Wombat

Not sure of exact numbers but the game seems to be basically for South Park fans and the presentation appears to be quite faithful to the series. Probably, the question for Obsidian fans is how Obsidian game it would be - the system of RPG seems to be solid, which is one thing (It was not just nice words when I wrote there must be tasks which require RPG veterans, criticizing Alpha Protocol). However, how much of the writing and dialogues (and thus C&C) are Obsidian? I cannot get rid of an impression that SP staff might have gone to Bioware to find their hands were full and/or have found they didn't have enough budget while Obsidian being just their second choice. Watching TV show dialogues written by Parker and Stone with solid RPG combat/loot mechanisms will sell enough to SP fans and it may be enough fun even to Obsidian fans, though. In any case, since, from a financial point of view, obviously, it would be good when the money eared is much more than invested, considering the situation surrounding THQ, they probably needed to put an emphasis on that. We can only hope that the situation won't get so hard to Obsidian. In any case, even before the subprime-loan-triggered recession, I was quite skeptical of the financial systems. At the moment, I'm hoping for at least one successful example of Kickstarter and the possibility of involvement of some Obsidian members to a project, either as a company or individuals. I may preorder Dishonored to show my support but, basically, any major title shouldn't need any "support vote" if they are to be successful at all and thus can wait till digital sales.

Same here...as far as my understanding goes, the role-playing focus on managing/interacting with people in a constantly stressful situation reminds me of the canned Aliens RPG. I think the solid concept about role-playing in the given setting and the turn-based combat are enough to attract some RPG fans but, if some people regard it as a yet another zombie game even after watching/reading some info, then, I don't think it is a game for them in the first place. After all, it's an investment, which depends on individual sense of value. For some people interested, here is a new interview with Brian and Annie at Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Just Survive: Dead State Interview

@Oner Oh...well, the last paragraph of my previous post wasn't meant for you - more like "generally speaking." In fact, I even had put two line breaks before it.

Nice to find someone has already posted about this. It is about a Zombie SURVIVAL. This is not pew pew shootan Zombies. It is how you manage your group and survive effectively (or not) in a zombie setting. Seriously, watch the vid. Not to ruin the mood, but flash games like that have existed for years. Granted, none of them were RPGs. ? Have you watched the video or explanations about the game on the official sites/forum?

Thank you for the links, funcroc. I hadn't watched this episode, which is, indeed, heavily inspired by dungeon crawlers.

Personally, I keep an eye on this mainly because I'm wondering if I can find something interesting in the apparent merge of games and movie industry. Of course, most of them are action-packed ones with obvious Hollywood influences but there can be some exceptions. At least, it is not necessarily a bad thing if actors take video games serious enough to maximize their performances.

Guess no PC version for Beyond Two Souls, again. Had Waited for Heavy Rain to be ported to PC in vein.

So, they are making fun of RPG format. Well, it will work - making fun of anything is the point of South Park, after all. Hope things will turn well for Obsidian, too. For developing graphic heavy games, competing against AAA titles was kinda...losing fight.

Wonder if we could make a joke about "reckoning" part, considering the current situation of the world economy. If the investors and the VPs managed to get away from the mess without a scratch, leaving Schilling and RI taxpayers, it will be yet another "prize" for the financial private sectors. 38 Studios' Downfall: The Gamasutra Report At least, good to know the ex-employees got their jobs.

? You sure put some money on the Shadow Run Kickstarter? I don't find the meaning in this simulation combat CRPG vs contemporary action CRPG anymore after seeing some successful indie companies. If I want combat simulation, I know where I should go. I like Kickstater projects to be successful and, currently, waiting for Dead State to announce. After all, the problem was not that action games sold well but that we didn't have other choices. Now, it's more like whether I should watch a film or read a book. I don't cry out for Obsidian anymore. If some designers are willing to go for Kickstarter or join other companies for a certain project like Avellone's case, I may support them (depending on the project). After all, companies are not the purpose but the vessels for it. Similar thing has been happening to music industry, too. If you want major music, then, go for it. If you are hooked by an unknown but talented artist, then, why not support them? Another important thing is that we should watch out for the mega IP conglomerates not to lobby against this trend in order to hold on their profits (assimilation is trickier than this, though). Of course, I don't think all the Kickstarter projects are going to be successful but it would be nice if some of them are successful enough. Some money can be just lost but they are a way of investment at the end of the day.

Didn't know about the game but, with a brief glance at the wiki, this can be interesting. The setting seems to be dry, which probably suites the format CDPR used in the Witcher series. I wonder how the concept which argumentation can cost humanity can play out. Not sure about the combat mechanics. Whether they go for tactical simulation or action game, they should go for it without hesitation since all the middle ground mechanics have ended up with mediocracy. Considering the current popularity, the possibility of its turning out to be a tactical simulation would be slim, though. Something like "shared universe" can be nice - like FO3 to FO:NV, CDPR designing Europe while Obsidian doing California, for example.

On the other hand, I don't think Obsidian could manage to build the atmosphere, where the designers being Polish seems to have worked preferably. I'd rather be happy with the variety. Not sure of the cyberpunk genre, though.

Well, my point was not about personal preference of a certain character. Again, I haven't read the novels but I feel the Witcher series are the mixture of romantic fantasy and hardboiled genres. An odd combination but it seems to work, at least. For, it's quite true that, even in hardboiled genre, characters tend to have subtle emotions so that the readers/audiences don't think it's just about ruthless gangs killing each other. At the same time, making it too emotional won't work, either. So, I think, the successful formula behind the Witchers can be letting the players to choose their comfortable spots between these romantic/sentimental reactions and coldblooded ones through Geralt. At least, I can welcome the change from that D&D style simplistic good-evil formula. Seriously, it's high time since it's mainly designed for escapist fantasy formula. If the designers try to study the formula/balances in various works of novels/films/dramas/comedies and make role-playing games with the earned insights, I'd be quite happy with it. Or, this is what I expect from story-focused role-playing games.

Not sure...I don't recognize many of them - except Persona from Megami Tensei series. I could reckon the series but it used to be more of Wizardry-like dungeon crawler on PC except that the protagonist is a Japanese highschool student (!). As I kept an eye on it, it has been "evolved" into Persona series with some psychological factors which decide PC-NPC relationship on RPG-ADV-interactive-novel format. According to what I heard/read, some ideas like this, indeed, sound interesting for me since I'm interested in story-focused role-playing games. However, its being on console and for teenagers have been keeping me away from it. Also, it defintely has the distinct smell of overly-commercialized products (About this, maybe, I'm being bit unfair, though).

This really isn't true, especially for The Witcher 2. Well, guess it's probably the matter of the extent. In something like Planescape: Torment, character-player relationship was very important in personalizing the story but, I don't think it can also be true to the Witcher series. I think a certain level of alienation is one of the factors in settings such as The Witcher and Fallout series for different reasons. I admit that the Witcher 2 probably tried to put characters more "humane" compared with its predecessor. However, then, why the designers didn't let the players to choose someone like Cedric as a possible key NPC to interact with rather than the "extremists" such as Roche and Lorveth? I haven't read the novels but I feel that letting the readers sympathize with lives screwed in stupid conflicts, no matter how Geralt deal with his political alliance, is a key factor of the works. Whether this is right or not, in the Witcher series, I find characters in humbler episodes more interesting.

In the Witcher series, it's the world which the players, as Geralt, are interacting with - not individual characters. They tend to be just the presentations of the political mess, which constantly alienates Geralt or the players. As such, as long as the Gelart is the most interesting character for the players, the story personalization is successful.

Yeah, maybe too early for gaming but we are witnessing many computer-related services going to cloud. Even now, there is a rumour of the partnership between Playstation Network and "a leading cloud gaming service", too. I agree that "cloud" here is defined rather loosely. As for Diablo III, I have this traditional and/or conventional attitude to grinding/item-collecting "culture" in "role-playing" games. However, even someone like me, it was natural to expect Blizzard to put Diablo fans into World of Warcraft-like money-milking scheme through battle.net network, bound with the account-based payment system. In any way, however technically defined it can be , in theory, it seems to be more convincing way to let the players to spend their money than DRM, which seems to benefit only the IP holders. The problem is that it doesn't always work as expected as you and Chapman mentioned. In any case, as a gamer, naturally, I'd like to have some benefits from the trend even if they inevitably have some draw-backs. I found some existing apps on Steam getting Mac-compatible, widening the meaning of "PC-compatible." I'm rather happy with Mac users being able to enjoy Psychonauts. Hopefully, such "distribution" routes could make niche market bigger. That explains a lot...I wondered how he had seemingly first-hand info about network gaming. For, Obsidian are not, well, a specialist in this area even dating back to NWN2.

Yes. It didn't. Compared with their debt, do you mean? A brief net search, which I should have done before my previous post, ended up with the fact that the company owed $75m (!) to Rhode Island governor, which is more likely to be the missing piece of the puzzle. Even a simple math is enough to show the million seller - "over a million" to be precise, according to Schilling - wouldn't cover it. Oh, well...I could only wish good luck on the designers who lost their jobs.

This is why I thought cloud gaming had an upper hand. It doesn't require maintenance from the user side, who indeed, need to invest on their connections, though. The companies can collect user data more freely since it is the user who is allowed to use their servers. This solves most part of the "piracy" issues, too, - A better control on IP form the greedy IP holders. ...Well, at least, it seems the distribution, or more precisely, the service has a certain advantages for both publishers and the users. Then, again, this is just a view from a gamer, who doesn't have any inside-industry experience.

Yeah...of course, I expect, at least, quite many bugs but my money wants to go after such designers. Any internet sale will do for "major" titles and it is if I find time to play them. Am I missing something? I thought Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning sold quite well.Indeed, I haven't bought it since I tend to be attracted to interesting worlds, characters and stories and that the most of the reviews around describe them "generic" unanimously. In any case, by the time reviews began to appear (I was quite busy at that time, too), I had already figured out or more precisely, hadn't been able to figure out what could be expressed by the goofy graphic with Ken Rolston and Salvatore. That said, they say the game has a well-designed action mechanic. I always thought action RPG had been cursed by the prejudice from the mechanic of party-based RPG, where magic users have no close-combat abilities - When in Rome... or, there should be a suitable way to balance games depending on their genres. It seems that they made some improvements in this area. In any case, even if the game appears to have its own achievement in the action RPG genre, a company can fail as a business. Does it happen to be another case of money shortage as in Troika's case? Anyway, it appears to be getting harder for independent developers which try to compete with their massively invested counterparts. I suspect that the same can be said to Obsidian, which seem to be laying off their younger designers despite that they seem to have some talents...

The carve up of Czechoslovakia- under the aegis of the UK, inventor of the concentration camp, and with Poland (and Hungary, for virumor) getting a forgotten chunk of the spoils- would be equally as good. Doesn't quite go to the same narrative, though. I'd like to have an RPG on such history-based setting but, the issue is, even if Americans try to capture the atmosphere, such an attempt tends to end up with something overly simplified (e.g. typical Nazi villain in Hollywood movies) or, at most, abstractly ideological.

That may work when the story is/gets linear but, in a free roaming setting, the fake feel of the urgency is inevitably hard to be ignored. Again, the theme has been discussed thoroughly that I'd be pretty surprised if someone managed to come up with a possible solution worth being added to the existing tricks. Considering that human being cannot keep attention all the time, I think it would be wise for the designers to give additional stresses/challenges to the players at certain intervals, which can be covered by alternatives above. I presume even Dead State would try to employ some humour at times to avoid possible monotone. For the same type of stimulation would eventually end up with immunity, obligations, or even routines from the eyes of the players. Designers need to pull various strings to keep the players entertained/engaged. However, guess Avellone already knows better than this even if he can be astonishingly dumb to introduce factors such as jumping in a first person format (e.g. Dead Money) .

As for Assassin's Creed series in general, I like the historical setting and atmosphere but...the story is...well, not even passable, IMHO. And I don't mean only the lame Sci-Fi part but also the "historical" part. On the other hand, the story of the Game of Thrones RPG seems to be interesting. There should be a mixture of fun game-play and, at least, a decent story. Why can't we have both, at the same time?

To be honest, I feel it's odd to hear this from Avellone. For I regarded him as a designer whose ideal seems to let the players build their own stories. And yes, non-compromising time-limit is, indeed, imposing. In any shape, the sense of urgency may fit survival horror such as SS2 in a closed environment, I cannot imagine a scenario where time limit and open world exploration go hand in hand together. If I am allowed to give up the fixed time-limit, the closest I could imagine would be Dead State, which is still under development. In any case, the game seems to be carefully built around survival theme from the initial concept. Making various types of management, including time management, here, as a challenge rather than independent mini-games is a spirit of older RPGs. The problem is that, once something is screwed, it can prevent the players from completing the game. Definitely one of the most likely reasons why they have died out. I think the game like FO and Wasteland should basically allow free-loaming but, if some quests reward for completing a further challenge on the top of the basic game-plays, it can be good for change. So, possible alternatives would be: A time-limited quest and/or SS2 style independent quest (However, make sure that the players are aware of the time-limit trigger and/or entering the area). Dead Money, for example? Time-line instead of time-limit - no game-over but, if the players are reluctant to react to an obviously urgent situation, the inactivity itself has its own consequence but it won't be a game-over screen - some may welcome (an) alternative quest(s) as such a consequence like chamr's example, here. However, normally, this is mostly presented as quest/quests line which allow the players to choose the order of solving quests - The quest-lines of Alpha Protocol is built on this idea and, indeed, it gives the players initiative to the story rather than imposing factors like time-limit. In any case, if we are long-time board lurkers, we have discussed the issue quite thoroughly. So, I mean, why now?