Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity [BETA RELEASED, GO TO THE NEW THREAD]

[tuluse]

Dark Knight does lack the subtlety to be truly great, it is good though, and certainly a huge step above a typical summer blockbuster.

 

[Akratus]

Indeed. I don't quite like absolute hatefulness. Sure, criticize flaws. But don't put a movie like that in the same bin as movies like Battleship.

 

[Ninjerk]

BB has ninjas so...

 

[AN4RCHID]

The system is pretty straightforward. Characters react to individual choices you make in the same way that they would in pretty much any other Obsidian game. Whether you see a [Clever] tag in front of your reply before you select it or not, your expectation of how the character is going to respond is going to be based on your understanding of the character. However they respond (positively, negatively, or something else), you just put a penny in the "Clever" jar. If you keep selecting witty/sassy/sarcastic responses or ways of dealing with people, their responses are all going to be based on the context and who they are as individual characters.

Where the actual rep comes into play is not in the replies available to you, but in how people talk to you or treat you as person, often outside of the context of you making those individual choices. An NPC might meet you and invite you to a party based on your reputation for wit (even if you're not being particularly witty at the moment). Another person might balk at involving you in a discussion of faith because they assume, based on your reputation, that you're a clown who can't take anything seriously.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/64...ar-to-torment-tides-of-numeneras-tides/page-5

Reputation mechanics sounding really good.

 

[Infinitron]

Oh boy that Gifted1 guy isn't very smart is he

BTW Roguey https://twitter.com/jesawyer/status/401441213292617728

BG/IWD successor

More: https://twitter.com/jesawyer/status/401429781507362816

entering a dungeon and immediately dying from a swarm of insects and spiders: a noble icewind dale tradition upheld in #projecteternity

 

[AN4RCHID]

Now you can clearly see what you mean to say but you will have no idea how the NPC will interpret it.

How could one ever anticipate what a characters reaction will be to dialogue options? It can't be done. Requesting Hepler mode for dialogue.

 

[Shadenuat]

That "problem" of NPC reaction and people who point it out make me angry. And tags which tell you what will happen after you pick the line make me even angrier.
Player is supposed to think with his own head and try and understand writing style of the game, and carefully pick his lines so he won't mess someone's life up.
Writers should challenge their writing skill so compassionate answer would indeed sound compassionate, and produce that kind of banter player would expect if he picks such an answer. They should establish player's persona, even if it's neutral, so you know what are you picking there.

But you never should exactly know how a person would react to your line. When you read a dialogue in a book, you never know what can happen before you flip the page. Sure, writer can use exposition and explain a tone of line spoken, but reader's predicament usually would be based on his knowledge of the nature of the characters. Sometimes you can predict ("Ooh, he shouldn't said that, now shit's gonna hit the fan"), sometimes you can't. And that's the beauty of it.

All this struggle for tags and helpful hints in dialogue is so pointless. If taken to absolute, it completely sucks out all player's agenda and challenge from picking lines, like in DA2 or ME, where player, like Pavlov's dog, just reacts to blue color or round shape to take his player's story into predetermined direction.

Thankfully you would be able to turn all tags which tell you about the consequences in metagame off in Expert mode, but I wish they would abolish them alltogether.

 

[AN4RCHID]

The tags Sawyer is talking about won't tell you what the NPC's reaction will be, just which disposition value gets incremented.

 

[Shadenuat]

I got that, but I fail to see the point in providing such information. And to make it an on/off switch. It's roleplaying thing. It should either be implemented by default like Numenera's "tides", or game should use other means to tell you what kind of character are you playing.
I'm confused.

 

[AN4RCHID]

Yeah, I don't love it either, but Sawyer worships at the altar of transparency.

I'm just glad they're designing systems like this in the first place. Going expert for my first run anyway, so Sawyer's obsession with tagging won't affect my experience.

 

[coffeetable]

Player is supposed to think with his own head and try and understand writing style of the game, and carefully pick his lines so he won't mess someone's life up.
Writers should challenge their writing skill so compassionate answer would indeed sound compassionate, and produce that kind of banter player would expect if he picks such an answer. They should establish player's persona, even if it's neutral, so you know what are you picking there.

you're right when has authorial intent ever been misinterpreted

 

[coffeetable]

example: you're really smart and your opinion is valued around here, post more

 

[Roguey]

Now, now Josh, the movie director has an obligation to make the movie more "welcoming" to the moviegoers that are just plain bad at understanding/following movie plots, if they don't "get" the plot, the movie director failed at his job, it's as simple as that.

"Show, don't tell."

When it comes to complex game mechanics you do need to tell.

Sorry, I don't believe that, not even if Josh were to outright state it, often moviegoers say they want one thing when in reality they want something completely else, (competent) movie directors have no illusion about that and act accordingly.

For example, my dumb jock friend who almost exclusively watches big budget Hollywood blockbusters loves it when the movie goes out of its way to help him understand the plot, I'm sure Josh is the same (he's just being dishonest).

Refer to http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...t-eternity-thread.75947/page-936#post-2954642

BTW Roguey https://twitter.com/jesawyer/status/401441213292617728

BG/IWD successor

I never said it wasn't going to be a BG/IWD successor. After all, that's what the pitch was. I said it's not going to be a BG-clone i.e. Baldur's Gate just with a different system and slightly different content.

More: https://twitter.com/jesawyer/status/401429781507362816

entering a dungeon and immediately dying from a swarm of insects and spiders: a noble icewind dale tradition upheld in #projecteternity

Can't be a tradition if it never happened to me.

 

[imweasel]

I never said it wasn't going to be a BG/IWD successor.

PoE is not a BG clone.

25:19

Chris is not the project director.

Josh can't really control what Obsidian co-owner Chris Avellone does or say to the public

 

[Sensuki]

Can't be a tradition if it never happened to me.

Your playthroughs do not count as you have not produced a Let's Play for Josh to watch so he can "see" how you play the game, because otherwise you do not matter

I'm also starting to think I should masquerade as a retard who does not understand the P:E systems in order to get more answers lol.

 

[The Bishop]

Sure, writer can use exposition and explain a tone of line spoken, but reader's predicament usually would be based on his knowledge of the nature of the characters.

Forget about it.

 

[coffeetable]

yo sensuki image macros will probs get you probated on SA

 

[Hormalakh]

so i haven't said much here recently, mostly because i've been busy with school, but i tend to disagree with those who advocate for less transparency at lower difficulties of the game (though, i do realize this may be a straw man) or even higher level difficulties unless the goal is to promote some sort of strategy to gather that information from enemies (like a rogue "eagle's eye" ability or something, where they would scout out ahead and try to find out information about enemies). this would be the only point i would see in hiding this sort of information. but the devs should try to develop it as some sort of mechanic which actually involves strategy and tactics. if the information is unknowable in no other way but to sit and do math before each battle (or only through metagame because you then just follow a strategy book along) then it's pretty much worthless. if the defenses of enemies can change over time or be randomized in some way and that randomized information might be helpful in gaining a tactical advantage, then yes, that could be a higher difficulty option.

now, as for the dialogue options. basically, the way i see it is that they're just doing the opposite of AP. In this game instead of you choosing "pick suave option" and not knowing what the actual dialogue is until it's stated, you can see what the option actually is going to say, and know that you're picking the "suave" option. it doesn't really take much away from the non-readers, and those who do want to read and decipher which "option" it is, can toggle it off. it doesn't reduce gameplay quality, mechanically speaking.

 

[Sensuki]

yo sensuki image macros will probs get you probated on SA

Really? Uptight faggots.

 

[Lancehead]

I got that, but I fail to see the point in providing such information. And to make it an on/off switch. It's roleplaying thing. It should either be implemented by default like Numenera's "tides", or game should use other means to tell you what kind of character are you playing.
I'm confused.

Unless you'd like the dialogue options to also contain descriptions of how the pc says his lines (like in the main dialogue window), tags can be a simple way to get the point across. And it's useful since the pc is doing it actively, something which should be made transparent to the player because, you know, he's the one playing.

 

[Shadenuat]

Pointless example. Both player and designer assume protagonist always speaks what is written - the truth, that's why Truth/Lie are the only tags which you must use if you want to give player an option of doing opposite.

Unless you'd like the dialogue options to also contain descriptions of how the pc says his lines (like in the main dialogue window)

For some reason even in text games, developers rarely use descriptions of that sort. Maybe it's because amount of text would be just too large, and "non-reading" people won't appreciate book-like dialogues.

 

[Lancehead]

No, the point was that you can't always express within the quotes the intent and the manner in which it's said unless it's written in a blunt manner which defeats the purpose you were rooting for in the first place.

 

[Shadenuat]

This problem is overrated and overblown. Most lines in games are in general investigative or blunt, because they follow set of mechanics (like take/reject a quest). So you don't even need many complex lines, if only for fluff reasons of making a pretty conversation. Only a few, like PST, KOTOR 2 or MotB actually try to go deep enough into relationship with characters, and they did well enough without colored lines. Just look at how Jedi Exile is written.
The amount of branching in dialogue and relationship trees is not that high, and designer can add only so many variables of 1s and 0s before going insane. Intent and manner matter rarely, if matter at all. It's actions in game world which change characters.
A good writer, I am sure, can express most of what he needs in a line. That's because we do not think just in words and sentences, we are thinking with context in mind. It's better to use both speech and context to express something, than just exposition.

And tags easily can defeat purpose of line too. Imagine you are reading a book, and a character is trying to make a joke. And instead of reading it and "getting" (because you've read the book, you know characters and the setting) it and laughing, you first read "[Joke]" before it.
Same with complex things like, say, sarcasm (which I myself often don't get). It's a lot better to somehow make player know that he is speaking sarcastically because of context, than by placing "[Sarcasm]" tag near it.

And let's not forget you can always quickload.

Really, I am Russian, and played all these text-heavy RPGs in english when they came out, and I never experienced a problem that I said something I didn't want to say. Unless we count Dragon Age 2 and shit.
I can go on forever about this stuff, but I already said ten times more somewhere at Obsidian forums, and I am kinda tired of it. If you want, you can be anal about any line, take anything out of context and question it, but truth is, in a good written game, transparency is rarely a problem. It just doesn't matter much, unless you are as crazy as MCA in his Arcanum LP. "I don't want to be snarky now, even if I 100% know only thing which matters is if I take quest or not".

(And if you actually want to create game where intent and tone of line matter so much it changes gameplay, tags are crude, ugly way to do that and won't even fit in such a complex game; you'll want to use real descriptions for that to make it actually look elegant and important).

 

[Lancehead]

(And if you actually want to create game where intent and tone of line matter so much it changes gameplay, tags are crude, ugly way to do that and won't even fit in such a complex game; you'll want to use real descriptions for that to make it actually look elegant and important).

And that's exactly what I said two posts back. Well, except I used "simple". And whether they'll fit such a game, if such things are systematized, I don't see why not.

 

[Shadenuat]

Well we agree on something then.