Sven_

Sorry, double-post (kinda.) Still yesterday there was a SKALD AMA on Reddit with a few decent info. - Launch successful accross every metric - Postlaunch support will bring a new bard class and improvements - SKALD 2 a developer wish - The engine already supports deeper systemic interactions for more emergent gameplay (as can be seen already in the light sources you can manipulate, e.g. for stealth purpose) ALSO: Love. Love never changes.

Even after four decades, you just can't get it out of yer head. (Later on I had one of those Action Replay cartridges though. Came with a turbo loader as well as simply hitting the C64's F-keys to shortcut the "loading routines".) Oh man, SKALD is actually good. I mean real good. It feels like those oldies but with updates where needed: No bloat, just an intriguing setup and off ya go. It's a narrative heavy game, too, but it doesn't drown you in exposition. I'd rather play focused games like these than a 100 hour campaign full of filler. The character system is complex enough, the battles are about the same. There's even a simple faction system in place. What kills it though is the vibe the guy was going for and manages to hit. Sure, it's pixels. But there's a skill check fairly early on whether your character can withstand the stench of rotting corpses in a cave... succeed, and all is well. Fail, and get a debuff 'til resting. This isn't a "poop your pants" kinda game. It's rather all very oppressive and feels like uncovering dark ancient secrets in the best of ways. There's even dynamic weather (and of course day/night cycles), with the island you visit apparently being fogged permanently. Clearly, the oft expressed notion that horror kinda themes and RPG's inherent level-up kinda power fantasy wouldn't gell is nonsense. Then substantial companies had shown such in the 1980s and 1990s. They just stopped trying it mostly with Bloodlines.

LOAD"*",8,1 SEARCHING FOR * LOADING READY. RUN What actually sealed the deal for me wasn't merely the Ultima/Goldbox aesthetics. But rather: This is a horror-themed RPG, in a sense? When did the last major one come out, really? Bloodlines some five football Eureopean Championships ago? You've gotta be sh*tting me!!!!1 Light sources can be switched out for improved stealth chance (that, is outside of the sun). Combat and character mechanics seem straight-forward enough. But then, a lot of oldies used to be pretty straight forward in that. And I needn't even gather my party before venturing forth.

That's a pretty low bar. I think they can fulfill that. It seems they're chasing another trend though (did they ever do different?): Combat similar to Gods Of War this time 'round. Personally I'm super glad I don't have to rely on Bioware, Bethesda or tiny indies anymore exclusively. Best thing that has happened in the past ten industry years. Well that, and Immersive Sims having another run (though it's come to an end with Deus Ex put on hiatus again, the Thief reboot misfiring from the go -- and Arkane's future in limbo). And now for something completely different: Gonna go watch Furiosa. WHAT A DAY WHAT A LOVELY DAY.

Larian were one time working on one. Beware, a very young Swen Vincke inside. :d The travelling and camping system in both Pathfinder games is clearly inspired by the Realms Of Arkania games (the first two that had a travelling and camping system, that is). Realms Of Arkania = Dark Eye / Das Schwarze Auge.

Well, for all my frustrations, I've put over 80 hours into that WOTR save over the course of over two years (despite never finishing it). And Kingmaker I DID actually finish. In hindsight, that also benefited from a change of pace every once in a while. There's even some easy detective work in that chapter with the plague spreading, and you tasked to get to the source of it. Plus, the nature of the campaign means that enemy variety was a tad higher in Kingmaker. Whereas it is mostly Demons in WOTR (which also means a lot of enemies with higher resistance to spells,.... which has side effects as to combat variety in itself as well. Btw. Unlike any other enemy defensive stats, NONE of the enemy difficulty settings makes this scale. It's the same resistance on lower as well as harder). I mean, Owlcat's basic idea of encounters is mostly stat block vs buffs as is. Gone are the ideas of even ancient Icewind Dale 2 toying with the environment as a factor (barrels, goblin wardrums that when not destroyed would call for reinforcements, ambushes with archers protected /harder to reach because of walls). Owlcat CAN do setpiece (see Oleg's). However, most of the time, they copypaste an enemy stat block, and have you running into that over and over. edit: As to Larian, I've never finished DOS as well for similar reasons. The first map obviously had seen the most luvin' (Early Access). I still fondly remember the encounter with the bomb/s on the graveyard. But: As soon as the second map, you'd run into the same orcs for a while over and over. Their combat system may have been nice. Their encounter system outside a few unique encounters got progressively worse though. Plus, unlike BG3, DOS is a game with a heavy combat focus as well. Every path through every map is gatekept by an enemy. The alternatives to combat aren't there. So the game would rely far more on superior encounter design than BG3.

If Avowed+The Outer Worlds 2 are gonna underperform, MS will delegate Obsidian to do Fallout franchise product for eternity anyway -- and inXile to handle the spinoffs and crossovers. Just think about it: Fallout: Beverly Hills. Fallout: Shanghai. Fallout: Escape From New York. Fallout: Cyrodiil. Fallout: Vault 1. The demand is obviously there, right now more than ever due to the show. But kids that were made when Bethesda gave birth to the the last main game are close to finishing elementary school. And cycles like that aren't going to come down, at least on the blockbusting tier. That is, unless every company expands to have a thousand employees -- Starfield was started in 2015. It's not their, pardon me, vault! Off-topic: I can totally see the attraction of people like Raphael Colantonio (CEO and founder of Arkane Studios) leaving that market and starting anew with a smaller company doing smaller games...

Actually, the latter I've been thinking about almost since starting out. I may even need it for a boss I'm facing atm (hides in the back row, has high resistance against being moved around and lets it rain deadly rubble upon the "heroes"). It's a more obvious thing to do though: There's multiple classes that can mark an enemy -- and multiple classes that can deal extra damage against marked enemies. This screams for a "nuke the **** outta currently marked enemy" type of compositions. Might go with two arbalests ( + 90% of damage against marked enemy), an Occultist for healing stuff (though he's a more prone to RNG in how much he heals than the Vestal) plus a bounty hunter in the frontline. I like this stuff. But then I've played Icewind Dale once exclusively with casters.

It seems I was a little unlucky with my first veteran (lvl3) dungeon. And that right in the first encounter. I've done a few since -- and that was a better ride. Not going too much into Meta / Wiki though initially, as I feel this is a game that is meant to experienced like that. On another note, on a low level dungeon I made an experimental party to send them there: Vestal -- Grave Robber -- Grave Robber -- Grave Robber. The Vestal heals from the backline. The Grave Robber in the front uses "Shadow fade" (invisible, damage buff, 2 places backwards, so ends up being in front of the vestal). From there I'd pickaxe and throwing knife enemies with the stealth/invisible damage buff. Don't think that would be viable at the higher levels. But it was fun whilst it lasted (and last the party did).

Picked up Darkest Dungeon a couple days ago.... Week 25 or something (Dark difficulty setting). Despite getting my ass whopped right in the first combat in my first veteran dungeon (LVL3), I'm kinda addicted. Which is strange, as what I'm doing since is kind of a grind: Leveling all weapons/armor and abilities up to lvl3 as well, all the while upgrading the town. Only then will I reenter another veteran dungeon. The radiant difficulty apparently shortens things without making dungeons/enemies easier, but we'll see. Also, hopefully veteran dungeons and up don't make encounters more frequent. I think it's part of the charm for me that you'll never know whether your next run has plentiful encounters or not. Sometimes, you go a couple corridors / doors without encountering anything, which only adds up to the suspense and decision making process: Should I push on or not? If there's enemies in every corridor and room anyway eventually, that's all moot.

I think that's crazy growth, btw. Even if a good deal of those 500 people are externals. Correct me if I'm wrong. But Owlcat so far had successful games -- including Rogue Trader more recent. But those are still far from the Original Sin 2 scale. Right? Even the likes of CD Projekt only really exploded some after Witcher 3 (250 people working on that, peak). Owlcat meanwhile seem to go "all-in" before a more natural growth would "allow" them to do so. It's fair to assume that one or two of those games aim to be more on the BG3 scale, also in terms of production values. There may be a more action-based game in there as well (similar to inXile with Clockwork Revolution or Obsidian with Avowed). E.g. the days of developing mostly isometric Infinity Engine-likes may be over. Owlcat so far are a good example of picking popular IPs that hadn't been much catered to yet. Proving just as well that it's never a "type of game" or specific set of features making or breaking a game, in particular considering the complexity of their games. But the overall experience pitched. On a grander scale, Larian had done the same with BG3 before. They deliberately didn't sell this as a CRPG. But a (D&D) experience where nothing would be off-limits and anything possible (including having sex with a bear). Owlcat meanwhile are selling the only available bigger Pathfinder Games™ around, and more recent the only beefy Rogue Trader Game™ as well. The flipside of that is having never developed an IP of their own (which they aim to). Who knows, maybe they're in for LOTR next and explode the same way as Larian.

This just in: For anybody hoping that Owlcat would slow down and reverse their "quantity over quality" stance -- well, bad luck. Owlcat may have released three epics (plus DLC) within barely half a decade. Each of those making any BG game look like a dinner snack. But clearly that was not enough. Seems like they aim for the Guinness World records next. company comprises about 500 individuals. they are currently developing 4 games with 4 separate teams. development of two of these games started just recently. games are being created using Unity and Unreal Engine. company's primary focus lies in creating RPGs with rich narratives and complex mechanics. one game being an original IP. next games likely will feature full VO and better cutscenes

Well, it's D&D 5e. Tbf, 2e (BG1+2) wasn't particularly complex either. A lot of level ups boiled down to pushing a button, seeing your THAC0 come down and getting more hitpoints. That said, combat itself in BG3 is on the easier side. In parts because Larian have fiddled with D&D action economy. They've also removed the limit how many magic items a character can attune -- and those are plentiful and have The Power™. Still, in particular early on, combat is oft but one possible way of many. Depending on your character, various hostile NPCs may be neutral just by your pick in character race, etc. And even a low INT barbarian gets the opportunity to just intimidate foes out of engaging in combat every once in a while.

Which is rather unfortunate, as: RPG Codex Interview: Eric Fenstermaker on Pillars of Eternity :: rpg codex > doesn't scale to your level Almost every C/RPG outside of BG3 is on a budget in some way or another. And with RPGs in general, I feel its the worst: Also due to historical reasons, a game said to be on the shorter side risks being flagged as "sales candidate" immediately. A game shorter than ~20 hours is a complete no-go for most, no matter the quality. Whereas supposedly epics are being applauded for offering "value for money". As if being able to spend days of your life on a game was inherently value itself -- even classic 16bit JRPGs were notorious for stretching their playing time with random encounters (right up to the Final Fantasys). Gotta love the Codex review of WOTR, btw. The reviewer acknowledges all of that filler. Actually, it argues the game even doubles down on it compared to Kingmaker. But rather than burning the devs at least some for it, the review ends on this note regardless: "Hey, this game has a lot of filler routinely wasting your time. But still, if ya like that kind of thing..." The original Fallout would have a real hard time were it to release nowadays. For ALL the wrong reasons.

The harpies illustrate the difference between the two of them in another way too: You encounter them exactly once (I did anyway.) It's wholly optional. Not even encountered somewhere along the main path through the map, but the periphery. Plus, they still recorded even vocals for their "Luring song" ability, seamlessly blending in and out of the soundtrack when it is activated/deactivated. That's another bunch of money spent on stuff some people may never see... Any other project would have guaranteed you'd encounter them. Say, by making them a non-optional gatekeeper kind of boss fight you need to get past to progress. That said, it's a bit harsh to compare BG3 in that way. There's not a single CRPG developer who has that kinda budget and can blow it like that. However, Owlcat for me still take the cake when it comes to stretching their campaigns a tad far. That you can at least attempt a quality over quantity approach even on a budget was to be seen in Solasta. That's a largely combat focused game -- yet even in some dungeons, there's but a handful of encounters at best. As argued though, I suspect this may actually be Owlcat's business model. There aren't that many companies pumping out releases at that pace, in particular not that big ones (even discounting all the DLC...). They've released 3 big games in the same amount of time that Electronic Arts was pondering what at all to do with their RPG division aka Bioware next.

Given that the combat (and toying with builds for that) is like 90% of their games, that'd indeed take things a tad far. It's never only about the sheer amount of combat though. Occasionally, they can even do decent set pieces -- the defense at Oleg's trading post in Kingmaker always immediately springs to mind. But still they'd rather prefer to **** mobs all over their maps, it seems. That's also much cheaper. Meh.

The Outer Worlds. Game was decent until ca. the Groundbreaker. Now at Monarch, it's taking a dive. Hopefully it picks up thereafter, but the area is focusing on everything the game isn't particularly great at: - combat (enemy variety, difficulty or lack thereof, the ever present bullet sponge replacing better AI on increased difficulties) - exploration (too many reused assets for budgetary reasons -- the environment on Monarch is rather bland in general, which is a bit subjective) - looting (extra paragraph and rant added below) I guess I could just sneak around all those copypaste enemy mob grinds, but that'd just take longer. To be fair, Emerald Vale already is in parts Monarch, just compressed and (thankfully) smaller: Settlements connected by wilds filled with enemy mobs -- and a faction quest you eventually need to fiddle with to advance. That's what somebody told me before: After the first planet you'd seen everything, and then the game was on repeat. Then I went to the independent Groundbreaker station first, and was surprised that wasn't the case. Fav location so far. I'm actually not at all a fan of Bethesda games (wide as the ocean, deep as a toilet). But Skyrim you want to explore some (without that, there's not much of a game, as systems are shallow and combat basic). Don't get that on Monarch, as every corner looks (assets) and acts (loot, enemy mobs) the same, so focusing on these areas does more harm than any good. Additionally, Monarch does away with the one thing unique to the game, which is toying with the idea of how corporations governing people may treat them. --- Speaking about the loot, this isn't unique to The Outer Worlds -- general rant incoming. But I wish games would stop with randomly allocating loot and/or conveniently placing a box behind every rock. Firstly, it harms the game's fiction to have money lying around literally on the streets, the same goes for weapons (unless the game portrays a universe of total anarchy perhaps). Secondly, it turns the process of looting into something rather braindead where you routinely scan every corner as you could find something (and you WILL). Even oldschool Ultima games did that better. Or Thief, for that matter: Breaking into a castle, you were guaranteed to not find jewels in the servant quarters (unless it was stolen, which a document or dialogue would hint at). So you could think and plan ahead. Actually engaging with the game world, basically, rather than randomly checking every corner, toilet and bucket for brain goodies like a zombie. Outer Worlds is a mix: In a bar, you'll mostly find stuff to drink. But then there's randomly sitting a box containing money right on a table, and on a chair near to the bar there's lying a hacking device. Meanwhile, on a toilet, there's a gun. Reason? Unknown. It's as if there's an RNG at work tweaked to trigger pack rat instincts in players rather than a world designer working alongside to the narrative guys. It feels lazy and cheap and only put in to further stretch playing time -- e.g. wasting yours in the hopes you won't notice the "quantity over quality" approach to things.

It's been six years last week, by the way. A couple of ados: - The carribean theme being a possible factor in underperformance is depressing as hell. I mean, this is the only genre left standing where announcing a product set in the zombie postapocalypse or during WWII would be seen as a risk. Says it all, really. Even if you're barely getting sick of elves&dwarves: Everybody is getting tired of their favourite meal when that is served 24/7. Unless they're a weirdo. In which case: great genre. Bad target audience. - Currently playing The Outer Worlds. And whilst that also was a semi-budgeted affair, it is remarkable how much more it relies on cheap tricks to stretch its playing time. Currently exploring Monarch, and that almost feels like Owlcat Games. You know: Having spaces and then bombarding them with paste&copy mobs for you to mow down over and over and over again. I know that Josh took the criticism as to PoE1 to heart and made his designers encourage to actually think of a REASON when putting combat into their design. Like: "Okay, why do you put those enemies there?" "They are meant to introduce the fauna of this place." But still remarkable. Mind you, these games are and always will be murder hobo sims. But killing less than 1,000 enemies over a 40-50 hours campaign is still pretty low end for this type. That's ~20 kills per hour on average. If Owlcat Games would have stats like these, there would be an integer error and the counter would re-start at zero at some point. Also, whilst the main quest is a bit conflicted/meh, Deadfire to me firlmy remains the most polished of all the major crowdfunded RPGs. At release, it was much too easy, admittedly. But that's been overhauled. It also remains the only one I've completed I think thrice. One time immediately after having finished it, just to try something out. As the main quest isn't a LOTR kind of epic done on a budget (and neither stretched to be such, see second point/paragraph), that is actually viable to do. Deadfire is also one I'll be getting back to the in the future. And that precisely because of its setting and atmosphere. The moment where you are finished with your starting island and get your first ship to set off to adventure land -- that's the one making the game to me. It's like Monkey Island -- except in an RPG. Dwarves&elves my ass! I can get them from 9.99 out of 10 RPGs anyway. Deadfire indeed was good.

This is a bit simplified. They only really "split" by the time Dishonored 2 and Prey were being developed in tandem. But even then, people switched places (I mean, Colantonio is from France himself). Also, even Redfall lists almost two dozen people from Lyon in the credits. Or, to let Raf Colantonio do the talking (note his huge follow-up post to this also). But in general, what happened in Austin is a good example of destroying studio culture. Arkane have been a very specialized company since their very inception. This naturally included what people they at all hired. And now they were tasked to do a multiplayer, open world CoOp shooter kind of game. It's akin to Hollywood encouraging Sofia Coppola to do the next Furious movie. Why? Becuz popular. In fairness, this started under ZeniMax. I personally didn't get much Arkane vibes upons Redfall's release. And had looked up the game's credits before it became public what happened. By watching the credits as well as checking people on Linkedln, it was apparent that a lot of people were brought in from all over the open world gaming action industry. This included Anthem's OW lead designer, and numerous other people who prior worked on Mafia, Destiny, Saint's Row et all. Some of those joined as late as a year prior to Redfall's release. So Arkane lost people that were hired specifically for the type of games they were specializing in, those people quit and left. To hire new ones just for Redfall. However, if it weren't for people working on a Marvel IP in Lyon, they may be in trouble now as well. Not sure if posted already. But 'd love if Arkane had gotten a chance at that announced Indiana Jones game rather than MachineGames. For a start, perfect fit for their type. See Thief's grave robbery missions, with fantastic in-universe maps for all your archeological needs. Secondly, Indy is still strong enough an IP, even if the last movie disappointed. Is it really the CORE of their very type of game that's not blockbuster worthy? Or is it rather their package? Until Baldur's Gate 3 came around, party-based tactical RPGs were seen as a niche as well. Turn-based ones even moreso. The notion was: No matter the rest of the game or what you're aiming for as an OVERALL EXPERIENCE: If you include THIS feature, you're going to go niche.

It's also a natural evolution of kinds. Similar to how Call Of Duty has seen sequels developed by various studios since forever -- and their games released in turns. That's why they can serve the COD crowd regularly, while it's a TV series currently keeping the Fallout name alive in popular culture. Studios under the MS/Bethesda umbrella have already helped each other too, or co-developed -- id helping out Arkane on Redfall, Arkane co-developing Wolfenstein Youngblood with MachineGames. So having multiple studios working on projects of the most popular IP is one next logical step for bigger corps. Wouldn't say the only one. But it is one. Even if tools improve and AI will offer helping hands, the development time of blockbuster games isn't going to come down. The tech is getting ever more advanced, expectations go up accordingly. People entering the blockbuster gaming industry may eventually help developing but a couple of games in their entire career. It's crazy to think that even the core team of Doom³ still consisted of ~20 people 20 years ago... and that game was seen as the most bleeding edge thing ever -- on a technical level, anyhow. Similar to the first Pillars Of Eternity, relative for their type of game, The Outer Worlds was also a rather modest budgeted game with modest expectations behind. The sequel, just like Deadfire, seems to ramp it up quite a notch. I think expectations are much higher on TOW2 than 1.

I'll bite. Avowed underperforming = realistic. The Outer Worlds 2 doing the same = realistic. Obsidian being turned into Bethsoft junior / Fallout game factory liners = a possibilty. At least they'd be working on an IP they like, hey. In particular considering how freakishly long it takes to churn out these games these days -- and that delivering BIG IP blockbuster product corporations care about becomes slower and slower a process. Who was Football World Champion back when the last Dragon Age released? On which console did the last GTA game first release? When did the last Elder Scrolls main game come out, discounting re-releases? Does anybody even remember the last Mass Effect, for that matter? If you can positively answer these, chances are, you're a pretty old fart.

If Obsidian eventually gets shut down too at some point, I'm hoping for somebody to mod the **** out of The Outer Worlds. We've shut down the best. Now try the rest. At Microsoft, we cut corners so you don't have to. Who, who, whoa, it's Spencer's!

MS going to close down Tango Softworks and Arkane Austin TX. WolfEye have set up their first ever offices in Austin TX just last year. That's the new studio by Arkane's founder Raf Colantonio, which already has quite an illustrious roster for people familiar. Any bets accepted there's more ex-Arkanes going to pop up in there? Every ending is a new beginning. Also, before anybody speculates: The dichotomy between Austin and Lyon has never existed like that. Arkane have never been a company of two studios. Rather a studio of two locations, with people moving between them as well (see Harvey Smith moving over to Lyon to direct Dishonored 2 and then going back). That's firstly a misconception that Colantonio himself has corrected multiple times. Secondly, if Lyon weren't working on a rather popular IP as we speak (Blade), I could imagine MS pulling the plug on them too. If Blade is gonna bomb... edit: Dang, @mkreku beat me to it.

Tbh, a lot of their content feels like there's barely any iteration or polish done in general. Stuff that sounds good on paper (rotating the camera in the demon city) seems locked early. Even if all the fed ex /errand job quests there eventually have you traversing that city, witness repeat loading bars and get you to rotating the camera over and over. (That was also the point where I finally called it quits. Bought the game upon release, took THREE timeouts to return to the save and continue. 80+ hours overall. But the grind didn't seem worth it anymore). It's a "more is more" approach all over the shop. Including the same, same combat, of which there's a ton of it -- I always like to joke that if Owlcat had made Baldur's Gate, the empty wilderness would be no more. Instead, you couldn't walk five feet before walking into a nother copypaste mob to murderhobo. As much as I like the better parts of their (Pathfinder) games: To me they're like the CRPG factory line producers: Churning out huge ass campaigns longer than any Baldur's Gates combined, DLC and Enhanced at an unheard of rate likely for reason. Maybe it's part of their business model though: keep on pumping, or go bust. I swear if they ever went with a "less is more approach", they'd be in for a masterpiece. And it makes me squirm that games said to err on the "shorter" side are immediately flagged for "sale candidate" by some, whereas devs going with the bloat approach never get any flak for it.

I just bougth The Outer Worlds on a sale (Classic, no Shiny New Thing Edition). More specifically, on Green Man Gaming (13 bucks). The Outer Worlds | PC - Steam | Game Keys (greenmangaming.com) My hope for this year, Broken Roads, apparently has a few problems. Another Owlcat Game stretched to LOTR proportions with copypaste combat, walls of text and filler I'm not in the mood for (Rogue Trader). There's not much else going on in terms of "bigger" RPG releases. Don't expect too much. Most of the more indepth genre channels have shown this to be a pretty "streamlined" (industry euphemism speech) version of New Vegas. Except with smaller hub worlds. Which apparently still need lots of handholding and guidance, even if quest givers and quest objectives apparently are but 50 feet apart on the occasion. (I swear, one day this will have RL consequences: People won't be able to find a way out of their toilet without a GPS). That's why I've never played this so far, even though I bought all PoE, Tyranny and Pentiment immediately upon release. Still hoping for some decent entertainment, some good quests with multiple solutions -- and Tim Cain's last hoorah before his semi-retirement and only doing consulting. Also, the Whodunnit DLC always sounded interesting. If anybody has a few hints how to make the game less handhold-ey, I'm all for it.