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Shadowrun Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Piranha Bytes are about that size (more like 20, at least according to their website)

I find this hard to believe
Yet it is true.
I had some lectures from some PB devs years ago (as a dev trainee, good times...) and they definitely were a medium sized studio back then.
And over the last years, this hasn't changed. They do not follow a grow-as-much-as-you-can philosophy. Instead, they have found their favored size to operate at and try to keep that, only replacing people that left.

But maybe it is a bit unfair to compare a team that works together since over a decade to one of the same size that has just formed.

20 isn't medium-sized, it's small. inXile is bigger than that. I find it hard to believe you could make an open world-ish console game with that size. MAYBE in the Xbox/PS2 era.
 

thesheeep

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Codex 2012 Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Torment: Tides of Numenera Codex USB, 2014 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Bubbles In Memoria A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Naaah. It is entirely possible if you have the right people.
And PB staying medium sized (or small or whatever you want to call it) allows them to recruit the right people for every single position. Working at PB pretty much means you've got some serious skills in the (rather small and incestuous) German dev scene. At least for programmers.
 

Crooked Bee

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Codex 2013 Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire MCA Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
20 isn't medium-sized, it's small. inXile is bigger than that. I find it hard to believe you could make an open world-ish console game with that size. MAYBE in the Xbox/PS2 era.

I just googled it and the 20-30 figure is true, but it doesn't seem to include interns or contractors (link):

- Wie groß ist nun das Team?

Ich müsste demnächst mal nachzählen. Aber ich denke eine Zahl zwischen 20 - 30 Leuten ist immer im Studio. Mal mehr, mal weniger :). Wir sind nach wie vor ein kleines Team


So, "between 20 - 30 people are always [i.e. the core] part of the studio. Sometimes more, sometimes less. :) We are still (as before) a small team." This is from February this year.
 

Roguey

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Guize you know you can see who worked on what right here http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/shadowrun-returns/details

The majority of the team was art of course. All the environment assets were made by contractors or interns (who were likely paid little or nothing at all). There's no designer or programmer bloat unless six programmers is too many for this kind of project.
 
Self-Ejected

Excidium

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I never used it but I believe the NWN Editor is far more in-depth. I don't think you can really compare...
 

Roguey

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You get what you give. NWN had 8 people dedicated to tools in addition to their other programmers.
 

almondblight

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I wonder how many of those 35 were writers making a quick buck:

We intend to follow a braided anthology structure for our story. Jordan, his partner Mitch Gitelman and Mike Mulvihill, who led Shadowrun game development at FASA Corp. will craft and structure the meta-story, then supply key information for a group of writers to weave into their own short stories, which we'll then use as the basis for our missions. To ensure an authentic tone, we'll incorporate the storytelling skills of many Shadowrun authors and designers who've been carrying the flame over the last 23 years such as:

  • Michael A. Stackpole
  • Mike Mulvihill
  • Tom Dowd
  • Malik Toms
  • Mel Odom
  • Jason Hardy
  • Stephen Kenson
The result should be an overall narrative that is layered, textured, and satisfying.

Anyway, it seems like HBS is a mix of pretty skilled and incompetent people. They managed to make a decent and good looking isometric RPG with a level editor in 15 months. On the other hand, the lack of a save system was idiotic (this is the only development team I can remember complaining about how a save system is too difficult), designing for mobiles hurt the game (flashing icons for any person/thing you can interact with makes interactive environments a mess), and they managed to make their OC more linear than even the mods that were out prerelease. Seriously, the OC is the only SRR campaign I've played (other than single-room maps) where if you go through a door you can't go back out.

So yeah, they clearly have some talent, but they also clearly have some idiots calling the shots. It's not surprising - Strikefleet Omega was supposed to be a good game that people were initially pissed about because they micro-transactioned it to death. I'm just curious to see whether HBS shifts more to the talented side or more to the idiot side as things go on.
 

Roguey

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That "braided anthology" thing never happened. Instead, some of those authors just contributed short stories to a book. Stackpole was noticeably absent; that guy seems to have a habit of backing out of things.
 

almondblight

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So they hired the writers just to get them to write a book for a few hundred higher tier backers?
 

Zetor

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The book does read like it was intended to follow the plotline closely (mostly by fleshing out sideplots, minor characters, etc). Problem is, all of those stories were clearly written during preproduction, and the SRR OC's story was significantly changed between that and release, so a lot of the anthology just hangs there.

For example, I can recall at least two of the longer stories in the book that explored the entire elf / Tir plot. That plot revolved around an elf gang leader called Green Lucifer -- you can see his icon in the editor, but he's been completely cut from the OC. Another example is the Baron Samedi business: he just acts as a glorified deus-ex-machina questgiver in the game, but he actually has a fairly deep backstory that's intertwined with the Telestrians' in the book. A lot of the other stories in the book (like the 2-3 shadowruns) were also clearly intended to be side missions for the player, but they were probably scrapped at one point during development.

That said, the book itself is actually pretty decent (as far as SR short stories go, anyway) -- I only recall 3-4 total duds along with a few competently-written stories that left me cold, and quite a few that were really interesting / enriched the game's backstory, provided you read them after you finished the OC.

e: I saw a hardcover version of the anthology on amazon, and I seem to remember them saying they'd put it up for download at drivethrurpg.com or something, but I can't find it there...
 
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TOUGH GUY

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Hey folks, are there any user made missions or campaigns that are worth playing? Preferably the latter, something that won't be over in two hours, y'know.
 

Zetor

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The campaigns that seem to be highly-rated and/or talked about are From the Shadows Run, Shadowrun Unlimited, Nightmare Harvest, Stitch in Time, and the Antumbra trilogy (was completed just a few weeks ago). I have yet to play any of them though because :effort:
 

Backstabber

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Shadowrun Unlimited isn't anywhere near finished yet, though, the story kind of ends abruptly. So far, my favourite campaigns are A Stitch in Time and the Antumbra series.
 

Agesilaus

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Grab the Codex by the pussy Codex USB, 2014 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I'm playing it on PC and it feels like I'm on rails. I mean, I get to pick the order I do jobs or whatever, but it never feels like I can escape or put to one side the main, "get 50 grand to give to the lady with the information", plot line. I also feel like I'm being railroaded into certain positions and politics. I don't hate the radioactive ghost dragon, I don't hate the ork with the skin grafts, I don't care about whatever stupid anarchist suburb I live in, that's not my choice or position; why is the game forcing me in to it?

Is the game going to open up soon and let me try to get a full time job as a security officer at a corporation, or team up with the dragon or whatever? Or is this another shit RPG from some myopic game designers? May as well play a first person shooter at this rate, it would be quicker.
 

Commissar Draco

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Insert Title Here Strap Yourselves In Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Divinity: Original Sin 2
I'm playing it on PC and it feels like I'm on rails. I mean, I get to pick the order I do jobs or whatever, but it never feels like I can escape or put to one side the main, "get 50 grand to give to the lady with the information", plot line. I also feel like I'm being railroaded into certain positions and politics. I don't hate the radioactive ghost dragon, I don't hate the ork with the skin grafts, I don't care about whatever stupid anarchist suburb I live in, that's not my choice or position; why is the game forcing me in to it?

Is the game going to open up soon and let me try to get a full time job as a security officer at a corporation, or team up with the dragon or whatever? Or is this another shit RPG from some myopic game designers? May as well play a first person shooter at this rate, it would be quicker.

And this is why I left it after trying 3 times; at least in OC you got Phantom Phat loot to pursue and then Vendetta against the Assasins as quest; here just some inbreed anarchists I couldnot care to care about; would rather play :obviously: Fallouts for 100th time than this.
 

dryan

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I'm playing it on PC and it feels like I'm on rails. I mean, I get to pick the order I do jobs or whatever, but it never feels like I can escape or put to one side the main, "get 50 grand to give to the lady with the information", plot line. I also feel like I'm being railroaded into certain positions and politics. I don't hate the radioactive ghost dragon, I don't hate the ork with the skin grafts, I don't care about whatever stupid anarchist suburb I live in, that's not my choice or position; why is the game forcing me in to it?

Is the game going to open up soon and let me try to get a full time job as a security officer at a corporation, or team up with the dragon or whatever? Or is this another shit RPG from some myopic game designers? May as well play a first person shooter at this rate, it would be quicker.
Try Skyrim.
 

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