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[Sentenza]

Haer'dalis and Aerie make for some awesome love triangle. Viconia was my favorite though, especially in ToB.

She was also an awesome cleric.

 

[ArjanN]

I didn't read these books myself, but I've also been told (and I found quite interesting as idea) that often those (female) mages don't shape themselves as beautiful women just for vanity or luxury, but because they realize it's an excellent tool of manipulation, when dealing with men.

And that, by the way, is the reason why every single female caster in The Witcher looks like the playmate of the year.

Well, to be fair, if people in real life had magical powers to alter their appearance no-one would be ugly either.

 

[Lancehead]

Well, to be fair, if people in real life had magical powers to alter their appearance no-one would be ugly either.

Sure there'd be. My standards of beauty can be quite random, to the point it becomes irrational.

 

[Zeliard]

Sure there'd be. My standards of beauty can be quite random, to the point it becomes irrational.

 

[Sentenza]

As we are all fellows PC RPG lovers here...
I realize that Fargo and Avellone have a way more solid reputation with the audience, but I don't get why there's so little interest with Chaos Chronicles.

I've started a thread about it sometime ago but form some reason I'm essentially posting in it all by myself.
Every single time I add some info the thread slips in second or third page in heartbeat without a single reply.

And yet it looks like old school, party-based, turn-based goodness, exactly what many of you should love.

 

[EndcatOmega]

And yet it looks like old school, party-based, turn-based goodness, exactly what many of you should love.

From what I can see with your thread, it's a bit more combat focused than I want in RPGs- I didn't hate TOEE or the old Gold Box games, but it's hard (for me at least) to get as excited about it as I am this.

 

[Sentenza]

From what I can see with your thread, it's a bit more combat focused than I want in RPGs- I didn't hate TOEE or the old Gold Box games, but it's hard (for me at least) to get as excited about it as I am this.

They actually claim a lot of inspiration from Realms of Arkania and so on, but yes, it's probably going to be a game with more focus on combat and dungeon crawling compared to Project Eternity.

Still, I love these things when properly done, so I can't say that's a mood killer for me.

 

[WorstUsernameEver]

As we are all fellows PC RPG lovers here...
I realize that Fargo and Avellone have a way more solid reputation with the audience, but I don't get why there's so little interest with Chaos Chronicles.

I've started a thread about it sometime ago but form some reason I'm essentially posting in it all by myself.
Every single time I add some info the thread slips in second or third page in heartbeat without a single reply.

And yet it looks like old school, party-based, turn-based goodness, exactly what many of you should love.

Mostly it's just that it's a developer with little to no credit and that so far is just talking the good talk and not really *showing* much. They certainly have me curious, if nothing else, but I wouldn't really know what to say besides "HYPE??!! MAYBE? Maybe!"

 

[peakish]

As we are all fellows PC RPG lovers here...
I realize that Fargo and Avellone have a way more solid reputation with the audience, but I don't get why there's so little interest with Chaos Chronicles.

I've started a thread about it sometime ago but form some reason I'm essentially posting in it all by myself.
Every single time I add some info the thread slips in second or third page in heartbeat without a single reply.

And yet it looks like old school, party-based, turn-based goodness, exactly what many of you should love.

Well I certainly wouldn't have caught that thread without this post. I loved TOEE warts and all, and although Knights of the Chalice is still on my to-play list the demo made OGL seem very good - promising to say the least.

 

[Zeliard]

I totally missed that thread.

 

[HoosTrax]

As we are all fellows PC RPG lovers here...
I realize that Fargo and Avellone have a way more solid reputation with the audience, but I don't get why there's so little interest with Chaos Chronicles.

I've started a thread about it sometime ago but form some reason I'm essentially posting in it all by myself.
Every single time I add some info the thread slips in second or third page in heartbeat without a single reply.

And yet it looks like old school, party-based, turn-based goodness, exactly what many of you should love.

Oh god, that's the team that made the Jagged Alliance remake? It wasn't a very well received reboot from what I've heard.

Anyways, I enjoyed both IWD and ToEE (as well as Jeff Vogel / Spiderweb's old-school party-based RPGs), but they're a bit of a different animal from BG and PS:T insofar as you control a generic party of adventurers, and there is no main protagonist to speak of. The lack of a focus on character interaction might not appeal to some people. It can work fine if the game keeps up a steady pace of varied and challenging combat.

 

[Lancehead]

Now now, there's nothing random or irrational in thinking every snake is the most beautiful creature on the planet.

 

[Sentenza]

Oh god, that's the team that made the Jagged Alliance remake? It wasn't a very well received reboot from what I've heard.

Well, tell me about it. I hated it (or at least the demo, which is the only thing I tried).

Still, I'm very interested in what they are doing (and saying) with this game.
Mostly because that's their own project and they are moving it in a complete different direction.
They also claimed that turning JA: BiA in a real time game was not their call, it was imposed by their publisher, so I'll give them a chance.

 

[dude]

I missed the thread as well, but this game looks very interesting indeed! Thanks for posting it

Are we getting an update today BTW?

 

[Sentenza]

I missed the thread as well, but this game looks very interesting indeed! Thanks for posting it

Are we getting an update today BTW?

Nope, they said Monday.

 

[Grayman]

As we are all fellows PC RPG lovers here...
I realize that Fargo and Avellone have a way more solid reputation with the audience, but I don't get why there's so little interest with Chaos Chronicles.

I've started a thread about it sometime ago but form some reason I'm essentially posting in it all by myself.
Every single time I add some info the thread slips in second or third page in heartbeat without a single reply.

And yet it looks like old school, party-based, turn-based goodness, exactly what many of you should love.

I hadn't seen the thread before probably because of the thread dropping. I am interested in Obsidian's kick starter because of the writing, world, scripting, design as you would call them. I haven't tried turn based DnD before but I haven't really enjoyed the combat in real time with pause options I have played. So a game trying to be like ToEE is probably not up my alley.

 

[EatChildren]

The stretch goal tiers are weird. "With the additional $200,000, we'll add in a new store! And a house!". I know that's now what they mean, but it's weird.

Spoiler

Arcanum 2.

Think this will hit 1.9m by the end of the weekend?

 

[Eusis]

Think this will hit 1.9m by the end of the weekend?

Seems plausible, just 50k more to go.

 

[Glaurungr]

New (?) interview with Feargus Urquhart:

• Part 1
• Part 2

 

[mclem]

Obsidian's "backed projects" list is interesting. Very heavy on tabletop gaming, which is understandable... and it's got me looking at those kickstarters too!

(Their only backed videogame, for what it's worth, is Broken Sword. Presumably because all the high-profile ones were over before the Obsidian *account* was made)

 

[EatChildren]

New (?) interview with Feargus Urquhart:

• Part 1
• Part 2

"One, it will be class based. So it won’t be like Fallout which is skill-based system, it’s going to be a class based."

And there goes my Arcanum 2 dreams.

 

[dude]

And there goes my Arcanum 2 dreams.

That's okay, skill-based systems usually suck, especially in party-based RPGs. And the system in Arcanum was awful anyway. Classes are much more at home in party-based RPGs, everyone has a role anyway, it's much easier having it clear via a class.

Obsidian's "backed projects" list is interesting. Very heavy on tabletop gaming, which is understandable... and it's got me looking at those kickstarters too!

(Their only backed videogame, for what it's worth, is Broken Sword. Presumably because all the high-profile ones were over before the Obsidian *account* was made)

It's actually amazing to see how many project they backed in such a short amount of time. Warms the heart!

 

[Nirolak]

Nick K: “What do you mean by the less than traditional or other races?”

Feargus Urquhart: “The others are… as we have been listening to people, we are coming up with ideas. For instance, there were a lot of threads about an insect race. At first we weren’t really thinking about one, but it’s definitely worth the conversation. That’s how we want to do it. We’re seeing what’s there, and what people are talking about, and then discussing it internally.”

I see they've been reading this thread!

duckroll will be pleased.

To answer Dennis' question:

Nick K: “When it comes to the stretch goals, I imagine if you hit over 2 million you’ll push them even further. Do you think it may impact the release date?”

Feargus Urquhart: “As we have more funding, it will probably take more time to make the game. But it’s not a ratio. It’s not like, if we get twice the money, it’ll take twice the time; because we will put more people on the project. But the time will be a bit squishier. We want to be careful that we are very serious about the money that we get and spend it wisely. We don’t want to go the other way and have twice the team if we have twice the money either.”

 

[Dennis]

Insect race WTF?

Don't ruin the game, GAF!

 

[Grayman]

Skill based rocks for single avatar systems and interesting trade offs but usually leads to jack of all trades characters that would make a six person party have way too much overlap. Depending on how many skills reasonably fit on a character the game needs many more combat differentiation skills than characters.

 

[EviLore]

No one wants an insect race, Feargus, what the hell :lol

 

[Grayman]

a game full of bugs to squish. special title of QA master for genocide of the insect race.

 

[Nirolak]

No one wants an insect race, Feargus, what the hell :lol

What do you mean?

All sorts of people are talking about Obsidian Bugs.

 

[Sentenza]

No one wants an insect race, Feargus, what the hell :lol

Actually, I wouldn't have any problem with it.
I'm not even saying I would cheer for it, but I'm open to any option for an exotic race as far as is decently written and well implemented.

 

[Zeliard]

We've got some anti-insect bigotry going on in this thread.

 

[The Technomancer]

Learning new things. This includes finding out previously unknown information, like the location of town or a hidden door, or uncovering secret knowledge, like a potion recipe or the true name of a demon. Or maybe you just want to know a good place to gather materials like ore or herbs. We will make abilities that let you find things out.

I really hope they do something similar to Alpha Protocol here

 

[Hargenx]

Class is way better, in isometric, Skill has more for 3D games.

 

[Llyranor]

Give me insect race + romance options, or neither of them.

 

[Grayman]

Tim Cain's non combat skills update is out, and he has a cool big box fallout case.

One of the design goals that i do not have a lot of (good) experience with is that non-combat skills are gained separately from combat skills. I always found the tradeoff between speaking and combat to be valid. On the other side that may eliminate mages are talkers or rogues do everything gameplay tropes.

From the video "Locks always lead to something beneficial" shouldn't a lock sometimes have something scary behind it?

 

[Dennis]

Non-Combat Abilities

Let's talk first about your goals as a player, about the things you would like to do besides fighting. Then I'll talk about our design goals and explain how we are putting the non-combat systems together.

Player Goals

When you are not fighting, that's when non-combat abilities come into play. We plan to add abilities that will let you become better at achieving four different non-combat goals.
■ Learning new things. This includes finding out previously unknown information, like the location of town or a hidden door, or uncovering secret knowledge, like a potion recipe or the true name of a demon. Or maybe you just want to know a good place to gather materials like ore or herbs. We will make abilities that let you find things out.
■ Traveling around the world. You will want to improve your movement capabilities (such as sneaking around some ruins), or traveling across the world map faster or more safely, or even teleporting directly to your destination. And sometimes movement requires removing barriers like locks or traps, so you will need some way to unlock and disarm. We'll add abilities for these actions.
■ Getting new items. If you are not going to kill a creature to take its things, then we will give you the means to make new items, buy them, or steal them. Or maybe you will choose to support NPC's by bringing them the materials or the recipes needed to make new items for you. We congratulate you on your non-violent and cooperative plans of wealth acquisition, and we'll give you the means to do it.
■ Interacting with companions. Once we have added many interesting and useful NPC companions, we will have to give you ways to recruit them, improve their usefulness, and keep them from dying (or even worse, disliking you!). We will make non-combat abilities that interact with your companions, so you can keep them alive and filled with a grudging respect for you.

Now each of these goals represents a whole slew of related non-combat abilities. For example, for player traveling, we could have all kinds of abilities, including stealth and teleport abilities, as well as abilities to make world map travel faster, less likely to have encounters, and able to make use of alternate transportation routes such as over mountains using passes or over water using ships.

Design Goals

In putting together our non-combat system, we have made a list of goals for the design of these skills and the rules they need to follow.
■ Non-combat skills are gained separately from combat skills. You shouldn't have to choose between Magic Missile and Herbalism. They should be separate types of abilities, and you should spend different points to get each one.
■ Non-combat skills do not use the same resources as combat skills. You don't spend the same stuff for a non-combat skill as you do for combat skills. Some don't use anything at all to use, so you will never find yourself unable to blast an opponent if you get caught sneaking.
■ All non-combat skills are useful. If we add lockpicking to the game, we will make sure that there are locks to pick and worthwhile rewards for getting past them.
■ All non-combat skills can be used frequently. If you take disarm traps as a skill, you should expect more than two traps in the entire game world. Frequency of application has a large impact on how useful something is.
■ Combat can be avoided with non-combat skills. There will often be ways to avoid fighting. Yes, we will have the standard methods of talking your way out of a fight or sneaking around an encounter, but there will be other ways too. Perhaps you can re-sanctify a desecrated cemetery to prevent any further undead from rising, or maybe figuring out a way across a ruined bridge will always avoid the bandits on this side of the river.
■ Avoiding combat does not lead to less experience gain. You shouldn't go up levels any slower by using your non-combat skills rather than your combat skills. We plan to reward you for your accomplishments, not for your body count.

Update 7.

 

[duckroll]

This is a huge huge huge update in terms of gameplay awareness.

- Combat and non-combat abilities using different resources and acquisition

- Encouragement in design to make non-combat abilities useful throughout the entire game

- Experience gain for using non-combat abilities to evade combat

Wow.

 

[EviLore]

Everything.

Every single thing.

That Avellone and Sawyer and Cain say about Project Eternity.

Inspires me with confidence and makes me ecstatic about this project.

 

[Sentenza]

Class is way better, in isometric, Skill has more for 3D games.

I don't think it has anything to do with perspective. Fallout was isometric and skill based, after all.
Grayman is right when he says that it's more about using a single character or managing a whole party (where high differentiation between characters becomes exponentially more important).

Update 7.

Wha- but they said they were going to post a new update just Monday.
Oh well, that's even better.

 

[Zeliard]

Great update. They seem to be doing everything right, to nobody's surprise.

Give me insect race + romance options, or neither of them.

It could be like a China Mieville novel!

 

[Nirolak]

From the video "Locks always lead to something beneficial" shouldn't a lock sometimes have something scary behind it?

I don't see how one precludes the other.

 

[A Human Becoming]

What do you mean?

All sorts of people are talking about Obsidian Bugs.

When you are not fighting, that's when non-combat abilities come into play. We plan to add abilities that will let you become better at achieving four different non-combat goals.
■ Learning new things. This includes finding out previously unknown information, like the location of town or a hidden door, or uncovering secret knowledge, like a potion recipe or the true name of a demon. Or maybe you just want to know a good place to gather materials like ore or herbs. We will make abilities that let you find things out.

The most recent game I've played that did this was Xenoblade Chronicles and it did it well.

■ Interacting with companions. Once we have added many interesting and useful NPC companions, we will have to give you ways to recruit them, improve their usefulness, and keep them from dying (or even worse, disliking you!). We will make non-combat abilities that interact with your companions, so you can keep them alive and filled with a grudging respect for you.

I thought Dragon Age: Origins handled this well. Hopefully it's even better.

Now each of these goals represents a whole slew of related non-combat abilities. For example, for player traveling, we could have all kinds of abilities, including stealth and teleport abilities, as well as abilities to make world map travel faster, less likely to have encounters, and able to make use of alternate transportation routes such as over mountains using passes or over water using ships.

Design Goals

In putting together our non-combat system, we have made a list of goals for the design of these skills and the rules they need to follow.
■ Non-combat skills are gained separately from combat skills. You shouldn't have to choose between Magic Missile and Herbalism. They should be separate types of abilities, and you should spend different points to get each one.
■ Non-combat skills do not use the same resources as combat skills. You don't spend the same stuff for a non-combat skill as you do for combat skills. Some don't use anything at all to use, so you will never find yourself unable to blast an opponent if you get caught sneaking.
■ All non-combat skills are useful. If we add lockpicking to the game, we will make sure that there are locks to pick and worthwhile rewards for getting past them.
■ All non-combat skills can be used frequently. If you take disarm traps as a skill, you should expect more than two traps in the entire game world. Frequency of application has a large impact on how useful something is.
■ Combat can be avoided with non-combat skills. There will often be ways to avoid fighting. Yes, we will have the standard methods of talking your way out of a fight or sneaking around an encounter, but there will be other ways too. Perhaps you can re-sanctify a desecrated cemetery to prevent any further undead from rising, or maybe figuring out a way across a ruined bridge will always avoid the bandits on this side of the river.
■ Avoiding combat does not lead to less experience gain. You shouldn't go up levels any slower by using your non-combat skills rather than your combat skills. We plan to reward you for your accomplishments, not for your body count.

All of this sounds awesome.

 

[mclem]

Hmmm. An interesting thing in that update that I'd like to know more about; how they'll reconcile these:

Traveling around the world. You will want to improve your movement capabilities (such as sneaking around some ruins), or traveling across the world map faster or more safely, or even teleporting directly to your destination. And sometimes movement requires removing barriers like locks or traps, so you will need some way to unlock and disarm. We'll add abilities for these actions.

Avoiding combat does not lead to less experience gain. You shouldn't go up levels any slower by using your non-combat skills rather than your combat skills. We plan to reward you for your accomplishments, not for your body count.

If you use an ability to directly teleport to your destination, and in doing so you avoid a (straight combat) random encounter on the way, what happens?

* If nothing happens, you aren't gaining as much experience as you would have if you travelled the slow way, breaching the second statement.
* If you randomly get given an appropriately-sized chunk of XP on arrival, it'd look a bit, well, weird.
* If the random encounter isn't worth *anything* at all, it'll make those fights feel very tedious and unrewarding.

 

[EatChildren]

And I thought my dream last night, where I hooked up with Elaine Benes, was as good as today was going to get.

 

[SquiddyCracker]

Update 7.

Awesome!
Hype get!

 

[Hargenx]

Finishing the game with just fast-talk!

This gonna be AWESOME!!!

 

[duckroll]

Hmmm. An interesting thing in that update that I'd like to know more about; how they'll reconcile these:





If you use an ability to directly teleport to your destination, and in doing so you avoid a (straight combat) random encounter on the way, what happens?

* If nothing happens, you aren't gaining as much experience as you would have if you travelled the slow way, breaching the second statement.
* If you randomly get given an appropriately-sized chunk of XP on arrival, it'd look a bit, well, weird.
* If the random encounter isn't worth *anything* at all, it'll make those fights feel very tedious and unrewarding.

I don't think those points are meant to specifically match each other. It sounds more like they're looking to provide more options for how players prefer to play, while also making rewards for completely scenarios in particular more fair.

Teleporting as a form of fast travel to avoid random encounters or lessen random encounters will always mean that you get less gold and materials than if you actually powered through a route with brute force for example. But if you create a player build which doesn't really require much of those things, or can get those things through alternative means, then it would mean you're being further rewarded through smart gameplay.

It does sound like actual experience from killing monsters is going to be a much smaller part of the game. This is a good thing imo, if it encourages players to actually tackle tasks in the game instead of "grinding" for exp with mobs.

 

[Zeliard]

Hmmm. An interesting thing in that update that I'd like to know more about; how they'll reconcile these:





If you use an ability to directly teleport to your destination, and in doing so you avoid a (straight combat) random encounter on the way, what happens?

* If nothing happens, you aren't gaining as much experience as you would have if you travelled the slow way, breaching the second statement.
* If you randomly get given an appropriately-sized chunk of XP on arrival, it'd look a bit, well, weird.
* If the random encounter isn't worth *anything* at all, it'll make those fights feel very tedious and unrewarding.

The notion of XP gain when avoiding combat refers to talking your way through encounters or finding some other way to resolve them that doesn't include smacking people around physically.

They aren't saying they'll simply substitute a set amount of XP for skipping combat, but rather for finding another way to solve those conflicts. If you are teleporting to places and missing out on some combat or other content, well, that's the give-and-take involved there.

 

[Digoman]

Well... another update, and again they are saying all the right things. If this goes on I'm going to have dig up more money to give them.

I thought Dragon Age: Origins handled this well. Hopefully it's even better.

I really like DA:O... but pleaaase nothing like "Morrigan disaproves"! But they already showed in Alpha Protocol how to handle making NPC hate you in a interesting manner.

 

[duckroll]

I can't update the OP anymore lol. Out of character space.

 

[maquiladora]

I can't update the OP anymore lol. Out of character space.

Maybe delete some of the earlier updates and replace them with links, then paste in the newest update?