Future RPG games by Beamdog
Blades
Member Posts: 167
Dear Beamdog Gods,
In the future, is there any possibility of Beamdog making their own Medieval Fantasy RPG game? Some of us old timers who have been craving since Akallabeth/Zork days are running out of time. Please hear my prayers and say yes you are in the works on starting an awesomesauce crpg next month! ??
Your most devoted servant .... Blades
In the future, is there any possibility of Beamdog making their own Medieval Fantasy RPG game? Some of us old timers who have been craving since Akallabeth/Zork days are running out of time. Please hear my prayers and say yes you are in the works on starting an awesomesauce crpg next month! ??
Your most devoted servant .... Blades
6
Comments
Personally, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for NWN2:EE or even NWN3.
i am not promoting piracy here, i am only saying that i find the present copyright implementation ridiculous and more a drag to creativity then something that improves the production of art, literature and other intellectual work.
the rolling stones or dylan would have any way been bilionaries and people like shakespeare, goethe and dante alighieri produced their masterpieces way before the idea of a copyright had been born.
now we are in the situation where WotC can at will let or deny the right to create sequels to the dnd based games, or impose a particular edition of the dnd rules.
and it is not the main damage that this crappy, greedy and absurd implementation of the copyright law is causing.
However, I remember playing Ultima Underworld, which had a much different magic system. You had to collect a complete set of rune stones, which were scattered throughout the game, and which allowed you to cast spells by selecting the appropriate runes and gesturing appropriately. There was no master spell book supplied with the game (this was pre-Internet), so you were looking for scraps of paper and journals with spells on them.
Eventually, you started to notice patterns in the runes. Like how anything with VAS in it meant "greater", or how AN negated the meaning of the other runes, etc. Eventually you learned that there were a lot of spells that could be created, but which were never spelled out anywhere in the game. Once you caught onto the fact that the runes were concepts that could mixed to create spells, you could experiment and create "new" spells. For example, you learn early on that IN BET MANI heals you a bit at a small cost of mana. Later, when you work out the VAS rune, you learn that VAS IN MANI heals you a great deal, though at a much higher cost of mana. Similarly IN FLAM would issue a flaming fireball, while IN AN FLAM issued flying ice chunks (and was undocumented). While the spells did have levels, based on the complexity of the spell, you were generally limited more by the amount of mana you had.
What this meant was that you could actually play a budding mage who discovered spells, rather than merely repeating spells other people discovered. Finding a new rune meant all new experiments - possibly dangerous experiments. It was a great system, though admittedly combat magic was often difficult due to the need to rearrange the runes to "switch spells". It did work, though, and both UW games were real-time first-person.
I would love to see a reimagining of that system told in a proper Celtic environment. It would also be nice if the runic vocabulary was a bit larger than 24.
A different game setting, like maybe steampunk or a space opera would be ideal. Sadly I doubt it would happen.
You guys are really really really missing out. Kingmaker is the best RPG I've played in a decade. Especially with the TB mod. It's just D&D with the serial numbers filed off.
If the studio can drop the stupid timed chapter nonsense and gating content behind time walls, I might give their next game a try.
But no to TB. Glad people have the choice with the mod in a way that I don't have with TB games, but I want RTwP.
I love the isometric game format, but it seems like everyone wants to go purely first person these days.
the problem is atlest to me the path finder setting is just the fr but not as interesting.
so our games need very powerful hardware and software, running the configuration program for the original bg2 you could set your game graphics and other stuff depending on the power of your computer, cpu speed and ram, and what was then an exceptional computer now would not even run a modern os without being overwhelmed. and the same is for our present computers compared to the ones that will really allow a credible virtual reality.
still there are games that are great, i would say immortal, even in the isometric format.
and i am not talking of the infinity engine ones, don't get me wrong, i am talking of one of the oldest games in the humanity history, chess, where the chessboard is an isometric super simplified approximation of a RL battlefield, with generals, cavalry and the rest, up to the pawns, the lower soldier rank.
an isometric format gives us much more strategical and tactical opportunity compared to a first person game, chess is a very good example of it. but the same is somehow true for the IE games, in a first person game you need mainly sharp reflexes, in an isometric one all the focus is on tactics and strategy, in a game like bg tactics, in one like civilization long time strategy.
and seeing how good can be AI to challenge the human players in the chess game, engines that would run on computers of 20 years ago can challenge proficient players and the best engine of the present days can do it with the most proficient human player in the whole planet, it is a shame that, side by side with the 1rst person games there has not been a real development of the isometric ones, going in the direction of the chess game.
a really strong and configurable ai, that can really challenge an human player, playing the same rules, that is not so predictable (the early chess engines was, the present days ones are no more so), with levels of difficulty that don't change things like the enemy damage or hp, but the level of ai the engine use, right like the chess ones do.
sadly afaik almost no improvement in this direction has been done in the last 20 years, i would say that the very old IE games are far superior to the present games as tactics and strategy needed.
even if they are a complete and utter crap compared to what a chess ai engine can do.
i have a dream (does someone told this before?
the dream of a baldur like game, does not matter if in a fantasy/medieval setting, a scifi one or other, that can challenge human players like a computer based chess match can.
and i know that i have no chance at all to see that dream come true.
even if i see an immense potential, commercial potential, in it.
let's think of PnP DnD, how it was and is a successful business, including his computer based versions.
and it is mainly the invention of a dice based good combat system and an interesting world, with its lore, where to use it.
the potential of a better combat system, no more dice based but created for computers, coupled with isometric graphics and a credible and interesting world in which to use it, against a proper modern ai, that can perform with it as or better then an human, as the combat system is created for it, not for a group of friends playing with some strage dices around a table, is immense.
but i think that nor Beamdog nor other game developers will see the opportunity/have competence and resources to invest in it.
all the effort is going towards the approximation of the reality, the first person games that every year passes seem more a movie then the bunch of pixels the early 1rst person was.
being this the situation i see 2 reasons to appreciate isometric games, nostalgia or tactical complexity, as even the actual isometric games, that make very little use of the present hardware capability, are still superior to the 1rst person games.
i like them for their tactical complexity, others for the nostalgia, but if no developer will share my dream and have the resources to invest in it i suspect that the isometric format is going to disappear or become an even smaller niche of the market.
A western Star Ocean-like RPG, basically. Then I'm content.
You can get all that without using the IE. Heck, using IE would probably hold the game BACK, with how buggy and restrictive it is. Not to mention difficult to create for.
I don't care what engine is used, or how it is implemented, I just like the format. Sure, it isn't as immediate as first-person (such as Skyrim), but it feels like playing such a game is more intellectual and less reflexive.
the first person game is all in being quick to react, to use our mouse and keyboard. and does that job very well, considering the actual hardware limitations, as also the most expensive experimental virtual reality equipment is a crap compared to the one we see in some scifi movie.
while i compared an isometric game to the chess one, intellectual and complex.
sadly the trend of this modern world is an other, our attention span is drastically reduced, looking now some masterpiece movies of 30 or 50 years ago we find them incredibly slow, and the special effects have often take the place of a well written plot.
an isometric game can give us a completely different experience compared to a first person one, and could give us a much better experience then how now does.
because all the modern hardware capability and virtual reality technology development is used in the first person games, at least within the hardware limitations that a typical home pc has.
but the isometric ones are stuck to the technology and knowledge of 20 years ago, let's think to the EE infinity engine versions, some cosmetic improvement, some bug fixing, but not much more. and possibly still today are among the best isometric ones.
let's think what an isometric game could be today if all the improvements in scripting an artificial intelligence would have really used, with the modern hardware capability...
because if giant steps has been done in approximating a virtual reality even longer steps has been done in the research about an artificial intelligence, now in many situations we use them, but not in gaming at all.
the present isometric games are stuck to our knowledge of 20 years ago and to the technology limitations of that time.
we have intelligent language translators, software that can make medical diagnosis, internet search engines that react to our habits and guess our preferences, and we could have a darn good approximation of an human DM, with a much more complex game system then the PnP DnD one, but no one wants or dares to invest money and time on it.
and probably they are right, as we, at least the majority of us, want only special effects, cheap trills, something that does not need intellectual effort, in our modern, short attention based, miserable way of living, of using the most precious tool humanity has, the brain.