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KickStarter Unrest: An Unconventional RPG set in Ancient India

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Cipher
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Oct 21, 2012
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I agree, it's pretty stupid to see modern doctrines like gender equality, gay emancipation and shit in historical setting IMO.
The people should act like they normally did in that age, in either intellectual and moral aspects.
I want to see Vikings pillage and rape someone's wife and do what Vikings did in the past, not today's version of angry dwarves with horned helmets and shit.

That's why Darklands is so unique, immersive and enjoyable, while Titan Quest despite of its historical theme is pretty ridiculous and artificial IMO.
But I fear no company today will invest their men and money to create such a precise, believable history, so all we get now will be Hollywood version of the past.

And Why will the Indians mad? Aren't they should be glad that their culture is appreciated this way?
I'll surely be happy if my culture is made into proper CRPG IMO.


Darklands is a great game, but then I also enjoyed Titan Quest despite its plastic portrayal of antiquity and clickfest nature. I'm not wizened to the ways of the RPG tbf.

Indians get mad because post Muslim and Christian domination their mindset has changed quite a bit, the past doesn't gel with what commoners want it to be and they get irrationally upset. Take the idea of scripture - ancient Indians are pretty chill, certainly didn't treat things like the Ramayana as scripture. Look at the recentish riots and kerfuffle though over the mention that Rama eats meat. Its in the fucking text! Quite clear! Same in the Rig Veda! Yet they were going ape shit. Idiots probably never even read the texts they're "defiling".

So set the Guptas in their proper chronology, have a character eat meat, have gods behave like mental bastards and you'll face endless protests.

BUT imagine this! Imagine a world where your background (Caste = varna) determines your job/professions, where you have to tow the line between Buddhist and Vedic kings, with invaders on the extreme north western border, with forests teeming with naga and veetala and picasa and rakshashas and other beasts. You could be a legendary warrior, or a noted brahmin who can slay demons with devastra mantras and try to sway the minds of kings....you could even try to be a man like Kautilya and be the mind behind the throne of an emperor etc. There's a lot of material in ancient India to be exploited.


Just...nowadays you don't even need to learn Sanskrit since so much stuff is in translation, you can easily get a good feel for the period.


Indian history hipster detected.


Not at all, not even my main area and I can happily play Rome:TW or Titan Quest etc without bitching about accuracy. I don't care, its a game, its only when they claim research and accuracy I get annoyed. Obviously this is irrelevant to this game, I was just musing how much nicer it could have been.
 

stony3k

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Strap Yourselves In
I would love to see a more complex game set in ancient India, but not sure if a small Indie team can do it justice. I'm just glad we're getting this instead of the same old D&D stuff (too many developers like to play it safe)
 

laclongquan

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Bitches! Get this into your fucking mess of a mind: There's no Indian setting game.

Before you ask for something better, you must, you have to, you need to ask for something to exist first.

If they successfully make and release this game, that's more than enough for the first of its genre. A baby step in more than two decades of computer gaming.
 

Indranys

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Indians get mad because post Muslim and Christian domination their mindset has changed quite a bit, the past doesn't gel with what commoners want it to be and they get irrationally upset. Take the idea of scripture - ancient Indians are pretty chill, certainly didn't treat things like the Ramayana as scripture. Look at the recentish riots and kerfuffle though over the mention that Rama eats meat. Its in the fucking text! Quite clear! Same in the Rig Veda! Yet they were going ape shit. Idiots probably never even read the texts they're "defiling".

So set the Guptas in their proper chronology, have a character eat meat, have gods behave like mental bastards and you'll face endless protests.
Well, please chill up a bit mate.
They certainly have certain ideal which is sacred and related to their identity and pride as a nation, they did not go such secular transitions like Europe, Turkey etc did.
So the traditions are all they have, and of course the origins could be interpreted or understood differently from age to age.
I'm trying to feel and think like a common Indian folks instead of an foreign outsider as best as I could.
And yes some people are indeed blinded by their emotion and fanaticism, but IMO it is understandable if the most sacred thing in their lives (which is more valuable than their lives and everything in this world) is being disrespected, ridiculed.

IMO some people and nations will always have sacred things that will make them upset if it's violated.
It may come from their cultures, history, faith, etc.
These things could be religion, God, women, money, ideal, doctrine, or anything really.

As an Asian I can relate to them, and maybe understand them a bit eventhough their culture is alien to me.
That's all I can share mate. :salute:

Also, traditionally in many parts of Asia, comedy isn't an excuse to ridicule these sacred ones, so expect massive rages if someone draw Prophet Muhammad with dynamite turban, Gigolo Jesus, someone mom's as a whore or some shit.
I said it because I'm under impression that westerners can't understand this issue perfectly because in their world everything's OK for joke.
 

LESS T_T

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Codex 2014
:necro:

An update on combat system:

COMBAT IN RPGS: LET'S TRY SOMETHING NEW

Combat in videogames is a funny thing. Since direct physical conflict is simple, exciting, and translates universally, it's been one of the staples of nearly all genres of game since the medium's inception. There are plenty of genres where you do little but fight things. For every other genre, it's generally a question of whether you fight a lot or a little.

And it's kind of strange that we've decided that roleplaying games are one of the genres where a lot of fighting is expected--or even demanded. Because while there's nothing wrong with lots of fighting, there's also nothing wrong with not lots of fighting...which is something we almost never get.

For every minute RPG protagonists spend discussing current affairs with aristocrats, haggling over supplies, or trying to boink party members, they spend anywhere from twenty minutes to several hours hacking their way through hundreds of men, beasts, and monstrous creatures that all presumably wish their day had gone differently.

And sure--there's not a lot of wit in pointing this out. Obviously the higher volume of combat is a game abstraction, just like the inventory system doesn't really capture the sublime subtleties of keeping one's after-battle snacks in a different pouch from the harvested bloodpig gallbladders. It was never intended to be realistic. It's supposed to be fun. And while that's totally okay, what it simulates makes the player act and think in very specific ways that deserve analysis.

Let's try to look at personal combat from a realistic perspective for a second. Bear with me here, because I promise I have a more nuanced point than "this is how things work in teh real worlds" coming up here.

As a fun exercise, imagine you round a corner and see two people with swords trying to kill each other. You don't have any prior information, and for the sake of argument the anachronism doesn't really register with you. Also for the sake of argument, you know they're not high, drunk, or insane.

Let's examine what assumptions you can draw about this scenario from a glance:

  • This is dangerous. One of them or very possibly both of them are going to be killed. SO:
  • Each of them must think they've got a good chance at winning. If either of them thought their chances of losing were as low as 49%, they would have either avoided this fight or run away instantly. THEREFORE:
  • The actual odds of either party winning are probably in the ballpark of 50-50. Obviously one of them has a better assessment of their chances than the other, but reasonably speaking, if they're both still swinging away gamely a few seconds into the fight, they're about evenly matched.
These three very reasonable premises lead us to one conclusion: they've probably been in very few fights like this before. In fact, they've probably never done this before.People who get into lots of one-on-one fights that they have a fifty-fifty chance of winning don't last very long.

This is why premodern battles were generally fought in formations. There's not a lot of future in having your soldiers square off with enemy soldiers one at a time; pretty soon neither of you have any soldiers left. For a semi-illustrative videogame example of this, watch any professional RTS match and count the number of times players allow their units to just walk up to enemy units and slug it out. Any level of tactics is better than a crapshoot, and that's what balanced one-verus-one fights by definition are.

But there's one more conclusion you can draw about these two brave sword-swinging morons, and this is, I think, the one that should be extremely exciting to any roleplayer:

These two people must REALLY care about what they're fighting about.

Either whatever stake they're fighting over is extremely precious to them, or they really, really, REALLY hate the other guy. Because seriously, they could die here. One of them IS going to die here, and the physics of sharp heavy pieces of metal plus the resilience of human anatomy means there really is an excellent chance that BOTH of them are going to die. Think about how much you'd have to care about something to wade into that kind of fight over it.

Now say you round a corner and see sane, sober people going at it with swords...and it's a computer RPG. Here's what we know about this combat:

  • One of them is probably a protagonist and one of them is an enemy.
  • They're about equally matched. Otherwise it'd be twenty guys versus the protagonist. As it is, the protagonist is probably only slightly stronger than the enemy.
  • On average, the protagonist has done this dozens of times. Every couple of weeks, really. Why would he ever back down from a fight? He always wins them. Eventually.
  • They both think they've got a good chance of winning. Or not. The enemy might be obviously outmatched. The fight might not even being going well. Honestly, he might not even really care about what they're fighting about. But he was there, and the protagonist was there, and, well, it was fight times. What else was he gonna do? Talk his way out of it? Flee his way out of it? As for the hero, he thinks he has an excellent chance of winning. Because he does have an excellent chance of winning. Because he always wins. Eventually.
  • They must both...sort of...care about what they're fighting over. The enemy may have asked the protagonist for money and, upon not getting money, drawn his sword and attacked. Or the protagonist might be a member of a different faction. Or the protagonist might be an intruder who hasn't yet expressed hostile intentions. Or maybe the protagonist was in the neighborhood, and this enemy popped up who happened to be one of a larger enemy's friends, or financial supporters, or lovers, or political allies...or something. Really, anyone the protagonist wants to exterminate. "Exterminate" is a good word, because like killing cockroaches, there isn't any personal risk involved.
And of course, this is all meta. It's very possible for a game to make you treat these combats with a lot more respect than I'm implying is due. But they end up loading all of the work onto the characterizations, narrative, and context--none of the drama is emergent through the design. And I think it's time someone tried doing that.

This is what I'm getting at. With Unrest, we didn't want combat to be daily, normalized slugfests that you go through over and over with no meaningful consequence for failure. We wanted violence to be--as it would be for our characters--rare, avoidable, and very dangerous. Fighting shouldn't be the thing you do to see the next part of the game. It should be the thing you do only when you really care about something.

That's why combat only exists in some chapters. That's why all fights are one-on-one. That's why you'll always understand why whomever is attacking you is willing to risk their lives to kill you. And that's why, when you die in combat, the game is willing to recognize your character's death as a valid end-state for the chapter. Because we want the risk to be meaningful.

So that's what we're going for in Unrest. I'll be honest, this is probably the one feature of our game I'd most like to see catch on. I'm not saying it'd be right for, say, Skyrim, but I can't help but feel there's a lot of untapped potential in exploring violence with a higher degree of realism. Not "realistic" mechanics--just realistic consequences.
 

curry

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How did they manage to get that much gold without even showing any gameplay? And a year later still no screenshots. Smells like vaporware
 

Lyric Suite

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Take the idea of scripture - ancient Indians are pretty chill, certainly didn't treat things like the Ramayana as scripture.

The Ramayana is an epic, but the Baghdad Gita IS scripture, and so are the Upanishads and the Vedas in general. Seems to me like you are just imposing your retarded modern biases on a culture you obviously don't understand.
 

pyroary

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How did they manage to get that much gold without even showing any gameplay? And a year later still no screenshots. Smells like vaporware

Hi, I'm a developer on Unrest (hopefully this doesn't get me flamed/trolled/dronestriked). I have been silently watching the thread since the Kickstarter launched (rpgcodex's fearsome reputation made me hesitant to join in), but this comment made me sign up :)

Updated screenshots can be found here: http://pyrodactyl.com/#images
Gameplay footage is here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8vDbqwFrjwsCacSdZ_RKpg - there's an edited trailer and also monthly streams showing a bunch of areas from the game.

And since I'm here, you can ask me anything about the game if you'd like. Cheers!
 

V_K

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Well, since you're here, there's one thing I never got from your kickstarter campaign (maybe I wasn't paying enough attention): what kind of character system are you planning (if any)? The protagonists are all fixed, IIRC, but will we be able to customize and/or develope them and in what ways?
 

pyroary

Ubisoft Abu Dhabi
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Well, since you're here, there's one thing I never got from your kickstarter campaign (maybe I wasn't paying enough attention): what kind of character system are you planning (if any)? The protagonists are all fixed, IIRC, but will we be able to customize and/or develope them and in what ways?

You will play as 5 different protagonists in sequence - each character is fixed in terms of their appearance and starting social position (caste, occupation).

While playing as a character, you will be able to affect their personality and relationships with the people around them. There are also certain 'traits' (which are sort of a cross between perks in fallout and achievements) that can give you certain extra dialog options or new ways to interact with the environment. Your relationship with every NPC is tracked using a 3 value system (Friendship, Respect, Fear), which hopefully is more nuanced than the usual "0-enemies, 100-buddies" reputation measurement system: for an out-of-setting example, 2 knights in a duel are not friends but can still respect each other for being honorable opponents - and the less experienced one can fear their veteran opponent.
 

pyroary

Ubisoft Abu Dhabi
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So no experience levels, stats/skills etc?

No XP levels.

Stats exist, are different for each characters but they cannot be modified by picking up and equipping items (for eg. the mercenary character is faster, has a higher attack, more combat moves than the priest character).

I would say 'traits' occupy the same position as skills, because a majority of the game is conversation (with some environment manipulation), and traits allow different approaches and options. But if by skills you mean combat skills/daily blessings/etc, then the game doesn't have those.
 

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Cipher
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Take the idea of scripture - ancient Indians are pretty chill, certainly didn't treat things like the Ramayana as scripture.

The Ramayana is an epic, but the Baghdad Gita IS scripture, and so are the Upanishads and the Vedas in general. Seems to me like you are just imposing your retarded modern biases on a culture you obviously don't understand.

Throwing terms around can sometimes obfuscate more than help but, ok,: The Ramayana is itihasa not exactly epic. The BG is also itihasa. The BG as a separate entity only happened much, much, later and is in fact just an inset narrative in a larger "epic" - The Mahabharata - and was not originally given religious authority. In fact the two major epics are only held to have religious authority from around the early modern period onwards. Moreover that authority stems from the bhakti influenced vernacular movements, not Sanskriti, which ironically paints a picture of Rama many fundamental Hindus would be appalled to read about were they literate.

The Upanishads were explanatory texts, the very name themselves sort of hints at that. As for the Vedas, you can't really foist either a Western or a laterbutinfluencedbyjudeochristiantraditions viewpoint onto them to turn them into "scripture". The ancients would have referred to them as sruti (literally heard, via recitation) or smrti (remembered, traditional). Neither of which lends divine authority. Have you read the Vedas? They either form praise songs or give ritual details. Perhaps learn Sanskrit before you judge.
 

Doctor Sbaitso

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This reminds me in ways of The King of Dragon Pass. To pyroary, I suggest that the team play that excellent game. There are no action combat sequences to speak of, but combat encounters none the less are very compelling. Mostly everything happens in dialogue, with limited overworld exploration.

It is not really a "conventional RPG" but the excellent narrative approach and strong writing really immerse the player in a different time, place and culture. I think you might get some excellent ideas there that can help you in what you are making.
 

pyroary

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This reminds me in ways of The King of Dragon Pass. To pyroary, I suggest that the team play that excellent game. There are no action combat sequences to speak of, but combat encounters none the less are very compelling. Mostly everything happens in dialogue, with limited overworld exploration.

It is not really a "conventional RPG" but the excellent narrative approach and strong writing really immerse the player in a different time, place and culture. I think you might get some excellent ideas there that can help you in what you are making.

I've played the King of Dragon Pass, love that game! Unrest isn't based on that, but there is the common theme of long ranging consequences based on your decisions in both games (if that makes any sense).
 

pyroary

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Yeah, the game is content complete, now we're just polishing and doing bugfixing. Should be ready for launch on June (Friday the) 13th.
 

pyroary

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Update:

Because I don't really keep up with the news, I forgot that the old release date of Unrest was one day after E3 *kicks himself*. The new release date is June 26th so that the game isn't dead in the water on the release date itself.

Unrest has a Steam page now: http://store.steampowered.com/app/292400

There's also this short trailer to introduce the player characters:

 

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