• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Pillars of Eternity by Obsidian Entertainment (Kickstarter) [Up: Teaser]

S

Syril

Member
Gattsu25 said:
Regarding real-time with pause vs. entirely turn based..

I think I would be okay with options to pause at start of combat and also pause after every turn in combat.

Those two options would make combat tactical while not impeding exploration and also leave the possibility for the game to be entirely real-time for the people who like to play it that way
Click to expand...

The Infinity Engine games I've played all had those options, though I have to say, the pause after every turn option doesn't work as well as it sounds. Everyone finishes their turns at different times, so it ends up pausing like every two seconds.
 
V

Vagabundo

Member
What more could we want for stretch goals? Thing is I'd prefer if they weren't too ambitious or this game will take forever to be developed.
 
S

SquiddyCracker

Banned
Vagabundo said:
What more could we want for stretch goals? Thing is I'd prefer if they weren't too ambitious or this game will take forever to be developed.
Click to expand...

More races, more classes!
I would like to see some more stuff like the "Cipher", which is pretty much the only "new" class they've introduced.
 
E

epmode

Member
Vagabundo said:
What more could we want for stretch goals? Thing is I'd prefer if they weren't too ambitious or this game will take forever to be developed.
Click to expand...
$3.5M
Optional Felicia Day voice track for every NPC

$4.5M
Optional Nolan North voice track for every NPC
 
L

Lancehead

Member
Obsolete Gamer's interview with Avellone, part 1: http://obsoletegamer.com/we-interview-chris-avellone-from-obsidian-entertainment-part-1/

And this:
Chris-Avellone-suit-picture.jpg
Click to expand...
 
L

Lancehead

Member
zkylon said:
So boss :3 (link's not working for me)
Click to expand...

Yeah, the link's acting up a bit. I have the page open so I'll post a few bits.

What non-gaming things have inspired you to become a better game writer and also gamer?

Going to see live plays that were made on a tight budget – the amount of emotion and lighting they can bring to a scene with a minimal amount of props and effort really makes me think about how you can do the same with modern RPGs. Comic books are another (both reading and writing them). They don’t always get the respect they deserve, and the way they unify visual storytelling and writing… well, there’s a lot to learn there, especially for describing and storyboarding cut scenes and making each line impactful with the right stance, action, and backdrop.

Neal Stephenson (with Snow Crash) is not only a huge host of design ideas on just about every page of his books, but he taught me when it was important to describe something and when it was not – there’s a end chapter line in Snow Crash that simply says “and a car chase ensued.” He had no need to describe anything further, that was enough, and it was simple, elegant, and I appreciated he didn’t try to force details and action when none was needed. Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics to this day makes me understand why it’s better to have less voice and less focus on ultra-realistic visuals if you truly want a player to empathize with a subject. Sometimes it’s easier to empathize with a stick figure than a highly-rendered 3D model, and it’s because the viewer is able to project more of themselves onto an abstract than something someone else has excessively detailed.

There’s more, but most of the rest is gaming related.
Click to expand...

What is something you have wanted to implement in a game in the past that you worked on but were never able to before? It could be a scenario, feature, just about anything.

I wanted to have a spell system based on harnessing sound effects you find and create by interacting and exploring your environment (the death howl of a wolf, the crashing of the tide on shore, walking into a forest and hearing the wind whistle through the trees). The mage could then assemble these SFX pieces into new spell combinations to defeat opponents. We tried to do something vaguely like this in Old World Blues with the sonic gun that could be equipped with various SFXs, but that’s not exactly the same thing.
Click to expand...

Do you plan to implement other worlds, like how it was done in Planescape: Torment?

Our goal with location design is to make amazing locales for the player to explore, much like in Icewind Dale 1 and Icewind Dale 2 (Dorn’s Deep with the frozen museum, Dragon’s Eye, the still-enchanted elven fortress of the Severed Hand that was literally a giant citadel shaped like a hand rising from the earth, etc.). Having dungeons like these allow for plenty of diversity among locations even though they all take place in one section of the Eternity world… the Endless Paths of Od Nua (which we’ve described earlier as our mega dungeon) is one such locale, and we plan to do many more locations equally unique and interesting for players to explore.
Click to expand...
 
D

dude

dude
SquiddyBiscuit said:
More races, more classes!
I would like to see some more stuff like the "Cipher", which is pretty much the only "new" class they've introduced.
Click to expand...

The Cipher sounds pretty much like a psionic :p

Personally, I want much more companions. We have too few right now! I don't expect BG2 levels, but two or three more would be excellent.
 
S

SquiddyCracker

Banned
dude said:
The Cipher sounds pretty much like a psionic :p

Personally, I want much more companions. We have too few right now! I don't expect BG2 levels, but two or three more would be excellent.
Click to expand...

Kindaaa :p
But when compared to the other classes, which aren't even called something new, it feels pretty fresh.
 
G

GlassBox

Banned
So as far as races go, we have the original three, which are assumed to be the typical Human/Elf/Dwarf trio. Then we have two extra unknown races plus an additional "godlike" race. That about right?
 
A

adixon

Member
can't decide whether to completely love or be mildly annoyed that they announced mod tools are already a go as part of the last update. Could have made for an epic stretch goal.
 
T

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
adixon said:
can't decide whether to completely love or be mildly annoyed that they announced mod tools are already a go as part of the last update. Could have made for an epic stretch goal.
Click to expand...

I'm really glad they weren't, because then there would be a chance we wouldn't get them
 
K

~Kinggi~

Banned
adixon said:
can't decide whether to completely love or be mildly annoyed that they announced mod tools are already a go as part of the last update. Could have made for an epic stretch goal.
Click to expand...

They have mentioned in the past that mod tools will not be funded by the kickstarter funds, and that they will probably come after release some time.

They also mentioned that the modding ability is relegated to being able to modify and look at their files, not necessarily having a full toolset. They would rather the sales funds fund the tools instead of the core kickstarter funds.
 
L

Llyranor

Member
For example, we are looking into the idea that wizards are only limited in the number of times they can cast their higher-level combat spells in a fight, and other spell are castable as many times as you want. As the wizard levels up, spells that previously had a limit can now be cast an unlimited number of times, and the newly acquired spells are the ones with a limit. And we could make similar abilities for fighters, priests and rogues too. In general, we always want to the player to have a choice of what to do with a particular character, and we want those choices to change as the character becomes more powerful.
Click to expand...

First off, cooldowns are NOT on individual spells. For any particular spell, you cast it, and when you are done, you can cast it again right away. But one limitation is on spells of a particular level. When you cast a certain number of those spells, in any combination, then the whole spell level group goes into a cooldown, and you can't use any of them until that cooldown has passed. That cooldown is long enough that for short battles, you are limited to casting a certain number of spells for each spell level. For long battles, that cooldown might expire and you can start casting those spells again.

The other cooldown has to do with your grimoire. A wizard may know a lot of spells, but he can only cast a few basic spells plus the ones that are in the grimoire that he is holding. Grimoires vary in size, holding various numbers of spells of different spell levels, and the player is free to load up his different grimoires with spell combinations of his choice. But once combat begins, switching grimoires causes a cooldown for all of those spells, leaving the caster only able to cast his basic spells until the grimoire cooldown passes. This means the player will have to think carefully about which spells he adds to a grimoire and under what situations he would want to switch one for another.
Click to expand...

Love these little gameplay details from the Tim Cain Q&A
 
DiscoJer

DiscoJer

Member
Lancehead said:
The big difference between turn-based and real-time-pause combat is that in the latter you can have your party take actions simultaneously.
Click to expand...

No, the difference is this

http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2011/06/turn-based-vs-real-time-combat.html

But here's the difference between the two: in Dragon Age, most of the time, I have no idea what the #&*$ is going on. Seriously. Combat begins. My party members go into their tactics. I select one of the foes for my lead character to fight. I start using his special attacks. Meanwhile, there's a cacophony of sound as friends and foes meet each other and cast spells. Colors streak across the screen. My character starts sparkling for reasons I don't understand--am I being affected by an offensive spell, or did one of my party members cast a buffing spell? Sten starts calling for healing but then suddenly he's at full health even though I didn't heal him. Liliana starts saying "trap, trap, trap" even though we're in combat and it's unrealistic to disarm traps. My character is suddenly paralyzed and I don't know why. The screen shakes and I go sprawling against at tree--what hit me? Then, all at once, it's over, and apparently we're all alive.
Click to expand...

I realize not everyone feels like that, but that pretty much sums up how I experience real time combat - I have no idea what's going on. I can muddle through it, but it's just not fun to me.
 
D

dude

dude
DiscoJer said:
No, the difference is this

http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2011/06/turn-based-vs-real-time-combat.html



I realize not everyone feels like that, but that pretty much sums up how I experience real time combat - I have no idea what's going on. I can muddle through it, but it's just not fun to me.
Click to expand...

You know, it's called real time with pause for a reason. You can't play these games in real time, you just pause whenever you need to get your shit together, which is constantly. Works much better for me than turn-based.
 
J

Jon of the Wired

Member
A Black Falcon

A Black Falcon

Member
Jon of the Wired said:
That article really seems to be about DA:O much more then RTwP. None of his complaints are about things that are inherent to RTwP.
Click to expand...

DA:O? That's not even problems with DA:O, that's when playing DA:O with the other characters' automation options on. You can turn that all off and control everyone directly (from the isometric camera) in the PC version, and play it as a real time with pause game... it's the best way to play the game for sure. It is missing the auto-pause options that Baldur's Gate and such had, which is annoying (you need to frequently manually pause instead), but still, it's certainly better than leaving all of the other party members up to the AI!
 
G

Gattsu25

Banned
Syril said:
The Infinity Engine games I've played all had those options, though I have to say, the pause after every turn option doesn't work as well as it sounds. Everyone finishes their turns at different times, so it ends up pausing like every two seconds.
Click to expand...
Yeah, that's more of an option for when you're trying an encounter after failing terribly a few times.
 
Sentenza

Sentenza

Member
A Black Falcon said:
That's not even problems with DA:O, that's when playing DA:O with the other characters' automation options on. You can turn that all off and control everyone directly (from the isometric camera) in the PC version, and play it as a real time with pause game... it's the best way to play the game for sure.
Click to expand...
No, it's not. Because playable characters in DA:O have way too many short cooldowns, so playing the whole game without any A.I. assistant becomes simply painful and ineffective (you are either losing a lot of potential DPS or pausing the game every TWO seconds to cycle through characters at a frantic pace).
 
G

Grayman

Member
szaromir said:
Not sure what to this about this:

I liked IE games, but they weren't perfect and mimmicking everything so that it feels exactly like them is not a good idea, Eternity should be its own game and the decisions should be made more progressively.

Also, the funding has been steadily slowing down. Wasteland 2 had had some healthy bumps at this point in their campaign, hopefully Obsidian figures out how to attract those who haven't backed them up yet.
Click to expand...

Wasteland got a bump from announcing Chris Avellone. Obsidian can always announce him ...AGAIN.
 
P

Perkel

Banned
New streath goals:

at 4mln $ they will create Planescape Torment 2

at 6mln they will create Arcanum 2

at 10mln they will create Bloodlines 2
 
D

dude

dude
Perkel said:
New streath goals:

at 4mln $ they will create Planescape Torment 2

at 6mln they will create Arcanum 2

at 10mln they will create Bloodlines 2
Click to expand...

PS:T 2 is a horrible idea. Some things are just too great for sequels.

Instead, they should create a Deadlands or a Dark Sun RPG, I'm fine with either.
 
M

Madrugador

Member
Rubius said:
Man, I hope we can reach the 2.5M goal. I love them Barbarians and Psionics.
Click to expand...

We are less than 100k away, of course we'll reach it.

We should get news about some new stretch goals tomorrow.

By the way people, please like Obsidian on Facebook. I really want more levels on the Mega Dungeon.
 
D

Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
Pledged $140 for that sweet collector's edition. Really excited for this.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

You don't need to play Pillars of Eternity for Avowed story, Obsidian confirms
Game Dev
0
526
Draugoth replied
Enotria: The Last Song Indefinitely Delayed for Xbox Series Consoles
2 3 4
173
9K
Shubh_C63 replied
Obsidian Has a 3rd Unannounced Project in the Works
Rumor
1
372
Punished Miku replied
Bethesda Declined Obsidian's Proposals to Develop The Elder Scrolls Spin-Offs
News Game Dev 2
70
5K
Robb replied
BlazBlue Entropy Effect Sells 500,000 Units Worldwide; Producer Message Shared, Major Summer Update in the Works
Sales-Age
0
478
Thick Thighs Save Lives replied
Top Bottom