KickStarter Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pre-Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Alienman]

Lol, optional threesome. Staple of RPG design right there. C&C bitches!

 

[aweigh]

"the game was good but the lack of romance options really prevented me from being immersed and doing role playing so i have to take some points off"

CONS: not as fully featured as contemporary games in the genre

 

[fantadomat]

Was Pillars really "mangled", though? I couldn't say, but the twenty or so hours I played were very polished, I'd say even remarkably so considering Obsdian's track record. Did they botch the last act or something?

Yes, everything after Maerwald has a stench of the cut, or at least underdevelopment. Maybe cut wasn't the right word, underdevelopment is. They actually tried to cram everything they promised in the KS in there and ended up half-assing it, but that was due to mismanagement. And Josh Sawyer's strange requests, like 150 maps (or some other number) while Feargus was only allowing 130 (or something), but all the extra maps went to trivial bullshit like little hovels nobody goes into or before-and-after maps of the inn in Caed Nua.

Oh i know mate,i just said that it could be,not that it is. Also romancing is not something to be cut off when marketed on. A lot of codexers hate romance but most casuals want them and don't care about the combat. Combatfags are relic of the pass and irrelevant in the current century,they don't move copies.

An example of bad management leading to a mangled game due to cuts and other shenanigans is obviously every single Obsidian game.

Fixed.

Eh, I was lenient on them because you can easily blame publishers before PoE. There are no excuses for PoE.

Was Pillars really "mangled", though? I couldn't say, but the twenty or so hours I played were very polished, I'd say even remarkably so considering Obsdian's track record. Did they botch the last act or something?

It is messy but it keeps the same mediocre level more or less trough the game. It is not like Deadfire where the first third is pretty fun and then it becomes total shit once you see trough their tricks.

 

[fantadomat]

I have no idea what you are even talking about. Could you explain to me in detail or given an example of what you mean?

Like some nerd starts writing about 10th century peasant life in north central france, and then...???? You crush them? What do you mean? You call them morons, or go into some long detail about how their version of mid-evil grain production and bread making is totally retarded? What exactly happens? How do you know who wins? Are there judges? TIA

 

[Lilura]

Storyfags are wholly responsible for the decline of RPGs.

 

[fantadomat]

Storyfags are wholly responsible for the existence of RPGs.

Here i fix it for you love. Clearly you are an low effort chick,it is only natural to make such a mistake .

 

[Dodo1610]

Storyfags are wholly responsible for the existence of RPGs.

Here i fix it for you love. Clearly you are an low effort chick,it is only natural to make such a mistake .

RPGs barely had a story before the nineties. Or do you want to tell me people bought games like Realms of Aracania for it's story.

 

[Strange Fellow]

RPGs barely had a story before the nineties. Or do you want to tell me people bought games like Realms of Aracania for it's story.

And we all know how Lilura venerates those games.

 

[fantadomat]

Storyfags are wholly responsible for the existence of RPGs.

Here i fix it for you love. Clearly you are an low effort chick,it is only natural to make such a mistake .

RPGs barely had a story before the nineties. Or do you want to tell me people bought games like Realms of Aracania for it's story.

D&D is all about RP and story telling,it is the corner stone of the RPG industry. Are you telling me that games like MM or Wizardry didn't have any story? Sure they didn't have millions of words like that glorious flop numanuma,but they did tell story far better than it.

 

[Safav Hamon]

He was never mentined as the lead writer, his role was mostly advisory. He looked over the writing and helped to create the main narrative. I do not see how this is deceptive maybe the journalists didn't get the right info and made his role bigger then it is.

That's bullshit. He's obviously presented in a way to make people believe he is the lead narrative designer.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Storyfags are wholly responsible for the existence of RPGs.

Here i fix it for you love. Clearly you are an low effort chick,it is only natural to make such a mistake .

RPGs barely had a story before the nineties. Or do you want to tell me people bought games like Realms of Aracania for it's story.

D&D is all about RP and story telling,it is the corner stone of the RPG industry. Are you telling me that games like MM or Wizardry didn't have any story? Sure they didn't have millions of words like that glorious flop numanuma,but they did tell story far better than it.

Wizard! Baaad wizard, developer name spelled backwards, in that hole! Go get him!

10 Iliads out of 10

 

[Thonius]

He was never mentined as the lead writer, his role was mostly advisory. He looked over the writing and helped to create the main narrative. I do not see how this is deceptive maybe the journalists didn't get the right info and made his role bigger then it is.

That's bullshit. He's obviously presented in a way to make people believe he is the lead narrative designer.

Kinda same way as POE did.... and DOS2? and dont remember if wastelands did...used Avelone as attraction.
Regarding source for companions and shit. FAQ theme with DEV(MLP) for RU speakers. I'm gonna add link asap.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/640820/discussions/2/1761356057403613486/ #7

 

[Riddler]

Ask Josh Sawyer why his writing team is so bad.

Easy to answer, they are recruiting people from California.

 

[Thonius]

Ask Josh Sawyer why his writing team is so bad.

Easy to answer, they are recruiting people from California.

I'm still shocked that nobody tried to get actual book writer on game dev team. I don't think they cost much right?

 

[Lacrymas]

Judging by the piles of shit that come out every year in the book industry, that wouldn't have helped. Not to mention that our very favorite Carrie Petel is a 'novelist', she has at least one published novel. The problem is that vidya gaem developers don't really have much of a choice, they advertise a writing position and only these sorts of people apply.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Well they do have the option not to boast that their game has "Moar words than the Bible!" as if it were some great accomplishment.

 

[Lacrymas]

And the Bible required at least a few centuries of revisions to be up to snuff, I'm pretty sure development deadlines are stricter than that.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Not if you go about it the smart way

 

[Life of the Party]

Blizzard Hires New Award-Winning Fiction Writer for Overwatch

Alyssa Wong, an award-winning speculative fiction writer, announced she is the newest writer to join Blizzard and work on Overwatch.

GUESS WHO'S THE NEW WRITER ON @PlayOverwatch!!! I'm so excited to join the team & learn from all of the passionate, creative folks at Blizzard!!  #BlizzLife pic.twitter.com/yec0Ve3E8E

— Alyssa Wong  (@crashwong) July 31, 2018
She revealed the news through Twitter, accompanied by a photo of herself posing in front of the Overwatch logo at Blizzard's headquarters. "I'm so excited to join the team and learn form all of the passionate, creative folks at Blizzard," she wrote. Wong received multiple awards for her science fiction and short fiction work.

As a writer, Wong's duties would most likely fall on creating dialogue for the game and helping grow the Overwatch universe -- anywhere from animated shorts to Overwatch comics.

Wong's addition to the team comes after Blizzard released Wrecking Ball, an intellectual hamster that communicates through translations from his mech. As interesting as his story was, his origin story had no direct impact on the conflict in Overwatch.

The addition of a new writer to the Blizzard team leaves the possibility of new lore that might help the story finally advance.

https://www.dbltap.com/posts/6132053-blizzard-hires-new-award-winning-fiction-writer-for-overwatch

 

[Infinitron]

That's bullshit. He's obviously presented in a way to make people believe he is the lead narrative designer.

Kinda same way as POE did.... and DOS2? and dont remember if wastelands did...used Avelone as attraction.
Regarding source for companions and shit. FAQ theme with DEV(MLP) for RU speakers. I'm gonna add link asap.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/640820/discussions/2/1761356057403613486/ #7

The issue isn't that they used Avellone but that they're doing so while seemingly hiding their other writers.

 

[santino27]

Oh, no! How will I function if I can't romance the companions or name my capital city?!

I'd rather romance my capital city, frankly.

Judging by the piles of shit that come out every year in the book industry, that wouldn't have helped. Not to mention that our very favorite Carrie Petel is a 'novelist', she has at least one published novel. The problem is that vidya gaem developers don't really have much of a choice, they advertise a writing position and only these sorts of people apply.

It's also a wildly different medium to write for. While talent/skill should presumably translate, in that they can still formulate coherent sentences, I think there's a lot of other stuff that doesn't, including working collaboratively and writing a thousand tiny snippets of text instead of a novel.

 

[karoliner]

Who?

 

[Haba]

Oh, no! How will I function if I can't romance the companions or name my capital city?!

How about playing a game where you can romance your horse (after marrying it, of course) and RNG names your capitol city for you?

Spoiler

 

[Lacrymas]

It's also a wildly different medium to write for. While talent/skill should presumably translate, in that they can still formulate coherent sentences, I think there's a lot of other stuff that doesn't, including working collaboratively and writing a thousand tiny snippets of text instead of a novel.

Those tiny snippets of text should still form a unified whole, however. I imagine every area (or cluster) of an RPG as a sort of short story that should preferably bleed into the main one somehow. Being a short story, it should be complete in of itself, with (main) characters, motivations, tension and form. DLCs are usually written like that and that's why a lot of them are better than the main game. Otherwise it comes off as fragmented and pointless, exactly like tiny snippets of text rather than a story. When you have your short stories, you can now add bigger stories interweaving between them and spanning multiple areas or clusters. And so on and so forth. This is why you need a lead writer that collects ideas for stories from all the other writers and arranges them in such a way as to be logical and to reinforce the themes.

When you put it like that, it starts to resemble something manageable and writable, as opposed to some kind of chaos that you can't make head or tails of because it isn't a novel.

 

[santino27]

It's also a wildly different medium to write for. While talent/skill should presumably translate, in that they can still formulate coherent sentences, I think there's a lot of other stuff that doesn't, including working collaboratively and writing a thousand tiny snippets of text instead of a novel.

Those tiny snippets of text should still form a unified whole, however.

I initially wrote out a long response, but as I did, I realized we may be talking about separate issues.

When it comes to the story outline, (which is what it sounds like you're focusing on; an overarching plot constructed of smaller vignettes), I agree a novel writer's skills should hopefully translate. Certainly, with POE's flaws fresh in everyone's mind, the need to have a strong backbones is obvious and clear. But most writers I know want to write, not just organize other people's work into a whole. And the ability to put words to paper doesn't necessarily equate to the skillset to be a lead, or to be a solid editor, or even to keeping things organized. I'm not saying a quality novel writer can't make for a great lead writer, I'm just saying that the one doesn't necessarily equate to the other. To make an analogy to software development... great coders don't necessarily make great architects (they can, but don't always), because while there's definite crossover (code), the latter requires an additional skillset/interest that the former might not have.

When I was talking of the thousand snippets in my earlier post, I wasn't thinking of a lead writer's duties, I was thinking of one of the many writers under the lead wrtier. You're working on one of the so-called shorts, but the fact is you're probably not getting to write that short in its entirety. You're writing pieces of it (and those pieces both have to account for branching dialogues and narratives and for the output of your co-workers), and that's all very different from standard novel work.

I've written 5 novels (that you can't read ), and think I'd suck at writing for video games. (I'm not sure I'd be a very good lead writer either, but I do think my skills (such as they are) would at least translate better in that scenario.)

Maybe it's different with music, where you are very much composing a piece formed of disparate elements? Or maybe I'm a terrible writer. Either way.