eimatshya

Wasn't Troika working on a post-apocalyptic game when they shut down? There's a tech demo of it on youtube: I'd be more interested in a WoD game, as we have more post-apocalyptic RPGs than urban fantasy ones, but that would be an additional thing to add to the list of games from Troika they could be considering.

I generally find steampunk pretty uninteresting, but I did quite like Arcanum, so you never know what will turn out to be fun.

True, I wouldn't want him to feel pressured into making a game he's not interested in. There's too much trend chasing in the industry already. That said, trying something you're disinterested in can lead to great things as well. At first, Chris Avellone didn't want to make a Star Wars game, but we ended up with KotOR II out it. So who knows? Anyway, after Sawyer has made his passion project, maybe he could consider making a sequel in a non-western setting? Like, your character from the first game gets shipwrecked in Africa or something. I can dream.

Hmm... I'll have to keep an eye on this. Looks like it could be interesting. Visually, the trailer made me think of Septerra Core (although any of the JRPGs that inspired that game would probably be a better comparison). Gameplay looks like it could be fun, too. Anyway, thanks for posting, OP.

I quite enjoyed the setting of Lionheart, even if they did sort of compress history to get various historical figures together in the same year. So, yeah, a setting like that could be cool, especially if the game was better. Personally, I'd prefer something other than medieval Europe, though. Spain just prior to the First Punic War, the ancient middle-east, feudal Japan (hopefully in a better game than Throne of Darkness), classical Meso-America, the Empire of Majapahit, something set in Sub-Saharan Africa (e.g. the Ashanti Kingdom or the Ethiopian Empire), or... I don't know practically anything that hasn't received much attention from western RPG developers. Jade Empire is one of my favorite Bioware games, not because it's especially fun, but because the setting was something new and engaging. Medieval Europe is full of interesting history, but we've been doing it for so long; I'd just like to try something else for a change. That said, as Sawyer's background seems to be in European history, I suspect that's what we'll get.

Yeah, I'm pretty bored with medieval fantasy (although Tyranny's bronze age fantasy setting sounds refreshing). I'd much rather see a space fantasy, sci-fi, modern fantasy, or some sort of non-fantasy modern game. Obsidian has shown they can do great things with these settings. KotOR II, Fallout New Vegas, Alpha Protocol, and the Stick of Truth all stand out as amazing games.

Good interview. Nice to get more info on the behind the scenes process that led to the final game. Anyway, I'm in the "shorter games" camp. When I was a kid and had tons of free time and little money to spend on games, I could spend months on the same game, but that just isn't the case any more. More often than not, I start games and fail to finish them because my attention gets pulled away by other concerns before I get to the end. Then, when I finally get back to the game, I can't remember what was going on well enough to feel connected to it. So yes, shorter, more polished games please.

Another game like Alpha Protocol would be my first choice (as Sega owns the IP it might have to be a spiritual successor rather than a direct sequel). I'd also really love to see Obsidian make a Bloodlines style game. That sci-fi game they were working on with the time-travel sounded interesting, as well, although there may be licensing issues that would prevent them from reviving it. I'm pretty burnt out on Fallout to be honest, and I'd rather see Obsidian something else instead.

I'd love for Obsidian to do a WoD game. VtM:B is possibly my favorite game of all time. Not sure a kickstarter would bring in enough money for another Bloodlines, though. I mean, for an isometric game like Wasteland or Pillars 3-4 million is enough, but for a first person, fully voiced game with mo-cap I suspect you'd need many times that amount. Look at the 3D graphics in Wasteland when you zoom way in. They aren't even on par with VtM:B's graphics from 2004. Unfortunately, creating a Bloodlines style game is super expensive. The only place they're likely to get that sort of cash is if they go to a major publisher, and then they'd ruin it by ramming a bunch of microtransactions, multiplayer modes, and other unfocused features to turn the game into a bland, uninspiring, and completely non-threatening product. Bloodline's strength wasn't that it was set in the Vampire the Masquerade setting; it was the way it brought the setting to life. Little things like arguing with a stop sign as a Malkavian or pretty much any conversation with Mr. Ox would be unlikely to make it into a modern AAA game. Things are just too streamlined now. Maybe they could make a smaller, isometric game in a WoD setting. It wouldn't be like Bloodlines, but on a kickstarter budget they could do something like Fallout 2 (another game where all the little details bring the setting to life). I'd definitely throw tons of money at something like that (or at least a couple hundred bucks). My preference would be for Werewolf: the Apocalypse, Demon: the Fallen, or Mage: the Ascension over VT:M or VT:R, though, as those are my personal favorites from the WoD line (admittedly Mage might be hard to do as a computer game, so maybe just Demon or Werewolf).

I sympathise with those who want multiplayer, but since I don't have any gamer friends, it's not a feature I would ever use. As such, I would rather see Obsidian's efforts spent on single player features that I can actually benefit from.

Yeah, for me, Obsidian really nailed the feel of the Infinity Engine games: that old feeling of wonder, like you're just stepping into a small part of a larger world. It's a feeling that the Dragon Age and NWN games never really had for me, and I've missed it. So yeah, thanks Obsidian!

I think a lot of the negativity comes from the comparisons to the IE games--which is not unreasonable as that was the selling point of the game--but unfortunately (or maybe fortunately?), there's a wide range of opinions on what made the IE games great. For some people it was the combat and magic system. For such people, Pillars of Eternity is likely to disappoint. I'm not one of these people, however. I thought the combat in the IE games was terrible and do not miss it in the least (not that I'm too into PoE's combat either; but it is less bad). Given my disinterest in RTwP combat (or Pause-n-play as it was called back in the day), my appreciation for the Infinity Engine games was based on the sense of adventure and immersion I had while playing through them (and I spent a lot of the late 90s-early 2000s engrossed in them). In this respect I think PoE is a true successor to its IE predecessors. As usual, Obsidian has done a great job of creating an engaging world to adventure through, and I do not regret my $148 pledge in the slightest.

Yeah, that's a feature I've been wishing for as well. It would minimize the amount time I waste trying to figure out who's who.

Honestly I'd prefer DLC to remove most of the voice acting from the game. I've mostly been finding it annoying as every time I try to read the descriptive text, I get distracted by the voice that's reading out some other part of the conversation. While the voice actors generally do a decent job, none of them have wowed me like Irenicus or the Arishok. An amazing performance can really add another layer to a game, but I have yet to encounter any performances in Pillars that have. I feel that the V.O. in this game subtracts more than it adds.

I think the industry just got too focused on the trend of 3D. At the time we all thought it was the wave of the future, so naturally moving towards 3D could only make games more awesome. When Bioware announced that NWN would be 3D, I thought it would be great: another BG but in a fully 3D world! Then it came out and looked awful, and my faith was shaken. Still though, the character animations were a huge improvement, so I still had hope. Then KotOR came out and at the time it looked amazing, and I was sold. But as the years went by, and games kept getting smaller and more linear, I started to realize that all those 3D graphics are over used. The fancy graphics in the Dragon Age games serve no purpose other than to look nice. Nothing about the core gameplay requires height or makes use of the 3D environment (yeah DA:I has some ladders, but that could have been done in a 2D isometric game like JA2). The Mass Effect games need the 3D because they're shooters. For tactical party management gameplay, the core gameplay of the IE and DA series, the 3D is just decoration, which would be OK if its incorporation wasn't so incredibly expensive. I've been having just as much fun with PoE as with the Dragon Age games (actually more), despite the lack of 3D. I really wish publishers would let games be in 2D when there was no gameplay exigency for their use. This would allow more experimentation and innovation as the cost of development would be so much lower.

Yeah, I've really been digging the environmental art in this game. Just wandering around feels awesome. One of the reasons I could never get into DA:O was that everything looked so bland. In PoE, places may look dreary (to the point that the game has actually been making me think of Diablo 1), but they never look bland. Obsidian really nailed the look. It perfectly matches the grim tone of much of the content. Can't say that there's any particular part that's hypnotized me, but overall, I couldn't be happier with the area art.

Hopefully it will be more like being a half orc in Arcanum. That is, many people will react negatively to meeting you, but you can convince them to give you a chance. This makes the game playable, while still showing that your choice of character type matters to the game.

I'd love to see Obsidian make a Bloodlines style RPG. I won't hold my breath, though.

Yeah, while I'd like to see more undead enemies that can't be fought (like the ghost from Bloodlines that someone else mentioned) and need to be avoided or exorcised with some ritual, a smaller change that could be made would just be sound design. I recently started replaying Daggerfall, which I hadn't played since the 90s, and was surprised to find that the dungeons in that game are actually scary. This is due in large part to the fact that you can hear enemies long before you figure out where they actually are. Also, the disembodied voice of the king's spirit in Daggerfall city combined with the specters that attack you definitely get's the heart rate up. So, sound design is a key element in instilling fear, but I don't think it's enough in-and-of-itself. In DA:O, the disembodied voice in deep roads wasn't all that scary because, unlike in Daggerfall, it wasn't accompanied by some unseen enemy that could conceivably attack the player without warning at any time. The voice in DA:O was a bit creepy, but you knew you were in no real danger.

Yeah, the word "mature" tends to be a red flag for me in advertising since it rarely means anything I'd associate as that. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with having sex, nudity, or extreme violence in a game (I've certainly enjoyed them in the past), but when the devs or marketers hype those elements as being mature, it shifts the focus away from any sort of substantial intellectual exploration the game could be doing. The Witcher 1 did actually have some interesting conundrums in act 2 when Geralt starts finding himself increasingly tangled up in political squabbles that he wants nothing to do with, but so much of the rest of the game was random chicks throwing themselves at Geralt for no clearly defined reason (I mean he's described as "foul" looking in the game, and most people think he's some kind of evil freak) or the game throwing out simple ethical choices and then feeling extremely smug about how mature and deep it was being that I found it hard to get that into it. Anyway, I don't know where I'm going with this. I guess what I want to say is that the label "mature", at least with respect to artistic content, isn't really useful. We can talk about the intellectual exploration of issues or M rated content like nudity, but just saying "mature" doesn't really denote anything specific, in my opinion, and its connotation is generally unappealing.

As others have posted, I think the word Skyrim is causing people to view the possibilities for open world games very narrowly. Baldur's Gate and the first act of BGII were mostly just wandering around doing quests and running into random encounters. If Obsidian made a game focusing on this sort of gameplay, it could easily be seen as an open world game. Take BG1, take out the Serevok stuff, and focus instead on adding more random encounters and you have a 2D, isometric, open world game that is conceptually pretty similar to Skyrim.

I don't think he mentions grimoires in the article linked by OP, so maybe you're talking about a different interview (or maybe I just missed it), but the three things Sawyer says about wizards in the article are: 1- They can wear armor. They cast their spells more slowly with armor though. 2 - They aren't as weak at low levels as D&D wizards. They have more spells available for casting. In BG, for example, a low level wizard only can cast a few spells before he has none left and becomes useless to the party until the party rests. Josh says that this will not be the case in Eternity. 3 - Playing a wizard is more complex than playing a fighter. Wizards have a lot of abilities to manage. Fighters have fewer. As a result, playing a wizard requires the player to do more and be more active.

In addition to the previously mentioned issue of union rules, the logistics of trying to organize a bunch of strangers all over the world to get the right lines done on time and with the desired level of quality, both in terms of performance and audio quality, would be a pretty big task. It's obviously possible, but it wouldn't be "free" since someone at Obsidian would have to put in a lot of work to coordinate the whole endeavor and evaluate the resulting audio submissions.

I understood that the companion was optional (as far as I know all the companions are optional, actually), but my point was that people tend to feel like they're being punished when the game tells them "If you'd done something different a long time ago, you would have got something here" without ever giving them fair warning before hand. Like I said, I'm OK with it, but in general, devs like to avoid blocking off significant content due to choices players didn't realize they were making. Then again, AP had a lot of examples of players getting completely different options on how to resolve situations based on their past decisions, so who knows; maybe Obsidian would be up for it afterall.

Hmm... I'd be OK with that I guess, but it seems like it would go against the devs' philosophy of not punishing players for their play style (it also would encourage metagaming). In your example, the player is punished for not aggressively attacking the optional mega dungeon. If you had worked harder to get to this arbitrary level of the dungeon early, you save someone you had no idea was even down there. If not, the game rubs your failure to achieve something you didn't even know you were supposed to do in your face. As such, I wouldn't expect to see something like that in the game. That's total speculation on my part though.