New interview with Chris Avellone on VG 24/7

[Lucas]

I think it's quite interesting, and touches quite a lot of subjects:

 

http://www.vg247.com...ment_interview/

 

A couple excerpts:

Fair play. Well going back to NPC reactions, how deeply will morality enter into plot progression? Just how dark are you looking to go with the narrative?

 

 

Dark’s a little boring to me, and it’s also too easy to fall down that hole in storytelling in an attempt to be pseudo-hardcore. Some of our strongest releases kept the dark on the backburner and cloaked it within a blanket of humor, and people responded to both.

 

I’m more interested in how people in the world perceive you rather than an internal morality bar. Alpha Protocol did this. You didn’t have a rep, you only had values for how others viewed you, which feels more natural.

 

We’re still fleshing out the lore and faction elements, but I’d always felt that morality and hard choices are things you don’t need to weigh on a slider, you only need to introduce them in the right context to make a player pause and go “oh, ****, what do I do?”

 

As long as they can feel the tension in the decision and see the result in a way that makes sense from their exploration and understanding of the world, that’s all we’re looking for.

 

Also:

 

All of this takes place in what you’ve billed as a huge world, filled with lore, races, ethnic sub-cultures – everything. How do you even begin to start pulling all of that together?

 

 

You start with the core system mechanics. What makes the world fun on a second-to-second basis? This includes spell systems, how the magic of the world and the powers of the world can be harnessed by your character – and how they can oppose your character.

 

It also includes races, character selection, skills, and more. Ideally, your world – like Eternity – has a core thematic spine to it in terms of how characters gain and harness power, and you want to weave that into not just character creation, but character leveling, and also into the exploration and narrative aspects. This is similar to immortality in Torment, or the soul-eating mechanic in Mask of the Betrayer.

 

From there, you figure out how the systems work in the environment – what’s the best backdrop for these systems? At its heart, Eternity is a rich world, and it’s a world of adventure.

 

We want cool locations to explore and cool people to meet, as well as cool companions in your party who can also act as sounding boards. Among its many elements is we want the player to explore fantastic beautiful locations, and also engage in cool dungeon-crawling adventures where they have to utilize their skills and those of their companions to conquer puzzles, traps, and encounters.

 

Once you have these elements decided, you work on giving a narrative context to these elements – the history of the location, how it came to be, and what ecology and cultures live in these areas.

 

More at the mentioned link.

 

(EDIT; btw, only a few moments ago I noticed it was already mentioned in the "known information" thread, but I still think it might deserve its own topic :D)

Edited September 21, 2012 by Lucas

[nikolokolus]

Nice. Thanks for sharing

[Entropious]

So now we can be certain that the game won't go towards "grimdark". I'm really happy to be hearing that. Too much of "grey RPG's" have been regurgitated as of late.

[LordCrash]

Great interview, thanks!

[eimatshya]

"Dark’s a little boring to me, and it’s also too easy to fall down that hole in storytelling in an attempt to be pseudo-hardcore. Some of our strongest releases kept the dark on the backburner and cloaked it within a blanket of humor, and people responded to both."

 

This is exactly what I wanted to hear. Some writers go overboard with "being dark", and it just becomes silly and results in unlikeable characters that are hard to empathize with or care about. Obsidian has always done a great job of not falling into this trap, in my opinion, and I'm glad to hear that they are aiming to keep it that way.

Edited September 21, 2012 by eimatshya

[bunia]

"Dark’s a little boring to me, and it’s also too easy to fall down that hole in storytelling in an attempt to be pseudo-hardcore. Some of our strongest releases kept the dark on the backburner and cloaked it within a blanket of humor, and people responded to both."

 

This is exactly what I wanted to hear. Some writers go overboard with "being dark", and it just becomes silly and results in unlikeable characters that are hard to empathize with or care about. Obsidian has always done a great job of not falling into this trap, in my opinion, and I'm glad to hear that they are aiming to keep it that way.

 

Sometimes 'being dark' or 'tormented' is more like being pretentious, isn't it? For me being mysterious and manipulative makes character more intresting and believable. Great example is Kreia or Ravel. Old hags rule the worlds! ;D

[Karranthain]

That was a good read, thanks. Some interesting details about combat.

[Lucas]

And one more interview with Josh Sawyer over at Ars Technica (I saw it first mentioned by "Alex D" on the Kickstart comments page):

 

http://arstechnica.c...classic-pc-rpg/

 

Being free of publisher constraints and things like the ESRB ratings system will also allow the game to delve into more mature subject matter that fantasy worlds normally ignore, Sawyer said. Things like "slavery, hostile prejudice (racial, cultural, spiritual, sexual), drug use and trade, and so on" will all help flesh out the story and add a believable core to the highly fictional world, he said.

 

"I think the reason a lot of fantasy storylines feel hollow is because we don't treat the worlds like real places nor the characters in them like real people. I believe the existence of fantastic elements is an opportunity to ask, 'How would this change things?' When we see how the fantastic changes our reality, and how it does not, I think it can help us consider why we are the way we are."

 

Now, of course this may not translate into "Eternity will feature slavery!" or "drug use in Eternity confirmed!", but we can expect quite a lot of realistic themes (as expected, anyway)

[Badmojo]

See, the dark is boring is sending warning bells going off in me. How will it be a mature game if its not going to have dark themes (drugs/slavery/prostitution/murder/rape/violence/etc)? Oh, it will be doing it through humor? or just use token moments? I guess this means we will not get to be trully evil, just another sort of bad option. I hope the mature was NOT just a PR spin, Many of us will not be happy if we get a PG-13 game with an M rating slapped on like so many games today.

[SirthOsiris]

I think he means doing dark themes just to be 'hardcore' is boring. If he thinks elements of slavery, drugs or something fits in with the story of someplace, he'll do it, and we deal with the consequences in the game.

[Badmojo]

Ran across this on ars

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/09/project-eternitys-all-star-effort-to-revive-the-classic-pc-rpg/

 

Being free of publisher constraints and things like the ESRB ratings system will also allow the game to delve into more mature subject matter that fantasy worlds normally ignore, Sawyer said. Things like "slavery, hostile prejudice (racial, cultural, spiritual, sexual), drug use and trade, and so on" will all help flesh out the story and add a believable core to the highly fictional world, he said.

 

I like the sound of this, and possible no ESRB nanny censor? Oh sweet cthulhu yes!

Edited September 22, 2012 by Badmojo

[BruceVC]

N

I think it's quite interesting, and touches quite a lot of subjects:

 

http://www.vg247.com...ment_interview/

 

A couple excerpts:

Fair play. Well going back to NPC reactions, how deeply will morality enter into plot progression? Just how dark are you looking to go with the narrative?

 

 

Dark’s a little boring to me, and it’s also too easy to fall down that hole in storytelling in an attempt to be pseudo-hardcore. Some of our strongest releases kept the dark on the backburner and cloaked it within a blanket of humor, and people responded to both.

 

I’m more interested in how people in the world perceive you rather than an internal morality bar. Alpha Protocol did this. You didn’t have a rep, you only had values for how others viewed you, which feels more natural.

 

We’re still fleshing out the lore and faction elements, but I’d always felt that morality and hard choices are things you don’t need to weigh on a slider, you only need to introduce them in the right context to make a player pause and go “oh, ****, what do I do?”

 

As long as they can feel the tension in the decision and see the result in a way that makes sense from their exploration and understanding of the world, that’s all we’re looking for.

 

Also:

 

All of this takes place in what you’ve billed as a huge world, filled with lore, races, ethnic sub-cultures – everything. How do you even begin to start pulling all of that together?

 

 

You start with the core system mechanics. What makes the world fun on a second-to-second basis? This includes spell systems, how the magic of the world and the powers of the world can be harnessed by your character – and how they can oppose your character.

 

It also includes races, character selection, skills, and more. Ideally, your world – like Eternity – has a core thematic spine to it in terms of how characters gain and harness power, and you want to weave that into not just character creation, but character leveling, and also into the exploration and narrative aspects. This is similar to immortality in Torment, or the soul-eating mechanic in Mask of the Betrayer.

 

From there, you figure out how the systems work in the environment – what’s the best backdrop for these systems? At its heart, Eternity is a rich world, and it’s a world of adventure.

 

We want cool locations to explore and cool people to meet, as well as cool companions in your party who can also act as sounding boards. Among its many elements is we want the player to explore fantastic beautiful locations, and also engage in cool dungeon-crawling adventures where they have to utilize their skills and those of their companions to conquer puzzles, traps, and encounters.

 

Once you have these elements decided, you work on giving a narrative context to these elements – the history of the location, how it came to be, and what ecology and cultures live in these areas.

 

More at the mentioned link.

 

(EDIT; btw, only a few moments ago I noticed it was already mentioned in the "known information" thread, but I still think it might deserve its own topic :D)

 

Nice interview, thanks for the link

[kenup]

Thanks for the link! Loved it!

[True_Spike]

See, the dark is boring is sending warning bells going off in me. How will it be a mature game if its not going to have dark themes (drugs/slavery/prostitution/murder/rape/violence/etc)? Oh, it will be doing it through humor? or just use token moments? I guess this means we will not get to be trully evil, just another sort of bad option. I hope the mature was NOT just a PR spin, Many of us will not be happy if we get a PG-13 game with an M rating slapped on like so many games today.

 

Learn to read, my friend. He meant that many games go overboard with the dark and gritty. When there's nothing else in the world it feels artificial. What he's aiming at is not all black, but shades of grey, just like it works in real life, which, in my opinion, makes it easier to discuss mature themes and makes them more believable, too.

[Theobeau]

Illuminating; many thanks for sharing this article.

[Monte Carlo]

Look at Dark Fantasy in other games: as I've said before, despite the Marilyn Manson "This is the new ****" and blood-spatters, Dragon Age was about as dark as a Ren Fair.

[GhostofAnakin]

Really good interview.

 

Is it April 2014 yet?