exploring different planes.

[Lephys]

actually it's more like... "this game takes place in the desert, so there are no forests. But I really like forests! So let's teleport the player to a plane where they can see the cool swaying tree animations one of our artist has been working on in his spare time."

 

it's like putting everything and the kitchen sink into the game, no matter if it goes against the concept/ premise of the game.

Except, the inclusion of alternate dimensions doesn't automatically = afterthought or design clash. You're acting as though there's no possibility of "this game takes place in a physical realm where there are no forests, with another realm where there ARE forests. Both of these exist, simultaneously, within my game world, and I planned for both of them from the get-go."

 

The only difference would be that, instead of traveling north until you enter the forest, you travel to a portal until you enter the forest.

 

Dimensional planes don't kill video games. PEOPLE kill video games.

[Sacred_Path]

Except, the inclusion of alternate dimensions doesn't automatically = afterthought or design clash. You're acting as though there's no possibility of "this game takes place in a physical realm where there are no forests, with another realm where there ARE forests. Both of these exist, simultaneously, within my game world, and I planned for both of them from the get-go."

Nop, it doesn't make a difference (to me) wether it was planned from the start. In either case, the portrayal of one area might suffer if you make a hasty transition to another. Would they have had to spend more time highlighting the cultural oddities of Chult in SoZ if half the game hadn't taken place on the Sword Coast? I think so. In the case of IWD2, the little holiday trip ruined the claustrophobic feeling of being stuck in a boreal corner of the world.

[Lephys]

Looking at it completely objectively, there is absolutely no difference between "There's an unknown area we can't see behind that door down into an ancient cavern" and "There's an unknown area we can't see beyond this portal."

 

Hell, "portal" is literally just a word for door.

 

It matters not whether you travel 100 miles to get to a different climate with different surroundings and different architecture, or if you travel through a portal to get there.

 

So, again, other than the subjective "I think planes are stupid," I don't understand what you're trying to suggest, here. There's nothing inherent to teleported-to areas that can't be equally as screwed up with areas in the same physical/regular plane, and there's nothing inherent to the method of teleporting somewhere that's any worse than the method of stepping through a previously blocked/impassable doorway (or "portal") beyond which you previously could not perceive.

 

I'm just trying to understand the basis for your point, if it isn't simply that you happen to personally not enjoy planes and dimensional travel. *shrug*

[Sacred_Path]

Looking at it completely objectively, there is absolutely no difference between "There's an unknown area we can't see behind that door down into an ancient cavern" and "There's an unknown area we can't see beyond this portal."

You can either flesh out one (type of) setting, or you can cram all kinds of settings into a game and call them "planes". An area that blends in seamlessly with the rest of the setting (such as a cavern in a mountain range in the Spine of the World) is therefore different than an area you reach by means of a "portal", for the very reason that in the latter case, players will expect something markedly different from where they left. Is that hard to grasp?

It matters not whether you travel 100 miles to get to a different climate with different surroundings and different architecture, or if you travel through a portal to get there.

I think you're confusing several things here. If you're talking about an open world game with the scope of having several different climates/ radically different cultures, then yes. This wasn't the case in, say, IWD2 though. By all means, it would have made sense for you to never travel very far outside the geographical region you started in, as the name implies. Stepping into a portal and ending up on the other side of the world in a greenhouse = spell broken, at least for me.

I'm just trying to understand the basis for your point, if it isn't simply that you happen to personally not enjoy planes and dimensional travel. *shrug*

yes, I don't enjoy them for the reasons already cited, not all of which are subjective.

[Lephys]

You can either flesh out one (type of) setting, or you can cram all kinds of settings into a game and call them "planes". An area that blends in seamlessly with the rest of the setting (such as a cavern in a mountain range in the Spine of the World) is therefore different than an area you reach by means of a "portal", for the very reason that in the latter case, players will expect something markedly different from where they left. Is that hard to grasp?

I'm afraid it is. What if a portal takes you to a cavern in a mountain range in the Spine of the World, but you weren't previously in that region? What if the elemental plane of Earth is simply a rain-foresty/cavernous area? A plane isn't even a "far" away place. It's no farther from one point in the world as it is from another. It's like a locked basement. So, are you trying to suggest that one cannot travel to both a city area in a plains region, AND a mountainous region, AND a forested region, AND a volcanic cavernous region, all in the same RPG, or that RPG is doomed to suck? I'm not grasping why:

 

A) Variety in scenery/setting is inherently bad, and

B) The use of planes can only come in the form of the prior decision to haphazardly cram a bunch of random settings together.

 

So, to "a bunch of settings haphazardly crammed together in a game, which happen to be in the form of planes," I say "Yes, that's bad." To "the use of planes in games," I still maintain "Nope, that's neither good nor bad, until you make it so."

 

You either agree and dislike them anyway, or you disagree and happen to also dislike them no matter what. And if you don't disagree, then, yes, I'm finding it difficult to grasp why I'm even explaining this and you're finding fault in my argument that you don't disagree with. And if you DO disagree (objectively and not subjectively), then I'd like to know why, as I have yet to see a reason.

I think you're confusing several things here. If you're talking about an open world game with the scope of having several different climates/ radically different cultures, then yes. This wasn't the case in, say, IWD2 though. By all means, it would have made sense for you to never travel very far outside the geographical region you started in, as the name implies. Stepping into a portal and ending up on the other side of the world in a greenhouse = spell broken, at least for me.

I don't believe I'm confusing anything of the sort. Why do I have to be talking about a specific game? made an example to support my argument for the potential non-badness of planes/portals to distant/alternate locales. What do you do? You start of your response to that with an example that supports my argument for the potential non-badness of planes/portals to distant/alternate locales. THEN, you go on to specify that, in completely different circumstances, it could be a terrible idea, such as specifically in IWD2.

 

If I never said "Man, portals to dimensional planes and distant lands are ESPECIALLY good in games like IWD2! 8D", then what is that even supporting in this argument, and what is the argument even against?

 

Why must people always disagree with things I COULD'VE said? *sigh*

yes, I don't enjoy them for the reasons already cited, not all of which are subjective.

 

Which is fine. You can fail to enjoy planes for objective reasons, and that still doesn't make planes inherently a bad idea. Planes have just as much potential to be a good idea as they do to be a bad idea, in general. It all depends upon the implementation.

Edited March 21, 2013 by Lephys

[Sacred_Path]

I'm afraid it is. What if a portal takes you to a cavern in a mountain range in the Spine of the World, but you weren't previously in that region? What if the elemental plane of Earth is simply a rain-foresty/cavernous area? A plane isn't even a "far" away place. It's no farther from one point in the world as it is from another. It's like a locked basement. So, are you trying to suggest that one cannot travel to both a city area in a plains region, AND a mountainous region, AND a forested region, AND a volcanic cavernous region, all in the same RPG, or that RPG is doomed to suck? I'm not grasping why:

 

A) Variety in scenery/setting is inherently bad, and

B) The use of planes can only come in the form of the prior decision to haphazardly cram a bunch of random settings together.

 

So, to "a bunch of settings haphazardly crammed together in a game, which happen to be in the form of planes," I say "Yes, that's bad." To "the use of planes in games," I still maintain "Nope, that's neither good nor bad, until you make it so."

 

You either agree and dislike them anyway, or you disagree and happen to also dislike them no matter what. And if you don't disagree, then, yes, I'm finding it difficult to grasp why I'm even explaining this and you're finding fault in my argument that you don't disagree with. And if you DO disagree (objectively and not subjectively), then I'd like to know why, as I have yet to see a reason.

Mhhh... so your point is entirely theoretical. That seems to be the case pretty often with you. Has that ever annoyed anyone?

 

No wonder we can't agree in that case, as my argument is "a lot of instances in which I've seen planar travel/ radical changes of location in games, it sucked", while your argument is "it could be good in theory".

Let me help you come up with an example; PS:T. Planar travel obviously worked for that game because it's set in the "City of Doors". I'm fine with that. Just like, OTOH, in Icewind Dale I expect an intimate portrayal of a geographically constrained area.

 

As to the plane of Earth being a simple cave; I think you can figure out yourself why that's not exactly a great idea. The idea of "planes" inherently has one quality: it must strike the player as alien. If your idea of a seperate dimension is that of a cave, there's probably no reason why your story element "travel to the Plane of Earth and talk to the Great Serpent" shouldn't rather be "travel to the Great Cave and talk to the Grand Druid". Unless your story involving planes is so strong, and your artistic possibilities so limited, that you want to go through with it nonetheless.

[Lephys]

Mhhh... so your point is entirely theoretical. That seems to be the case pretty often with you. Has that ever annoyed anyone?

Unfortunately, it's nothing of the sort. I believe it's simply misunderstood. And yes, whatever causes that to happen does tend to annoy people, and it must be something about the way in which I think and present points. I have accepted this, and I choose to attempt discussion in spite of my shortcomings, rather than give up. 8P

No wonder we can't agree in that case, as my argument is "a lot of instances in which I've seen planar travel/ radical changes of location in games, it sucked", while your argument is "it could be good in theory".

I believe we actually can agree, for our two arguments aren't even in the same lane of traffic. They are not mutually exclusive. I don't claim your "I see planes and dimensional travel suck a lot in games" as perfectly legitimate, and I believe that it's true, despite being unable to prove it (there's no point in needing to prove this). AND, I see that my "planes and interdimensional travel don't necessarily suck" as being true. You just agreed with it, even, by pointing out that they don't suck in Torment.

 

And I didn't intend for the plane of earth to be a "simple" cave (even though I see how I wasn't ultra specific in that regard). I only meant that it's not going to be any more alien to a person in the physical plane than a rainforest is to a desert-dweller. I mean, how can the plane of "earth" not be made of things familiar to earth? You're going to know it's not just a simple cave, but how much different from a cave/natural-formation can it be? Maybe there are minerals and rocks and plants you've never seen, but they're still going to be recognizable as minerals and rocks and plants. If I see an animal, I know that it's an animal, and I may even say "it's the size of and moves like a large dog," even though it could be quite different from a dog and I might not know much about it at all.

 

I'm not wondering why you don't admit that I'm right and you're wrong, here. I'm simply wondering why you deny that I'm correct about a possibility. If you don't think it's impossible, then you don't think I'm wrong. *shrug*. It's as simple as that. You haven't SAID "it's impossible" yet, which is why I don't think you're wrong. So, again, I'm not comprehending the conflict here, and I apologize for the annoyance and frustration my lack of comprehension brings. I really do.

[Sacred_Path]

Unfortunately, it's nothing of the sort. I believe it's simply misunderstood. And yes, whatever causes that to happen does tend to annoy people, and it must be something about the way in which I think and present points. I have accepted this, and I choose to attempt discussion in spite of my shortcomings, rather than give up. 8P

You state that your point is that planar travel could be good, and you don't care about any examples either of planar travel done well nor of it done badly. Therefore it IS theoretical, not misunderstood. Believe me. Or look up the definition of theoretical

And I didn't intend for the plane of earth to be a "simple" cave (even though I see how I wasn't ultra specific in that regard). I only meant that it's not going to be any more alien to a person in the physical plane than a rainforest is to a desert-dweller. I mean, how can the plane of "earth" not be made of things familiar to earth? You're going to know it's not just a simple cave, but how much different from a cave/natural-formation can it be? Maybe there are minerals and rocks and plants you've never seen, but they're still going to be recognizable as minerals and rocks and plants. If I see an animal, I know that it's an animal, and I may even say "it's the size of and moves like a large dog," even though it could be quite different from a dog and I might not know much about it at all.

 

I'm not wondering why you don't admit that I'm right and you're wrong, here. I'm simply wondering why you deny that I'm correct about a possibility. If you don't think it's impossible, then you don't think I'm wrong. *shrug*. It's as simple as that. You haven't SAID "it's impossible" yet, which is why I don't think you're wrong. So, again, I'm not comprehending the conflict here, and I apologize for the annoyance and frustration my lack of comprehension brings. I really do.

Eh, exactly because I was mostly talking about how planar travel, and I included "teleportation to a far-away region" there, sucked in a lot of games I've played, not how a theoretical example of a plane could sound cozy and homely. Yours does, btw. And I would compliment it for that on the one hand while faulting it because OTOH it's so mundane. We might just ask "what is a plane"? Does the plane of Earth really need to be made up of mud and rocks, things that are Earth-y in our 'plane'? Couldn't it just as well just be a void through which many-colored gaseous formations drift, and smugly in the middle of it sits the great deity of Earth? I think so.

The point is I'm not especially intrigued by either idea, nor especially repulsed by either idea, until I get some reasoning why the story had to take place in this other plane at all (instead of a more common type of area).

[JFSOCC]

To me the naysayers sound whiny. Waah, it doesn't fit how I see how things should fit together. therefore it must be wrong.

And you fail to see the potential that planar travel brings: Infinite variety in landscape, in style, in culture and wildness. infinite worlds.

 

And infinite potential.

[Amentep]

I'm disappointed - I thought this was going to be about the z-axis!

 

At this point, I don't know if the lore/setting of PE supports planar travel - or if there are even other planes.  So if it fits the setting...why not?  If it doesn't fit the setting...no.

[Sacred_Path]

To me the naysayers sound whiny. Waah, it doesn't fit how I see how things should fit together. therefore it must be wrong.

And you fail to see the potential that planar travel brings: Infinite variety in landscape, in style, in culture and wildness. infinite worlds.

 

And infinite potential.

Infinite amounts of man-hours that could be infinitely better spent on other things.

 

Sry

[rjshae]

To me an interesting aspect of having different planes is the point where they join together. Each plane has its own physical properties that sets it apart from the others. Thus a surface where two planes meet represents a discontinuity of sorts; a tear in the fabric of each universe where the properties of one universe transition into another. This represents a potentially calamitous physical discord that can cause severe disruption in the immediate vicinity of the two planes. Perhaps then the deities guard against this possibility by means of a mezzanine zone; an intermediary plane where the physical properties of space and time vary, creating a safety buffer between each of the realms. The gateways into this mezzanine zone may be warded by guardians that protect it from significant disruptions. Wanderers entering into the mezzanine zone will need to understand the ways to placate these guardians and seek their guidance before a different realm can be entered. Those who fail to do so will draw down the wrath of the guardians upon their heads; a risk that should not be taken likely since these are potent divine creations. With the exception of deities and their servants, these guardians will naturally limit movement between the planes.

[motorizer]

I don't really see the need for different planes....since they are building the world from the ground up they can go as wild and varied as they want without any daft interdimensional travel

[Lephys]

You state that your point is that planar travel could be good, and you don't care about any examples either of planar travel done well nor of it done badly. Therefore it IS theoretical, not misunderstood. Believe me. Or look up the definition of theoretical

Your definition of "theoretical" is accurate. Your fabrication of my apathy towards any examples whatsoever is inaccurate. My point is not theoretical, because you, yourself already acknowledged that it HAS, indeed, been done well. I'm really not trying to be this technical, but I'm simply catching what you're throwing at me, here.

Eh, exactly because I was mostly talking about how planar travel, and I included "teleportation to a far-away region" there, sucked in a lot of games I've played, not how a theoretical example of a plane could sound cozy and homely. Yours does, btw. And I would compliment it for that on the one hand while faulting it because OTOH it's so mundane.

See, now this is just pointless. You give "because they're always such a crazy change in locale" as a reason for disliking planes (or, rather for the disjunction that creates in the game's setting), so I point out an example of "not necessarily." What do you do? You simultaneously acknowledge that such an example does, indeed, accomplish its task WHILE criticizing it using a completely different set of criteria. As if you can't make a non-mundane cavernous/naturey dimension? Your failure to imagine an alien enough place that still uses the familiar object-types of plants and mud/rock formations is not my responsibility to overcome. Of course, I would gladly cooperatively discuss such design possibilities, if you weren't explicitly trying to act as though I wouldn't know a valid point if it hit me in the eyeball. In other words, how to make sure a game region/locale isn't too mundane is something I would worry a lot about if I were actually designing an entire game and not simply pointing out a tiny portion of inaccurate reasoning.

 

And why do you keep referring to everything as "theoretical" now? Is there such thing as a non-theoretical design of a fictional thing? "In the ACTUAL design of the plane of Earth, it wouldn't have any of your theoretical stuff!" I don't have a theory that I can paint a lovely picture using only the color blue. I know that to be fact. I can type some crazy word right now. Just because I don't doesn't mean that's a "theory" of mine. It is true.

 

I don't know what else to say. Planar travel/long-distance teleportation isn't inherently crap in an RPG. Not only that, but several of your reasons for disliking it, in general, are based upon unnecessarily narrow fields of factors and possibilities. That doesn't make me better than you, or make you in any way unintelligent. Nor are you unentitled to your opinion. You may clearly do with this information what you wish. You don't even have to believe it. But, that doesn't make me wrong for wanting to explore the possibilities of planar travel in games, simply because you bet it won't work well.

 

It's like I'm trying to flip a coin, and you're trying to tell me it can't land on tails, because you've flipped a coin 10 times and it landed on heads. If you'd rather not flip the coin some more to find out, no one's making you do so. I'm not going to spam you with pms of planar travel prototypes for P:E or anything. Why not just say "bah, humbug!" and be done with it? Or, you know, "Fair enough, but I'd still rather not bother with planes, personally." And that's it. Why does there NEED to be more? "And also, you're stuff is theoretical, and that example was dull, and... and...!"?

[Sacred_Path]

Your definition of "theoretical" is accurate. Your fabrication of my apathy towards any examples whatsoever is inaccurate.

Mmmh... maybe do give examples then? Granted, I've already brought up PS:T, but... if you're fond of planar travel, you should be able to think of some other examples.

See, now this is just pointless. You give "because they're always such a crazy change in locale" as a reason for disliking planes (or, rather for the disjunction that creates in the game's setting), so I point out an example of "not necessarily." What do you do? You simultaneously acknowledge that such an example does, indeed, accomplish its task WHILE criticizing it using a completely different set of criteria.

Let's try to sort this out. I don't think I broadly acknowledged that your example "accomplishes its task", I said that what you describe could be agreeable on the one hand because it's obviously not very different from your usual cavern/ natural adventure location, but on the other hand it begs the question why such a relatively mundane place has to be an alternate "plane". This is an inherent problem of using planes, not specific criticism towards you. You can bombard the player with weird ****, thereby provoking the question of "WTF is this ****?", or you can design your plane to be more natural-looking/ feeling, thereby provoking the question of "how is this a different plane?".

Planar travel/long-distance teleportation isn't inherently crap in an RPG. Not only that, but several of your reasons for disliking it, in general, are based upon unnecessarily narrow fields of factors and possibilities.

elaborate plz

[Lephys]

Mmmh... maybe do give examples then? Granted, I've already brought up PS:T, but... if you're fond of planar travel, you should be able to think of some other examples.

 

I realize I'm about to take crap for this, but I haven't actually played a ton of RPGs (that would be close enough to P:E's type) that included planar travel. I mean, I played both Baldur's Gates, and I believe both IceWind Dale games, but I never actually finished them (as I never owned them... always played them at a friend's house). I even played a little of ToEE. So, really, the closest thing I can think of, off the top of my head, is Diablo. In Diablo, you took a portal to Hell, itself, and even Heaven in the 3rd game. Not to mention that city toward the end of the second game... I think that was a different dimension, or it was the suburbs of Hell? I can't remember exactly.

 

Oh! Dragon Age: Origins (and 2, I suppose). The Fade, in those.

 

Of course, I'm all for some examples. Whether or not I've played and/or finished a game does not in any way alter the objective functionality of that game's setting.

 

Let's try to sort this out. I don't think I broadly acknowledged that your example "accomplishes its task", I said that what you describe could be agreeable on the one hand because it's obviously not very different from your usual cavern/ natural adventure location, but on the other hand it begs the question why such a relatively mundane place has to be an alternate "plane". This is an inherent problem of using planes, not specific criticism towards you. You can bombard the player with weird ****, thereby provoking the question of "WTF is this ****?", or you can design your plane to be more natural-looking/ feeling, thereby provoking the question of "how is this a different plane?".

 

I think you're both mistaking the physical-plain-familiarity I'm suggesting my example for utter normalcy, AND assuming an unnecessarily-high strangeness quota for an alternate plane to have in order to be an alternate plane. Look at sci-fi, with its actual alien worlds. They still have ground, and atmospheres, and weather, and organic life, yet they're hardly the woods outside some medieval fantasy village. The elemental (or others) planes can even have shifted physics and other natural properties, yet they need not be designed by MC Escher just to qualify as "not the regular worldy place."

 

Of course, I realize that a game like P:E probably shouldn't have as much involved planar/dimensional travel as a game like Torment (or Diablo, going back to my most-likely-piddly reference above). However, I hardly think it would be a sin, or in any way problematic, to include otherworldly realms in the lore of the P:E world (maybe tied to the deities, or some of them at least?), and bump into the occasional "Oh, great, we've got to enter THAT place to get some answers? Who KNOWS what'll happen there...", or "Crap! They took her through that portal!" moment.

 

I mean, to say "Nah, best to just do without any alternate realms of any sort" would be to restrict the game's lore from even HAVING any alternate realms. And, in a game that focuses heavily on a world with cycling souls, I'm not sure that's even possible to avoid in some form or fashion. What's the point in the lore including even a single alternate realm/plane if no one ever interacts with that realm/plane in any way, shape, or fashion during the entirety of the game? So, yes... it doesn't have to be an entire extra-planar nation-city that you quest through for 20 hours, but it can be in the game and even enrich the game by being there.

 

 

Planar travel/long-distance teleportation isn't inherently crap in an RPG. Not only that, but several of your reasons for disliking it, in general, are based upon unnecessarily narrow fields of factors and possibilities.

elaborate plz

 

See above.

 

 

Planar travel, as it pertains to P:E (thus far), is a bit like firearms. I wouldn't want to see a class based solely on the arquebus, yet that doesn't mean I want to see precisely zero firearms in the game or it's ruined. Somewhere between "... this is a cave" and "WTF WHAT IS EVEN GOING ON?!" is a nice happy-medium implementation. That's the same factor involved in everything that's implemented. "How large do we want to make these cities? We don't want a whole world made out of urban-ness, do we? But, we don't want just a huge wilderness with no civilization. So where, then?" "How fantastical can soul powers get before it gets ridiculous? We don't want flying deathgods, but we also don't want fictional powers that provide, at most, an increased resistance to indigestion."

 

Obviously, the first step for the implementation of planar travel would be "Where/how does this fit into our world? How much is too much, and how much is not enough? How strange should the realms/planes be whilst retaining enough of the familiar?".

Edited March 23, 2013 by Lephys

[Sacred_Path]

I have a bit of a longer post I've been trying to post for some minutes and it doesn't work o.O

I realize I'm about to take crap for this, but I haven't actually played a ton of RPGs (that would be close enough to P:E's type) that included planar travel. I mean, I played both Baldur's Gates, and I believe both IceWind Dale games, but I never actually finished them (as I never owned them... always played them at a friend's house). I even played a little of ToEE. So, really, the closest thing I can think of, off the top of my head, is Diablo. In Diablo, you took a portal to Hell, itself, and even Heaven in the 3rd game. Not to mention that city toward the end of the second game... I think that was a different dimension, or it was the suburbs of Hell? I can't remember exactly.

Diablo could actually be a good example. That also made me think of Might&Magic VII, where you took a portal (I think) to the "divine realm".

I think you're both mistaking the physical-plain-familiarity I'm suggesting my example for utter normalcy, AND assuming an unnecessarily-high strangeness quota for an alternate plane to have in order to be an alternate plane. Look at sci-fi, with its actual alien worlds. They still have ground, and atmospheres, and weather, and organic life, yet they're hardly the woods outside some medieval fantasy village. The elemental (or others) planes can even have shifted physics and other natural properties, yet they need not be designed by MC Escher just to qualify as "not the regular worldy place."

I'd just state two things:

 

1) you need a good reason why you're including planes at all

 

2) you should have an idea and communicate it to the player what exactly a plane is and how they co-exist

 

of course, in a fantasy game, I'd say 1) is more important than 2). I am willing to suspend my disbelief if there's a great story in there, be those alternate realms mundane or alien. I think the one reason for planar travel that was brought up the most in this thread was "diversity", and that's something I'm not agreeing with; because that just tends to end up as "weird place we crammed with things we couldn't find a way to fit into the game proper, so we made a different plane".

 

Something I could actually see would be a rather tiny alternate plane, or part of an alternate plain, in which things appear mostly as they did in the original world, with only one, or very few, differences. You know, that often cited element of horror, where something seems just wrong.

 

 

eh, maybe for P:E, things should be reversed and souls can enter this world easily, but you can't follow them.

 

edit: eh, now. O.O

Edited March 23, 2013 by Sacred_Path

[Nonek]

Having thought further on the subject of Planar travel i've got to admit that i'm somewhat ambivalent on the matter, on the one hand we have the obvious arguments for added depth and variety, a touch of the beyond if you will. On the other i'm of the mind that if you make the world of Eternity as deep, rich, interesting and beautiful as the single screenshot we have so far seen, then there will be no need for planar travel. Thanks to past civilisations, magic gone awry, soul energy interacting with the land and what have you we can have very interesting and disparate locales appearing in the game that reinforces the vitality and complexity of the Eternity world.

 

Even without the touch of the supernatural we can have arresting geographical and historical locations, such as the Old Man of Storr and Hoy, the Gordale Scar, the Ring of Brodgar, Maeshowe, Skara Brae, Cheddar Gorge, the White Cliffs of Dover, the Severn Bore, the Lake District etcetera, etcetera, and these are just a small selection from the British Isles.

[rjshae]

I don't really see the need for different planes....since they are building the world from the ground up they can go as wild and varied as they want without any daft interdimensional travel

 

Yes the players may not need to travel to different planes in order to enjoy variety. But that doesn't mean that the setting needs to disallow dimensional travel. It depends on other factors. Thus, do the deities inhabit other planes? Does the soul travel to another plane before returning to the world in a different body? According to the religious mythology, do you travel to the plane of your deity after you die? Do the wizards draw their powers from another plane? Do they travel to other planes in order to enhance their power and knowledge?

 

Once you allow for the possibility of other planes, and allow for residents of the setting traveling to those planes, then I think you need to allow for the possibility that the writers will want to use those planes in the story.

[Nonek]

In terms of Deities and Mortality personally i'd prefer that we remain in the uncomfortable grip of ignorance and doubt, not having the cast iron progression of the D&D planar progression from Prime to Petitioner and such. Having death and the supernatural remain the great unknowns is in my own humble opinion a far more interesting situation than a strictly laid out map of existence, both material and spiritual. Then again this leaves plenty of room available for making other dimensions more than the realms of Gods and Spirits, make them something truly unusual and otherworldly, though perhaps this would more suit the upcoming Numenera's ambience and theme.

 

Just so long as we are not subjected to the dull and blurry re-used levels and assets of something such as the Fade in Dragon Age, an utter waste of a premise that sounds infinitely interesting, an eternally shifting dreamscape where emotions and thoughts trump physicality.

[Lephys]

Just so long as we are not subjected to the dull and blurry re-used levels and assets of something such as the Fade in Dragon Age, an utter waste of a premise that sounds infinitely interesting, an eternally shifting dreamscape where emotions and thoughts trump physicality.

 

It was rather simple. Especially with the same 5 demon types over and over. I don't know if anyone else has read any of the Wheel of Time series, but there's a dreamworld in that called Tel'aran'rhiod that's remarkably similar to The Fade, but was used far more interestingly. People's dreams were actually separate, individual things, but they could, from time to time, touch the dreamworld (usually for only a few seconds at a time). Also, in its natural state, it mirrors the real world. However, since the real world is always changing, things shift in Tel'aran'rhiod the more those things are moved and/or altered in the real world (desk papers move between surfaces before returning to a stack where they began, doors are open one moment and closed the next, candles are tall and lit, then melted down to stubs and unlit, etc). Likewise, the more stationary they are in the real world, the more static they are in the dreamworld. The idea, I think, kind of mimics that shifting nature of dream transitions. You know... you open a door, and it leads to a meadow or something, even though, just a moment ago, it lead to the other room. Also, the whole "I have no idea how long it's actually been, nor how long it's even supposed to have been, exactly, in this dream" thing.

 

Annnnnnywho. Made me think of it. 8P

 

There's also a "fast-travel" realm called The Ways. However, there's a seemingly invincible dangerous thing there that's corrupted the entire place, and it's all beyond pitch-black to the point of the darkness actually consuming light, to an extent, and everything's falling apart. The interesting thing there, though, is that it isn't a system of portals straight to other places, but rather, a sort of shortcut "highway" system of bridges and paths in a realm in which time passes much more slowly. Someone, long ago, apparently discovered that realm (which was empty, I suppose?) and took advantage of it.

[forfs]

Probably one of the most impressive moments in Oblivion for me was when during a search for missing painter you enter a painted world trough a magic portrait. This quest just made my day, and it was one of the things that have kept me playing this game for longer that I would have otherwise. For that reason I support different planes, although BG1 for example didn't have any, neither did Morrowind, and I still consider both of them to be better than Oblivion.

[Greydragon]

Aside from other dimensions the game has the potential to explore the minds of enemies and even that of the main character using Ciphers; a mental struggle as a separate reality. It offers interesting perspectives like those in the game Psychonauts except darker and less comedic. Imagine besieging an enemy's will and winning with abstract concepts as siege weapons  (fear, despair, terror, self doubt, etc.).