New Kickstarter RPG: THORVALLA by Guido Henkel (producer of Plancescape: Torment!)
So, I've been going through kickster and just noticed this game by Guido Henkel.
Most of us know the games he was working on, if not him: Fallout 2, Realms of Arkania, Neverwinter Nights, Jagged Alliance... and most importantly, produced Planescape: Torment.
The new RPG isn't yet decided on how it will be exactly, but seems like he will be going for a top down view, turn based. It'll be based on Norse mythology, tribal mysticism and sword-and-sorcery fantasy. There will also be companions to take along with you, with interactions and dialogue. And there will be dragons!
I really like it how it's described so far, hopefully the updates won't disappoint!
Here's a few snippets from the kickstarter:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/g3studios/thorvalla-an-rpg-by-guido-henkel
"Featuring single-player party-based play, Thorvalla allows you to take advantage of the traits and abilities of a variety of NPCs that you can add to your party as the story unfolds. Along with meaningful character interaction and a wealth of dialogue, these kinds of decisions influence not only how the story evolves but also the strategies you will have to apply in order to succeed and progress through the game. Unlike modern RPGs, in Thorvalla, there won’t be any babysitting the player, funneling you down a virtually linear path of no-defeat. This is going to be an RPG where you will have to save your game… often."
"In addition, instead of providing a huge one-piece game world—which typically end up being mostly barren landscapes—the game hearkens back to more traditional computer role-playing games, by implementing a system that focuses on specific areas and connects them through a map.
As in the Realms of Arkania games, the travel map will be one of the most exciting features, actually, as countless events, missions and encounters are hidden in the map that will be unlocked as the story unfolds. Occasionally, you will find a hidden path, based on information you may have obtained elsewhere. At other times you may find yourself ambushed, while on other occasions yet, you may just have managed to avoid a trap as the result of one of your characters’ many skills. Camping, hunting, gathering, discovering, and healing are just a few of the exciting possibilities the map has to offer the daring adventurer."
"But first things, first. Like all serious role playing games, Thorvalla begins with Character Creation. The game will allow you to personalize the look of your character along with certain traits and skills. Choose from eight different classes, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, then go ahead and balance out your skills. With a wealth of skills, ranging from the use of certain weapons to things such as sneaking and tracking, you will be able to customize your character to your needs. "
Most of us know the games he was working on, if not him: Fallout 2, Realms of Arkania, Neverwinter Nights, Jagged Alliance... and most importantly, produced Planescape: Torment.
The new RPG isn't yet decided on how it will be exactly, but seems like he will be going for a top down view, turn based. It'll be based on Norse mythology, tribal mysticism and sword-and-sorcery fantasy. There will also be companions to take along with you, with interactions and dialogue. And there will be dragons!
I really like it how it's described so far, hopefully the updates won't disappoint!
Here's a few snippets from the kickstarter:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/g3studios/thorvalla-an-rpg-by-guido-henkel
"Featuring single-player party-based play, Thorvalla allows you to take advantage of the traits and abilities of a variety of NPCs that you can add to your party as the story unfolds. Along with meaningful character interaction and a wealth of dialogue, these kinds of decisions influence not only how the story evolves but also the strategies you will have to apply in order to succeed and progress through the game. Unlike modern RPGs, in Thorvalla, there won’t be any babysitting the player, funneling you down a virtually linear path of no-defeat. This is going to be an RPG where you will have to save your game… often."
"In addition, instead of providing a huge one-piece game world—which typically end up being mostly barren landscapes—the game hearkens back to more traditional computer role-playing games, by implementing a system that focuses on specific areas and connects them through a map.
As in the Realms of Arkania games, the travel map will be one of the most exciting features, actually, as countless events, missions and encounters are hidden in the map that will be unlocked as the story unfolds. Occasionally, you will find a hidden path, based on information you may have obtained elsewhere. At other times you may find yourself ambushed, while on other occasions yet, you may just have managed to avoid a trap as the result of one of your characters’ many skills. Camping, hunting, gathering, discovering, and healing are just a few of the exciting possibilities the map has to offer the daring adventurer."
"But first things, first. Like all serious role playing games, Thorvalla begins with Character Creation. The game will allow you to personalize the look of your character along with certain traits and skills. Choose from eight different classes, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, then go ahead and balance out your skills. With a wealth of skills, ranging from the use of certain weapons to things such as sneaking and tracking, you will be able to customize your character to your needs. "
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Comments
Had me until this. Not a fan of constantly reloading.
There's no game over in that game. Anytime you lose a battle, you just restart that battle and continue on! No saving required at all.
But in all honesty, I have full confidence in Guido Henkel making a game that will be fun, challenging and interesting. He's already responsible for 2 of my favourite games, Fallout 2 and Placescape: Torment. And he was already complaining back then about Interplay and the management team screwing up with the development when making Torment... and he still succeeded in creating that game. I'd love to see what they can accomplish without someone breathing over their necks this time.
That makes me very hesitant, TCG's and their mechanics never really appealed to me.
That said, this KS doesn't seem very interesting to me. When one of the primary selling points is "lots of dragons" and "riding dragons", I get turned off to the product. Dragons are cool when they are rare. Saturating a game with dragons is not fun or unique.
But overall it seems like the guy has spent more time working on KS rewards information than the game itself. I definitely support more 'classic' RPG's though. To get excited, I need more than a guy sitting in a chair with a few non-sequitur talking points.
As for the game itself, I think it's a bit too soon to say much, but Guido Henkel does have a good history of games and of writing. At least in my opinion.
Plus, I really welcome the change in settings. Vikings and Norse mythology is underused and overshadowed too much by DnD, Tolkien and the likes. So I'm hoping they'll be able to succeed with this kickstarter. I've already have 2 kickstarters I'm waiting for anxiously, and a third would be a great addition. I'm actually hoping that a lot of the KS projects succeed... what I've seen on KS in a few months has been far more interesting than the majority of 'RPG's I've seen in the last 5 years.
They've released quite a detailed update on some core parts of the game.
The 9 classes are
Warrior
Scout
Shadow Dancer - a Thief-like class
Monk - a tank with some basic magic abilities
Druid - a tank mage with focus on magic based in nature
Wizard/Witch
Sorcerer
Demonizer - a spell caster class that draw its powers from demons of all shapes and forms
As for the cards in combat part, looks like it might not be for everyone but it sounds very interesting to me. It will definitely make every battle very tactic oriented and different from one another, so no mindless 'attack, attack, attack, boom', and repeat times 1,000. It's a bit hard to describe, but they did describe it in pretty good details under combat.
And new update: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/g3studios/thorvalla-an-rpg-by-guido-henkel/posts/353823?ref=activity
About companions... when talking about the two different methods: either you have a fully fleshed out companion with background, story, etc. that already has a class, attributes and the likes picked, or create your own from scratch(basically, BG/Torment vs Icewind Dale), they want to combine both.
"What if we could combine these two general approaches? Well, perhaps we can. In Thorvalla we will create a hybrid of these two systems. Let me elaborate, step by step.
As the game begins you will create your own hero character. The opening storyline will be ambivalent enough to make sure players can pick male or female characters and then go through the whole spiel of determining the character’s class attributes. Feel free to take a gander at yesterday’s update An Overview for more details about character attributes, skills and traits.
The game then starts with this one character and very soon, our hero(ine) will meet an NPC who is willing to join the party. What happens next is putting the control back into your hands.
While the NPC willing to join you might be a centaur and you may not have an option to change that particular fact, you will now get back into a character generation screen that will allow you to make modifications to that centaur character. You will roll the attributes, but more importantly, you will be able to determine the class of the character as well, along with his traits. It’s not just a question whether he’ll be strong or weak. We are talking the entire gamut here. It means that the centaur who just joined you can be a Warrior for one player, but a Sorcerer for another player. The choice is entirely up to you, and it is my way of giving control back to the player, even though he is dealing with a recruitable character."
This was my biggest dilemma with BG (and still is, but Shadowkeeper solved it for now), so that idea sounds great to me.
These guys appear to be very serious about it, and the updates they've been releasing so far are amazing. They latest one includes a brief animated demo of how the game will look. So far, beautiful!
If anyone's interested, they've just added a new update with how the game art will look like. It definitely has potential to be a beautiful game. Here's a video of the sample. If you get the small Unity3D plugin and look at the update, you can see the below in a much better res and be able to zoom in and out yourself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=A4_UftTDETA
http://www.gamebanshee.com/news/110222-thorvalla-kickstarter-campaign-update-12-campaign-cancelled.html