CahiersDuVidya

I've not read one person who has said that. I have read a lot of other good responses as to why it would be a horrible idea.

I'm sure you'd love donating 25 million dollars to that cause. Throw on top of that a frugal 15 million dollar marketing campaign and I'd say we'd have a very believable kickstarter campaign.

I can think of half a dozen AAA-rpg's that do just that. To whom? I can't even tell who's trolling anymore. But I think this is one that had me going for a few paragraphs. *sigh* Back in my day, trolling used to mean something.

I wouldn't be opposed to a more linear story. Think of DA:O. While it claims 'non-linearity' due to the patented "intro quest, conflict, go do one of 4 larger quests in any order, conclusion', it's quite linear feeling. But not only does it end up feeling linear, it ends up being bad.The whole 'do these 4 quests in any order) thing ruins a sense of progression as each of those quests has to be scaled towards a wide range of levels. Not only that, having such disparate quests that take place within the larger arc of the main quest (think DA:O, the darkspawn 'threat' is looming as your trot around forests, the underdark deep roads, mages tower, etc.) ruins all sense of urgency that the quests have. And when you compound that with side quests that have you traipsing all over the world and companion arcs/quests, you have a jumpled mess. This has always struck me as an absurdly bad way to make a game as the timings of these arcs are never controlled well. So you have taken a few npc's all the way through their arcs and they are completely new characters...but what does it equate to? Nothing. They still spout the same dialogue and it has no effect on the majority of the game. Now if you happened to do this towards the end of the game, it would not be very noticable. But if you complete their arc earlier in the game, it ruins all illusion that your interactions accomplished something meaningful. But side-quests are the worst. When you are trying to finish all available side-quests, all belief in the threat of 'awoken ancient evil #299' is dispersed. I was doing all kinds of absurd errands in DA:O while the rampaging darkspawn horde apparently got bogged down in Lothering for months and months. A lot of people like to think non-linearity brings about a deeper experience or greater replayability...and though it sometimes can, the majority of the time it just brings about an ill executed game that I don't have the will to finish. I would prefer an excellently polished game that is more linear than a mediocre, garbled, non-linear game. No. The reason for choosing an isometric view (3d or not) is because it would cut down on a lot of time of polishing up textures and working on relevant animations. Now if you had to jump to 1st person for dialogue...well...all those textures would have to be brushed up and those animations done anyways. And if that work was to be necessitated...then why have the game in an isometric viewpoint in the first place? Otherwise all that work would go to waste. Just watch an M. Night Shyamalan movie. Well...I agree with this, but Obsidian (and Troika and Black Isle) have a tendancy to try to avoid these things in a good many of their games. If they were to make their rpg, I'm sure it wouldn't be yet another ancient evil awakening that drives the plot but rather internal conflicts within our character or with your character's pre-game actions that moves the game forward. Would it? It would probably be disappointing and underwhelming. Especially when compared to the Torment experience. There is a sweetspot when it comes to games giving the player information. Most games today...they overshoot it. Let's stick with Bioware as we've all played their games. Do you think the npc's are more believable in BG/BG2 or in DA:O. I would say the BG's. But why is this? The npc's in DA:O are fully voiced, have (what seems like) hours of dialogue, their own quest arcs, more detailed forms, etc. Well, I think that the IE games had a certain magic to them. Think of all the energy you had to put into Torment or the BG's. You were led to your image of these games instead of shown an image of these games. I'll explain. When dealing with npc's, you had sparse voice acting and a character portrait, that's about it. So all that other information was superimposed onto the character by the player. My perception of Jahiera or Dak'kon could be markedly different from another player's. This applies to all aspects of those games. When exploring Irenicus' Dungeon or The Smoldering Corpse Bar, we are given a beautiful scene, some flavor dialogue, music, and ambient sound (can I just go ahead and say that the ambient sound in Torment is possibly the most unfortunately overlooked thing in gaming). To breathe real life into these scenes, we have to superimpose a lot of information. So even though we are both imaging the heat or the smell or the thickness of the air, what we are perceiving could be drastically different. Yet despite that difference, the experience could be powerful for both of us. The stimulation of imagination is something that games just don't do. It's not because people are bad at making games or gamers are hopelessly plebeian and lazy, but because the constant push of using exciting new technology (and getting sales just by virtue of having the latest bells and/or whistles) has been a big race of making the use of imagination less and less necessary. Unfortunately, we've lost the magic of games like Ultima 7 or Torment as we've had this tech race to inundate our senses with the latest thing. I think that a clear defiance of this trend would stand out vividly against the brown and bloom landscape of modern games. Gameplay leading a person to use his imagination to create a living world out of the game he is playing...what a novel idea!

...were you on the Interplay forums for Baldur's Gate before BG2's release? anyhow, why do people find the graphics in Torment to be bad? The graphics aren't dated at all. Go look at Coaxmetal, FoR, or well...any scene in the game. They hold up well to games today. If an indie developer produced something as atmospheric as The Smoldering Corpse Bar, they'd be hailed as a gaming savior.

Well first off... To everyone saying "remake Torment"...leave. Just leave. There is absolutely no need to remake Torment with 'better graphics' as better graphics would do nothing to improve the game. There is absolutely no need to remake Torment with 'better gameplay' as the gameplay was superb (I'm assuming the people saying this are conflating combat with gameplay, which is just silly). The game was almost perfect the way it was. To everyone saying 'Torment 2', 'Kotor 3', 'BG3' etc. Think about it. The point for the whole kickstarter thing is to have Obsidian maintain 100% autonomy on the project they are making. If they are tied to existing IP, the people holding those licenses would hold a large amount of control over this project, ruining its purpose. Additionally, the surge of sequels we've seen in the past few years is due to publishers wanting relatively safe returns on their investments. Though this only seems to work for Activision and Zenimax (sometimes), it is still the course that most studios are going to take. Why not use this to free up a studio to completely buck that trend and use creativity and innovative to get sales - not rehashing. There are also many technological trends that are proving to be utterly pernicious to game development. The amount of resources that have to be redirected to voice acting and animation are hamstringing the quality of games that are being released. Other aspects of the game suffer to accommodate these supposed requisites. This would be an opportunity for a studio to be free of those obligations and create a game in a manner that they believe would be best to tell their particular story. Now...as far as what to make. Why are you asking us? I've never made a good game, nor has anyone responding to this blog (The original ideas put forth in these comments should be enough evidence that you should not be coming to us for ideas). The reason people are excited over this is because we trust that Obsidian, if allowed to run loose, would make an extraordinary game. Personally, I just say lock you, Tim Cain, and Michael Kirkbride (The fellow responsible for much of Morrowind's excellent lore) in the same sensory deprivation tank for a week and see what comes out. But that might be a bit extreme. You've had well over a decade in the industry and you know what you would like to do. Why not give us a few examples of games you think should be made and let us mull over those?