Storm of Zehir 10 minute walkthrough video

[Warden]

Also, it doesn't have Bishop, so let's just see how long it takes Merilinda to make a mod that adds him.

She's already modding it as a random overland map encounter. (100% chance of appearance every 100 m)

 

[Durwyn]

Looks great... If writing, atmosphere and story will be on par with MoTB it's an instant buy for me.

It won't. They already said they wanted to go for a lighter, merrier expansion. I'm a cynic so I don't understand this move but undoubtedly Biowarian women will approve.

Yeah, and I heard so. I was thinking not about the depth but more about the quality. Being lighter and merrier doesn't prevents from keeping high quality atmosphere, story and writing.

 

[Annie Mitsoda]

No romances. I can promise you that. Not like I think they are icky-poo or stupid, but most romances in games are done with either all the subtlety of a WB drama (which make me want to take a belt sander to my eyeballs) or turned into a kind of uncomfortable "collectible" feature wherein you boff as many lasses as will raise their skirt for you (which, I know, in the Witcher is just about everyone the main character looks at twice).

I don't want to dump on the writing in other games - not only is it unseemly, I know writing romances is not easy in the LEAST. It's always a risk, and that it's become an expectation for most RPGs is kind of... unfair. It puts expectations on games that shouldn't have it, and makes it a "no shit" devalued feature on games that actually do choose to incorporate it.

While I'd love a chance to write a game relationship that got away from that and actually was fun and worthwhile, sadly SoZ is not the game for it. You want romance in games, you gotta make it a core feature, or it's not gonna get the shine and polish it needs to not come across as "gee we have been through so much [PLAYERNAME] let us now totally DO IT." Which may be funny here and there, but it's not something I can really go through with a straight face.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

To me, the best take on romance evar would be something like dialogue option 1. for Neeshka in the NWN2 OC in the Inner Sanctum.

And of course, Torment. But it never really had them in importance either.

 

[Annie Mitsoda]

Ion Flux: Yes. There was a Taxi Driver game. Almost. It was a bad idea. The team I was on tried REALLY REALLY hard to make it workable, and some parts were actually pretty cool, but it was a lesson to Majesco that if you buy a license and slap it on a game that is not always a guarantee of the big bucks. They did that to Jaws, too, and it reviewed about as well as a bag of dead cats.

I can say that as a game, it was a hell of a title to make my start in the industry on, as there is nothing quite like showing a game at E3 and waiting for a die-hard fan to emerge at any second screaming and ready to stab your eyes out (didn't happen, whew). I got to do a lot of tasks in a small and dedicated team, even if (as a writer) I kept having to tell the other designers NOT TO EVER MAKE THE ENEMIES SAY "YES I'M TALKING TO YOU" BECAUSE IT'S STUPID. I think they eventually started to do it on a bet about when I would snap.

Also it was my first experience (and thankfully LAST) of having my lines come out with horrible, HORRIBLE shitty VO. Being able to work with Margaret Tang on AP and Yutaka Maseba on SoZ was like a shining gift from the gods after that.

And in case you care, I have not been able to watch that movie to this day. I watched it CONSTANTLY to try and get the tone and cadence right for dialogue for the game. I don't think I can ever watch it again.

 

[Radisshu]

No romances. I can promise you that. Not like I think they are icky-poo or stupid, but most romances in games are done with either all the subtlety of a WB drama (which make me want to take a belt sander to my eyeballs) or turned into a kind of uncomfortable "collectible" feature wherein you boff as many lasses as will raise their skirt for you (which, I know, in the Witcher is just about everyone the main character looks at twice).

For some really great amateur writing, play the Bishop romance mod!

 

[Ion Flux]

I kept having to tell the other designers NOT TO EVER MAKE THE ENEMIES SAY "YES I'M TALKING TO YOU" BECAUSE IT'S STUPID. I think they eventually started to do it on a bet about when I would snap.

I lol'ed . Yeah, that's quite a first job. Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing your current project when it's done. Dino pets sound fun.

 

[DemonKing]

No romances. I can promise you that... It puts expectations on games that shouldn't have it, and makes it a "no shit" devalued feature on games that actually do choose to incorporate it.

That's my problem with Bioware's latest offerings since BG2 - romances have gone from a nice option to a dot-pointed feature. At least in the Witcher the "romances" were pretty explicitly kept as a mingame option even though I felt they were pretty tacky and didn't say much about who the developers thought their core audience was.

I've always thought that if I wanted to waste my time romancing annoying people then I could do it IRL - when I game I want to do stuff I can't achieve in normal life such as killing orcs, Nazis and terrorists by the hundreds and taking their stuff...

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Not to mention the Biowarian idea of romance is absolutely ridiculous. Yes, let the player act as your personal psychiatrist during all this immensily important world-saving, for I need to pour all my shallow angst to OH GOD I LOVE YOU SO MUCH BUT I SHOULDN'T.

 

[Jaesun]

No romances. I can promise you that. Not like I think they are icky-poo or stupid, but most romances in games are done with either all the subtlety of a WB drama (which make me want to take a belt sander to my eyeballs)...

Thank you Annie! I love you <3. In a gay man who loves how you think kind of way.

 

[Annie Mitsoda]

That's the most flattering kind of love ever! You like my brain and my sass, and don't let my lack of penis get you down. You're a rad kind of awesome, Jaesun

 

[Starwars]

You like my brain and my sass, and don't let my lack of penis get you down.

Lulz, this is sig material right there.

 

[Solohk]

You like my brain and my sass, and don't let my lack of penis get you down.

Lulz, this is sig material right there.

Perfect, I had been keeping my eye open for a lulzy quote.

 

[Hazelnut]

You like my brain and my sass

He's not alone. Look forward to seeing what you work on next. Oh, and welcome to the Codex.

 

[Annie Mitsoda]

Pleased to be here, and to be abusing my no-longer-relevant-to-the-company-in-question dev sig. /evilgrin/ I shall indeed keep the internets aware of my game development activities, because it is the internet, and it gives us all the comforting illusion that it is all about US. Ah, I love you so, the internets!

 

[Gay-Lussac]

Pleased to be here, and to be abusing my no-longer-relevant-to-the-company-in-question dev sig. /evilgrin/ I shall indeed keep the internets aware of my game development activities, because it is the internet, and it gives us all the comforting illusion that it is all about US. Ah, I love you so, the internets!

Im confused I thought you and Mitsoda had left Obsidian to start writing books.

 

[Annie Mitsoda]

We left, but our departure from the industry is only temporary. He's got a project in the works, as do I, but we're both made of the kind of crazy that assures we'll be making games again VERY soon. :twisted:

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

particularly being able to choose the party member you use in conversation

I'm not very impressed by this. It means you don't really have to worry about having skills on your character. That's one of the problem I have with party based CRPGs. The end result is lots of combat because that's the only way you can challenge a party. You don't really need to worry about making thiefy means of doing things because the party will have a thief typically, so you're left with combat. The party dialogue thing is just a continuation of this problem.

 

[Xi]

This looks promising. I hated how railed NWN2 felt. I also disliked that it didn't have much gaming charm. I always felt like it was a job just to play the game and never felt very impressed or concerned about what was going on.

The party system, the over land map(Which looks WAY more D&Dish), and just the improvements to the gaming interaction all look much better.

NWN2 was just a hollow game for me, but it may have been a worthwhile purchase if these expansions can build on the frame work of NWN2. Plus it seems like Obsidian has more leeway with the feature set of these expansions than they did with NWN2 originally.

I'm just glad that they aren't only adding a new story element on top of the same old game-play and features of NWN2 vanilla. It's nice to see the game-play and feature set grow.

 

[dagorkan]

particularly being able to choose the party member you use in conversation

I'm not very impressed by this. It means you don't really have to worry about having skills on your character. That's one of the problem I have with party based CRPGs. The end result is lots of combat because that's the only way you can challenge a party. You don't really need to worry about making thiefy means of doing things because the party will have a thief typically, so you're left with combat. The party dialogue thing is just a continuation of this problem.

Not really. ToEE (despite being an extremely combat heavy game) I think allowed any party member to contribute their skills and it still didn't mean you could do anything. If there are enough specialties and skill requirements you will never be able to cover all possibilities and that's where the strategic element comes in.

I think throwing lots of combat which is common in Party RPGs is just lazy design... and also, as I mention in my new thread there haven't been many Party RPGs recently. The games that are known for deep non-combat gameplay are all pretty new, and therefore are all solo character or pseudo-party (aka Bioware faggotry) main characters with 'followers'.

 

[dagorkan]

Overland map looks cartoonish.

Camera still annoying as hell.

Combat looks as shit as ever.

'Swashbucklers' I am pretty certain I remember already being in NWN2 original. Anyway Dex instead of Str to-hit is not new, I think there was even a special ability in ToEE which gave you that.

Also, how many projects are Obsidian developing? Alpha Protocol, Aliens "RPG", and this... seems a bit much, must have too much cash.

 

[Crichton]

Overland map looks cartoonish.

Camera still annoying as hell.

Combat looks as shit as ever.

'Swashbucklers' I am pretty certain I remember already being in NWN2 original. Anyway Dex instead of Str to-hit is not new, I think there was even a special ability in ToEE which gave you that.

Also, how many projects are Obsidian developing? Alpha Protocol, Aliens "RPG", and this... seems a bit much, must have too much cash.

I honestly don't know what you're trying to say here.

Overland Map- GFX whore? It's the same engine they use for any other area in NWN2.

Camera- Set to "Strategy Mode", hold down middle mouse button, move it wherever you want, give commands, unpause. How complicated is this?

Swashbucklers were not in NWN2, duh. This is why previews mention them as a new class. "Weapon Finesse", the feat that allows one to use dex instead of str to hit, has been in all the 3E D&D games, including ToEE and NWN2 (also NWN1 and IWD2).

 

[dagorkan]

I honestly don't know what you're trying to say here.

Overland Map- GFX whore? It's the same engine they use for any other area in NWN2.

I'm not complaining about texture shading or bump maps, it just looks like shit. I would prefer a simple 2D non-animated map than something that looks so annoying. To make it even more annoying it looks like they've also made it real-time.

Camera- Set to "Strategy Mode", hold down middle mouse button, move it wherever you want, give commands, unpause. How complicated is this?

My mouse doesn't have a middle mouse button, but of course I know about that view and am going to use it when I get MotB. I don't understand who would use the stupid default perspective and why they still have it as default and show off the game with it.

Swashbucklers were not in NWN2, duh. This is why previews mention them as a new class. "Weapon Finesse", the feat that allows one to use dex instead of str to hit, has been in all the 3E D&D games, including ToEE and NWN2 (also NWN1 and IWD2).

I know the preview mentioned this was a new feature. Obviously that's why I commented on it, because I'm certain there's a sub-class or something that fits the same description, might not be called "Swashbuckler" but a type of fighter that uses Dexterity.

 

[Jaime Lannister]

Why is a real-time overland map bad? What games use turn-based overland maps?

And the Swashbuckler was an auto-build for a fighter in NWN1 and 2.

 

[Forest Dweller]

You like my brain and my sass

He's not alone. Look forward to seeing what you work on next. Oh, and welcome to the Codex.

You missed her original introduction.