injurai

Just listened to the 2012 reissue of Californication. Where has this been all my life...

Well... iunnoboutchu, but Maia is meaninful to me. Also these hifi models make me happy.

Well, while everyone else is having super serious time with Deadfire. I'll be having fun.

I think this campaign was actually run more confidently, but last time they had a lot of fresh stuff to report so it felt a bit more indepth. It's not like they can show us all their engine work for the first time again. This game is all about content, and new gameplay systems probably are too much WIP at this point. I agree, it feels like we are due. But I do want meatier updates, so I will wait. Articles just about "daily life on the Deadfire team" might be neat. Just so we can hear about overcoming challenges on things that are related but not directly the game itself.

If I understand you correctly they tie bug fixes for existing content to pay for new content? And they don't push those patches out unilaterally? Hmmm. The grand strategy community is an odd one to reciprocate that model. I'd call them champaign socialists but the games seen to be more about imperialism and nationalism than anything else. Stellaris seems cool though I guess there is no point in buying a new game of theirs since the dlc is still coming out for it.

Well, Obsidian wants to self-publish. The cost saved funds expanding the company and they can give themselves a better deal. It's efficient since everything is in house. But you have to build the initial capital and if you aren't releasing games frequently enough then that division is too idle. Obsidian is pretty big for what it is, and certainly works with tight turn around unlike other companies. They may not be ready yet to make a jump, but that is the direction they are striving for.

Good point about E3, I keep forgetting about it.

I mean, we had backer graves stones so why no. But one single list is a bit dense and uninteresting.

What do you mean when you say that Paradox thew Obsidian under the bus with Tyranny? Something happened? Well, that does need contextualized and curtailed a bit. It's not like a business agreement was violated. But Paradox went on record saying that everyone at Paradox expected it to do better. Ergo, something went amiss in the market and Obsidian product.

I sort of assumed Fig would be considered the publisher I guess, but they still need distributors and localization. Which I don't think Fig will be handling.

Mads is a great pick. But I'd really love to see Josh Holloway (Sawyer; Lost) come back with some major work. I think he'd be perfect.

I hope it's self-published at least in the west. Maybe CDPR could publish it in certain select European regions. I've long been a fan of Paradox but just recently they have started to rub me the wrong way. Paradox is also trying to sell to Tencent, at least that was the last I heard. Or Tencent was one of the interested parties, but I know Paradox is seeking investment to grow, they are publicly traded after all. Obsidian is in a really tight place, after Paradox throwing them under the bus a bit with Tyranny I think Paradox has Paradox in mind. Kind of going the way of Zenimax if you will. Maybe Devolver could publish it? Man if only there was a PC-centric company who owned an entire content distribution system that was privately owned that could publish games and not force the games to be restricted to their own store...

Well there is always the aesthetic association. There is modern swing music, but the genre will always be associated is old fashion ways. It's probably scene as the most conservative and tempered of the "fun" dance musics. Being musics that are flirtatious, energetic, and not stifled. Similarly I think, pre-rendered backgrounds are just associated with a certain era. It's all about hyper-realistic 3D graphics or clean flowery cartoon graphics. The sort of two dialectical poles of most graphics progress. Think Uncharted vs Overwatch. Imo PoE feels like a modern 2015 game, where ME:A feels like it's trapped in 2007. But it's hard to impress upon people aspects like this unless they are have already played the games. It's the new player that is always the hardest to reach. So association dominates people's impressions until they take a further look. There are a lot of games fighting for people's "second looks" before they buy.

Hmm, maybe get Jimmy Fallon to play it live. Otherwise, I see what you mean. There is perhaps a ceiling when it comes to generating interest out of the blue in the non-grognards.

In some ways, I'd prefer if updates were used as a marketing device. Look, I like, no, LOVE Pillars of Eternity. I've backed both games now. I rate PoE+TWM as perhaps my favorite rpg of the past two generations. I make the effort to stay up to date, I read text descriptions and feedback from the team. But there are those who don't, and instead hitch themselves mainstream opinion vectors. Where many of the opinions are armchair by people that you know can't feasible play all the games they seem to form strong opinions on. Just recently Paradox released a statement declaring Tyranny as having not performed as well as they were expecting. Well... they gave Obsidian the typical short grunt work cycle and budget. They were hoping to capitalize on the new upswing of infinity-like crpgs. The Neogaf thread on Paradox's statement was filled with the general sentiment that: 1. People didn't know it existed until it was out. 2. It was Obsidian not doing the proper marketing steps, as opposed to Paradox... their publisher. 3. PoE was a favorite but most other crpgs have been disappointing. 4. Obsidian HAS USED ****TY UNITY FOR 2 ENTIRE GAMES NOW! 5. Not noticing the beauty of pre-rendered back grounds because of ****ty 3D models and flat scenes, looks outdated compared to modern titles. 6. I love Obsidian but I'm going to wait until their V:TM-B game comes out x_x X. The hardcore fans there don't really put a dent in the impressions of the less informed. The aggregate take away from a large general gaming forum, that is in eternal September, and tracks niche interests that could include taking interest in a crpg would be: 1. Strong Marketing Pushes are necessary. Ones that will generate the most positive word of mouth discussion. Which starts from people who already track the game. Meaning they need to talk about "revealed feature x" at the same time as the general audience. Not 3 months earlier. General audiences deserve to be clued into hardcore impressions. I'd say this is especially important if you don't have a considerable marketing budget that can usurp word of mouth interest. 2. Really sell people on that PoE is not just nostalgia but something new and worth while. 3. Target the most lucrative word of mouth vectors, namely YouTube, and the demonstrate why PoE is a worth while experience. For many people this might indeed be story mode, so really sell that aspect of it. 4. Appeal to young people in marketing as your primary concern, and keep previews heavy on demonstrable content like unfolding narratives which are easily conveyed. Unlike the number-systems that drive the game. 5. Sell people on character crafting and a robust ability to living out roles which rival AAA games. People love choice especially when it comes to crafting a characters identity. 6. Potential for crafting a very attractive player character (but not exclusively). And yes I still hope Obsidian blue balls everyone except Eder. --- Most of the above deals in properly marketing the game. Finding out what features are best used to sell the game to non-fanatics like myself. Pull in new audiences. A few like attractive player models I'd hope they already are sort of planning for, because that's something that has to be planned way earlier than marketing. But it's an rpg and you want to let people know that they can live out their ideal protagonist.

There is a difference between general plot points, general characterizations. And then charting out every nuance of dialogue direction due to player decision making, and actual writing out the exact lines with the proper character voice. In fact, if you can't implement what you had planned to implement. The writing is the best way to warp to those changes. The trick is to still get compelling dialogue out of the final variation of the game, which may not be locked in until rather late in development.

That's how in-jokes work...

How soon until House of Cards gets canceled in favor of the far more unprecedented series called US Politics. I swear, the world feels like a spectacle at times.

Huzzah!

I hope we see a Druid form model soon!

I don't want my rpg to loreify game design concerns. Not unless it's some cheeky break th 4th wall sort of thing. But I don't think everyone likes those, since it can be misconstrued as actual lore/canon.

Well there are cold deserts and cold rainforests...

I made this attempt a couple of months ago according to the various sources: https://forums.obsidian.net/uploads/monthly_02_2017/post-52304-0-45324700-1486033731.png Only problem with the Living Lands being at the pole is that it's described as having both deserts and jungles (next to each other even, which isn't implausible because rainshadow deserts). The way it's described, the Living Lands sound like Papua-New Guniea dialed up to 11 with fjords and etc. See... the world of Eothas is so incredible, but I don't even bother remember stuff like this because I have no context for anything. Like seriously. My best friend used to get lost in WoW of all things, even when he had the maps, the compass, and mods galore to direct him. He'd be unable to keep track of due north irl. While I have total spatial awareness... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igSv9d50fYM Yet... YET, I am totally for a loss with this game.

Maybe hitting the space bar stops dialogue and you have to hit it again to go to the next line. Also I too like the Maerwald encounter but it did seem to drag on. I got the point pretty quickly. The more interesting bit was not Maerwald's delivery but the squad trying to surmise what it was that they were encounter. Which made the whole thing worth while. But Maerwalds delivery was rather slow and noodling, which only slowed down even further what was a fully voiced long encounter. For all the resources that went into it, I don't think the payoff was nearly as high as one might have hopped for such a heavily voiced scene. I'd certainly not want to encounter too many more scenes like that if there are other deranged-watchers in Deadfire.

I made this attempt a couple of months ago according to the various sources: https://forums.obsidian.net/uploads/monthly_02_2017/post-52304-0-45324700-1486033731.png Because you beat Obs to it, this is now my canon.