Josh Sawyer GDC Next 10 Talk

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

PS:T Haters Anonymous?

 

Now all we need is a Arcanum hate group.

[PrimeJunta]

I'll join. I'll also join the Arcanum fan group. I can't make up my mind.

[SunBroSolaire]

 

So do you anticipate there will ever be a situation where it will be difficult to discern what the specific objective is without this option enabled?

 

If we're bad designers, sure.

 

Ha. I guess I'm just wondering how you will make quest objectives so explicit and also make quests that are interesting, but I guess we'll see. I actually prefer instructions to be vague rather than direct, and it seems like the presence of this option will limit the level of open-endedness that will be possible in PE.

Edited November 8, 2013 by SunBroSolaire

[Lephys]

 

So do you anticipate there will ever be a situation where it will be difficult to discern what the specific objective is without this option enabled?

Is Sammys situation so clear-cut? To deal with Sammy you could tell him to move to a different town and never show his face here again. This might suffice for Frank or it might not.

 

 

Well, "Kill Sammy the Idiot" is merely the objective as communicated to you by Frank. I would assume it's not some kind of restriction on what you can do in relation to the situation. I certainly hope not, and have no reason to believe that's the case based on the team's expressed intentions with the game's design.

 

I think whether or not simply getting rid of Sammy (without actually killing him) would suffice for Frank is more a question of "Can you then convince Frank that you killed him and/or prevent him from finding out that Sammy still lives?"

 

Which is kind of the nature of the depth of scenario we want out of these games, . It's more like a PnP campaign. There's stuff, and you can interact with and influence things, but you can only control so much, and the situation plays out according to all the factors: those you don't control notwithstanding.

 

Maybe convincing Frank involves lying. Or maybe he wants to see the body, and you persuade him to trust you by taking advantage of your expertise in that area and his personality. Maybe you convince someone else that he trusts more than he trusts you, to go in on it to help Sammy and tell Frank that they saw Sammy dead. Maybe you lack the capacity to convince him and/or generate the result of Frank being appeased by what actually happened (or, at the very least, what he thinks happened), and you must now deal with his wrath. Maybe there's some sub-branch of the plot that involves "forging" Sammy's corpse to show to Frank (maybe dependent upon previous contacts/connections and/or skills and resources at your disposal, etc.).

 

That's the beauty of a good RPG. Frank wants you to kill Sammy. What do you do with this information? Then, what happens based on what you choose to do, and what do you THEN do in reaction to that? And, alas, a story is woven.

 

I'll join. I'll also join the Arcanum fan group. I can't make up my mind.

How about we just found the Association for Arcanum Ambivalence?

[Monte Carlo]

PS:T Haters Anonymous?

 

Now all we need is a Arcanum hate group.

 

Me. I can't stand Arcanum. The music makes me want to slash my wrists. I don't like Fallout 1 either. Bwahahahahhahaha. The feeling of liberation is like fire flowing through my veins.

[Messier-31]

I don't like Fallout 1 either. Bwahahahahhahaha.

 

Oh snap, now you've made him angry!

 

[Lephys]

I don't like Fallout 1 either. Bwahahahahhahaha.

 

Just for that, if we both survive a nuclear apocalypse, I'm never sharing a single bottlecap with you, u_u.

[jethro]

 

So do you anticipate there will ever be a situation where it will be difficult to discern what the specific objective is without this option enabled?

 

If we're bad designers, sure.

 

 

I would have thought ambiguity was a positive attribute. But I guess the journal has to function as a fallback hint repository/clue stick in addition to its use as a notepad/memory refresher

 

The Sammy quest is a good example why slightly nebulous "Frank wants you to deal with the Sammy problem" is better than explicit "Kill Sammy" even if killing Sammy were the only possible solution. Because "Kill Sammy" is taking the player firmly by the hand just like exclamation marks above quest givers, even if it later became evident that there are other solutions. So this configuration option is already an excellent idea. But I hope at least in the actual conversations sometimes even more is left unspoken and mysterious, even if the journal has to spoil the fun in case you didn't get it.

 

Didn't we have a long discussion a few months ago about how cool it would be to have quests that never even get an entry in the quest log? You just see some injustice, something wrong or hints about some crime and you can just solve the problem without anyone commanding you to do so. This is somewhat similar.

Edited November 9, 2013 by jethro

[Nonek]

You overheard the King asking who would rid him of this troublesome priest, nicely ambiguous.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Me. I can't stand Arcanum. The music makes me want to slash my wrists.

Arcanum's music makes me want to strangle a kitten and the combat makes me want to defecate on my keyboard.

[Lephys]

I don't think there's any threat to the existence of... I'll say mystery, because "ambiguity" just sounds so much like murkiness in communication, which isn't really what we're going for, I don't think. The toggle Josh was talking about seems to only affect the actual communication of the objective in summation from the quest text -- whatever that objective may be. The objective could have just as easily been "Find out what happened to Sammy." In which case, what info do you have, other than Sammy's name and the fact that someone doesn't know where he is but wishes to know this?

 

I don't think the "tell me the objective so I don't have to reread the quest text/journal entry" is going to take "My nephew, Sammy... he was supposed to have returned from Helmsington Abbey 3 days ago. I noticed you were leaving with master Nephan and his caravan, and I know his route takes him that direction. If it's not too much trouble, could you find out whatever you can about Sammy?", and post "Defeat the Crimson Bandit Leader who's secretly holding Sammy in the tower east of the old bridge in a cave past some bears, and free Sammy" as your objective.

 

Basically, if there's mystery there, then the objective will simply clearly state the mystery. If there's a very specific thing you know you're supposed to do, then it'll state that.

 

It's only going to tell you what your character already actually knows. It's just a matter of whether or not you want it summarized in a gamey fashion, or left in its original form in the journal only.

[jethro]

Basically, if there's mystery there, then the objective will simply clearly state the mystery. If there's a very specific thing you know you're supposed to do, then it'll state that.

 

It's only going to tell you what your character already actually knows. It's just a matter of whether or not you want it summarized in a gamey fashion, or left in its original form in the journal only.

 

Good point, we are role-playing a character with his own intelligence interpreting what is said, it is not neccesarily about us interpreting the information. But in that case a low-int character should misunderstand stuff and overlook clues. A bit like the journal entries for a low-int character in Arcanum, only that the journal entries in Arcanum had the low-int speech patterns, but failed mostly to include any cluelessness (at least as far as I played that low-level character).

 

So while ideally (for the idea behind role-playing) we should be using only the abilities of our PCs in combat and conversations, in reality the tactics is ours and the interpretation of the conversations too. Only that the journal hits us more or less with a clue bat, irrespective of our perception and understanding AND the PCs perception and understanding.

 

Naturally for PE, which should appeal to all players, the compromise with the helpful journal is a good one. But since we already have the option to turn on a super clue bat (the "Kill Sammy" hint) it shouldn't be "bad design" to leave more room for interpretation in the normal journal entry. 

Edited November 9, 2013 by jethro

[Karkarov]

Honestly I vastly prefer how quests were handled in Dragon's Dogma.  Most people don't know it but multiple quests had multiple ways of resolving them.  There was one stand out one where you were given a simple job.  Run some supplies to a nearby fort and deliver them to a person there.  Pretty simple.  The game never explicitly tells you but you can do a number of things at that point.  You could A: Do what you are told.  B: Just say to heck with it and keep the supplies yourself and never do the delivery.  C: Deliver them to someone else.  Even though the game never explicitly tells you there is an alternative recipient if you ask around and think about it there is one. D: Deliver the wrong items to either of the two possible recipients. 

 

That's how quests should be.  Let there be a journal entry, give the player a basic way point on a map, but don't spoon feed it to them and leave in plenty of quests where you can do more than just blindly follow the marker.

[JFSOCC]

I'm OK with expecting at least a decent standard of intellect from players. That means a little ambiguity is fine. If the player can't figure it out, that's really too bad.

 

I'm not saying quests should be absolutely cryptic, but ambiguity allows a player to react as he would: Doing what he or she thinks should be done, rather than what the game tells him or her what needs to be done.

Edited November 10, 2013 by JFSOCC

[Falkon Swiftblade]

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

 

 

 

 

 

[Monte Carlo]

^ Looks like Age of Decadence to me.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

^ Looks like Age of Decadence to me.

I would guess that you are correct.

 

 

Doesn't have the stats that PE will have, and the art style seems too Roman for PE.

[Xienzi]

 

^ Looks like Age of Decadence to me.

I would guess that you are correct.

 

Hmmm. That looks fun.

[SunBroSolaire]

 

 

^ Looks like Age of Decadence to me.

I would guess that you are correct.

 

Hmmm. That looks fun.

 

Very fun. There's a free demo with several hours of gameplay on the developer's site.

[Falkon Swiftblade]

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

[Infinitron]

Slides: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1019755/Gathering-Your-Party-with-Project

 

[Cubiq]

Dem character portraits O_O

I hope they are companions

 

Thanks for posting that Infinitron

[Infinitron]

Hey Josh, can you tell us which (if any) images in that presentation are ingame screenshots and which are concept art or partially rendered assets?

[Sabotin]

Awesome, more pictures!

 

The picture with the gear, lower right part, those are all wizards with grimoires in their hands?

 

The map mockup really reminds me of BG1.

 

Btw, won't that kind of tall grass look really bad, since characters have to move on top of it rather than through it, or is there some magic involved again?

 

And all the areas seem pretty wide, that's cause of the perspective change I guess (my other thought is that it's to avoid such large pathing issues as IE games had )?

[Jajo]

THIS

 

 

IS

 

 

AWESOME!