They said the game starts with 3 races, 5 classes and 5 companions. Goals are extra.
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Pillars of Eternity by Obsidian Entertainment (Kickstarter) [Up: Teaser]
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They said the game starts with 3 races, 5 classes and 5 companions. Goals are extra.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Oh really? The goals are a sizable increase then. Cool
I played some of NWN2 co-op. It was painfully awkward.
jim-jam bongs
Member
co-op in IE games was really just a nod to the pnp roots of the settings and systems, it's a shame it never really took off.
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
So ultimately, we could/are be/are getting:
6 races
7 classes
7 companions
Without the stretch goals, it seems we'd be getting two of Race X and two of Race Y, with each being one of the classes.
So I like six races.
I have been begging for a turn based multiplayer D&D game with the 5E ruleset. It would be amazing done right.
Instead we get shit like Neverwinter or Daggerdale
Screaming_Gremlin
My QB is a Dick and my coach is a Nutt
Well now I just feel stupid. Thanks for pointing that out. And the stretch goals are actually some pretty good additions then.
EternalGamer
Banned
Sometimes, perhaps. But I would say rarely. Spoken dialog allows for sublty of tone that is hard to communicate in written dialog. This can be made up for in narration in books that serve to contextualize dialog but it is never a real substituit. This is because, to state the obvious, dialog is meant to be spoken. It is literally defined as words characters are supoosed to be saying. If it doesnt work spoken out loud, that frankly means it is bad dialog.
Speaking it make dialog come to life, almost literally. It fills it with emotion, emphasis. cadence, and idiolect that humanizes and embodies it. This is the same reason Shakespeare os better performed and heard outloud than read. His plays are composed of dialog that is meant to be spoken.
I have issues with the idea of branching narratives in games.
In a perfect world, branching stories would be the best thing ever. It lets the player craft his own story and he really feels like his choices can have a real impact since it shapes the world around him. It sounds awesome!
But alas, this is the real world. Where money and manpower are not infinite. So, instead of having a great story split into two equally awesome branches, you get weaker ones because they can't concentrate on one of the two.
I mean, just look at Mass Effect, you had a lot of decisions that really changed the story, yet most of it was irrelevant in ME3, where it was all supposed to pay off.
In a perfect world, branching stories would be the best thing ever. It lets the player craft his own story and he really feels like his choices can have a real impact since it shapes the world around him. It sounds awesome!
But alas, this is the real world. Where money and manpower are not infinite. So, instead of having a great story split into two equally awesome branches, you get weaker ones because they can't concentrate on one of the two.
I mean, just look at Mass Effect, you had a lot of decisions that really changed the story, yet most of it was irrelevant in ME3, where it was all supposed to pay off.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
But in video games it so rarely rarely does. So really truly rarely. Even the great BioWare is incredibly hit or miss. Good voice acting may be better then good text, but good text is far better for me then mediocre to bad voice acting, which is almost certainly what we'd get on this budget if even stuff like Assassin's Creed and Mass Effect isn't up to my standards.
Counterpoint: Alpha Protocol.
Took so much money to make the story right that the gameplay was shit.
THAT'S RIGHT SHOTS FIRED
Exactly, you voice characters when it's appropriate but for Infinity, full voice acting is just too ambitious.
Basileus777
Member
Voice acting has its place even in these sorts of games. I know Irenicus would have been a lesser character if his monologues weren't voiced and were instead just text. For special events and "cutscenes" voice acting is certainly a welcome enhancement, if they can afford it.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
For a few events and cutscenes perhaps
EternalGamer
Banned
And I would rather have better writing than more writing. And voice actors would force you to be a better editor. Good writing is about the economy of language, saying as much as you can with as few words as possible. That is the essence of powerful language. As Pound noted, great literature is "language charged to the utmost with meaning."
What the Technomancer said is true, but more importantly the very nature of video games can be very, VERY different even with money being a non-issue. In film there's rarely a reason to go text only, usually you're going for a specific effect or something, but in a game you can have a far larger volume to work with, which takes up more memory and more time to work out. SOME VA may be reasonable, in fact I believe they stated they would do that (similar to what Fallout and the Infinity Engine games did I believe), but full VA can be (and arguably HAS BEEN) detrimental to games with loads of text and dialogue options like RPGs.
Besides, everything's probably going to be acted out with low detail characters standing around, coming closer to action figures than a play. Something like FFVII's cutscenes (when they had dialogue anyway) are better examples of "well, why not?"
Having voice acting for a few important characters at a few important times wouldn't be bad, but any more than that is a no-no purely for practical reasons.
Did Pound write role playing games with a branching narrative? Did he spend millions on voice acting?
Count of Monte Sawed-Off
un33dab@dpu$$y
The BG games and well the IE games in general did voiceovers right for this type of game. There's enough there to define the characters, but not so much that it became a burden on the writing.
You know...I'm a little hurt J.E. is on SA and not GAF. Just sayin' =[
(unless he does have a GAF account and I just don't know about it)
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
*sigh* nvm
In an RPG like this voice acting should be a minor part of it. For important lines of the story, flavor like Minsc, generic NPC innkeeper type replies that they have one sentence voiced. Voice acting can help in that respect. The problem with voice acting is for anything complex it quickly becomes hugely expensive. It also is severely limiting on the complexity of the narrative and player choice. We went from games having huge branching dialogue paths, to everything leading the same place and having 3 different ways to say the same thing. Lack of voice acting isn't a bad thing. It is not a missing feature. It is something that will make for a better game.
EternalGamer
Banned
Frankly I think the examples you refer to are more about badly written dialog than they are bad actors. I wont say the latter is never a problem but it is certainly true that when you speak dumb words outloud it makes it a lot more apparent they are dumb.
But if it is good dialog, it deserves to be spoken because dialog is literally written to be spoken. Especially videogames are not a typographic medium. They are visual and aural by nature.
To me it is like saying it would be better to have text that pops up ans says says "Then a gust of wind blew by" rather than actually having the sound of wind in the game.
jim-jam bongs
Member
after all the ED-E fanfic I sent him on GAF letterhead I don't think we'll be seeing him around these parts.
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
My thoughts ex. Ac. tly.
-tetsuo-
Unlimited Capacity
Nah son
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
In some cases it can be. Some of my favorite RPGs use text heavily to create atmosphere because of the severe limitations even high-end games still have in terms of resolution of detail. I don't think a single gust of wind needs to be described perhaps, but a complex action scene might work better as text instead of some small models jerking around.
Actually another point with the VA, which makes that call for it kind of funny: it can potentially be directly incompatible with a branching narrative. Just look at Bioware, they go more for fully acted out stuff in their 3 part sci-fi epic, and the actual variation is pathetic compared to KotOR, which cheated out of fully voicing everyone, while Dragon Age 2 stuck you with one Origin due to the switch to full VA there (and both probably could've done more with elves/dwarves if they had their own "language"). The one game that still gets this right is a fairly short game, Alpha Protocol. I'd say leave it to either a few very important characters, or little bits to give flavor to each significant one. Especially since for every major, important scene there'll be a lot of NPCs and relatively minor stories I'd rather just speed through, VAing's also a problem for being FAR slower than reading.
whalleywhat
Member
So they should put that level of story branching in an isometric RPG with IE combat.
Admittedly with good cutscene directing you could probably capture that without text very well.
Too bad that unless you're going for comic-style panels that's not going to happen on a Kickstarter budget. Hell, you'd need a fairly high budget to do it justice.
EternalGamer
Banned
But then you are basically talking about an interactive or choose your own adventure novel. Not a videogame. I realize there is obviously a blurring of lines there in the origin of RPG genre, though.
I also realize we aren't going to come to agreement because a lot of people want a game that is exactly like the old games they played when they were younger and anything that deviates from that is apocryphal.
I just simply don't agree on the idea of the text heavy philosophy of game design. When I play a lot of older CRPG games and I read that dialog, I often find myself thinking that if someone had to read this shit out loud, then an actor might look up at the producer and give a look like "Are you serious?" that would serve the editing process well. Or that if they actually had to reign themselves in due to budget or time constraints, we would get less badly written drafty prose and lore descriptions that are far more convoluted than they need be and more sharp, vivid prose in its place. Putting that kind of constraint upon writers is a good thing, in my opinion. Somewhere there may very well be mad visionary geniuses who could write reams of text and whose artistic brilliance would be heavily compromised by such a process, but I'm not convinced those people are writing scripts for CRPGs. But again, as I said from the start, I am more concerned with quality than quantity.
Jibbajabbawockky
Member
Yeah, I think BG2 struck a pretty great balance in terms of having voice over to enhance certain key scenes and give the characters some identity that could be carried over into their text only bits, while not needing every single thing voice acted, allowing for just more writing and dialogue and reactivity.
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Well...to a certain extend yes. A lot of us have tasted what "progress" has brought and we don't like it. This is actually an excellent experiment: can a game based on the old design principles be positively received against contemporary titles without nostalgia going for it?
EternalGamer
Banned
Or with well written and well spoken dialog, you could convey that sensation in a way that is far more powerful than merely telling the reader about it. That passage it is the very definition of "telling not showing."
jim-jam bongs
Member
uh yes actually there are. one of them is called chris avellone, and he's writing this game, hence the reaction to your posts.
EternalGamer
Banned
And I think there is a very nice middle ground that could be reached by staying true to the type of mechanics and art styles that made those games so memorable but updating the production values (including graphics and voice work) to modern standards. And Obsidian is a big enough studio where they could actually do that whereas there are literally dozens of CRPGs now that are following the model you suggest because it's cheaper and easier to do.
What are your "modern" standards? Full voice acting, CG cutscenes?
Personally I'm appalled that you would want this, and think that this probably isn't the game for you.
EternalGamer
Banned
Full voice acting would certainly be one, yes. Because I always considered written dialog to just be a result of hardware and budgetary limitations rather than intentional design. Like I said above, it is, afterall, dialog, which by definition is words characters are supposed to be speaking.
As for CG, actually In don't particularly like CG and never have because it creates too much discontinuity. At it's best, it is merely a visual treat but still one that, most of the time, breaks too far from in game visuals to really enhance immersion.
Although I know it isn't feasible with this particular project due to budget limitations, I also think these old games could use some updates in terms of how they handle cameras. I realize the far back view they take is optimal for a lot of strategic battles but there is no reason you need to maintain that view constantly. I think the new X-com games way of handling dynamic camera is a good example of how you can marry that kind of traditional view with occasional more dramatic action shots. And that certainly would be a lot cooler for narrative or dilaog moments if you could actually see character's faces rather than always staring at everything like a bird up in a tree. Again, I realize for this project that kind of thing isn't feasible, but it is an example of how I think the genre could benefit dramatically from updated production values while still capitalizing on what people love about the genre.
CrunchyFrog
Member
what was that website that kept track of kickstarter campaigns, had like graphs of $/hr, pledges/hr over the course of the campaign along with other interesting stats?
jim-jam bongs
Member
I just love how everything EternalGamer wants is window-dressing which doesn't actually improve the gameplay in any way yet he can't understand why people disagree.
EternalGamer
Banned
Well suicide is always one option. But incase you wanted to ponder the absurdity of your existence a little bit longer you could always just, you know, turn the voice toggle switch to "off" in the options menu.
More than that, it means less game for more presentation. If the game's budget was unlimited I wouldn't mind way more VA but if it's a choice of one city getting fully voiced vs a brand new city to quest in throw out the VA!
