several references to The Shining itself,

modern_game_writing.txt

 

[Iznaliu]

Someone give this man a Goldfist™

Asking people to rate things for you never goes well.

 

[FeelTheRads]

As a secondary goal, I wanted to include several references to The Shining itself,

modern_game_writing.txt

Also failedwriter.txt

When tributes is one of your main concerns you are simply irrelevant garbage. Period.

 

[I ASK INANE QUESTIONS]

Shortsighted homages without care for the context of gaming are poor design choices.

So, just like Fallout 2 then? :^)

Game designers really ought to actually be gamers who play other games.

No. No, you don't want that, because then you will inevitably get this.

The problem is precisely that - this generation of writers are gamers and geeks. And nothing more than that. They read derivative products, they play derivative products, all the media they consume is also hugely derivative and made by people exactly like them.
On top of that, their audience doesn't actually expect them to perform, and when they try, they get shafted hard, because game writer is actually a shit job.
Shit's fucked, yo.

 

[l3loodAngel]

Shortsighted homages without care for the context of gaming are poor design choices.

So, just like Fallout 2 then? :^)

Well in FO TC said they had a rule that if someone puts in a reference nobody should know what it is AND it was stilish as hell for example "slayer" perk was a reference to buffy vampire slayer.
In FO 2 they went overboard with Tom Cruise scientology etc. and those parts did break immersion.
However, FO 2 was good despite of that not because of that. So your point is null and void. I have never heard anyone say: I like FO 2 because of lame, nonsensical and immersion destroying references.

 

[Lurker King]

The problem is precisely that - this generation of writers are gamers and geeks. And nothing more than that. They read derivative products, they play derivative products, all the media they consume is also hugely derivative and made by people exactly like them. On top of that, their audience doesn't actually expect them to perform, and when they try, they get shafted hard, because game writer is actually a shit job. Shit's fucked, yo.

Ok, but hold on. When people complain that some developers are not really gamers what they meant by that is that they do not have a deep understanding of what makes the classics work. This is a valid criticism whether we are talking about hardcore storyfaggism (C&C, proper use of skill checks, atmosphere, etc.) or combat systems and tactics (decent character building, itemization, the works). No one considers Fallout or PS:T Shakespeare material, but they are head and shoulders above W2 or T:ToN. So clearly something is wrong here, especially if you consider that some of the same people that were behind PS:T and MotB release these shitty games.

We can hypothesize about a series of factors. One factor is that they are working from different locations. Another one is that they don’t have the pressure from publishers anymore-that’s right, those same evil suits that took the blame for every bug and developer’s fuckup. It’s also obvious that most of these developers became worse as they reached a plateau of excellence. They are more experienced, but they are also less dedicated because they know how to make these products without genuine effort and passion. They stopped trying to improve a long time ago. This in turn is probably related to the fact that they are burnout and consuming derivative internet culture that is detrimental to their craft. It’s impossible to dissociate some of the SJW dogmas from a deep despise for gamers and gaming community. You are right that they are consuming derivative culture, but it is a specific type of derivative culture that eat their spare time and minds.

What is undeniable is that most of these developers clearly don’t give a fuck anymore. They have many other interests and they will release shallow games because they don’t understand complex games, don’t want to play complex games, think this is a complete waste of their precious time.

And by the way, this explanation that they are incompetent because being cRPG writer is a shitty job, we are talking about writers receiving a good pay in comparison to the industry (read InXile Glassdoor reviews) and a creative line of work where you can make your own hours-some of them work next to a beach. Shitty job is breaking your back on a coal mine or working on a fabric for 10 cents a day. People work longer hours for less in much stressful environments and deliver what is expected from them. So don’t give me that crap that is a shitty job. It's not.

 

[Lurker King]

Well in FO TC said they had a rule that if someone puts in a reference nobody should know what it is AND it was stilish as hell for example "slayer" perk was a reference to buffy vampire slayer. In FO 2 they went overboard with Tom Cruise scientology etc. and those parts did break immersion.
However, FO 2 was good despite of that not because of that. So your point is null and void. I have never heard anyone say: I like FO 2 because of lame, nonsensical and immersion destroying references.

People see in FO what they want to see. I could list a ton of features that made these games special. Tom Cruise references and other reatarded jokes are not one of them.

 

[MRY]

No one considers Fallout or PS:T Shakespeare material

Lies.

The "love story" between TNO and Daionarra is much better than some classics, it's especially better than Romeo and Juliet *shudder*.

:D

What is undeniable is that most of these developers clearly don’t give a fuck anymore.

This is deniable, and in fact I deny it. It was clear to me that the developers cared intensely about TTON. I've worked on a lot of games over the years, and while it is certainly true that there have been people I worked with who were dismissive of some parts of the game (story in particular, certain aspects of polish and presentation in others), I never really encountered anyone on the development side who didn't care. And at inXile, I didn't encounter any dismissiveness at all, except maybe a certain level of exasperation at my word-level neuroses. There's really no reason to be in game dev unless you care about games, unless you've pigeonholed yourself with a degree from one of those for-profit game development colleges or something.

this explanation that they are incompetent because being cRPG writer is a shitty job, we are talking about writers receiving a good pay in comparison to the industry and a creative line of work where you can make your own hours. Shitty job is breaking your back on a coal mine or working on a fabric for 10 cents a day. People longer hours for less in much stressful jobs and deliver what is expected from them. So don’t give me that crap that is a shitty job. It's not.

I haven't followed the thread closely enough, and you and I have talked at length about this topic, but my view isn't that it's a bad job -- obviously, looked at across all jobs around the world, it's a pretty fun job that pays pretty well. It's just that it's a tricky job to do well, and talented people are hard to attract into it for a variety of reasons. Those people are then spread pretty thin across an ever-growing industry. In days of yore, young men who loved fantasy and science fiction, were on the autism spectrum, and were into computers were relatively more plentiful compared to the overall quantity of game development jobs. Today, for a variety of reasons, I don't think it's as easy to have a game made primarily by obsessed, often brilliant, polymaths. Companies like Riot have the resources to attract that kind of people (I know because one of the founders, now VP of Design, is an old friend of mine and tried to recruit me*), but most don't.

[EDIT: * This is not to say I am a brilliant polymath, only to say that I have some idea of the resources Riot has and their recruitment philosophy.]

I do think that you are basically right that one reason why the same group of developers might make worse games today than they made in the past (I'm accepting your premise, but I haven't played TTON or WL2 or PoE, so I can't agree or disagree) is that "they have many other interests." In my 20s, I could devote 5 hours a day to game development easily, even while doing pretty well for myself as a full-time law student. In college I could put in even more time. Similarly, when Avellone was a young man working on PS:T, my understanding is that he was putting in 14-hour days -- essentially the "full time" of the job, plus the 5-6 hours of "surplus" time in which I was doing my hobbyist development. Once you're a grown up with a wife and kids and more perspective on life, those hours -- and to some degree that passion -- are harder to justify. Indeed, even the physical exertion of working non-stop is harder. Maybe this is what you mean by not caring, I guess, in which case maybe you're right. But to me it's not a matter of "not caring," it's just a matter of adding things into your life that necessarily take priority over making games.