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Game News Greyhawk: Temple of Elemental Evil Interview at HomeLanFed

Mistress

Liturgist
Joined
Oct 22, 2002
Messages
341
Location
UK
Tags: Temple of Elemental Evil; Tim Cain; Troika Games

<a href="http://www.homelanfed.com">HomeLanFed</a> have posted an <a href="http://www.homelanfed.com/index.php?id=11357">interview</a> with <b>Tim Cain</b> of <a href="http://www.troikagames.com">Troika</a> about the upcoming title, Greyhawk: Temple of Elemental Evil.
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Here's a couple of tasters:
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<blockquote>HomeLAN - What are some of the difficulties in adapting this module to make it a fun and deep PC title?
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Tim Cain - At its heart, ToEE seems to be a standard dungeon crawl. But when you read it carefully, you realize that many of the NPC's have substantial histories, with explanations on why they came to the area and what they do there. Our job was to convert these hundreds of NPC stories into rich dialogs and quests, while keeping a strong storyline to carry the player character's through the main plot. In many ways, using 3E rules helped a lot, since we used the skills and feats as a guideline for converting the module. For example, we have the skill Sense MOtive, so we had to identify every NPC who would try to lie to the player and write their dialogs with checks against that skill, including determining the results of you exposing their lies. These myriad skill, feat and class ability checks make for very deep game play.
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HomeLAN - How will combat be handled in the game?
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Tim Cain - We are keeping our D&D 3E combat turn-based, as it was meant to be. We are following the combat rules very closely, so characters get their turns in initiative-order and pick which actions they want to take on their turn. We are supporting the 3E rules for moving, for attacks of opportunity, for combat feats like Cleave and Whirlwhind Attack, etc. Basically, if you know the D&D 3E rules, you will have nothing new to learn in our game.</blockquote>
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Spotted over at <a href="http://www.rpgdot.com">RPGDot</a>
 

Crazy Tuvok

Liturgist
Joined
Dec 17, 2002
Messages
429
"We will be the first D&D 3E game to support the item creation feats, from scribing scrolls and brewing potions to crafting magic armors, weapons, and magic items. Players can finally invest their hard-earned gold into making the magic items that they want to have, and not just settle for those they have stumbled across in their adventures"

sweet!

"Not every situation should be solved by brute force. Side quests provide a nice way to gain extra experience points and treasure without necessarily resorting to combat."

Tim Cain is fucking beautiful.

"You may want to clear your summer vacation plans now. :)"

If I had a life I would; luckily I don't. Altho I could live without another DnD game, at least this one sounds like it is going to be done right. But of course, every game Tim has made that I have played are truly wonderful - flaws and all.
 

triCritical

Erudite
Joined
Jan 8, 2003
Messages
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Location
Colorado Springs
THIS SUMMER! :shock:

Engine details, finally. Looks like 2D prerendered background, with 3D avatars kind of like LH.

Can't wait. I am glad its coming out this summer, but I sure hope they had enough time.
 
Joined
Nov 5, 2002
Messages
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The Lone Star State
Whoa, they're doing item creation feats, I don't remember seeing that before. Depending on the power level allowed, solos might have a chance, after all. If they also soak up experience like in the rules, it wouldn't make the level cap hurt so much. At the very least it should give you a chance to use up excess gold, which most CRPG's have a problem with.

I'm surprised they're already going to start QA. I didn't know things were so far along. Another lesson they learned from Arcanum, I guess. Wonder if this means all the "if we have time for it" stuff got dropped.
 

Crazy Tuvok

Liturgist
Joined
Dec 17, 2002
Messages
429
triCritical said:
THIS SUMMER! :shock:
Can't wait. I am glad its coming out this summer, but I sure hope they had enough time.

Yeah I am getting more excited by this game every interview I read - now if only the Troika website would freaking update.

As far as the time being enough - from what I have read it sounds like they had the engine all done and that the development time has been spent on making the game in which case they have had quite a bit of time to work on it.

Moreover the stuff that is confirmed to be in the game is pretty damn impressive. The "if we have time stuff" would be great but the stuff that Tim has said is in the game - dialogue options, viable evil PC, multiple endings *and* beginnings, NPC interaction, deepening of the world, Sense Motive feat (frelling cool), turn based (yah!!) etc - already makes it the best DnD game since the gold box series.

Now the thing has to sell like mad so Troika can do whatever they want without (too much) publisher/marketing interference, which afaic was the biggest problem with Arcanum.
 

Spazmo

Erudite
Joined
Nov 9, 2002
Messages
5,752
Location
Monkey Island
Interesting stuff there. It's great to see that the game is on track. And I suppose they'll add stuff likes subraces during the beta, which is when a lot of fine-tuning goes on. I doubt they're anywhere near feature lock yet.

But I want some screens, dammit!
 

Saint_Proverbius

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Behind you.
triCritical said:
Engine details, finally. Looks like 2D prerendered background, with 3D avatars kind of like LH.

No, more like Pool of Radiance 2. Lionheart's engine renders models in to sprites in real time, much the way a raytracing program does. ToEE will be using hardware 3D, so you'll be seeing them as typical polygon models.
 

triCritical

Erudite
Joined
Jan 8, 2003
Messages
1,329
Location
Colorado Springs
Saint_Proverbius said:
No, more like Pool of Radiance 2. Lionheart's engine renders models in to sprites in real time, much the way a raytracing program does. ToEE will be using hardware 3D, so you'll be seeing them as typical polygon models.

Oops, thanks for the correction.
 

Grimhazzod

Novice
Joined
Jan 22, 2003
Messages
1
Location
Virgina Beach, Va. (USA)
Fear of Troika's efforts turning into a another D&D flop

Like many others, I too love this old classic beyond measure. Like an old war veteran I have fond memories of those sessions and moments surviving ToEE many years ago that shall be endeared and carried with me the rest of my life. However, I can not merely just jump on the bandwagon and assume that anything having to do with this title will be alright. Many whom revere it such as I will agree a great deal of care and concern is necessary in regards to "THIS" particular title.

I fear any attempt made to reproduce this classic beloved epic story will only serve to do more harm than good, unless great care is taken. To date, there are many in this genre's community whom will agree that attempts to retell the saga have fallen extremely short of their endevor and have only brought an injustice to the original literary work ontop of that which has already been published!

For an example of what I speak of, read the title, The Temple of Elemental Evil by Thomas M. Reid, which is the most recently released book set in Greyhawk. It touches bases with this all time favorite adventures from the past. The book, in fact, was written rather well and is a good read. However, I found the book a bit short for my taste considering the particular subject matter and his characters intriguing, though longing for growth.

For many of us old timers whom remember this place as being the most vile location on the prime material plane this side of the nine hells and various layers of the abyss, they will find the authors telling to be overall slightly inadequate if not grossly negligent depending upon their history experience with this much beloved title. Although, I will add that the author does a fine job telling "his version" of the tale. His villains are most assuredly evil and his heroes are likewise good, but overall I felt the tale should have been higher on the epic scale for this particular saga.

Overall, any attempt to reproduce this title should focus on the fact that The Temple of Elemental Evil; as in the original title, should burn it's very existence into anyone's memory to have experienced it. Most of the "old school" DM's would agree that have actually ran the module, the original literary work was left somewhat open ended for the Game Referee to adlib after reading between the lines. Considering the fact that were dealing with incarnations manifested from hell, the title well deserves an "R" rating for a mature audience of readers whom can handle opulent amounts of the gross carnage with death and destruction upon an epic scale. I feel there was a lack of such tragedy, death and destruction for the heroes to overcome such a historical vile place.

Unless an auther comes along to take all theses things into consideration and do the title justice, any attempt at this work will fail to capture even the smallest amount of satisfaction from this titles original audience.
 

Saint_Proverbius

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That kind of sounds like the Vault-Tec Vault in Fallout, that had been corrupted by the Master, only on a larger scale. It was fairly interesting to see what the Master had done to a formerly pristine vault. The walls, floor, and ceiling were literally covered with his amorphic, groteque form.
 

TimCain

Obsidian Entertainment
Developer
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Dec 6, 2002
Messages
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Location
Irvine, CA
Grimhazzod, all I can say is that I will do my best to make a great game worthy of the name and license.
 

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