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Lars Westergren
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Posts posted by Lars Westergren
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Notes in Hadret House (2 places): "The notes are scribbled in a cyrptic shorthand"
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I have one of those. When talking with Freyol, in the sanitarium, one of the dialogue choices:
"Maybe you'll get there again one day. If not in this life, than in another."
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Entering Brackenbury, there are assassins standing around the fountain. If they see me, half of them immediately run right and kill Serel. I can sneak around them and stand between her, but someone usually runs by the party to get to her. Ranged opponents focus her too. They really don't like her!
She seems to be the highest priority target for the AI (because no armor and vulnerable?) but when the fight is over and I finally managed to keep her alive, she just repeats her "The nobles really didn't like it when I moved in here" line, so I'm guessing she wasn't the real victim.
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When using skills, draw an arrow from caster to target. Like in this image from Dota 2. It can be improved upon from Dota - if cast target is so far away you need to move, make the target cursor or arrow yellow. If moving will provoke a disengagement attack or will move you into engagement range of an enemy when casting, make arrow or cursor red.
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I just watched the update video again, and I ended up staring at the whiteboard behind Josh.
It actually contains place names, or rather names of societies, or perhaps both. Help me fill out what they are:
...dead Knight
I think it is "...pact Knights" as in Goldpact Knights, one of the paladin orders.
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Well if they are peoples photos, that fella who's blue and yellow with sharp teeth must get a few odd looks around town. No wonder he stays in playing computer games.I do have sharp canines, but I'm usually not blue unless it's really cold outside. I'm extremely happy with the portrait, especially since everyone else seem to like it as much as I do. Even RPGCodex was nice to me. This is one of the source pictures used. It's a few years old, I have even less hair now so I usually just shave everything off, Heisenberg style.
I hope the AI will take into account strategies like denying an enemy Moonwell by casting a Malignant Cloud on top of it. Bonus points if you have different AI profiles, so an aggressive one might ignore the damage taken and "dive" to the Moonwell if it thinks it might kill a PC in the process with the stamina gained, while a cautious/defensive/fearful AI hangs back. Doing AI for this game will probably be very challenging, but fun. I would love if that is available for modding (but I understand it might not be possible).
I seem to recall Josh mentioning the intense yet strategic battles of MOBA games like Dota 2 being an inspiration? If not, they should be. There is a huge source of spells and item mechanics to draw inspiration from, and lots of pro matches to see how even seemingly weak spells can interact in interesting ways and turn even the most challenging skirmishes around if used creatively.
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God suggestions:
The god of transgressions, exploration, of the spaces between borders. Nomadic people, same-sex couples and all sorts of outsiders are assumed (rightly or wrongly) of worshipping this god of indeterminate gender. Many conservative, tight knit societies loathe this god and call it the Corruption. The general public often conflate it with The Leech (see below), though priests and scholars are generally aware that they are separate entities. Worshippers of this god tend to keep very quiet about it as they are often distrusted, or even actively persecuted. Transgender or other "unusual" people are considered holy, whether they like it or not. Worshippers don't completely trust their own god or other followers either, as the "transgressive" part can be problematic.
The god of borders and stability. Art tend to be stylized, with clear distinct fields of color, architecture is a highly respected craft. Purity and strength is valued, as is social cohesion and unity, but all talk of "oneness" causes unease among followers. Other cultures tend to find cultures where worship of this god is dominant at best dreary and conservative, at worst oppressive, xenophobic and controlling. Relations between genders are strictly ritualized, and typical love poetry revolve around the beauty of this separation, of not fully understanding the other. These cultures produce many monastic orders. One insular clan which doesn't tolerate the worship of any other god is rumored to have special rituals to strengthen the minds and souls of children and sometimes even adults against what they call "possession" - any echoes or memories of former lives. They have never been known to share this knowledge with outsiders. Any in the clan showing signs of possession are summarily killed.
The goddess of secrets and mystery. She exists, but almost nothing else is known about her among mortals. She actively discourages worship and all forms of intellectual curiousity. Scholars fear this being which oppose them, and just mentioning her is considered very bad luck. Many suspect that finding out more about this goddess would lessen her strength, but those who attempt to research her tend to quickly die in violent accidents or just vanish without a trace.
The Leech. The god of parasites - animal, human, and supernatural. Worshippers do exist, but they are rare and universally hated. Their holy symbol is a small tick made of metal, usually hidden somewhere on the body. Beggars in bigger cities often form guilds that police against Leech worship, and if any are found they are driven away or quietly disposed of. The informal leaders of these guilds argue that begging is done from necessity, but true followers of the Leech seek to grow ever stronger by weakening and sickening others. It is a grave insult to call a beggar or anyone else a Leech in most cultures. This god is suspected of being the progenitor of vampires.
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I love dogs, but it has been done to death lately in RPGs in my opinion - Fallout 3, F:NV, Fable 2, Fable 3, several action RPGs and JRPGs... Dogs were not just included but a bit marketing point.
If there is a dog, I want it controlled by telepathic brain worms with a secret agenda.
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Some really nice HD concept art suitable as desktop wallpaper. Like Wasteland 2 did.
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I think that now that we know Obsidian are using Unity just like Wasteland 2 and Shadowrun, the odds that full modding support will appear as a stretch goal increased significantly.
I got a full licence to Unity as part of a compaign they were having. I'm going to do a lot of tutorials this weekend.
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I vote strongly NO to this. There are few things that are better at ensuring that your choices in the game and the final climactic battle have no effect on the game world whatsover.
See Kingdoms of Amalur for an example. "Congratulations, you beat the big bad and stopped his invasion of our lands, but now all his foot soldiers are driven insane by the defeat, so you will keep meeting the exact same enemies in the same numbers wherever you go. But you are totally the hero of the world now."
Endless endgame is appropriate for grind-heavy games like Diablo 3 or World of Warcraft, not for choice & consequences and story driven games, like I hope we are getting here.
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What iof their could be something like a Time mode? I.e. when you first start the game, you can choose for things to be time sensitive, or to just disable the time counter for the quests. That way, both sides can be happy; those who want it can have it, and those that don't can just put a checkmark in the box, and continue on their merry way.
That would add a lot of burden on Obsidian to create extra content and test. For many quests, they would have to write an "failed due to timeout" result path in addition to all the other result paths. Like the "can't we have both RTwP and fully turn based modes?" I think that would risk falling into the trying to please everybody and ending up pleasing no one trap.
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When music is all big all the time, you tend to get tired of listening to it after extended periods. That's what we in audio call "listener fatigue", and I'm pretty sensitive to that. The problem with listener fatigue is that when you reach the climax of musical intensity and you keep it there for stustained periods of time, where can you go next if the narrative calls for things to get kicked up another notch?
You have to leave yourself a "vertical buffer" to ensure those moments have meaning and impact. So, to answer your question, there should definitely be moments of moody ambience when its appropriate, just as there should be big grandoise moments when it's called for. But ultimately, everything depends on the narrative imo!
That settles it, If Justin doesn't get to do the soundtrack now, I'm going to get *angry*.
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Kickstarter vid music is not exactly impressive but its serviceable and cheaper than hiring somebody new who'l likely only do a slightly better job anyway.
I thought it was pretty impressive. It pulled at my heartstrings at least. The intro had an "epic" feel to it, especially when the logo was revealed, but without being to obviously "triumphant". The quiet section with the vocals and strings after that was really nice, I am already fantasizing about sitting at the character creation screen for hours with this music playing. And the growing sound of the wind+the bells at the end? GREAT atmosphere.
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As I mentioned in another thread, in my opinion having your portrait on an minor NPC (antagonist, merchant, mayor, barkeep...) instead of as a selectable player portrait would be an awesome high-tier reward.
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This was a popular topic in these forums back when Obsidian asked "If we (theoretically) did a Kickstarter, what would you like to see"? There were some great ideas there, but many of them were prohibitively expensive or impossible to implement.
This is just idle speculating for fun, but if possible I would like to see something new - i.e. not MMO/Dragon Age style cooldowns or D&D memorized slots. My own ideal (probably totally over-ambitious) magic system should affect the lore, and exist/be useful outside of combat. Something that bothered me with D&D - if you could manipulate wind, why could you only do one specific thing like "create a gust of wind"? If you could do that, you should also be able to
- caress someone with a light wind at low levels, blow away toxic clouds, extinguish candles
- create a strong gust that pushes a hostile away (or sweeps the street if spring cleaning) / do a smaller focused air punch to knock people out or break small objects at mid levels
- keep a sailing ship moving / thicken air to slow down projectiles, hold someone still, or slow down a fall / fling heavy items at high levels
- Have such power and control that you can fly / create an impassable field / sharpen the air to a killing edge / strangle someone at a distance / blast down walls / pick locks with ease at epic levels.
Magicians at epic levels would be feared or revered, a leader and a target for assassinations. When characters level up, they can choose to deepen an understanding of a domain (air, life, demonology, mind...), invest more points into power or finesse for a known domain, or put it in stats to get more stamina.
Casting spells drain stamina (or mana), so all spellcasting would be like sorcerers in D&D. You can risk casting higher levels spells than you are normally capable of or you have stamina left for - force-casting. This carries a high risk of knocking the spellcaster out, and/or physically damaging them. High level and really strong willed characters can choose to force-cast something that is likely to kill them, which can be useful both in combat as a dramatic cut-scene event.
- caress someone with a light wind at low levels, blow away toxic clouds, extinguish candles
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Apart from the aforementioned Planescape:Torment and BG2, I thought NWN2:Mysteries of Westgate had a good city. What little I played of it - I would love to replay it but I've lost the disc (or was it a digital download file?).
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At $3000, could you consider having the pledger's portrait on a NPC instead of as a player portrait, as an alternate reward? I would LOVE to be a villain in the game.
Also, as someone else suggested - a ring with the ouroboros motif, included at some level for physical rewards above a certain level? Preferably in a material with some weight to it.
As for project updates on the Kickstarter.... this may be a bit cynical and manipulative of me, but I think gameplay hints seem to be very controversial subject. If you add concept art, more of the great music, or lore hints, that is something everyone would be excited about.
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Hi,
LONG time fan. This Kickstarter is a dream come true for me. I was wondering if you have any official template to describe quests or levels?
I guess you don't want to be distracted by constantly being spammed by amateur "My furst tootorial adventurr" efforts, but if you ever have a competition or something, I would love to give it a shot (or if it is added as an extra reward to high-level pledgers, hint hint). I'm not much of a designer, but I *am* a good programmer and I think I could be a good writer with some practice.
Do you have some sort of framework, a script language, a FSM notation, a doc format or anything else that you use to describe, and/or implement & test quests, subgoals or other objectives? Or is that proprietery info, and I should just use something like Unity or NWN2 and do some demo-worthy stuff to practice first?
Regards,
Lars
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I personally think a low-fantasy/horror (possibly World of Darkness) game set in 16th-18th century would be cool. Many cool ideas at the time, lots of beautiful architecture and scenery to borrow from. I'd love to see a game which begins with subtle court intrigues, and a mysterious murder of a marquis at a ball rather than "here is a dagger, kill 5 rats".
One example to take inspiration from could be this film:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brotherhood_of_the_Wolf
Probably not a recipe for a box office hit, but one can dream...
Also, in the latest version of World of Darkness, I find the Werewolf:Forsaken imagery the most powerful. A urban noir horror game based in that world, where combat is turned based squad tactics would be great. The game could start with you discovering your werewolf heritage and being recruited into a low-ranking pack. You are given a small, mostly worthless territory by your mentors, an alpha pack. You police the spirit world, defend your territory against other WoD horrors, find a totem spirit, etc, and then the real plot begins when all hell breaks loose and you are forced to flee as the alpha pack is wiped out by.... something.
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Best of luck to Alex in his future work.
Whoever becomes the audio director, I nominate he/she contract the awesome Jeff Tymoschuk (http://www.greenwiremusic.com/) to make the music for upcoming Obsidian games. He added a lot of the atmosphere to Penny Arcade Adventures. Also check out the music in the trailer for Ron Gilbert's upcoming action/adventure/rpg game DeathSpank - http://grumpygamer.com/6338868
[Bug report] Dialogue options oddity with Icantha
in Pillars of Eternity: Technical Support (Spoiler Warning!)
Posted
I ended up in Heritage Hill early when reaching Defiance Bay, before Woedica's temple. When meeting Icantha, I had "I'm looking for Icantha" as one of the dialogue options even though I believe I had never heard that name. She replies something like "Oh, and what do you want with her?" and then the conversation just ends.
I opened the door and found her "prisoners", but chose not to talk to them because I fully expected some horrible moral dilemma and wanted to know more about the situation before being made to choose. Coming back days later they are still there even though the door remained open. Minor issue, but maybe having a conversation autotrigger when opening the door and having the option to tell them - "Stay here for now, it's even more dangerous outside!"?