New Infinity Engine style game in the works...

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri Oct 12, 2012 4:45 pm

Whipstitch wrote:It goes a bit deeper than that, but yes, context and managing player expectations is certainly the biggest part. ME 1&2 for the most part taught you that yes, Commander Big Damn Hero certainly could decide the fate of the galaxy. Random space aliens would totally fall over themselves talking about how great you are and would mention how you have that special something that makes people just want to follow you into hell and polish your knob on the way there. I mean, yeah, sure, you lost a squaddie here and there but you had a large degree of control over even that. Your actions impacted the fate of pretend billions. Do enough extracurricular activities and you could even tell Wrex to sit down and shut up as you undo the work that could revive his people. And remember, the ability to control your environment is the ultimate power fantasy. Yes, even moreso than running people down in GTA.

You know, I haven't had much truck to play ME1 and 2, but that actually sounds pretty damn awesome.

So ME3 basically pulled a Chrono Cross?

FatR · Post by **FatR** » Fri Oct 12, 2012 5:47 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:
You know, I haven't had much truck to play ME1 and 2, but that actually sounds pretty damn awesome.

So ME3 basically pulled a Chrono Cross?

Well, ME3 problems were deeper than that. In fact, the overarching plotline of Mass Effects ended up full of fuck, because no one paid much mind that it is supposed to be a trilogy, and in ME3 it just became glaringly apparent. But yes. The first two games were a space opera with the setting more or less created as an alternative to using Star Wars license. They also pretended that your key choices matter. Then the third game mostly disregarded your prior choices during its story (including a couple of those where accounting for alternative outcomes was relatively easy to implement), had them all combined have less impact on the possible ending than trying the fucking multiplayer mode in ME3, and attempted to be all DEEP. So in the end you were forced to choose one of the three (four in the Extended cut) bad options by a literal deus ex machina. Instead of shooting robo-Cthulhu in the face, which people actually expected after, you know, playing the first two games. And because rationalization for that was also deeply retarded, we got probably the single worst ending in history of videogames, hated by 9 people out of 10 even on the Bioware's own site.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri Oct 12, 2012 6:27 pm

So it's just like Chrono Cross, then.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Fri Oct 12, 2012 7:25 pm

I'd say a smidge less bad; ME's more of a tragic figure, really, since they gave the players a long leash then tried to shorten it only to have the players get pissed and hang them with it. Chrono Cross would be a straight up incoherent and contradictory mess even if you had a developer watching over your shoulder and choosing the most sensible plot options for you and explaining things every step of the way. With Mass Effect I totally understand how they could look at their trilogy plot outline and think a bittersweet apocalyptic ending would work--ironically, I think the ending works best if you have invested minimal amounts of time in the series. Things are somewhat gloomy and doomy throughout the main quests of the series. And in ME2 people will die left and right if you don't go around making sure life is all hugs and rainbows for your squad mates. It's possible to do a run through the series that features a hero who makes a lot of sacrifices to win his battles. Problem is, most people don't buy a big ol' fuckin' rpg to play speed runs, and we're generally conditioned to think of the ol' BEST END as the "real" one. Many people, hell, probably even most, experienced ME as Commander Invincible who got through the "suicide" mission without losing a man and spent his spare time hitting on space omnisexuals and informing everyone that this is his favorite store on the Citadel.

MfA · Post by **MfA** » Fri Oct 12, 2012 11:16 pm

Everyone hates it ... and they still don't seem to have any clue that what they did was wrong. To me it seems they don't have a single good producer left, their entire decision making has been taken over by writers (see the Penny Arcade post about how the ending came the be). Which is a recipe for disaster. There are some writers who can settle well into the role of entertainer, but most need to be savagely beaten out of the DEEP and only good ending is bad ending mindset ... and it's not happening at Bioware at the moment.

I think the best thing which could happen with Bioware at the moment is if EA send in some people to restore order ...

Aryxbez · Post by **Aryxbez** » Sat Oct 13, 2012 1:29 am

MfA wrote: I think the best thing which could happen with Bioware at the moment is if EA send in some people to restore order ...

Alas, I could not read the alleged quote below the Penny Arcade article's explanation, for I've yet to play Mass Effect 3, and thus doing my better to avoid any SPOILERS. Anycase, I was under the impression that it's EA in the first place, that making Bioware become full of suckage, after all, EA is rather skilled in the manner in which it ruins sequels.

As for Obsidian, I trust them decently enough, New Vegas probably being my favorite RPG of this current console generation. Though I know one of their designers(co-director for PE), Josh E. Sawyer, does play/like 4th edition, though recognizes the HP bloat, and failure of Skill challenges, still concerns me in regards to what's been mentioned.

MfA · Post by **MfA** » Sat Oct 13, 2012 1:45 am

EA seems to have been experimenting somewhat with how tightly they can compress the schedules on a Bioware games ... but the direction the writing has taken is entirely on the heads of the writers.

K · Post by K » Sat Oct 13, 2012 2:14 am

It seems like a pretty good case for why writing by committee with input from producers is a terrible idea.

Aryxbez · Post by **Aryxbez** » Sat Oct 13, 2012 4:13 am

mikayel wrote: Also, the forum is flat out scary. The things people want... they... they don't even know what they don't know.

I guess so much for me asking if anyone on the Gaming Den is going to the forums to suggest good ideas, making respectable threads illustrating these good ideas to the creators of this game? I've gone to the Wasteland 2 forums, and seems the desires of the people are likely just as dangerous there as well.

MfA · Post by **MfA** » Sat Oct 13, 2012 5:31 am

K wrote:It seems like a pretty good case for why writing by committee with input from producers is a terrible idea.

So you like the ME3 ending?

FatR · Post by **FatR** » Sat Oct 13, 2012 6:27 am

K wrote:It seems like a pretty good case for why writing by committee with input from producers is a terrible idea.

Except the ending allegedly (according to whatever information we have) was a direct opposite to writing by committee, with the head writer basically shutting everyone else out of the creative process at that stage.

In general, writing by committee with oversight by producers or their equivalent (editors, studio directors, etc) is a terrible idea... for a miniscule portion of writers that genuinely can police themselves. For the overwhelming majority of people out there, including genuine talents, the unlimited (or close to that) creative control is directly harmful. In the best cases, an author just stops watching the wordcount and no longer squeezes water out of his texts, like, oh, George Martin. In the worst cases we just see that he really needed a creative committee around to filter out stupid shit and attempts to insert DEEP, as happened with, say, most of the Soviet filmmakers in the post-Soviet era.

As about EA involvement in this particular case, I seriously fucking doubt that they could have ordered a DEEP ending, instead of a stereotypical happy end that leaves a room for a sequel.

K · Post by K » Sat Oct 13, 2012 6:50 am

MfA wrote:
K wrote:It seems like a pretty good case for why writing by committee with input from producers is a terrible idea.
So you like the ME3 ending?

No. It feels like a story written by a team, but they left the ending to Writing Unit #3552 and they didn't make sure that it fit in with the rest of the series. Maybe a producer stuck his dick in and said "here is the ending I want because we only have the CGI resources to do one," but there was obviously a serious creative breakdown of some kind at the end.

It almost comes off as a protest ending because there are a number of basic storytelling flaws in the ending to make it look a deliberate hatchet job. It's like some writer said, "Fuck your franchise because I am going to make it taste like ashes in everyone's mouth and you don't even realize it because you aren't a writer."

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Oct 13, 2012 6:57 am

Honestly, it reads like X3 - a deliberate attempt to scuttle the franchise. If ME3 had had a good or even passable ending, they would have been forced to make a 4th, and maybe a 5th. By making an ending that insulted everyone who played the games and got all fans to rage against it, they get to make other things.

Interesting note: the guy who finished work on writing X-men 3 went on to produce X-Men First class - which of course used an all-new set of actors and was therefore way cheaper to make. So the conspiracy theory that he shat in the pool while writing it on purpose isn't even far fetched.

-Username17

FatR · Post by **FatR** » Sat Oct 13, 2012 7:13 am

K wrote: It almost comes off as a protest ending because there are a number of basic storytelling flaws in the ending

This is different from typical ME 2-3 storytelling how? I mean, this is the trilogy where the entire second game ended up as filler (even though ME2 is my favorite, and I love it, when it is taken separately from the rest, this needs to be admitted). Never ascribe to evil intent what can be explained by stupidity.

FatR · Post by **FatR** » Sat Oct 13, 2012 7:26 am

FrankTrollman wrote:Honestly, it reads like X3 - a deliberate attempt to scuttle the franchise. If ME3 had had a good or even passable ending, they would have been forced to make a 4th, and maybe a 5th. By making an ending that insulted everyone who played the games and got all fans to rage against it, they get to make other things.

The problem with this theory is that DA 2 ending sucked a quite similar barrel of dicks - the game forces you to jump on the stupid train in the end to force a choice between bad options, your choices during the rest of the game end up meaningless. So either Bioware writers secretly hate their work so much, that they want to ruin their studio's every existing franchise (and fail, DA 3 is in the making), or, maybe, their remaining writers are just not good enough.

FatR · Post by **FatR** » Sat Oct 13, 2012 7:35 am

Aryxbez wrote:
As for Obsidian, I trust them decently enough, New Vegas probably being my favorite RPG of this current console generation. Though I know one of their designers(co-director for PE), Josh E. Sawyer, does play/like 4th edition, though recognizes the HP bloat, and failure of Skill challenges, still concerns me in regards to what's been mentioned.

There is little reason to expect that the gameplay will be anything but poor. But we might hope for a good story behind it. I'm still not going to pledge my money. But I will certainly watch their progress and buy the game if they deliver said story (and the game in general). In my opinion BG 2 was pretty much a pinnacle of western CRPGs, so I welcome an attempt to revive it, it is just that my trust in Obsidian's ability to deliver a quality finished product is rather limited. And while I really like their art for the game, the provided information about the game itself remains too vague and smells of cliches too much to dispel my caution.

MfA · Post by **MfA** » Sat Oct 13, 2012 2:41 pm

K wrote:Maybe a producer stuck his dick in and said "here is the ending I want because we only have the CGI resources to do one," but there was obviously a serious creative breakdown of some kind at the end.

Except of course it was Mac Walters who pushed through his vision for the end unimpeded (the account which posted that story on the PA forum was owned by a writer at Bioware). We might have differing views on the value of teams and producers, but to say the ending is evidence of your point of view is just strange.

BTW, Mac Walters was only co-lead on ME2, which might have had a boring non story but was at least still a power fantasy ... then he got lead on Arrival and it all went to shit ...

It almost comes off as a protest ending because there are a number of basic storytelling flaws in the ending to make it look a deliberate hatchet job. It's like some writer said, "Fuck your franchise because I am going to make it taste like ashes in everyone's mouth and you don't even realize it because you aren't a writer."

Okay that's a more coherent argument, but not really what you initially said.

Really though, between Arrival, an obnoxiously forced MacGuffin 5 minutes in and what he did to Legion I think he was on a mission all along ... the ending was just a cherry on top.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Sat Oct 13, 2012 4:25 pm

Aryxbez wrote: As for Obsidian, I trust them decently enough, New Vegas probably being my favorite RPG of this current console generation. Though I know one of their designers(co-director for PE), Josh E. Sawyer, does play/like 4th edition, though recognizes the HP bloat, and failure of Skill challenges, still concerns me in regards to what's been mentioned.

Huh, I still think of JE as the PR monkey/forum mod from the Black Isle days, despite the fact that he did switch over to design. But he was lead for IWD II, and that was frankly a pretty shitty game (both in terms of the terrible 3rd edition conversion kludge and in terms of plot), so I'm not terribly reassured.

As for vegas- I did really like the early game, but the mid-game (and the plot) went a bizarre direction and the 'beat the randomly nigh-invulnerable normal human' end game made me want to punch someone in the face.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Sat Oct 13, 2012 7:05 pm

rjshae asks...

Back in the BG series, experience growth was relatively slow and it felt like an accomplishment to reach a new level. Since then, D&D v3.5 rules came out and level up began to feel almost like a cheesy accomplishment that didn't require much effort. That has become the trend in modern games: leveling up after every few battles. I have to wonder how this will be handled in PE? It sounds like Obsidian wants to return to the style of the BG series, which would seems to entail a return to slower level progress. If they do allow a more rapid level up, I hope they tone down the power growth rate so that lower level monsters remain a challenge for longer periods.

We are working hard to make Project Eternity revive the spirit of the older IE games, and this includes making leveling up an important accomplishment, one that makes your character feel substantially more powerful afterward. I agree that frequent level-ups make the event feel less special, so we plan to space out these events over the course of our storyline. The first few level-ups will occur relatively early in the game, but the pacing of the subsequent level-ups will be much slower.

For people who enjoy level-ups, they are free to use our Adventurer's Hall to swap out new companions frequently, so they are always leveling up new characters to use in later parts of the story. For people who aren't sure what character classes they will want to have available in the end game, it's always nice to have the choice of having all of them.

Stephen P asks...

After seeing this screenshot my anticipation for the game has spiked considerably, but it left me with a few questions. I understand the 2d portrait background concept, but will there be any overlapping animation with the river to make it appear flowing, even if the actual image doesn't move? The same question for the flowers? trees? will wind be simulated somehow?

We will certainly be adding animations to our backgrounds. The trees should sway, there will be birds or butterflies or insect clouds, depending on where you are, and the water in rivers and waterfalls will flow. We are using a rendering technique similar to the one we used in Temple of Elemental Evil, where the background is a pre-rendered 2D image and the characters and some props are 3D objects. This gives us the advantage of exquisitely detailed environments without the polygon cost, along with lots of animation without the memory cost that 2D sprites would entail.

Mirokunite asks...

Will there be low intelligence/charisma dialog?

Yes, we will have these dialogs. They are a great deal of work, since it means writing two versions of every dialog in the game, but I am sure that our wonderful writers are up to it. I really want these dialogs too! I find it fun to replay the game with a low intelligence character, just to see how the NPC's react to my slow-witted attempts to help them.

And there we have it! Five questions answered from five sites. Again, thanks for your support of Obsidian and Project Eternity. There are just a few days left before the Kickstarter campaign is over and we enter full production of this game, and we are all very excited about the prospect of working on a classic CRPG again!

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Oct 13, 2012 7:11 pm

The first two paragraphs don't actually sound too bad. I mean, pre-rendered backgrounds with 3D objects is what games like FFIX use. And if you completely ignore the grognard whining aside about level-ups not being special enough (in which case, you shouldn't be playing a 2E D&D game, but that's grognard whining for you) that's a reasonable design philosophy.

The third one is definitely an eyebrow-raiser, however.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Sat Oct 13, 2012 9:50 pm

Actually, the specific example for pre-rendered backgrounds is _really_ worrisome. The biggest problem with TOEE was the massive memory leaks that slowed the game down, particularly at the end (In addition to shoddy as fuck debugging).

Though I really like the use of 'we' there. Tip guys: you aren't Troika anymore. You ran that company right into the dirt, with 3 buggy-as-fuck releases.

Yeah, though I'm not sure why a few extra lines of dialogue is really hard, especially if its just the multiple-choice menu dialogue, BG-style.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Oct 13, 2012 10:01 pm

Well, here's my opinion. I've been a bad boy and used .tlk-editors on some Bioware properties, like for Jade Empire and Baldur's Gate 2. And those dialogue trees are a lot deeper than I thought they'd be. Something as simple as doing a quest out of order or just having someone different in your party can cause huge spanning trees.

Which is fine, because I like it when a game acknowledges that different shit goes down. The thing is, that kind of thing takes a lot of time. And I mean a lot of time. If someone makes a promise like that, it means one of a couple of things:

[*] They're not going to be able to go through with it and it'll just come up enough times to be annoying.
[*] They're going to have to cut out some dialogue/effort in other parts.
[*] They will actually be able to pull off their promise and gain our respect.

Unfortunately, even if the third caveat ends up being true then what's the point? You did all of that extra effort so that someone can RP being an idiot and/or a boor? Is there really a big enough subcategory of protagonist-based wish fulfillment where people want to play unintelligent sub-ubermensch? I think their time would be better spent somewhere else.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Sat Oct 13, 2012 10:16 pm

It depends how they do it. The trees in fallout weren't deep, they just had a basic string replacement or an additional line. Basically every dialogue they bothered to do it with (and they _didn't_ do it with all of them) had a simple if INT<4, then dialogue option = 'Thog stupid, use small words with Thog' replacement of the players options. There might be a corresponding change to the NPCs dialogue for the response, but usually for only for the first two responses or so.

Now, I agree that bothering with the 'stupid fucker' dialogue options is a wate of time. What they should do is selective replacement for shit that actually matters for each NPC. For example, if you rescue some brat in a small town early on in the adventure, are you bump into his aunt in the city later, she reacts differently than she would if you let the kid die, or just never interacted with that subquest. As in, the default is her dialogue tree mentions being worried about her nephew. If you already rescued said nephew, the dialogue mechanism notices that flag, and she thanks you, and maybe tips you off on some relevant news. If you interacted with the boys mother and laughed in her face, the aunt could throw shit at you (or whatever).

Reacting to consequences is a lot more rewarding for the player than simply doing string replacements for the small subset of people that just want to play Thog.

Now, given that they're pimping IWD, IWD II and (apparently) TOEE as what they want to go back to, it really doesn't matter, because there isn't a fuckton of dialogue in any of those games. They are mostly straightforward murder-fests.

MfA · Post by **MfA** » Sat Oct 13, 2012 11:21 pm

They don't pimp ToEE any more than Arcanum (other than using a similar graphics engine).

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Oct 14, 2012 6:09 am

Torment, which did have some pretty deep dialog options and event dependency had 800,000 words in it. If it were a novel, it would be roughly the length of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and be approximately the fifth longest novel ever written in the English language. It's awesome when someone delivers something like that, but you're going to have to have a lot of trust between authors working very independently. Also: testing it is going to be a bitch, because you're going to have to trigger all the different dialog menu items in order to make sure none of them say "INSERT_TEXTKEY" or trigger on the wrong events or something.

That said: comedy dialog options for when your character is a functional retard are extremely low priority. Or at least they should be. You'd just be mirroring all the dialog in the game with a lot of "Zug!" thrown in for comedic effects, and that would wear thin pretty damn fast.

-Username17