Falkon Swiftblade

I'm not sure if it's relevant here or not, but I came upon this article the other day that may help them save a ton of space. http://gamingbolt.com/granite-sdk-v2-0-now-available-reduces-ps4-pc-xbox-one-memory-usage-by-75-for-texture-streaming

I read in one of the interviews they said 2nd half of 2014. Winter officially begins on December 21– March 19, so I sure hope not "winter!"

As much as I would love more stuff, I have to admit Obsidian has a bad rep for releasing some pretty glitchy and bug infested games. If you guys add more stuff, that's a bigger game you have to QA, if in fact you have a decent QA system in place. I need to double check, but I think there was an Alpha and Beta option for us to pledge on which should aid in that area much faster and better so you guys can make a smooth release. I'd prefer a smoother experience and focused project, than a bunch of random stuff that seems halfway thought out. No offense to Tim Cain, but that initial crafting mechanic update #58 we had was really a poor concept for something we put such a large amount of $ into. Luckily you guys were flexible and listened to us and made some tweaks, which hopefully end up being a lot of fun! One idea I would like to have included in the game I think would be a lot of fun that hopefully could be implemented without needing a stretch goal involved would be for when you return your session of playing you get a short narrative explaining the storyline at your last save point or check point. An example of what I'm talking about that I felt did an exceptional job of that was Rogue Galaxy on the Ps2. Basically the loading screen talked about what major story element was happening and your goal or things you were doing the last time you played. This brings you back into the world in a similar way as the narrator did in The Princess Bride. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_Av_1NmQMU#t=122

to whom it may concern, I can't view anything on the new site for actual content. I only see the layout and none of the links work. I've tried using Firefox and Chrome on a mac osx 10.6.1 Chrome is this screenshot, and Firefox won't let me log in or out, it just gives me the error 500 - Something Went WrongKerflufflupogus may be attacking us again... We can't seem to retrieve this page right now... https://www.dropbox.com/s/pligcaygfflqcbt/Screenshot%202013-12-10%2021.19.32.png

I'd prefer a bit more funding go into animations and fx. You're guy's animation budget is horrendously low, and if we're going to have a bagillion choices of play-styles, then each race and character type should really have much more variety in their animations. With the most recent update to Unity Pro they added some great additions for animations which should make your guys jobs even easier. What I noticed in the trailer as nice as everything is coming together, I can't tell Jack from Jill, nor are there anything about the characters other than their armor or weapons that's really unique. The characters are all running with the same chicken wing pose as the rat creatures in the crystal cave too. I would really prefer someone had the mindset to give the races more unique silhouettes, & make their strides longer or shorter for example. Add some randomness to their idle animations, and combat animations. These types of games are fantastic, but if it's the same rig on 8 races and classes and the monsters all run like the humans, then it's going to feel stale real quick. Please add like 3X more animations. Heck I'll help you do it if you want. You might need to seriously outsource it to some folks, and I can make some recommendations if you want.

For me the thing I've most wanted in an RPG over the past decade was a stronger sense of character progression. I feel BG2 was the best to pull that off. By the end of that game I felt like I had done a lot of stuff, and explored a lot, and sufficiently grew into a bad mofo. I would like a game that really has a balanced mechanic that is more meaningful than level 10 or 99 means I'm as strong as I can be. If they're going to do a level cap system, I like how some games like Reckoning started to do where you had a title based upon the type of skills you chose and even though I might be called a Arch mage, my Arch mage and your's might not be exactly the same. If they can find a way to allow us to be enabled to have a lot of choices of how to play as we gain power the better it would be for me. I am bored with skills like fireball and as you level up all you have to look forward to is a bigger fireball. I'd prefer a fireball that does more stuff, like has the chance of burning down structures so they fall on enemy's, or gives me the ability to interact with the environment. Let my fireball actually destroy a farmers house for example. Also I'd prefer more interesting types of magic. Fireballs and lightning is cool and all, but I think I'd like to see a more realistic use of magic, like maybe how the player uses alchemy to create potions or hallucinogens against enemy's. in addition, I've been waiting a really long time to have a battle with the boss that lasts a long time, and is not set in a tennis court where we whack a mole back and forth at each other. I want an encounter where we are traversing the mountain to reach the top before he gets away and escapes. Or, maybe when you get to the final dungeon to beat him, you actually get tricked into setting him free and now he's a dragon flying around burning down villages and stealing peasants to eat them, so you are actually chasing him down to stop him before he decimates the entire world.

The only reason there's a bend in the road is because art schools tell you to do so to make the scene more interesting. That's really the only reason you ever see a snaking pathway in a painting. Realistically, I wish artists and designers did do things with purpose instead of following a formula or convention, but I like the thought behind having an obstacle in the way. Actually, one thing I hope they can add into the game mechanics somehow are booby traps, and places where we may get ambushed as we're exploring. Also I feel both images have a very narrow range of values and contrast. I like the idea of having some color in the world, but I would really like to see a solid 7 point values system so things feel a little more organic. Overall the work is pretty and I really like the way the ground looks.

http://nooooooooooooooo.com/

Nice work Brandon, can you give us an idea roughly how many people at Obsidian are working on this game? At times it sounds like a small team, and other times it sounds like many hands are working behind the scenes. I'm interested in understanding how everyone works on stuff. Can ya give us an idea of how much of the game is feature complete at this point? Also how are you guys coming along for sound design and music so far?

all cool stuff, though I hope the characters and races are very distinguishable with unique silhouettes. I was having a difficult time making out what classes and races I was looking at. Also I want to know how they plan on making the different difficulty levels fun and not so repetitive? Maybe there will be additional content?

ahh, well buggars.... I guess we'll see some new stuff in a couple more weeks at least

Possible Spoiler inventory shot I found I'm guessing from the talk. It's looken pretty good!

I saw josh post a few hours ago he was trying to upload the file (powerpoint?) to his dropbox, not sure if he thought to upload the pdf instead, that would be a way smaller file. But then we wouldn't get the music and video clips and stuff. Hopefully it'll be shared.

Maybe I missed it but has Hector discussed working in the Unity Engine vs however they had to create the assets back in the old days? Is it faster, harder, What are some of the new things he can do now that he couldn't before? What are the chances we'll have things like moving lava or caverns with reflective crystals, etc? Hector, if it's possible, can you guys try to create some levels where the environment has edges like the edge of a cliff or bridge in the foreground so we have really epic views while we're exploring. I know the old IE games didn't have that, but I'm hoping with technology now, we can explore the lay of the land a little bit more so it looks like in parts of the game we are climbing in elevation, or have to make it up a pass before the wind blows us over an edge for example. Maybe we can knock enemies over ledges so they fall below on rocks and we go back later to loot their corpse. I think everything you've shown so far has been great, keep up the good work. In the Dev Diary video thing, maybe you can give us a walkthrough of your process of making a scene or something like that too by the way.

Kaz, can you speak as to the scope of the world you guys are creating how big it is in relation to BG one or two? Also, as far as the paper doll inventory, could you guys try to create something like this only cropped in on the characters so it looks like they are standing on something and not arbitrarily floating in space? By the way I'm so glad to see some art you created that shows true foreground, mid-ground, and background in it, something the old I.E. games surely lacked. I hope you're able to achieve that same perspective in the final product.

Thanks for the early update! Nice work, I wonder how long did those 4 concepts take to make? They seem like pretty high renders, but being a matte painter that makes sense.

^^ that's what I'm talking about Osvir, you're on point. I agree with basically everything you stated. I'll have to look into the Seiji Haitani reference, but that would make a really strong nemesis boss type of character that I would like to play against. Another character I thought of that was a bad guy that I loved was Ben in the Lost TV show. He was smart, not physically massive, he had a master level of persuasion to make people do what he wanted, and he always had a plan b.

I understand what ya are referring to about the childish and cliche boss, but I also wonder the same thing about people who are in bad relationships. Why do they keep putting themselves in patterns with the same people? Why do people who know they have an addiction with something still go back to it when they know their addiction only fixes their condition for that moment in time...? In the case of a reoccurring nemesis it's kind of like that psycho ex girlfriend who just won't obey the restraining order you have against her and it's more of a nuisance being around her than thinking of I just knocked you off the bridge for the tenth time, would you die already!? My issue with most game bosses is they don't have any depth or mystery about them. They're the bad guy because the dev said so. They arbitrarily have the most guns, if it's a fantasy game it's almost always a dragon that's the final boss, and usually the encounters are pretty one sided. Or there's like one weapon or one ability that you have to have to win. That doesn't feel very fun to me. The game is said to be dark yes, but dark to me doesn't mean we have to have the same zombie and dragon enemies that are in everything we ever played and spam magic missile over and over on. To me those are the same game play mechanic issues you're describing with having a psycho Susie boss who won't take no for an answer. At least I can relate to someone like that who has compulsive obsessive and attachment disorders, than I can for some random dude who is just as cliche of a bad guy as is in just about 98% of every other game out there.

that is pretty cliche and the only time I saw it used in context I enjoyed it, was in Killer Instinct when Spinal could turn into you briefly as a shadow and used your attacks on you. Generally though I feel like shadow's have been done almost as much as vampires and zombies, of which i'm personally fatigued from playing anymore.

this is quickly becoming my favorite thread, these are great ideas!

I agree Lephys, kind of like the emperor in Star Wars. Political favors can be a real tension getter. Sometimes you meet people and you have no idea the real reason you thought you were being hired for was for a bigger nefarious plan. Like maybe a group of soldiers hired to fight some thugs in a nearby area who are harassing the farmers think they're doing the right thing. You think you're doing them a favor by defending them, only to find out much later you were actually used to muscle the supplies from the farmers & delivering the supply of local drug plants in the region. The supplies you thought you were returning wasn't really food, it was many years salary worth of illegal substances.

You know what, in all my years of playing Super Mario Bro's or Zelda games, it never bothered me I had to fight the same boss over and over throughout the game. In fact, I think it made that nemesis that much more despicable and fun when I really did "defeat" him. I like the concept of having a complex character that might take a few games to play through and you have the option of eventually truly defeating them on even play field, or maybe even decide to switch sides and future games you are on his side fighting folks like your typical hero. I don't want to deemphasize the importance of choice, I just feel morality in games is ambiguous without a real moral compass to gauge from. Having a character like the female boss in Reckoning whose name I'm forgetting of hand was awesome. She hated that her lot in life was to be killed because she was perceived as evil, whether or not she truly was or not was an interesting take on her character, and I liked that the player had a choice of how they decided her fate. The announcement of having prisoners in the stronghold is an interesting one, and I could see it going in any number of ways. I wonder if we'll have the discussion to release the prisoner after a time? I also thought it would be an awesome game play mechanic if you let an underling escape, they'll remember you slaughtered his clan or whatever they are, and later in the game, he's now a mid level boss you encounter. I also think it would be great to have a character who has a warped perception of some truth he followed. Maybe it was just blind pride. Like Vegeta in DBZ. He was an angst heavy d-bag most of the time, but he had good intentions of bringing honor to his race as the last surviving Prince of the Saiyans. Another thing that I liked about that series in general was the characters had a realistic character ark they went through. They actually had to practice a skill set a lot before it was perfected and they got stronger. It wasn't so random, like I killed 50 bunny's, now I know how to cast fireballs. I like the option of choice, but I like a narrative wrapper that goes around it giving the player or npc have some depth to them. Hopefully the guys working on the game will give us some thoughtful conflicts and likable characters.

holy geebus, this was an unsuspected surprise update. Everything sounds pretty awesome, there are a few things that seem kinda obvious to me that I don't know how you guys plan on reducing the suspension of disbelief, but the concept of taxing for loot sounds interesting, but I've yet to play a game that had enough of a population of npc's and buildings where something like that would make sense. Most rpg's have like 9 npc's walking about and like 5 buildings total you can interact with. I don't know how those 9 folks are going to populate cities to fund the upkeep of my abby...? Just something I'm wondering about... The other part of keeping prisoners is really a cool and unique option too, but it almost sounds like that's missed content that we lose out on if we don't play that way. I'm all for a pacifist play style, but I'm not a fan of a system that dictates I have to follow the formula of game mechanics, because then it feels too scripted and not very organic. As long as there are options in place for similar rewards elsewhere than I'm totally cool. I'm even fine with the system as discussed, just as long as the game mechanic isn't being designed as if I have to play that way to win. I'd like having the option of how to progress my character while reducing grinding unless I choose too. PS, can someone refresh my memory, wasn't there mention of an expansion coming out shortly after PE releases on scope of BG TOB mentioned in the kickstarter? Have you guys considered how the Abby or castle whatever it will be will be used in future updates? Will it grow over time in future expansions?

There's a lot of links for those, it would take me a lil while to compile them all, but a few you can refer to would be: http://www.develop-online.net/features/1993/Land-of-the-indies-PS4-self-publishing-explained - http://www.polygon.com/2013/7/24/4553842/so-how-much-does-it-cost-to-develop-for-playstation-4 - http://www.itproportal.com/2012/02/14/xbox-360-patching-costs-40000/#ixzz1mMnpOLCl - http://www.psu.com/a018676/ - http://au.gamespot.com/news/just-cause-dev-says-ps4-will-out-power-most-pcs-for-years-to-come-6405102? - http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-02-22-ps4-pc-like-architecture-8gb-ram-delight-developers you can also check out n4g.com probably or even reddit.

One thing I considered about the new controller that we're forgetting, is the built in move controller. I think it would be very possible to use the controller to point the controller on screen and make the party walk where you want them to as a new mechanic. Playing on a 32-60 inch display on your comfy couch with your surround sound speakers would be cool. One of the features of PS4 is it supports 4k movie playback. To do so on a PC would require a really high amount of disk space to install. However on the PS4, it would easily fit on Sony's new blu ray disk. (Currently Sony is partnering with another company to develop a 300 GB blue ray disk.) Or, with technology that came out this year, it's now possible to stream 4k resolution on devices as small as a cell phone or the Vita and it requires about 50% less bandwidth than current 1080p at max settings if you were to stream online and that's a new experience. To say the Ps4 has 8 slow cores is not quite accurate. You can process 176GB of data per second on the PS4. My PC from 2 yrs ago has a really nice Nvidia GTX 580 and only does 20GB and has only 2GB of built in GDDR5 ram. Not to mention was $500 by its self. The legal issues you mention I don't think are existent in PS4 since the dev's have complete control of their pricing model, release date, and patches I think are either up to them when they want to, or at most is 1/10th of the cost from this gen. I know Xbox 360 was $50k per patch from a project I worked on a couple of years ago. From what I gathered from some industry folks so far the PS4 doesn't have any of those restrictions, and the process to go through approval is like a week to nine days. And again, most 3rd party developers creating games on PS4 and PC keep stressing how easy it is to develop for PS4. I even read an article from Gamescom where the guy said it's easier to develop for PS4 than PC because Sony actually went to developers and created the machine for developers by developers and gamers. We've moved past the 12-18 month cycle to get a game up and running on a console now. I've read time and again it takes weeks to do so now.