He's the guy who makes DSfix and DPfix, the things that make Dark Souls and Deadly Premonition work on PCs.
I honestly can't tell if this is you being sarcastic or if this is legit high praise.
But as others have said, combat was more of a function within the game then the main draw for it. The fact that people are seriously shitting themselves in rage over whether it's turn based or pausable is asinine.
This got very dark, very quick. From refund demands to fraud accusations to outright threats the reaction got all of it covered.
I do think the poll was a mistake exactly for those reasons.
People are dumb.
Sad thing is, Durante of Dark Souls fame is among them accusing InXile of rigging the vote from the beginning.
He's a PS:T superfan though, so the emotional reaction is kinda understandable.
OK, so Durante's an idiot too.
He's apparently got some skill at improving buggy games post-release? Doesn't mean he's less of an idiot. It just means he's a whiny bitch, who sometimes patches games.
EDIT: I guess my reaction is just disappointment that, after all kickstarter promised us, it's turned out to just replace publishers with shitty, stupid fans who think they know better than the devs. The more things change, eh?
This got very dark, very quick. From refund demands to fraud accusations to outright threats the reaction got all of it covered.
I do think the poll was a mistake exactly for those reasons.
People are dumb.
Sad thing is, Durante of Dark Souls fame is among them accusing InXile of rigging the vote from the beginning.
He's a PS:T superfan though, so the emotional reaction is kinda understandable.
OK, so Durante's an idiot too.
He's apparently got some skill at improving buggy games post-release? Doesn't mean he's less of an idiot. It just means he's a whiny bitch, who sometimes patches games.
EDIT: I guess my reaction is just disappointment that, after all kickstarter promised us, it's turned out to just replace publishers with shitty, stupid fans who think they know better than the devs. The more things change, eh?
A lot of this has nothing to do with the developers, but the culture in the forums. If you look in that Neogaf thread, it's a bunch of people winding each other up to the point that the losers melt down when the results are announced. The fact that the winners actually won the vote seems to just make it worse. You can see that with the post where the guy shows how a lot of the most pissed off have actually backed other Kickstarters with turn-based combat.
The funny part is that this was announced as an upcoming part of the Kickstarter since the first.
Oh, if I wasn't clear, I didn't mean "after all this kickstarter promised us", I mean "after all kickstarter in general promised us". I was hoping that it would empower devs to make the best games, while letting fans show their enthusiasm, give feedback from the first stages of preproduction, and let us see the development process more clearly.
Instead it's just RPGCodex and NeoGAF idiots complaining about everything, like turn-based combat will ruin this, or like early concept art in Project Eternity was indicative of final quality.
Something something loud retards ruining it for the rest of us something.
Oh, if I wasn't clear, I didn't mean "after all this kickstarter promised us", I mean "after all kickstarter in general promised us". I was hoping that it would empower devs to make the best games, while letting fans show their enthusiasm, give feedback from the first stages of preproduction, and let us see the development process more clearly.
Instead it's just RPGCodex and NeoGAF idiots complaining about everything, like turn-based combat will ruin this, or like early concept art in Project Eternity was indicative of final quality.
Something something loud retards ruining it for the rest of us something.
Actually RPGCodex is biased towards turn-based. They were some of the guys that riled the rtwp fans up. There was a big discussion between the youtuber smudboy and sea (Who both work in the industry) That went over videos and forum posts.
They're still at fault too, but they were basically the opposition.
Oh, if I wasn't clear, I didn't mean "after all this kickstarter promised us", I mean "after all kickstarter in general promised us". I was hoping that it would empower devs to make the best games, while letting fans show their enthusiasm, give feedback from the first stages of preproduction, and let us see the development process more clearly.
Instead it's just RPGCodex and NeoGAF idiots complaining about everything, like turn-based combat will ruin this, or like early concept art in Project Eternity was indicative of final quality.
You realize the first paragraph necessitates the second, right?
Oh, if I wasn't clear, I didn't mean "after all this kickstarter promised us", I mean "after all kickstarter in general promised us". I was hoping that it would empower devs to make the best games, while letting fans show their enthusiasm, give feedback from the first stages of preproduction, and let us see the development process more clearly.
Instead it's just RPGCodex and NeoGAF idiots complaining about everything, like turn-based combat will ruin this, or like early concept art in Project Eternity was indicative of final quality.
You realize the first paragraph necessitates the second, right?
Those two places are borderline NMA, at least when it comes to intelligent critique.
"Borderline?" RPG Codex is worse than NMA in basically every way.
I took a rough average. :P
I try to avoid all three when I can.
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Dr. ChaosPost nuclear nuisanceRegistered Userregular
edited December 2013
RPG Codex seems like a really rough place to go forum diving.
Every time I read a thread, I expect somebody to whip out a switchblade and slash someone across the nostril. Tough crowd.
I wish I could say I don't follow Neo Gaf anymore since I got banned from there (first time thats ever happened to me) but well, it's Neo Gaf. You have to read it even if you don't want to.
Oh, if I wasn't clear, I didn't mean "after all this kickstarter promised us", I mean "after all kickstarter in general promised us". I was hoping that it would empower devs to make the best games, while letting fans show their enthusiasm, give feedback from the first stages of preproduction, and let us see the development process more clearly.
Instead it's just RPGCodex and NeoGAF idiots complaining about everything, like turn-based combat will ruin this, or like early concept art in Project Eternity was indicative of final quality.
You realize the first paragraph necessitates the second, right?
Those two places are borderline NMA, at least when it comes to intelligent critique.
Ehhhhhhhh
I'd say the articles/critiques are the best thing about NMA and the Codex.
It's forum discussions where it gets terrible.
C2B on
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Dr. ChaosPost nuclear nuisanceRegistered Userregular
They recently had the chance to ask Chris some questions in a recent post:
Hi Chris, you were the lead designer di Planescape: Torment and the guy who wrote a huge part of that game. Even if your role in T:ToN development is smaller, part of your job now consists in reviewing various design docs and giving advice to the other Torment developers. Is there any particular area of Tides of Numenera that has taken advantage of your feedbacks, something where players can clearly recognize your signature? And on the other hand, what’s the feature designed by another guy of the team that appealed you the most?
I’ve been part of intense story reviews with Colin McComb, Adam Heine, Kevin Saunders, and Nathan Long on Torment, and given hours of feedback on the story structure, plot direction, and questions about player agency – that said, the story is very much from Colin’s mind, he was open to a sounding board for a variety of concepts.
So what appealed to me at first glance? Oddly enough: the combat tie-in to the protagonist’s dilemma. And the reasons surrounding the player’s initial quandary, which I’d be happy to elaborate more on once the game is released and people have had a chance to play it. What I like about Colin is he really likes digging in deep with motivations for NPCs and then laying out the quest and backdrop permutations that result naturally from asking a lot of questions about how the NPC would handle the situation if he had years upon years to tackle it.
Aside for the role of advisor, your job for both Pillars of Eternity and Torment: Tides of Numenera is pretty much all about writing. Since now it’s clear that the two games have different philosophies about combat system and encounter design, how are these differences impacting your job? Broadly speaking, what’s your opinion on combat in RPGs? Can non-violent interactions be a core gameplay mechanic similarly to combat?
I’ve given input on a variety of design disciplines when permitted. In general, Torment and Wasteland have been pretty receptive to systematic input and area design formatting and templating, and I like a lot of the direction that has arisen from both.
I absolutely believe non-violent interactions can be a core gameplay mechanic (even if Telltale hadn’t already proved it). You only need to read the “dinner party” chapter early on in Frank Herbert’s Dune, or read Ennis’s run on Hellblazer, or watch the “combat” that often occurs in dialogue in Tarantino’s movies (Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained) to see how you can introduce escalating tension and drama without a shot being fired.
Is there any other major difference between the two games that impacts on your work? I mean, aside from the obvious ones like the setting.
It’s nice to switch gears. When doing story critiques between the two, it’s nice to take a break to jump to Torment and play around with some unconventional approaches that the Numenera world allows (and Monte Cook is to be commended for this – he set up the framework of the world – er, worlds).
Tides of Numenera will be an heavy-text game and Pillars of Eternity will have its share of dialogues, text-descriptions and even choose-your-own-adventure-encounters. How do you feel about that? Recently you experimented a lot with visual narratives and - if I recall correctly - you stated before that additional dungeons and combats (so less emphasis on text and dialogues) would have made Planescape: Torment a better game. Do you still feel the same way about that?
If the story can be accomplished visually or with audio, I prefer it. By audio, I don’t mean dialogue that’s voiced, or even spoken audio logs, but SFX in the environment. I feel BioShock and Halflife have it right in presenting a story to the player – and allow them to participate in piecing together the experience through the arrangement of props and visuals.
That said, Torment has some very experienced writers on staff, and if you’re in the mood to read, you won’t find the word choice lacking.
I’d like to ask you something that I’ve already asked Kevin Saunders, even if it is not a Torment related question. Wasteland 2 will feature a fully developed world-map gameplay, with elements of exploration and resource management. Can we expect something similar from Pillars of Eternity? What’s your opinion on free-roaming in RPGs? Do you feel it adds to the genre? And since you have been working on many non-linear games, what’s the impact of free-roaming on your writing process?
I love free-roaming, and I feel it makes the player empowered to have their own story. When doing a free-roaming game, the idea is to create an interesting backdrop and interesting characters to interact with, but you don’t inflict (inflict is a harsh word, but…) characters and plot points on the player and force them to interact with the NPCs or the story.
My personal preference would be doing a plot where a variety of the player’s actions makes the plot come to him, not the reverse.
You are well known for the memorable characters you wrote for pretty much every game you’ve worked on. You’ve also stated many times that themes and game systems should play a role in the writing process of an RPG, especially when it comes to companion design. Can you tell us how these elements influence your work both in Torment and Pillars of Eternity?
I laid out some companion specs for design based on 15+ years doing it, and those same principles were re-examined for Torment as well, with one exception: Kevin and I agreed that there may be Torment characters that don’t serve a game mechanic function as long as their narrative presence is strong (which is fine). Although, that didn’t stop me from trying to suggest new ways to make those narrative-based characters still contribute to the game mechanics.
Is there anything else you want to add on the companion topic? Maybe a concrete sample (either from Torment or from Pillars of Eternity)? Probably you don’t want to give away too much too early, but there’s no harm in trying.
The companion for Torment was born out of reading the others – I wanted to make a character whose fit, in terms of the RPG mechanics, with the others (ex: what party role was missing that would be needed to round out the party?), and also someone that would be fun and interesting in a party banter situation, as well as with the player.
So the first thought after reading through the companions was – wow, we have a grim bunch. Like, really grim. You feel sad and terrible after reading most of them, although there’s bright points of light (the Toy, for example, and Pat Rothfuss’s character, who is great, and also Nathan Long’s character, which fulfills another important role I’ll get to once revealed). In the end, I recognized one important companion signpost in Torment lies in characters like Morte and Nordom – one provides humor naturally in irreverence, the other provides humor in being a fish out of water. The companion I’m doing in Torment is another take on adding some levity to the situation, whether intended to or not. I’ve played him in a few Numenera tabletop sessions, and so far, he adds a lot of… energy… to encounters. Plus, he’ll be a lot of fun to write, and I think he’ll lead to some interesting adventure possibilities.
Finally, I’m aware of your passion for unusual characters and nonconventional settings (as well of your racist feelings against elves ). Since Pillars of Eternity is a deliberately conservative game in both areas, can we expect something “bolder” in the feature of Obsidian (don’t get me wrong, it’s great to have a game with the same feeling of Icewind Dale/Baldur’s Gate)? Maybe a Ghost in the Shell RPG or a Kickstarter game where players are supposed to collect everyday noises and arrange them in powerful spells? (Link)
I can understand what you mean about traditional fantasy – if I had the choice of a fantasy world, I’d probably start by destroying it and stomping up and down on it a few times with some steel spiked boots.
As for the games you suggest, I would like to do the last two (Ghost in the Shell is one of my favorite series of all time), and the collecting SFX as a spell mechanic has always been something I’d like to try (I think it surprised our audio director when I first mentioned it years ago when we were discussing how we could blend audio and gameplay).
I don’t have anything against traditional RPGs, as long as they’re reaching for something new, I just often find there’s plenty of traditional backdrops already out there – why not try something new? Flip the world on its head, and then let the player deal with all shattered clichés.
Updated our Journal (28): “What Have I Got In My Pocket?”
TL;DR: Licensing Pillars of Eternity technology; Inventory and Loot; Crowdfunding milestone as Double Fine's Broken Age launches
Hello,
I hope 2014 has been good to you so far. We’re continuing to flesh out our area and systems designs, but lately we’ve had increased emphasis on developing Torment’s aesthetics and environments.
To that end, we have some news related to our environment art: late last March, we announced that we’d be collaborating with Obsidian Entertainment on technology. This primarily meant their conversation editing tools, which provide a very strong foundation for the dialogue reactivity we seek for Torment. We’ve been prototyping conversations with these tools since last summer and have been adapting the technology for Torment’s specific dialogue needs. Meanwhile, we’ve been evaluating other aspects of the Pillars of Eternity technology over the last months and have been impressed with the environments they’ve been able to create with it in Unity. We seek a similar high level of quality for our environments in Torment.
I’m happy to say that we’ve taken things a step further and recently reached an agreement to license Obsidian’s technology for Pillars of Eternity to use in Torment. (In case you haven’t seen it yet, a great Pillars of Eternity teaser came out last month – they are still accepting late pledges for any who missed their Kickstarter.) Torment’s code base will thus include the most relevant components of PE’s technology and Wasteland 2’s. We’re making enhancements to best suit Torment, and some systems will of course be completely new as Torment’s design is its own.
What are the practical implications of our licensing PE technology? It provides us with a stronger starting point for certain game systems and pipelines, including the creation of the 2D pre-rendered environments (we’re working on having something to show you in the coming weeks). This means we will have more resources to invest on other aspects of the game, allowing us to achieve a higher quality overall. (Recall that 100% (and more) of the crowdfunded monies are allocated to development of Torment. So anything that saves effort means that we have more to spend elsewhere on Torment.) This arrangement benefits both games and we continue to push Torment as far as we can in terms of quality.
...
XBL - ArchSilversmith
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
This seems like the place to share something Torment-y
I can only imagine the TORMENT it was to get that done.
Eh?
I know it's 3 months too late, but Nope!
The upper arm is one of the least painful places for a tattoo.
It got unpleasant after ~4-5 hours in the chair, but it was the home stretch.
The only real pain was when he went back in to add little highlights and stuff to flesh that had been inked hours earlier.
Has there been any news on a Planescape: Torment Enhanced Edition?
My own quick search found some chatter from 2012, but nothing recent.
Posts
Curst Battle is fantastic. I was really pumped when that kicked in. Mark Morgan never disappoints.
Sad thing is, Durante of Dark Souls fame is among them accusing InXile of rigging the vote from the beginning.
He's a PS:T superfan though, so the emotional reaction is kinda understandable.
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
I honestly can't tell if this is you being sarcastic or if this is legit high praise.
But as others have said, combat was more of a function within the game then the main draw for it. The fact that people are seriously shitting themselves in rage over whether it's turn based or pausable is asinine.
OK, so Durante's an idiot too.
He's apparently got some skill at improving buggy games post-release? Doesn't mean he's less of an idiot. It just means he's a whiny bitch, who sometimes patches games.
EDIT: I guess my reaction is just disappointment that, after all kickstarter promised us, it's turned out to just replace publishers with shitty, stupid fans who think they know better than the devs. The more things change, eh?
A lot of this has nothing to do with the developers, but the culture in the forums. If you look in that Neogaf thread, it's a bunch of people winding each other up to the point that the losers melt down when the results are announced. The fact that the winners actually won the vote seems to just make it worse. You can see that with the post where the guy shows how a lot of the most pissed off have actually backed other Kickstarters with turn-based combat.
The funny part is that this was announced as an upcoming part of the Kickstarter since the first.
Instead it's just RPGCodex and NeoGAF idiots complaining about everything, like turn-based combat will ruin this, or like early concept art in Project Eternity was indicative of final quality.
Something something loud retards ruining it for the rest of us something.
Actually RPGCodex is biased towards turn-based. They were some of the guys that riled the rtwp fans up. There was a big discussion between the youtuber smudboy and sea (Who both work in the industry) That went over videos and forum posts.
They're still at fault too, but they were basically the opposition.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
Those two places are borderline NMA, at least when it comes to intelligent critique.
I took a rough average. :P
I try to avoid all three when I can.
Every time I read a thread, I expect somebody to whip out a switchblade and slash someone across the nostril. Tough crowd.
I wish I could say I don't follow Neo Gaf anymore since I got banned from there (first time thats ever happened to me) but well, it's Neo Gaf. You have to read it even if you don't want to.
Ehhhhhhhh
I'd say the articles/critiques are the best thing about NMA and the Codex.
It's forum discussions where it gets terrible.
It's poisonous. Once you get it in your veins, it's hard to get it out.
They recently had the chance to ask Chris some questions in a recent post:
Also, I checked George's twitter.
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
I didn't see that last week.
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
I can only imagine the TORMENT it was to get that done.
Eh?
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
I know it's 3 months too late, but Nope!
The upper arm is one of the least painful places for a tattoo.
It got unpleasant after ~4-5 hours in the chair, but it was the home stretch.
The only real pain was when he went back in to add little highlights and stuff to flesh that had been inked hours earlier.
Has there been any news on a Planescape: Torment Enhanced Edition?
My own quick search found some chatter from 2012, but nothing recent.