[Whisperzzzzzzz]

Beautiful.

[cerveza_fiesta]

Sooo excited development on this game is drawing to a close. I can't wait to play it.

The updates haven't exactly been coming fast and furious, but they stated in a recent one that it's because they're hunkering down so hard getting ready for promotional events and polishing the game up. Who knows how true that is, but whatever....all the updates so far have led me to believe this will be completed more or less on time and it will be awesome when it's finished.

I saw on the backer site the other day that they are still selling goodies and pre-purchase of upcoming expansions at $25 apiece until August 31. I can't be arsed to get a signed copy of the game or a stupid shirt, but I'm sorely tempted to pre-buy the expansion at that price!

[Aptorian]

Not being an aficionado of these types of games I am curious to see what the reaction will be. Namely now that Divinity OS just came out and has taken the RPG community with a storm.

[cerveza_fiesta]

shows how out of touch I am with CRPGs these days. D:OS looks amazing! I might try that one while I wait for pillars of eternity to come out.

Just looking at a quick let's play to get a flavour of actual gameplay, D:OS has a waaaay more modern look and feel to it. Combining turn-based wargaming and RPG with graphics and environments of Diablo III. The combat system looks really fun. I'd worry with a game that good looking that they might scrimp on story, but I have no real basis for that concern. I'll have to read the reviews on it.

Pillars of Eternity is through-and-through an infinity engine successor, and can't exactly be placed alongside something like D:OS. They do compete in the exact same niche though, so it will be interesting to see how it stacks up. I feel like I'm a fairly typical buyer in that niche - 30something that used to play and love DnD & infinity engine games back in the day. For me, as long as the story is solid and the combat system has room to play with varied tactics (ie not repetitive-works-every-time sequences), I don't much care if I'm controlling 2D sprites or fully-rendered characters.

[Aptorian]

I think Pillars of Eternity is facing an uphill battle.

Prospective customers, especially those who have played Divinity, will look at what Eternity is offering and turn up their noses. I know that I personally was sort of miffed when I saw what the actual visuals looked like in game. I knew they were going old school but even the resolution looks slightly fuzzy.

But that is part of the package I assume. Divinity must have had a budget 10 times Eternity's.

This post has been edited by Apt Hoc: 14 August 2014 - 02:38 PM

[cerveza_fiesta]

You definitely could be right. It's for a small subsegment of a small segment of the gaming market. I guess they're betting heavily on the nostalgia thing.

Budget though - I'm curious what the actual difference is. Looking only at the kickstarter, Eternity raised 3ish times as much from 3ish times as many backers, though they were starting from scratch (engine, graphics, everything) and ostensibly doing the majority of the work using that budget. I didn't see a figure on the total budget for Divinity, but it was more a campaign to add polish to an existing engine than a build-from-scratch so it's likely the studio had already dumped in a sizeable amount at the outset of the kickstarter.

Though for sheer backers vs. backers, the Eternity kickstarter was far more impressive. It set a record for game funding (later broken by the new torment game). I'm not sure if that correlates directly to adoration of the finished product, but it definitely speaks to the interest for such offerings in the genre.

[Imperial Historian]

I'm looking forward to playing both these games. I doubt either will have the impact of baldurs game or torment, but both look like fun games. I think for most of the players of these games graphics and looks are in a distinct second place to story and gameplay. Baldurs gate looks crap these days, but I still play it as the story and gameplay are still fun, mods add enough interest and extra challenge and the only game I've played which came out since which even remotely has a similar style of play is dragon age 1. So even if they just create a good new story on an engine similar to the infinity engine, I and similar players will still be playing even if the graphics are dated.

[Macros]

What IH said.
Graphics can cram it, storyline and gameplay is where its at

[Morgoth]

Yeah, even though Divinity is a step up in writing from such travesties as Dragon Age 2 and so on, it's still realtively poor when it comes to storyline if compared to Torment and Baldur's Gate.

[Macros]

Minsc and Boo stand ready!

[Whisperzzzzzzz]

Morgoth, on 15 August 2014 - 06:23 AM, said:

Yeah, even though Divinity is a step up in writing from such travesties as Dragon Age 2 and so on, it's still realtively poor when it comes to storyline if compared to Torment and Baldur's Gate.

Yup, Divinity's story is pretty boring. And orcs, undead, etc are so passé.

[cerveza_fiesta]

Whisperzzzzzzz, on 16 August 2014 - 02:21 AM, said:

Morgoth, on 15 August 2014 - 06:23 AM, said:

Yeah, even though Divinity is a step up in writing from such travesties as Dragon Age 2 and so on, it's still realtively poor when it comes to storyline if compared to Torment and Baldur's Gate.

Yup, Divinity's story is pretty boring. And orcs, undead, etc are so passé.

Most of the reviews say the best story elements are from the shorter side quests rather than resolution of the main plot, and few complain about the main story at all. Gameplay (from the let's plays I watched) looks awesome too.

Leaves me wondering how seriously I should take such comments coming from Malazan Empire forumites. Standards on story depth aren't exactly set low around here


I'll definitely pick up D:OS and play it while I wait for PE.

EDIT

On the subject of story - I've heard this Avelonne name kicked around the eternity updates and the net in general. Never knew he was responsible for the writing in all the Infinity Engine games. Bodes well for the PE story that he's on the team.

This post has been edited by cerveza_fiesta: 20 August 2014 - 02:16 PM

[Werthead]

PoE certainly had a bigger budget than D:OS. D:OS had about $4 million total including money from Larian's previous DIVINITY games, whilst ETERNITY had more ($4 from the Kickstarter alone, a lot more from Obsidian's own, considerably larger funds).

The reasons for the graphical disparity are fairly straightforward. D:OS uses very large areas, but only a relatively small number of them. PoE has absolutely tons and tons and tons of maps. The Endless Dungeon by itself is FIFTEEN levels, and each level is huge. That's bigger than most entire games and is only one area of the PoE map (not to mention it's apparently completely optional). Creating maps in 2D is much faster and easier than in 3D, hence why Obsidian was able to bash them out so quickly. D:OS was also in the planning stages for years whilst Larian made other games, so a lot of design, quests, ideas etc were locked down long before the Kickstarter whilst Obsidian were developing things much more on the fly.

WASTELAND 2 combines both, with strong 3D visuals and an absolutely vast number of maps. However, WL2 was both longer in active development than either game and again had been pre-planned for years (apparently Bryan Fargo knocked the original design document into shape somewhere around 2003, so almost a decade earlier than the Kickstarter). Also, WL2 isn't quite as good-lucking as D:OS.

Quote

On the subject of story - I've heard this Avelonne name kicked around the eternity updates and the net in general. Never knew he was responsible for the writing in all the Infinity Engine games. Bodes well for the PE story that he's on the team.

Avellone was only the creative lead and head writer on PLANESCAPE: TORMENT (although that by itself is enough for a whole career). He also worked as a co-writer on ICEWIND DALE 1 and 2 and contributed some elements to BALDUR'S GATE II, although that was more helping BioWare get the massive game done during the crunch than contributing anything substantial.

Outside of the Infinity Engine games, Avellone was head writer on FALLOUT 2, STAR WARS: KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC II, NEVERWINTER NIGHTS II: MASK OF THE BETRAYER, ALPHA PROTOCOL and FALLOUT: NEW VEGAS - OLD WORLD BLUES. He was also a co-writer on NEVERWINTER NIGHTS II, FALLOUT: NEW VEGAS (and its other DLCs), FTL: ADVANCED EDITION, WASTELAND 2 and the forthcoming TORMENT: TIDES OF NUMENERA and did some uncredited side work on SOUTH PARK: STICK OF TRUTH. He's certainly one of the more notable voices in the writing of western RPGs, maybe now the most well-known and critically acclaimed.

[cerveza_fiesta]

cool, thanks for expanding on that wert. Wasteland 2 looks hella sweet as well. Now, if I could only find a few spare decades to play all these immense RPGs coming out...

Latest update on PoE said that fit and finish is now going on the game. Beta testing was a great success and they claim to have made some pretty big changes to core combat and pathfinding systems. They are also ploughing through the game quest by quest locking down bugs and making sure everything runs smoothly.

I am so excited to run a 15lvl dungeon too. The deeper ones in the Infinity engine games were the best. Stretching resources to the absolute max, sneaking in rests to restore spells wherever you're able, good times.

[Messremb]

Not to mention desperately trying to carry out every item of loot you come accross. Bag of Holding, I love you still

[Werthead]

WASTELAND 2 is very, very good. It is quite tough though. Managing ammo is a major headache, since money is relatively restrained, vendors are rare and combat soaks up ammo like nobody's business. I'm starting to regret not focusing more on melee.

[Macros]

Ah dungeon trawling, do I hump back through 5 levels of dungeons to cash in some of this glorious loot or do I start abandoning items?

To the nearest town I say!

[cerveza_fiesta]

Messremb, on 23 September 2014 - 08:30 PM, said:

Not to mention desperately trying to carry out every item of loot you come accross. Bag of Holding, I love you still

of course! Who cares that the common longsword was only worth 3 gold! THATS THREE GOLD WE'RE TALKING ABOUT!

[Werthead]

On a related note, PCGamer got Avellone to talk about his gaming rig here. It's less that which is impressive than his insane action figure display surrounding it.

[cerveza_fiesta]

Not that it was unexpected, but release has been pushed into 2015 -- boo.

If it was pre-beta I'd be worried, but at this point I'd rather wait a bit and have a good experience rather than them rush out a buggy-as-shit product.