Guess that's a point we won't be agreeing on, lol. Romances make up a huge part of RPGs for me. And they are optional after all, so if one doesn't like them, they don't need to pursue them. Having the choice is nice though. Adds a lot for me in an RPG....in a crisis I tend to cling to people, and so do my characters, haha. I really hope PoE gets romance options in the future, or an expansion etc. I would happily pay for that. Having Dorn added as a romance option for me in BGEE and BG2EE was awesome, so awesome I bought the game on multiple platforms to show support xD
I respect your point of view but mine is completely the opposite. Shows the spectrum that a single game genre spans I guess.
I would prefer that effort and time spent on romances were instead spent on more story/plot/quests. I'm yet to encounter a single romance which didn't come across as awkward and immersion breaking.
Just a note, if you don't mind a stranger joining discussion. David Gaider stated many times in many places (and repeat it again and again) - resource allocation does not work this way. It's not either\or - either romances or story. If romace is supposed to be included it will be part of the character development (part of the dialogs tree), if not - there will be that less dialogs for that particular character. Not dialogs of a different type, just less dialogs in general. Not to mention in case of PoE romaces were never planned for completely different reason:
I think I prefer BG2's approach where you have predetermined interactions with your party members popping up at regular intervals and in certain situations, over PoE's approach where you mainly have a growing dialog tree of topics you can access at any time. While the PoE approach might be more realistic in some ways, I find the BG2 approach has better pacing and is more entertaining overall.
As for romances, I agree with @typo_tilly. I don't care about the romantic element of romances, but I do like the involvement your PC and another character can achieve. It's a great opportunity for character development.
I was answering about Sawyer's opinion but a sudden F5 blew my post away so I'll just say that I agree with him, that that user took his opinion as a general statement instead of a personal opinion (so I think he misunderstood Sawyer), that one should take writers' decisions in a better way instead of complaining about bad ending romances as one should understand that romances are carved around characters, their minds and their personalities, so one should consider that some behaviors fit better that a 100% chance to have a NPC replying "I like you and I'll have sex with you!" just because "it's a videogame and I want my character to do everything I want": it's like complaining a character's behavior in a book, and these kinds of videogames are more like books, even if interactive, with preset characters with their own paths, and it happens that authors simply don't want to have this or that character doing certain things.
I think that sometimes it is better to consider the whole story with "is this events flow right for the character, setting and atmosphere?" instead of "why this character doesn't act the way I like most?"
It is like a friend of mine complaining when our characters die in a Lovecraft-setting PnP or tabletop game. I often try to explain him that it is really intended to have a high chance of death (or madness, so game over) in a game set in Lovecraft world, because this fits the atmosphere (if only he should have read the novels!), and everyone who have read Lovecraft knows this.
Anyway, that post was from 2006 so who knows about the future?
However, OT: I am about half through PoE and I find that each character is well developed, and I like how the more you go through your quest, the more often they talk with you. While at the beginning you just have some sporadic exchange with them, then the things change: some things about them are unveiled, you'll start talking with them about these things and they will impact you more and more, but they will impact you more emotionally and morally than in a material way.
On romances, the only character I would like to romance, Sagani, is married. What I would enjoy is a chance to be rejected, though. Imagine if there were no romances but you had the option to initiate one only for them to break your heart. It would be gloriously tragic and my character would cry himself to sleep at night knowing he can never be with Sagani because she's already married. It'd be great
Reminds me of DA:Inquisition where I kept trying to flirt with Sera but she kept rejecting poor ol' Val because he was Male.
"No, we would never work! We have too much in common; we both like women."
Personally I think it may be connected to the fact InXile Entertainment had trademarked Van Buren and recently Brian Fargo said to Eurogamer:
"I asked if Fargo was doing anything with the Van Buren trademark. "Not yet," he replied. "But there were some things, some ideas, that Chris Avellone had for doing something that made the post-apoc -- a twist on the whole what-was-being-done that we really loved. So we talked about it and we thought why not grab the rights so we can entertain this one of these days.
"But nothing now," he stressed. "We have enough on our plate to be doing that right this second."
Van Buren (Fallout 3) was çanceled in 2003 and maybe now they are thinking about making it again.
As for the Obsidian, it's a big loss. A narrative designer for their most successful game has just left. A person with IWD and PST experience is no longer with them.
It seems very likely that Chris Avalone has gone to InXile: he was already involved in Tides, and Van Buren was originally his project. Presumably the plan is to turn it into Wasteland 3.
Obsidian seems to be going into "card" games, presumably to exploit the mobile market, so they may not have much need for writers.
Hmm. Sounds unfortunate, but hopefully they will realize the importance of his role and seek to find someone who can, though not exactly replace him, bring their own talents to the fore to still make an excellent product. I prefer optimism to pessimism in this case. Still, it's never a good thing to hear a major contributing component of a company has left.
The first one is that there's a new project on the Horizon about Van Buren and InXile already has gathered a lot of people who worked on the cancelled project back in 2003.
The second reason, from my opinion, is the fact there was a cut content in the final version of Pillars of Eternity, made by Avellone.
"At a specific level, in Eternity, the original premise of the companions I wrote (Durance and the Grieving Mother) was unpeeling the layers and discovering what they were at the core – unpeeling these layers involved slipping stealthily into their unconscious, a dungeon made out of their memories. There, the player could go through an adventure game-like series of interactions, exploring their memories using psychological items important to both your character and to them as emotional keys to thread your way through the memories – but carefully, without revealing your presence. The memory dungeon was to uncover their shared history, how it impacted you, and the core of who they were as people.
And their core was pretty unpleasant. Both of them were very bad, very weak people, committing not only violations on each other, but on the player as well. When faced with the discovery that your allies, even if they fiercely support you and fight for a larger cause, have some pretty horrid faults, what do you do? Do you pass sentence? Do you forgive? Do you assist them to reach an understanding? And what I found more interesting with the spiritual physics in the Eternity world is that a death sentence isn't a sentence – killing someone actually sets a soul free to move on to the next generation. So if you intend to punish someone in a world like that, either out of revenge or to correct their behavior, how do you do it when execution is not an answer?
The elements above got stripped out of the companions in the end, so I'm happy to share it here (and I may re-examine it in the future). Overall, I thought they raised interesting questions for the player to chew on, and it was interesting to explore those themes, as most game narratives and franchises wouldn't allow for such examinations – still, Eternity was intended to be a more personal project for Obsidian where we can stretch our narrative legs more, both in structure and themes."
Best of luck to Chris Avellone! Still I couldn't help but feel a little sad at this news, but I'm pretty sure we'll hear from him again(hopefully soon)
I'd love to see him as a creative lead on a game again though, it's been a long time.
Here's an excerpt from the latest interview by Josh Sawyer:
Thomas: Are you happy with the feedback? What surprised you the most and what were the most frequent complains?
Josh: We’re all very happy with how it has been received. I did not think it would review as well as it did (it’s the highest-rated game I’ve worked on), but I’m glad people are enjoying it. The most frequent complaints focused on bugs, the lack of party AI, the shallow depth of the stronghold content, reduced combat challenge in the late game, and the pacing of the first act of the story. I think those were all reasonable criticisms.
Thomas: Which aspect of the game are you most proud of? Which was the biggest challenge to overcome during the production?
Josh: I’m happiest with the overall feeling of the game, not with any particular aspect. Our goal was to make something that captured the spirit of the Infinity Engine games, regardless of the individual changes and adjustments we made along the way. I believe we have both captured that and created a system and setting that we can continue to build on in the future.
Thomas: The next question is about the headquarter-system. Mid-game, the fortress will become less important. The keeper, the errand quests and even the attacks on the fortress will lose there scope. Two years ago, it was mentioned, that the headquarter would work like a quest hub and would play a vital part for many of the games quests. In your opinion, did this original vision come true?
Josh: It is a quest hub (for bounties), but even in our original design, it was supposed to be an optional system, not required outside of the first part of the critical path. I do think that the content in the stronghold fell short of what we wanted in terms of depth, which is the most common complaint I’ve seen from players. If we have a stronghold (or strongholds) in a future game, it’s something we are going to focus on improving.
Thomas: Could you spare a few details about the expansion to our readers? Will the expansion be integrated into the game like “Durlag’s Tower“ during the original “Baldur’s Gate”? Will players visit new, maybe exotic, locations? Are we going to see Fleetbreaker Castle? How far is the development of the expansion?
Josh: You’ll certainly be visiting new locations. Part of the appeal in an expansion like this is to travel somewhere outside of the base game. We’ll also be raising the level cap and adding new items, abilities, and talents. The development is going well. The environments, in particular, are really beautiful.
Thomas: Concluding this interview, here´s a question about your experience with the crowdfunding-campaign. Would you do it again and which significance do you see for the future of crowdfunding in the videogame industry?
Josh: I think we’d definitely do it again for the right project. Not all projects require crowdfunding and our fans simply may not be interested in some of the ideas we come up with. I think crowdfunding does have a future in the videogame industry. I’d like to believe, at the very least, that Pillars of Eternity was successful enough to show that crowdfunding can deliver a good game long after the initial excitement of a Kickstarter campaign has died down.
I also hope that successful smaller games (in terms of budget) can help motivate some publishers to be interested in this type of project again. The argument is usually that no one is interested in an older style of game. Clearly that isn’t the case. Smaller projects may not appeal to the biggest publishers, but I think there are publishers out there who can be good partners for this type of game.
Also, a recent hotfix has revealed that Obsidian are planning to make significant changes to the game's primary attributes and possibly implement party AI scripts for the game's next major update (it's interesting if that update will coincide with the release of the expansion or if there's still time): http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/80214-106-hotfix-live-on-steam/
Meanwhile, in the latest interview, that was made before the announcement of the departure from Obsidian, Chris Avellone shared an insight into his future:
"I’m focusing on Numenera right now, finishing up the companion work and any additional work they want me to do.
I’m also finishing up the last few chapters of the Wasteland 2 novel which I loved writing. Man, it grew from a novella to a novel… My first novella experience and I made the mistake of making four protagonists, because I thought that felt more wastelandy, and that just grew and grew. I was having so much fun writing it that I was like, “Hey Brian (Fargo), can I just turn this into a novel?” And he was like, “Well, you don’t have twist my arm.”
So I want to wrap that up and get the help of a good copy editor who has a lot of time to spare.
On the question of if there's anything beyond Numenera that he can talk about: "Nothing that I can talk about right now. I will say that the work on Numenera, I’m really enjoying it. There’s a lot of stuff still to do so I’m looking forward to getting my hands back in there. I really enjoy writing the character that’s going to be in the game, in many respects he’s very planescapey so I’m looking forward to that. Also, I’m working with a lot of the guys that I worked with on NWN 2, and also the original Planescape, so being able to work with all those guys again has been a huge joy.
The future beyond that… I guess there’s a lot of gleams in people’s eyes for these really cool ideas they would like to bring to the game arena and those ideas are pretty awesome. So I’m looking forward to seeing where that goes and hopefully being a part of that."
"I don’t think I could ever stop being a game designer, that’s just where my brain is going to be at until I’m in the coffin."
Did you ever even use the prison? I read that there was no real point in taking prisoners.
I've heard that if you have prisoners in your dungeon (depending on the prisoner) a random event could trigger, asking you to barter the prisoner for a ransom, but it never happened to me.
The only prisoner-related event happened to me was a jailbreak... T^T
I think what annoyed me during the kickstarter stretch goals was how that Od-nua megadungeon got bigger and bigger. I mean the time and resources spent on just designing that massive dungeon could have been spent on better polishing other features of the game, like the stronghold for example. Or they could have just skipped the stronghold altogether.
Not that the dungeon is bad, but I didn't like how they aimed for that with the limited budget they had.
Let's see... I've had an animancer come by and offer me 200 copper for a prisoner to experiment on (which I accepted, because what else was I doing with him?), I also had a prison break with another prisoner, and one that I've just been sitting on for the longest time.
Personally I love the stronghold and I wish it had a bit more depth to it (to be fair, the resting bonuses are cool, especially when you can put them to use in a 15-level dungeon in your front yard). My vote would be to flesh out the stronghold more, and give more quests / meaningful choices for prisoners / cool events (why not host some kind of holiday revel at your stronghold, where you can invite NPCs you've met?).
The memory dungeon did sound like a super-cool idea, so I'm sad it isn't in the game. Really, I guess I would like to just see more of everything (and some things get added), so the game didn't end for a long, long time. =D That would be similar to my experience with the massive Bethesda worlds (Fallout 3, Morrowind, etc.), where I experience 80% of the world content and then decide maybe it's time I just beat the game. ^_~
Did you ever even use the prison? I read that there was no real point in taking prisoners.
I've heard that if you have prisoners in your dungeon (depending on the prisoner) a random event could trigger, asking you to barter the prisoner for a ransom, but it never happened to me.
The only prisoner-related event happened to me was a jailbreak... T^T
Yea I've had it happen. Like the other cases of this in pillars there really isn't any interaction. Besides maybe getting one line from them when you click on them in your stronghold. Its not like BG2 where you go through dialogue choices.
The Stronghold was nice and all, but it just wasn't really useful/ important. It should have been like back in NWN2 with the Crossroad Keep, which was a central point in the plot.
The White March, an expansion for PoE, will feature, according to IGN, new companions, new abilities, and a higher level cap, among other things. It will also "extend the story and experience" of Pillars of Eternity.
Yea I've had it happen. Like the other cases of this in pillars there really isn't any interaction. Besides maybe getting one line from them when you click on them in your stronghold. Its not like BG2 where you go through dialogue choices.
Yeah, considering that in my case was a dangerous criminal that fled my dungeon I would have liked to have the choice to capture him back, at least...
It has been a while since my last visit to the Obsidian forum so: there's already a thread in there asking to put some interactions in Caed Nua? Just to turn that place in something more... interactive?
The Stronghold was nice and all, but it just wasn't really useful/ important. It should have been like back in NWN2 with the Crossroad Keep, which was a central point in the plot.
I felt the plot of NWN2 was bent to justify the stronghold, rather than being something organic and natural.
Comments
Josh Sawyer on romance: http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=953
And I really like Patrick Weekes' reaction to that post: http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showpost.php?p=15098&postcount=32
As for romances, I agree with @typo_tilly. I don't care about the romantic element of romances, but I do like the involvement your PC and another character can achieve. It's a great opportunity for character development.
I think that sometimes it is better to consider the whole story with "is this events flow right for the character, setting and atmosphere?" instead of "why this character doesn't act the way I like most?"
It is like a friend of mine complaining when our characters die in a Lovecraft-setting PnP or tabletop game.
I often try to explain him that it is really intended to have a high chance of death (or madness, so game over) in a game set in Lovecraft world, because this fits the atmosphere (if only he should have read the novels!), and everyone who have read Lovecraft knows this.
Anyway, that post was from 2006 so who knows about the future?
However, OT: I am about half through PoE and I find that each character is well developed, and I like how the more you go through your quest, the more often they talk with you.
While at the beginning you just have some sporadic exchange with them, then the things change: some things about them are unveiled, you'll start talking with them about these things and they will impact you more and more, but they will impact you more emotionally and morally than in a material way.
PoE NPCs are deeper than one would think.
WooHoo!
My game finally shipped out!
So it looks like I'll finally get to play the game next week!
Reminds me of DA:Inquisition where I kept trying to flirt with Sera but she kept rejecting poor ol' Val because he was Male.
"No, we would never work! We have too much in common; we both like women."
Chris Avellone confirmed his departure from Obsidian Entertainment.
So, no further does he work on the expansion to the game nor can he be involved into Pillars 2.
Personally I think it may be connected to the fact InXile Entertainment had trademarked Van Buren and recently Brian Fargo said to Eurogamer:
"I asked if Fargo was doing anything with the Van Buren trademark. "Not yet," he replied. "But there were some things, some ideas, that Chris Avellone had for doing something that made the post-apoc -- a twist on the whole what-was-being-done that we really loved. So we talked about it and we thought why not grab the rights so we can entertain this one of these days.
"But nothing now," he stressed. "We have enough on our plate to be doing that right this second."
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-06-08-inxile-fallout-van-buren-trademark
Van Buren (Fallout 3) was çanceled in 2003 and maybe now they are thinking about making it again.
As for the Obsidian, it's a big loss. A narrative designer for their most successful game has just left. A person with IWD and PST experience is no longer with them.
Obsidian seems to be going into "card" games, presumably to exploit the mobile market, so they may not have much need for writers.
*falls to the ground, shocked*
Creative Director/Chief Creative Officer/Co-Owner
Obsidian Entertainment, Inc.
June 2003 – May 2015 (12 years)
12 years! It's like an era. I think it feels like (God forbid) if Cameron Tofer departed from Beamdog.
The first one is that there's a new project on the Horizon about Van Buren and InXile already has gathered a lot of people who worked on the cancelled project back in 2003.
The second reason, from my opinion, is the fact there was a cut content in the final version of Pillars of Eternity, made by Avellone.
"At a specific level, in Eternity, the original premise of the companions I wrote (Durance and the Grieving Mother) was unpeeling the layers and discovering what they were at the core – unpeeling these layers involved slipping stealthily into their unconscious, a dungeon made out of their memories. There, the player could go through an adventure game-like series of interactions, exploring their memories using psychological items important to both your character and to them as emotional keys to thread your way through the memories – but carefully, without revealing your presence. The memory dungeon was to uncover their shared history, how it impacted you, and the core of who they were as people.
And their core was pretty unpleasant. Both of them were very bad, very weak people, committing not only violations on each other, but on the player as well. When faced with the discovery that your allies, even if they fiercely support you and fight for a larger cause, have some pretty horrid faults, what do you do? Do you pass sentence? Do you forgive? Do you assist them to reach an understanding? And what I found more interesting with the spiritual physics in the Eternity world is that a death sentence isn't a sentence – killing someone actually sets a soul free to move on to the next generation. So if you intend to punish someone in a world like that, either out of revenge or to correct their behavior, how do you do it when execution is not an answer?
The elements above got stripped out of the companions in the end, so I'm happy to share it here (and I may re-examine it in the future). Overall, I thought they raised interesting questions for the player to chew on, and it was interesting to explore those themes, as most game narratives and franchises wouldn't allow for such examinations – still, Eternity was intended to be a more personal project for Obsidian where we can stretch our narrative legs more, both in structure and themes."
http://www.xp4t.com/interview-with-the-devs-chris-avellone/
The third reason may be that Avellone is involved into TToN.
There may be another reason;)
May be Trent Oster called him and invited to Beamdog to work on BGNext?
I'd love to see him as a creative lead on a game again though, it's been a long time.
Thomas: Are you happy with the feedback? What surprised you the most and what were the most frequent complains?
Josh: We’re all very happy with how it has been received. I did not think it would review as well as it did (it’s the highest-rated game I’ve worked on), but I’m glad people are enjoying it. The most frequent complaints focused on bugs, the lack of party AI, the shallow depth of the stronghold content, reduced combat challenge in the late game, and the pacing of the first act of the story. I think those were all reasonable criticisms.
Thomas: Which aspect of the game are you most proud of? Which was the biggest challenge to overcome during the production?
Josh: I’m happiest with the overall feeling of the game, not with any particular aspect. Our goal was to make something that captured the spirit of the Infinity Engine games, regardless of the individual changes and adjustments we made along the way. I believe we have both captured that and created a system and setting that we can continue to build on in the future.
Thomas: The next question is about the headquarter-system. Mid-game, the fortress will become less important. The keeper, the errand quests and even the attacks on the fortress will lose there scope. Two years ago, it was mentioned, that the headquarter would work like a quest hub and would play a vital part for many of the games quests. In your opinion, did this original vision come true?
Josh: It is a quest hub (for bounties), but even in our original design, it was supposed to be an optional system, not required outside of the first part of the critical path. I do think that the content in the stronghold fell short of what we wanted in terms of depth, which is the most common complaint I’ve seen from players. If we have a stronghold (or strongholds) in a future game, it’s something we are going to focus on improving.
Thomas: Could you spare a few details about the expansion to our readers? Will the expansion be integrated into the game like “Durlag’s Tower“ during the original “Baldur’s Gate”? Will players visit new, maybe exotic, locations? Are we going to see Fleetbreaker Castle? How far is the development of the expansion?
Josh: You’ll certainly be visiting new locations. Part of the appeal in an expansion like this is to travel somewhere outside of the base game. We’ll also be raising the level cap and adding new items, abilities, and talents. The development is going well. The environments, in particular, are really beautiful.
Thomas: Concluding this interview, here´s a question about your experience with the crowdfunding-campaign. Would you do it again and which significance do you see for the future of crowdfunding in the videogame industry?
Josh: I think we’d definitely do it again for the right project. Not all projects require crowdfunding and our fans simply may not be interested in some of the ideas we come up with. I think crowdfunding does have a future in the videogame industry. I’d like to believe, at the very least, that Pillars of Eternity was successful enough to show that crowdfunding can deliver a good game long after the initial excitement of a Kickstarter campaign has died down.
I also hope that successful smaller games (in terms of budget) can help motivate some publishers to be interested in this type of project again. The argument is usually that no one is interested in an older style of game. Clearly that isn’t the case. Smaller projects may not appeal to the biggest publishers, but I think there are publishers out there who can be good partners for this type of game.
The rest of the interview is here: http://www.hardbloxx.de/2015/06/12/pillars-of-eternity-interview-mit-josh-sawyer/2/
Anyway, we'll learn more about the expansion in a few days at E3.
Also, a recent hotfix has revealed that Obsidian are planning to make significant changes to the game's primary attributes and possibly implement party AI scripts for the game's next major update (it's interesting if that update will coincide with the release of the expansion or if there's still time): http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/80214-106-hotfix-live-on-steam/
Meanwhile, in the latest interview, that was made before the announcement of the departure from Obsidian, Chris Avellone shared an insight into his future:
"I’m focusing on Numenera right now, finishing up the companion work and any additional work they want me to do.
I’m also finishing up the last few chapters of the Wasteland 2 novel which I loved writing. Man, it grew from a novella to a novel… My first novella experience and I made the mistake of making four protagonists, because I thought that felt more wastelandy, and that just grew and grew. I was having so much fun writing it that I was like, “Hey Brian (Fargo), can I just turn this into a novel?” And he was like, “Well, you don’t have twist my arm.”
So I want to wrap that up and get the help of a good copy editor who has a lot of time to spare.
On the question of if there's anything beyond Numenera that he can talk about: "Nothing that I can talk about right now. I will say that the work on Numenera, I’m really enjoying it. There’s a lot of stuff still to do so I’m looking forward to getting my hands back in there. I really enjoy writing the character that’s going to be in the game, in many respects he’s very planescapey so I’m looking forward to that. Also, I’m working with a lot of the guys that I worked with on NWN 2, and also the original Planescape, so being able to work with all those guys again has been a huge joy.
The future beyond that… I guess there’s a lot of gleams in people’s eyes for these really cool ideas they would like to bring to the game arena and those ideas are pretty awesome. So I’m looking forward to seeing where that goes and hopefully being a part of that."
"I don’t think I could ever stop being a game designer, that’s just where my brain is going to be at until I’m in the coffin."
http://www.pcinvasion.com/chris-avellone-interview-game-design-numenera-and-hints-about-his-future
But the time spent developing the Stronghold would have been much better spent on Avallone's memory dungeon.
The only prisoner-related event happened to me was a jailbreak... T^T
Not that the dungeon is bad, but I didn't like how they aimed for that with the limited budget they had.
Personally I love the stronghold and I wish it had a bit more depth to it (to be fair, the resting bonuses are cool, especially when you can put them to use in a 15-level dungeon in your front yard). My vote would be to flesh out the stronghold more, and give more quests / meaningful choices for prisoners / cool events (why not host some kind of holiday revel at your stronghold, where you can invite NPCs you've met?).
The memory dungeon did sound like a super-cool idea, so I'm sad it isn't in the game. Really, I guess I would like to just see more of everything (and some things get added), so the game didn't end for a long, long time. =D That would be similar to my experience with the massive Bethesda worlds (Fallout 3, Morrowind, etc.), where I experience 80% of the world content and then decide maybe it's time I just beat the game. ^_~
It should have been like back in NWN2 with the Crossroad Keep, which was a central point in the plot.
ANYWAY, E3 announcements, everybody!
I especially look at "companions", meaning there will be more than one.
It has been a while since my last visit to the Obsidian forum so: there's already a thread in there asking to put some interactions in Caed Nua? Just to turn that place in something more... interactive?