meomao

It's a slide from a speech held by Josh Sawyer at 2011's Games Developer Conference wich was named "The Evolution of RPG Mechanics". At that point he talks about randomized accuracy and criticizes it as a form of mechanical chaos. You can find a pretty good summary of his conference at that link: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/36637/GDC_Europe_Obsidians_Five_Hard_Lessons_Of_RPG_Design.php

I have just one thing to say about the gameplay video. It looks like serious action rpg stuff and I don't like it. In the famous words of Josh Sawyer, that's what I think about games that try to blend rpg mechanics and action gameplay:

Yes, I'm feelin' that we're getting what we were promised so far in general terms. Basically, what's missing is the D&D rule system/lore. Without D&D & its lore is difficult to get the feel of those games. But as far as "house rules" go, I feel Sawyer is doing a very good job. We could always say that PE is more D&D than the 4th edition'll ever be .

I've played Portal 1&2. I had a lot of fun with both, especially the first. Great games.

I've been playing Dishonored for 10 hours in the last days... and while the game is not bad and there's a lot of interesting things about the setting and the mechanics... I'm still on the fence about the game being actually good or not.

Not true: it was just a matter of roleplaying. You can became head of both organizations (I know because that was my choice).

Ain't going to happen but I would be glad that at least we have got one good game.

BG Trilogy. C'mon don't make me choose: in these day BG1, BG2 and ToB are all in the same DVD . But... Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines would be close second.

Italian do it better . PS: Glad to see Europe is the last bastion of CRPGs goodness .

So, just one question: why are you even posting in those forums? I mean, in a best case scenario you are a troll. In a worst case scenario you are paid for these .

Could not agree more. I don't understand why some people think that story and mechanic are at odds. Maybe they have played too much TES post-morrowind and believe that Oblivion/Skyrim poor writing is the mechanic's fault . Narrative, gameplay and art are the three tools that developer use to deliver the game feel. The more organically the dev can use those tools the better the game experience for the players.

Great work! I support Armand being in the game as NPC .

I don't know what the future will bring to the game industry: publisher, kickstarter. etc. Who knows? For sure if we look at the music and film business we can guess that beside the big names and the big budgets, internet will make the life easier for the indie cutting the middle man and favouring a direct relationship between customers and developers. The two models will coexist and follow different priorities. Crowdfunding will grow, change and mature: KS in 3 or 4 or 5 years won't be the same anymore. But it could easily estabilish itself as the best tool for middle tier and indie games. Both models will influence each other in one way or the other. Will we be able to finance a so called AAA game with KS? I don't know and honestly I don't even see the point. If you have a good idea for a AAA game, you should not have a lot trouble financing yourself with a publisher (or trying to publish yourself). I just know that Obsidian KS was funded and that they have received nearly 4 time the amount of money they asked as a mean to develop a spiritual successor to the IE games. In a couple of years we hope to get that game.PE has been the most succesfull kickstarter drive to date and that say just one thing: even if we are a niche (and we are) there is money to be made with us and we are enough to deserve a good game. That's incredible in itself if you just stop for a moment and think about it.

This. Plus, I think that the gameplay has gotten worse in the last game. I know, it's a better shooter. That's exactly the point why I don't like it that much. It's frantic and caothic and do not feel like an RPG that much. ME2's combat was a better compromise imho.

The setting's quite generic at the end but it has potential for originality if they stop to keep the card so closed to their chest and start to show what's the point of the whole universe (one of the really few interesting bits about DA2 was the secret history of the city: "the enigma of Kirkwall"... it's sad that they haven't developed it as a full fleshed quest because it was one of the very few hook I feel for that game). Having said that, history has shown that the only fantasy setting that sells in the videogaming world are generic fantasy setting with a twist. Not to say that you need really good writers (I mean GRRM's level of good) to mix good and innovative in the fantasy genre. Without any offense, the average game writer has not that level of skill. PS: Now that we have all that hopefully good oldschool RPGs coming thanks to KS (W2, PE and let's not forget DS), I think that Bioware should just follow their guts and complete the mass-effectization of the franchise they begun with DA2. If they're really serious about the whole storytelling/cinematic action-RPGs for consoles thing and it's not just marketing, they should remove the last elements that tie DA to the old D&Desque CRPG genre because they do not add anything to the kind of games they want to make (I would come as far to say that they are at odds with their design model of late and that they force compromises for many important features in most game areas).