RANDOM VIDEO GAME NEWS

[Drowsy Emperor]

New, pseudo historical RPG released on GoG. We need someone to bite the bullet on this one and tell us whether its worth taking up the muskets or not.

 

http://www.gog.com/gamecard/expeditions_conquistador

[melkathi]

New, pseudo historical RPG released on GoG. We need someone to bite the bullet on this one and tell us whether its worth taking up the muskets or not.

 

http://www.gog.com/gamecard/expeditions_conquistador

 

Downloading now...

[Humanoid]

Just installed it, but no real time to play it tonight. Love the fact that the hardest difficulty level is labelled Aguirre. :D

[Drowsy Emperor]

Just installed it, but no real time to play it tonight. Love the fact that the hardest difficulty level is labelled Aguirre. :D

 

Ha ha, cool.

[melkathi]

Played a bit.

First impression is very positive.

You start out making your character. There are a number of skills you get to assign skill points to: Tactics, Diplomacy, Healing, Survival, Scouting and Leadership. Then you choose the ten members of your expedition. Each follower has a class (doctor, hunter, scholar, scout or soldier), some starting euipment based on class and very important, three personality traits which dictate how they will react to your decissions during play. So if a character is racist and you treat the natives well, they will not be happy. On the other hand, if they are open-minded, then enslaving the natives may rub them the wrong way. A narcissist likes to be appreciated - use your xp too often to level up other characters and they'll resent it. I guess it makes sense to try to have your expedition made up of mathing personalities. But with three traits per characters, some conflicts are unavoidable. Based on their class, folowers also add to your skills.

Combat is turn-based. You have enough move points to move in the light green hexes and still attack, or you can move in the dark green hexes and not perform an action. There are attacks of opportunity for firing a missile weapon in melee, or moving past an enemy in melee etc. Based on class and level, characters have various skills.

On the world map you move around as your movement points allow you. When you run out of points or you want to end your turn, you set up camp for the night. You have to assign food to every member of the expedition as well as tasks. Based on class, characters can perform various tasks more or less well. Soldiers are good at guarding, scouts at patroling etc. Events may happen during the night and the area you are camping in will make guarding, patrolling and hunting more or less difficult.

 

Oh and Drowsy, I got the last name through the random button, so I couldnt resist

 

[Keyrock]

New, pseudo historical RPG released on GoG. We need someone to bite the bullet on this one and tell us whether its worth taking up the muskets or not.

 

http://www.gog.com/gamecard/expeditions_conquistador

I've had my eye on this one ever since the Kickstarter campaign.  I love the setting and concept.  Right now my plate is way too full, but it's definitely something I'll look to scoop up in the future, especially if the feedback is favorable, which it has been so far.

Edited May 31, 2013 by Keyrock

[Humanoid]

Went through character creation too and fired up an ironman game (of course). Impressions:

 

- Character creation is nothing special. Select gender - no portrait selection unfortunately, but at least the player character portrait is nicely ambiguous while still being nicely finished, Enter first and last names, each with a handy random name generator. Again, nice touch to have the name structured properly, allowing NPCs to appropriately address you. Finally, assign stats which are a linear point buy, 38 points to distribute amongst six skills on a range of 1-10. Unfortunately the effect of each point is not made explicit in-game, so you're initially just guessing how many points in a given skill is ideal - I'm assuming the gain from each point is linear for now. Still, no biggie, and I put points in purely based on my character concept rather than the mechanics behind them. The game does advise that specialising instead of being a jack-of-all-trades is a good move, however.

 

- Party recruitment is mechanically simple, but a far more involved process. NPCs fall into one of five classes, each of which correspond to one of your own character's skills, except for leadership. (The genre-savvy will suspect that leadership, the unlinked skill, will be the best skill to max based on this) Statswise within each class there is no variation, save for doctors and hunters who either come with a bow or a gun, and soldiers who come with either a sword or a polearm. Otherwise, despite ranging in age from teenagers to fiftysomethings, they all start at level one with the same base numbers. Each has their own short biography covering their origin and motivation for joining your expedition, which is a nice touch. But I suspect the most important thing here will be the personality traits each have.

 

Each character has three and only three traits, which three is fixed for each character, but none are unique traits. These can be perceived to be positive or negative things, such as piousness, caution and racism, but I don't think they're mechanically meant to work as such. Instead, they're indicators on how they will react to your character's decisions. Shun the Christian god and your pious NPCs will get restless, rush headlong into situations and your cautious NPCs will get nervous, and so forth. Obviously then the intention here is to try to ensure your party shares most common values with both yourself and the other NPCs, but the number of combinations is high enough such that there will invariably be conflicts - and that's surely a good thing.

 

Anyway, select a crew of ten from a pool of NPCs. None of them are randomised - every game has the same pool of NPCs to recruit, each with their individually written biography and three personality traits.(and did I mention I liked the portrait art style?) The balance here is a bit confusing: there are four doctors, six hunters, five scholars, six scouts, and ten soldiers to choose from. It's not obvious whether it is intended that you select your crew in roughly those proportions, or whether you can balance your party however you please. (Well, you definitely *can*, but I mean whether it's viable to do so). As implied in mel's screenshot above, each NPC gives you +2 to one of your stats - he's obviously taken two of each. I on the other hand, loaded up with extra soldiers and stuck to one doctor and one scholar. We'll see how that goes...

 

- You then, after a brief cutscene, start the game having landed in the New World. This is the Adventure Map, much like that in Heroes of Might and Magic, and perhaps more closely again, like that in the new King's Bounty games. There's the obligatory tutorial, which is effective enough while being a bit clunky (it's not really interactive). You walk around in discrete tiles - the game is turn-based all the way - talk to people and interact with objects/buildings, which are essentially people too since essentially all interactions will bring up a dialogue window. The plotting is nothing special in context of standard RPG beginnings: your ship is confiscated and you have to do some odd jobs for the arse of a governor to get it back. Your dialogue responses can take on various tones, but aside from a decision on whether or not to recruit one extra person, I haven't noted any differing outcomes stemming from your choice of response. Again, fairly standard - you're going to have to do that quest for that jerk no matter how you feel about it.

 

- I've only engaged in a single battle, which was the tutorial one - a scaled down version of combat with only three units to control. Combat occurs in a different dimension to the rest of the game, as you're whisked away to a separate combat screen. Again, HoMM style hexes are the go here, with your people on one side and the enemies on the other. The actual fighting is sort of a hybrid of the various turn-based tactical games out there. Movement points are discrete and can be taken at any time during your turn, one hex at a time, but only one other action is permitted in addition to the movement (like new XCOM) - one attack or usage of a special ability (or forfeit it to get extra movement). There are the expected special rules - flanking, attacks of opportunity, and cover against ranged attacks (half cover for a defensive bonus, or full cover for immunity to attack).

 

- Once you leave town, the adventure map remains functionally identical to movement inside town, but there is now a movement point counter - you can only move a certain number of hexes a day before having to camp for the night. This isn't just a "okay, everyone heals up and start the next turn" type event - you have to set up the overnight meals, patrols, guard duty, and organise hunters to gain supplemental, er, supplies. Thankfully there's an autoassign button for these tasks, as I don't think I'm quite ready to delve into the nuances of optimising the various tasks. Anyway, it's here I called it a night.

 

 

 

TL;DR: Seems quite good.

Edited May 31, 2013 by Humanoid

[Malcador]

Sounds pretty good

[Morgoth]

http://kotaku.com/we-hear-the-people-behind-dishonored-are-now-working-on-510646344

 

Arkane now apparently working on Prey 2.

 

Obsidian worked on it at some point, too.

[Tale]

Obsidian worked on it at some point, too.

Always interesting to hear things like that. Wonder why they didn't go all the way.

[Keyrock]

 

Obsidian worked on it at some point, too.

Always interesting to hear things like that. Wonder why they didn't go all the way.

 

The publisher claimed they were tired and had a headache and just wanted to go to sleep.

[melkathi]

 Each has their own short biography covering their origin and motivation for joining your expedition, which is a nice touch. But I suspect the most important thing here will be the personality traits each have.

 

 

Actually I have had one night-time minor random event so far which seemed to be based on the background. I am making a fairly wild assumption here, but it seems you have a chance to unlock discussions in camp with your followers about their motivation to join you. At least one of my scholars and I had a very interesting chat.

 

Also, the leadership skill does get a boost from followers later on, but never as much as the other skills. Leadership does not get a boost by class, but by follower rank. As you can have a max of two sergeants and one lieutenant, it seems that you can get a bonus from three followers.

 

It also remains to be seen what the native only class "shaman" works out as. Probably the same as the spaniard only "scholar" with slightly different combat abilities.

 

I would assume that extra soldiers are especially usefull if you are aiming for an aggressive playthrough, even though soldiers may be cautious, peacefull altruists. I went for one of each so that even if someone falls ill, gets kidnapped or whatever, I still have a spare.

[NOK222]

This is game is giving me a Black Isle Fallout feel. 

[Humanoid]

 

 Each has their own short biography covering their origin and motivation for joining your expedition, which is a nice touch. But I suspect the most important thing here will be the personality traits each have.

 

 

Actually I have had one night-time minor random event so far which seemed to be based on the background. I am making a fairly wild assumption here, but it seems you have a chance to unlock discussions in camp with your followers about their motivation to join you. At least one of my scholars and I had a very interesting chat.

 

Also, the leadership skill does get a boost from followers later on, but never as much as the other skills. Leadership does not get a boost by class, but by follower rank. As you can have a max of two sergeants and one lieutenant, it seems that you can get a bonus from three followers.

 

It also remains to be seen what the native only class "shaman" works out as. Probably the same as the spaniard only "scholar" with slightly different combat abilities.

 

I would assume that extra soldiers are especially usefull if you are aiming for an aggressive playthrough, even though soldiers may be cautious, peacefull altruists. I went for one of each so that even if someone falls ill, gets kidnapped or whatever, I still have a spare.

 

Somewhat misleadingly though, soldiers aren't necessarily the best combatants. Scouts are better at melee combat and hunters are better at ranged combat, making the soldier more of a generalist than anything. You'll still want at least a couple, but that's more for guard duty when camping rather than for the combat subsystem - beyond that it's a matter of preferred playstyle.

[HoonDing]

Obsidian worked on it at some point, too.

R00fles!

[Serrano]

Wow. Just wow. Is something akin to the holodeck coming eventually?

[Rosbjerg]

Cool idea, but I doubt it's gonna be anything beyond niche - it's too much of a hassle to get a suit on everytime you want to play.

[Humanoid]

VR technology with be driven not by games, but by, ahem, ...adult entertainment.

[Malcador]

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/local//orange_county&id=9122999

 

Oculus VR co-founder killed in a police chase

Edited June 1, 2013 by Malcador

[Lexx]

What the hell.

[melkathi]

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/local//orange_county&id=9122999

 

Oculus VR co-founder killed in a police chase

 

...

[Keyrock]

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/local//orange_county&id=9122999

 

Oculus VR co-founder killed in a police chase

That's horrible.  My condolences to his family.

[babaganoosh13]

So....

 

Fallout: Project Brazil is finally out, and Nexus is done with their maintenance!!!!

 

http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/mods/45138/?

[Keyrock]

So....

 

Fallout: Project Brazil is finally out, and Nexus is done with their maintenance!!!!

 

http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/mods/45138/?

That sounds really awesome.  Yet another reason to return to New Vegas.  I was going to at some point anyway.

[Rosbjerg]

Pruned the thread - this is about video game news. Keep it on topic guys or start a new thread. Got issues with that? PM me and keep it out of here.