Game looks great, but...

[archangel979]

 

 

Guys,

 

in the end it's all about the gameplay. That's the only focus in IE games IMO. If that ain't right, then the game won't last.

 

10 days, that's when we will know........

No you will not. That will only be beta and if you will base your final opinion on beta version you are a fool. You will know once full release is out. 

 

 

By the time a game gets to beta its core gameplay is pretty well locked in. Gameplay stays in flux during alpha and beta is for polish and number tuning. I've been through a lot of alpha/betas in my gaming career and its exceedingly rare for significant gameplay changes to occur at that stage.

 

Except they already said pathfinding is being reworked from ground up and it is not going to be ready for beta. And they said only a few feats will be ready for beta and the rest will be added afterwards. And people will complain about game being too easy or too hard based on one area. And so on and on and on...

[Gaidan]

 

 

 

Guys,

 

in the end it's all about the gameplay. That's the only focus in IE games IMO. If that ain't right, then the game won't last.

 

10 days, that's when we will know........

No you will not. That will only be beta and if you will base your final opinion on beta version you are a fool. You will know once full release is out. 

 

 

By the time a game gets to beta its core gameplay is pretty well locked in. Gameplay stays in flux during alpha and beta is for polish and number tuning. I've been through a lot of alpha/betas in my gaming career and its exceedingly rare for significant gameplay changes to occur at that stage.

 

Except they already said pathfinding is being reworked from ground up and it is not going to be ready for beta. And they said only a few feats will be ready for beta and the rest will be added afterwards. And people will complain about game being too easy or too hard based on one area. And so on and on and on...

 

None of what you said contradicts what you quoted. By this far into development the core gameplay will definitely be in the game, even if it is always up for tweaking or additions.

[Mangonel]

Pathfinding in games is an inherent requirement, its like the graphics engine. It can influence gameplay (typically only if its really bad) but its not strictly speaking a 'core' gameplay mechanic. IE you don't design your gameplay around your pathfinding implementation.

 

'Fixing' or redesigning their existing pathfinding will have no influence on core gameplay. That is the wounding/death mechanics, the types of abilities/items/weapons each class has access to, nor the effects of stats and stat modifiers on said abilities/items/weapons will be effected.

 

No major changes to 'gameplay' does not mean no major changes to the games back-end.

[NWN_babaYaga]

I like the textures... well i havent seen the textures yet... no one here has realy with no acces to the game... But i think everything fits perfectly together. Oh man i can write walls of text about textures... i guess i can even identify many many textures people ripped from games and used in their "mods". I´m the texture detective call me doctor texture and not Dr. Greenthumb...

 

Yep, textures are cool to have... you need good textures but that doesnt mean high res... nono... a texture or not to texture is the question!

And without a doubt i have the best textures always for my stuff and i´m proud to say that... why? Because i think i have the best textures period!

Edited August 9, 2014 by NWN_babaYaga

[Hassat Hunter]

Divinity Original Sin I will also bet money had a much much larger budget than Eternity does, additionally, Eternity is being made as a modern reboot of the IE games.  The IE games didn't have 3d backgrounds.

Not sure why no-one mentioned this yet...

 

Divinity Original Sin budget; 4 million

Pillars of Eternity budget; 4 million

 

That's... no difference at all. PoE might actually have more money with paypal and backerportal later and all.

Not that I mind what's been complained about at all... Graphics are the least of my worries, and I can't think why anyone would object to that and put them before gameplay :/

[Lephys]

For what it's worth, people have mentioned, aplenty, that Divinity's Kickstarter campaign only raised a million, and that "look how great it looks with just a mil! I'm disappointed in PoE!". Then, other people have jumped in to clarify that that wasn't their entire budget for the game, but was only a supplement to what they had already spent on the game.

 

I don't think anyone posted anything about exactly how much their budget really was, but the same general idea has been mentioned before, in various threads. 8P

[Hassat Hunter]

As I said; 4 million (3 from before, 1 additional through KS). So about the same as PoE...

But from what I can say, PoE looks better than D:OS (which already looks amazing)... even in 2014 3D can't thriumph over handdrawn 2D...

[Sensuki]

It was 3 Million euros, not 3 million USD, IIRC.

[Karkarov]

It was 3 Million euros, not 3 million USD, IIRC.

Yeah, pretty huge distinction there.

 

In reality Larian had about 1 mil USD more (maybe a little more than that) than Obsidian did.  They also got to save a ton of time and money because they used their own in house engine and did not have to build a new one or rework an existing one like Obsidian did.

Edited August 10, 2014 by Karkarov

[Sensuki]

I think Obsidian got some money from Torment licensing their graphics tech. They *may* have also received some from Paradox, we are not sure.

 

They give up more in their publishing deal with Paradox than inXile's with Deep Silver, however they get more "frills" out of it (E3 access, marketing, beta testers etc).

Edited August 10, 2014 by Sensuki

[IRMA]

I watched the gameplay and I can say I am honestly super pleased. Still bothers me a little that I won't be able to equip all party members but what the hell, this game looks awesome!

Just one little tiny thing that I feel like could be corrected: I really like how the text falls into the scratchy rough background most of the time, buton the very first screen when introduction is being told the text comes out too much shiny and clear (in compare to the old stone ish borders):

 

 

And for 20 minutes of gameplay, this being the only one thing that I didn't exactly like clearly means that my years long grieve over infinity games is finally over.

 

Also, I LOVE that almost every enemy drop little loot. Even few cp makes the kill more rewarding!

 

 

I mean, **** you Dragon Age, **** you Bioware! This is what REAL RPG looks like.

Edited August 10, 2014 by TrueNeutral
Picture circumvented the language filter.

[Lephys]

Still bothers me a little that I won't be able to equip all party members but what the hell, this game looks awesome!

Wait... say what now? Josh just talked about how we'll even have full control over level-up-point-allocation for all party members. Why wouldn't we be able to manage their equipment? Did I miss something? I hope not...

[Panteleimon]

 

Still bothers me a little that I won't be able to equip all party members but what the hell, this game looks awesome!

Wait... say what now? Josh just talked about how we'll even have full control over level-up-point-allocation for all party members. Why wouldn't we be able to manage their equipment? Did I miss something? I hope not...

 

 No, you didn't.  It's just something lost in his translation.

[Lephys]

No, you didn't.  It's just something lost in his translation.

Phew...

[IRMA]

Wait really? I think I have read in earlier updates that you won't be able to choose equipment your party wears, only your primary character's.

If they changed that then ever better

Edited August 11, 2014 by IRMA

[Sarex]

Wait really? I think I have read in earlier updates that you won't be able to choose equipment your party wears, only your primary character's.

If they changed that then ever better

 

I think you are mixing up Dragon Age with PoE.

[Panteleimon]

Wait really? I think I have read in earlier updates that you won't be able to choose equipment your party wears, only your primary character's.

If they changed that then ever better

 

 

God no.  That would be awful.

[Killyox]

 

To OP i kind of agree with you. The graphics looks really dated. The sole reason they mentioned why they went 2D was the visuals can look visually stunning on lower end machines. I've seen Wasteland2 and Divinity Original Sins which were 3D looks far more beautiful.

Uh Wasteland 2 looks like crap.  No seriously, the game is ugly as hell.  I guess it is intended due to the setting but seriously dude.  Divinity Original Sin I will also bet money had a much much larger budget than Eternity does, additionally, Eternity is being made as a modern reboot of the IE games.  The IE games didn't have 3d backgrounds.

 

Here is a pic I made purely for people to see some of the most complained about or considered UI features.  I made it using the very detailed and complete PC Gamer full demo video that posted their video in as good a quality as can be done.  There is still quality loss of course but it gives at least a better idea.

 

 

The key things I want to point out is #1: It is actually the Dialogue window which has the blurry harder to read text in my opinion.  None of them are actually that bad though and I imagine without the compression of video they would both be perfectly legible by any normal person.  The character model does look rough on the inventory screen, but much of that could be the nature of the ugly hide gear and the uh.... interesting color choices for their main and secondary colors.  All of these elements are merged into one picture but are at their 100% normal full screen resolution if you were playing the game in 1080.

 

Divinity had actually a lot smaller budget than POE and imo WL2 atm looks good.

[Karkarov]

Divinity had actually a lot smaller budget than POE and imo WL2 atm looks good.

Uhm no.  Per the head of Larian themselves Divinity: Original Sin had a budget of around 5 million euro's which is more than 6 million US dollars.  Obsidian had a budget of about 4.5 million USD.  So Larian had at least a million more to play with, combined with the fact that they had their own in house engine to use which saved tons of time and resources which equates directly to money saved for other parts of the game.

 

Wasteland 2's graphics looking good is a matter of opinion so there is nothing wrong disagreeing with me.  That said I think the UI is painfully bad, the environment art is okay, but the character models are flat awful and look straight out of year 2002.

[archangel979]

Just to add to this last discussion, WL2 total budget was 6 mil $.

[Sarex]

To be fair we don't know how much PoE made with the slacker-backer.

[Panteleimon]

Am I the only guy who thinks that the art direction of Divinity is painfully WoW-esque?  It's like looking at Candyland: Online.  Or Diablo 3, which suffered terribly from it's emulation of WoW's aesthetic(especially when compared to Diablo 2) .

 

Thank goodness PoE takes itself seriously in it's art direction. I think the only other major RPG studio that DOES take it's art direction seriously is CD Projekt Red.

 

I also don't understand why people have such a hard time wrapping their heads around the difference between Euros(for Divinity) and Dollars(for PoE) .

Edited August 11, 2014 by Panteleimon

[Karkarov]

To be fair we don't know how much PoE made with the slacker-backer.

They ended somewhere between 4.5 mil and 5 mil from all available evidence.

 

 

Am I the only guy who thinks that the art direction of Divinity is painfully WoW-esque?  It's like looking at Candyland: Online.  Or Diablo 3, which suffered terribly from it's emulation of WoW's aesthetic(especially when compared to Diablo 2) .

 

Thank goodness PoE takes itself seriously in it's art direction.

Nah, that is just how Larian does it.  Their games always have a sort of "fairy tale" graphical vibe going on over top of them.  I am happy Eternity is going with a more serious look though.... well you know... assuming you don't turn Big Head Mode on.

Edited August 11, 2014 by Karkarov

[Panteleimon]

 

Am I the only guy who thinks that the art direction of Divinity is painfully WoW-esque?  It's like looking at Candyland: Online.  Or Diablo 3, which suffered terribly from it's emulation of WoW's aesthetic(especially when compared to Diablo 2) .

 

Thank goodness PoE takes itself seriously in it's art direction.

Nah, that is just how Larian does it.  Their games always have a sort of "fairy tale" graphical vibe going on over top of them.  I am happy Eternity is going with a more serious look though.... well you know... assuming you don't turn Big Head Mode on.

 

 

I must have grown up with different Faerie tales, then.  But I was born in a small village in Bohemia, so maybe that's why The Witcher rings true so strongly for me in it's style.  Though I think not caring for the fantasy genre for it's own sake is also a big factor.

[Killyox]

I will always put gameplay above graphics.

 

As long as the gameplay is superb then graphics may be splendind (TW3) or can be simple (Paper Sorcerer). 

 

At the end of a day It comes down to whether I enjoyed it or not. 

 

Why do people have to make things more complicated than needed?

 

I think 3D paperdoll for POE is ugly but at the same time think that environments and top-down view looks really good. Animations could use a lot of polishing but they won't impede my enjoyement at all as long as the game is fun to play.