Independant Stories/Quests: Mods

[Osvir]

Hi!

As we know, the IE games were moddable, you could add in Quests, mess around with the rules a bit, add NPC's, and various other things. But whatever you did, you were still starting off as the Bhaalspawn. It was always the same campaign.

So what I am wondering is, will it be possible to "change" story? To be able to write one of your own, change the starting location (still the same world of course and the same areas). But be another character traversing the lands, having a different agenda and goal. Being able to make new quest-trees and rules.

In Neverwinter Nights (1 & 2) these were called something but I don't remember, "modules"? Ah, I forgot. But there is a bit of a charm to be able to do this, to build a new campaign. Not new environments or any of the like, simply put: a new story (new text, new background, new starting location, same world and locations).

@Devs: Will this be possible in PoE?

@Forum: What do you think? Did you ever feel you wanted to break off from the Bhaalspawn story and play or even create a different campaign?

[Sabotin]

Well I'm expecting modability to be along the lines of IE games (without the need for WeiDU and ToBEx and stuff though). That's different than what NWN had though, cause there you could make a whole new game, areas and all.

 

Although there are some campaign type mods out there for IE, but I think they're usually applied as total conversions?

[JFSOCC]

I'd like the ability to make a new rpg entirely, if I wanted to, with the tools released for modding PoE.

[Osvir]

@Sabotin: What I kind of envision with my question is a sort of... well... hmm it gets difficult to explain but okay:

You meet up with Minsc in Nashkel right? What if you could start as Minsc and Dynaheir somewhere else within the reaches of the Sword Coast, before meeting the Bhaalspawn. You go through the "main quest line" and eventually Dynaheir gets captured and you end up in Nashkel looking for help. By a chance the Bhaalspawn passes through and you accept the help, and then, as the Player, gets to decide whether to follow the Bhaalspawn or do some other quest. Maybe you even skip Nashkel and go for Dynaheir with Minsc alone.

That's kind of a campaign I'd like to do, but with one of the companions from PoE.

Or an entirely new character who has an entirely different story within the world. Perhaps a sub-character that traverses the lands at the same time as the main hero (or villain) from PoE, but from a different perspective. 

I guess a good way to look at it could be Half-Life: Opposing Force and Half-Life. In Half-Life you are Freeman jumping into the portal, but in Opposing Force you are Shepard seeing Freeman jump in. That's kind of what I'm envisioning. It's the same environments/areas used, they just have a different perspective and dialogue/text.

Blue Shift and Half-Life also share this "different perspectives" in the opening train scene.

That's what I'm curious about, if it will be possible. Or perhaps being able to create a short story 100 to 200 years before the "event" even happens, maybe you find an interesting lore book in PoE and it tells a great story that took place within some of the areas that Obsidian creates for PoE, what if you could then create the author of the story and re-imagine it?  Or maybe a short story that takes place afterwards, with lore books re-telling what you chose to do as the main character in PoE.

[anameforobsidian]

That would technically be quite difficult.  I would love an NWN replacement for a wRPG game-maker.  I doubt it will be PE though.  The art is static.  Obsidian is using their proprietary dialogue tool, and I think they've broadly hinted that they don't want to share it.  So, this game is not going to be very moddable.  SRR looks like the best replacement for a while at least.

[Candid]

Ah, if they really have expressed that they're going to keep all the tools to themselves, I hope they reconsider. I was quite a prolific modder of Baldur's Gate 2 and I can't imagine not being able to implement new characters and arcs in PoE.

 

Share those tools!

[nikolokolus]

Divinity:Original Sin's mod tools are supposedly going to be quite robust and allow for the sort of module creation you're talking about Osvir.

 

I doubt PoE is being built from the ground up to encourage this kind of wholesale modding.

[Silent Winter]

@Sabotin: What I kind of envision with my question is a sort of... well... hmm it gets difficult to explain but okay:

 

You meet up with Minsc in Nashkel right? What if you could start as Minsc and Dynaheir somewhere else within the reaches of the Sword Coast, before meeting the Bhaalspawn. You go through the "main quest line" and eventually Dynaheir gets captured and you end up in Nashkel looking for help. By a chance the Bhaalspawn passes through and you accept the help, and then, as the Player, gets to decide whether to follow the Bhaalspawn or do some other quest. Maybe you even skip Nashkel and go for Dynaheir with Minsc alone.

 

That's kind of a campaign I'd like to do, but with one of the companions from PoE.

That would be difficult to pull off - you'd basically have to program a new story including the actions of the bhaalspawn to which the world reacts (like opening baldur's gate / flooding the mine) and your own actions.

You could reuse the generic NPC talk lines ("nice weather we're having") but you'd have to disable the special NPCs ("I heard what you done at the mines") - not to mention repopulate and redialogue the areas that had bosses (you can't go killing Mulahey and looting his chest if the Bhaalspawn needs to do it).

If you chose to follow the Bhaalspawn then it'd be not really different from playing the game with Minsc in your party anyway.

 

Creating a whole new adventure using the same areas would be easier - but still very time consuming - it's been done with the BG2 engine, but took a team of modders a long time.

 

That's what I'm curious about, if it will be possible. Or perhaps being able to create a short story 100 to 200 years before the "event" even happens, maybe you find an interesting lore book in PoE and it tells a great story that took place within some of the areas that Obsidian creates for PoE, what if you could then create the author of the story and re-imagine it?  Or maybe a short story that takes place afterwards, with lore books re-telling what you chose to do as the main character in PoE.

 

If you're going for 200 years before, then you'd need to redo a lot of the area art assets (villages and towns would need to shrink, new NPCs created.  I guess the very old ruins could remain the same (though you should lock the doors on your way out )

 

So 'possible'? yes, 'difficult and time-consuming'? yes.

[Silent Winter]

 Obsidian is using their proprietary dialogue tool, and I think they've broadly hinted that they don't want to share it.

That would be disappointing, after they said they were willing to work with the modding community to make it as mod-friendly as possible.  (making file-formats open was mentioned before).

[Osvir]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2071423/deep-dive-with-pillars-of-eternity-project-lead-josh-sawyer-the-full-interview.html?page=3

 

Bottom of the page. If it is possible to make new quest lines (which means you'd be able to mess around with dialogues and such) it might be possible to fix new spawn-points as well. Maybe be able to make new "cinematics" as well (I know there are some new in BG:EE). In Baldur's Gate you could write new dialogue and you could re-write what NPC's were saying and you could add choices to it as well.

Also making a mod taking place 100-200 years ago doesn't necessarily have to change the areas or shrink them or whatnot. It'd be more immersive if it was possible, but if you are good enough at expressing the idea that it takes place 100-200 years ago it wouldn't matter. As long as you get the content, what you want to express, within the mod right.