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Editorial RPG Codex Report: Gamescom 2015 - The Technomancer, The White March and Kingdom Come

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
Tags: Adam Brennecke; Gamescom 2015; J.E. Sawyer; Kingdom Come: Deliverance; Obsidian Entertainment; Paradox Interactive; Pillars of Eternity; Pillars of Eternity: The White March; Spiders; The Technomancer; Warhorse Studios

Attending the Gamescom trade fair in Cologne, Germany has become an annual tradition on the RPG Codex. In 2013, our representatives were staff members Grunker and JarlFrank, whose all-expenses-paid invitation by Ubisoft kicked off the tradition. Last year it was Darth Roxor, who accurately predicted his own reception of Pillars of Eternity, but not so much for Blackguards 2. This year, the honor has fallen to elite collaborator Bubbles, who has come a long way since his early days as a fake Realms of Arkania HD fanboy, joined once again by lovable administrator JarlFrank.

With a full complement of German efficiency this time around, this year's Gamescom coverage has turned out to be our most extensive yet. As such, our report will be divided into several parts. In the first part, Bubbles and JarlFrank share their impressions of The Technomancer, the latest offering from the curiously omnipresent French console RPG house Spiders, Pillars of Eternity: The White March - Part 1, Obsidian Entertainment's soon-to-be-released expansion pack for the Codex's top-reviewed game, and Kingdom Come: Deliverance, the authentic medieval RPG and contemporary culture war totem from Daniel Vavra's Warhorse Studios. Have a snippet:

Paradox had no presence in the business area of the fair, instead electing to hold all their meetings in the public area. I had assumed that the highly exclusive "trade visitor only day" would let us take a sedate stroll through clean, bright halls full of business people in smart suits, just like the organizers had promoted it on the website. Unfortunately, I had overlooked a crucial piece of information, buried in the fine print: "The organizers may grant special access to select members of the public." As soon as we stepped past the fortified barricades of the trade area, we ran into a yelping teenage boy who was jumping up and down with a "Free Fucks - Gay 4 Pay" sign in his hands. The halls were throbbing with select members of the cosplaying public, who shared with us their deep appreciation of Final Fantasy XII, Mad Max: The Game, and the brave resistance fighters from Homefront. More than a hundred people were standing in line at the Fallout 4 cinema to see the latest trailer and take a picture with PipBoy. I did not understand any of the things I was seeing, but I knew that I hated it all.

I could barely talk to JarlFrank through the din. I looked at the publisher's instructions again: "Paradox Interactive will be in Hall 9.1, at Booth A053. The actual demos will be given in private booths located at the end of the hall, following the aisle from our booth, outside the hall facing the hotel Dorint An der Messe Koln. " We flittered through hall 9.1 like carrier pigeons flying over a giant magnet, bouncing from wall to wall and looking out the exits in a futile attempt to figure out which side of a windowless hall was facing the hotel Dorint. Finally we turned around and asked one of the nameless interns at the Paradox booth, who told us to take the southwest exit and turn straight left. They might have just written that in the invitation to begin with. We staggered to the exit, half deaf and mentally scarred.

The Paradox booths were housed in a large white block made of sheet metal sitting on stilts above the convention grounds, so that all visitors might bask in its majesty. Unfortunately, that also meant stepping outside into the blazing sun, which our delicate German temperaments could not withstand for long. We resolved to flee to safety as soon as humanly possible. The greeters at the entance were busy with another pair of visitors, so we swiftly snuck in behind their backs and climbed up the great set of stairs to the top. Up there, we were immediately caught by a bunch of guys sitting in a cramped room resembling a cargo container, who questioned us on our credentials. Thankfully, they were just PR people, so we verbally identified ourselves as serious journalists and were promptly presented with cooled bottles of water. Now we had to wait for "the Pillars of Eternity guys", who were "just coming from dinner".

We still didn't know who exactly we were meeting, so it was pointless to speculate about the wonders that might await us. Instead we struck up a conversation with another attendee, a sweet guy from Munich whose company made children's games. He had a personal interest in Hearts of Iron 4, and had decided to come visit the devs in his spare time. He also, inexcplicably, thought that we were Dutch. He seemed an innocent man with an untarnished soul, but we eventually got to talking about hardcore turn based games, the word "grognards" was mentioned, and before he knew it, we'd exchanged business cards (ours was just a handwritten scribble of our front page address - maybe we should do a community contest for a proper Codex Calling Card). In retrospect, I feel rather bad about sending any mentally stable person to the Codex front page, so I want to mention his company (Studio 100 Media) here to give him some exposure in recompense. He would ultimately prove to be the most interesting person we'd meet during our stay at Paradox.


Read the full article: RPG Codex Report: Gamescom 2015, Part One - The Technomancer, The White March and Kingdom Come
 

Athelas

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Bubbles: Most of the Technomancer presentation was handled by Spiders's CEO Jehanne Rousseau, who had taken on the executive-level task of explaining how a studio with a history of making half-baked low budget games could possibly pull off a complex hardcore RPG full of meaningful choices and consequences. Rousseau was the only female presenter I would meet at Gamescom; this seeming career imbalance was alleviated by the fact that most of the receptionists and trash collectors I saw were women.
:lol:
 

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
Now you see what I meant by this:

Our own intrepid Gamescom agents also had a look at The White March yesterday, and they came away with positive impressions - of the game, at least. More on that later.

Although in the report, Bubbles doesn't actually say much about why he thought the game looked better. That's something he told us privately; maybe he can explain in this thread.

I'm sure things would have gone better if badler had been there.
 

VentilatorOfDoom

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Of course, as an industry professional I was determined not to let myself get fooled by her pleasant words; the danger of a pop-a-mole action developer trying to rope in the old school crowd by paying lip service to hardcore elements is all too real in today's industry. So when the developers opened the floor to audience questions (and, as usual, the non-Codex attendees mostly twiddled their thumbs and waited for the gift bags to be handed out), I decided to spring a quickly improvised bullshit detector on them.

I asked: “It's strange to see something as old-fashioned as social skills in a modern RPG - don't they restrict the amount of choices for players who don't have the right skills? What made you decide for this option, as opposed to putting in minigames -- or just making all dialogue open to everybody, so we can all enjoy the game?”

The other presenter, who for most of the presentation had been dead silent, suddenly lurched forward, his eyes bulging out of their sockets, aflame with the fires of primal hatred. “No! We do not have minigames! No minigames! We don't do that! We have no minigames!” I shifted uncomfortably under his unrelenting gaze. Thankfully the CEO had understood my question a little better and intervened before anybody came to harm.
Priceless :)
 
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Bubbles

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Although in the report, Bubbles doesn't actually say much about why he thought the game looked better. That's something he told us privately; maybe he can explain in this thread.

Well, seeing the combat demo'd on Normal, in slow mode, with frequent pauses and a lot of auto attacking made it look dull beyond mortal comprehension. However, if playing through battles yourself is still as tolerable as it was in the base game, then the enemy AI tweaks and new abilities should make things more fun. In theory.
 
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felipepepe

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The gameplay itself consisted entirely of following linear corridors and killing enemies. Almost no dialogues at all, only combat. While the devs talked about choices and consequences and factions and multiple ways to solve quests, the screen showed a typical action brawler.
the game's combat skill screen looked uncannily like a Witcher 2 rip-off (with three trees for the weapon styles of blade+shield, blade+gun, and staff, and a fourth tree devoted to Technomancer abilities)
Sounds like every Spiders RPG ever. Mars: War Logs had some of the worst level design in history, with just linear corridors & copy-pasted enemies. Plus, you only had one weapon the entire game. Bound by Flame wasn't so bad, though it felt like a low-budget grimdark BioWare game, but the combat was still boring as hell. Can't believe they are trying the same shitty combat AGAIN.
 

Cowboy Moment

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I have to say, the tone of Bubbles writing and his slightly trolly behaviour (liked the MCA remark in particular) is how I always imagined ideal Codexian reporting to be. Well done bro. Have a real brofist for your efforts :bro:.

Looking forward to the next installment of this grand saga.
 

VladimirK

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I don't know whose style Bubbles is imitating, but it's amazing.

We had decided to visit the booth incognito to get an undiluted impression of the typical PoE presentation, but by now we had started to aggressively mention our site's obsession with PoE and the many, many reviews we had published. Eventually, Adam asked where we came from. We said "we are from the RPG Codex". He said "ah, the Codex." There was nothing more to talk about. Suddenly, Jarl found himself gripped by the kind of cruel and mischievous impulse that sometimes asserts itself in the deepest recesses of our psyche. "Let's take a picture!" he said. The men from Obsidian inched towards the PR guy, who had been sitting in the darkest corner of the room, hidden from human eyes. "Do we still have time for this?" one of them asked, his voice cracking as if under an impossible strain. "Yeah, sure," said the PR guy.
 
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Lhynn

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Sounds like every Spiders RPG ever. Mars: War Logs had some of the worst level design in history, with just linear corridors & copy-pasted enemies. Plus, you only had one weapon the entire game. Bound by Flame wasn't so bad, though it felt like a low-budget grimdark BioWare game, but the combat was still boring as hell. Can't believe they are trying the same shitty combat AGAIN.
The combat in bound by flame wasnt bad, tricky enemies that had to be overcome with player skill for the most part, as a nice challenge curve that you dont get to see too often in rpgs, where the difficulty stays the same till around the end, where it spikes (that final boss was complete bullshit), thanks to new enemy types constantly being introduced up and some decent encounter design.
I wonder why he called them popamole, you dont really pop moles in any of their games.

Not sure about this new game of theirs tho, war logs was like half the game it promised to be and the writing wasnt good either.
 
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Bubbles

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Sounds like every Spiders RPG ever. Mars: War Logs had some of the worst level design in history, with just linear corridors & copy-pasted enemies. Plus, you only had one weapon the entire game. Bound by Flame wasn't so bad, though it felt like a low-budget grimdark BioWare game, but the combat was still boring as hell. Can't believe they are trying the same shitty combat AGAIN.

I'm not a fan of action combat either; my enthusiasm is only based on the talk of an increased budget and their strong commitment to c&c and social skills. Although I ended up seeing quite a few RPGs with even worse combat later on...

I wonder why he called them popamole, you dont really pop moles in any of their games.

I remember having long discussions about the precise meaning of "pop-a-mole" before, but let's just skip them. To me, it signifies simplistic, samey looking combat without any apparant challenge, and that was fully on display during the presentation.
 
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Ludo Lense

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Considering their past achievements I am completely immune to Spiders hype. Their games are sub-par on every front (mars has a somewhat interesting setting that is not used appropriately). Make a good game or go away, I don't care about your trailer.

IE games were never fun to look at. They make horrible let's play material (Darklands too for that matter +M). I feel sorry for the Obsidian guys.

Ouch. The "take a look at our revolutionary reactionary A.I." shtick has never worked out well and gives me bad vibes. Well at least it looks purdy. Hopefully it turns out good.
 

Cazzeris

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I suppose the next parts will be written exclusively by Bubbles. If so: :incline:

Definitely looking forward to enjoy more of this subtly humorous (and depressing) writing.
 
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Excidium II

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bubbles said:
The other presenter, who for most of the presentation had been dead silent, suddenly lurched forward, his eyes bulging out of their sockets, aflame with the fires of primal hatred. “No! We do not have minigames! No minigames! We don't do that! We have no minigames!” I shifted uncomfortably under his unrelenting gaze. Thankfully the CEO had understood my question a little better and intervened before anybody came to harm. “We don't have minigames because we come from a pen&paper background” she explained. “That's what we know and that's what we like – lots of character stats, not just player skill.” Well, who can argue with that?

I sensed the opportunity for another question: "List or grid based inventory?" "List based." At least they gave a straight answer.
For euro shovelware devs, those guys seem to get it. :thumbsup:
 
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Bubbles

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I suppose the next parts will be written exclusively by Bubbles. If so: :incline:

Not so. However, I tend to be a lot more wordy than JarlFrank, so it may occasionally appear that way. Going with two people was very appropriate for that day, since we could do a multiplayer session from two perspectives (very rare scoop, this), and later had a two-on-two that would have overwhelmed any single man.
 

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