PC Gamer 2024 RPG Roundtable with Swen Vincke, Carrie Patel, Ted Peterson and others

[Infinitron]

https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-indu...2077-in-stars-and-time-and-the-elder-scrolls/

Our RPG roundtable returns with developers from Baldur's Gate 3, Avowed, Cyberpunk 2077, In Stars and Time, and The Elder Scrolls​

What makes a great RPG companion? How horny is too horny? We dive into these questions and many more in our podcast with some of the biggest names in RPGs.

For this week's special roundtable episode of the PC Gamer Chat Log, recorded at the 2024 Game Developers Conference, we gathered a party of adventurers and ventured forth into our second annual deep dive into making RPGs. Here's who you'll hear talking about wizards, lovable and hateable companions, and, yeah, a little game called Baldur's Gate 3:

• Swen Vincke, founder and director at Larian (Baldur's Gate 3)
• Carrie Patel, game director and senior narrative designer at Obsidian (Avowed)
• Sarah Gruemmer, acting lead quest designer at CD Projekt Red (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)
• Adrienne Bazir, founder and sole developer at insertdisc5 (In Stars and Time)
• Ted Peterson, co-founder Once Lost Games and former writer and designer at Bethesda (The Elder Scrolls 1-4)

Across an hour and 20 minutes, our RPG discussion includes a dissection of Baldur's Gate 3's approach to romance, as well as the immense challenges of designing intro quests for lengthy RPGs and finding the balance between linear and nonlinear.

On the romance front, Larian's Swen Vincke talked through their approach to making a mature-rated game and taking that responsibility seriously: "We try to be as true to life as we could," he said. "Internally in the studio there were some people who felt uncomfortable, and we said, it's a mature game, right? We're going to treat it like what you would see on TV. A series I refer to often was American Gods, which I thought was really well done [in how] it treated mature themes and fantasy settings. You can do really crazy stuff and still relate to it. It was always tastefully done. I mean, the famous bear scene—it was really a squirrel that was not looking. The rest was the theater of your mind. You filled that in, we didn't do that!"

Later, Ted Peterson, who served as a primary writer and designer on the original two Elder Scrolls games, talked about how the first game, Arena, was a linear story inside a large open game world—and how trying to make the sequel more ambitious posed some problems.

"[The Elder Scrolls: Arena] was not even meant to be a roleplaying game," he said. "Because it was turned into a roleplaying game it became super linear. The original idea was that you'd go around to a bunch of fighting arenas, build your characters up, and eventually go to the Imperial arena and fight the evil wizard at the end. But as the arena combat didn't work out, we changed it into a roleplaying game where you had to fight through these arenas in a distinct order… so linear was our easy choice."

Peterson remembered that when Arena came out, the reaction was positive—except for players who said "the story kind of sucked."

"I overcompensated by making to Arena super nonlinear, and nobody understands the story to this day."

Thanks to the revival of The Elder Scrolls 2 in fan remaster Daggerfall Unity, Peterson said he's actually been working on a series of books to "explain the background of this story that I wrote 25 years ago and try to patch it all together."

If you haven't heard of indie RPG In Stars and Time, you're in for a treat: solo writer/developer Adrienne Bazir dives into the unique way the game deploys a time loop mechanic to consider the meta storytelling layers that come from a player and character reliving the final moments of a quest over and over again. And make sure you stick through to the end—I promise you won't want to miss Carrie Patel's story about a moment from The Outer Worlds that didn't make it into the final game for reasons that become more and more clear as the tale unfolds.

And if you're hungry for more after this conversation is over, you're in luck: our 2023 RPG roundtable is also a great listen with a whole different crew of experienced designers.

 

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https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/b...-fugue-plane-if-you-died-but-it-was-scrapped/

Baldur's Gate 3 initially had an entire mechanic where you'd go to the fugue plane if you died, but it was scrapped​

"We had this entire thing built out for it."

Death in Baldur's Gate 3 is final—if you're playing Honour Mode, that is. For everyone else, returning to the land of the living is but a revivify scroll away. This is a streamlining of D&D 5e (the system the game's built upon) and its resurrection mechanics—which typically require powerful magic that grows costlier and more advanced the longer the poor sod in question has been dead.

Originally, though, this process wasn't quite so simple. As Larian co-founder and CEO Sven Vincke told PC Gamer in a recent roundtable podcast, Baldur's Gate's development team once planned an entire mechanic that'd task players with escaping the fugue plane.

"Whenever you died, you were supposed to go to the fugue plane," Vincke explains. "[We] had this entire thing so that when you died, you were gonna go into the fugue plane … for instance, you would be in the fugue plane but the rest of your party would still be walking around in the material plane."

Vincke wasn't able to go into the details, especially since the studio would be within their rights to retool any systems they built for it for whatever's coming next, but that won't stop me from rolling up my sleeves and doing some speculation.

The fugue plane in Forgotten Realms lore is described as a neutral area within the Astral Sea—as AD&D Forgotten Realms book "Faiths and Avatars" puts it, it's "the place where spirits go right after people die." Gods will come and sort the faithful into their respective heavens. If you didn't sign on for any particular god you, uh, get formed into "a living wall around the City of Strife" and are "left there until [you] dissolve". Yikes.

It was also home to the City of Judgment (the City of Strife by another name) which plays host to gods of death—including Myrkul, who is a key figure in Baldur's Gate 3. Whether Larian would've even hypothetically have had room to go whole-hog with the concept, however, is another thing entirely. While Vincke says that the studio "had this entire thing built out for it", it clearly didn't make the cut.

While I personally think a mechanic like this could've been cool, it does sound like a pain in the keister to balance and fit into the game's pacing—especially since dying happens in combat. One of the cool things about Baldur's Gate 3 is that it allows players to have several different combats running in the same game if they'd like, since initiative order's imposed at a local level.

This has the unintended consequence of allowing players to effectively "pause" a combat by never taking their turn, while their allies—not in the initiative order—run around the rest of the world unimpeded.

The scope of uses here is pretty limited, but it wouldn't take a rocket artificer to figure out that balancing a dead player's adventures on the fugue plane with the rest of their party's combat would be nigh-on impossible.The alternative is to just huck a grey filter over everything, but that's hardly paying due deference to the striking visuals of the source material.

You can find to the full podcast at the YouTube link above, use the Spotify embed below, or find it wherever else you get your podcasts.

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/t...-was-cut-for-pushing-the-limits-of-too-horny/

The Outer Worlds once had an incredible secret ending that was cut for pushing the limits of 'too horny'​

"Assume the position, Charles."

Baldur's Gate 3 has certainly changed the conversation on sex in games, from the breakout viral moment around its bear sex scene to the way it turns intimacy, rather than sex, into the end goal of many of its relationships. Our RPG roundtable from this year's Game Developers Conference, now available on the PC Gamer Chat Log podcast feed, touches on the topic of sex in games—but it also spawned an incredible anecdote from Obsidian game director Carrie Patel from her time as a narrative designer on The Outer Worlds.

Here is, as far as I know, the never-before-told story of what would have been a wild hidden ending in The Outer Worlds, if it hadn't been cut before release:

Carrie Patel: "I worked on a secret ending to The Outer Worlds with Dan McPhee who was another narrative designer on the project. Fairly late in development I was writing the flavor terminal stuff for Chairman Rockwell's office, which you can encounter midway, maybe ⅔ of the way through the game. For all of the terminals we'd have some flavor entries that would say something about the character, the world, just kind of fill things out.

"We'd been working on this game for awhile at that point, and you know, everything is about capitalism and brands. I remember thinking: 'Man, all these corporate guys love their brands so much, what if they were literally horny for it.' So I wrote this entry on Chairman Rockwell's terminal that was locked behind a skill check or two, so you had to work for it. But it was a transcript of his weekly dom session with a Moon Man impersonator. It was very fun to write, because it was all this wordplay, with all of this business speak like 'maximizing growth vectors' and 'end-to-end optimization.'

"There was even a bark for one of the guards where you enter that office. You pass through a security checkpoint, and if you walked by him with a Moon Man helmet on—I don't know that it ever got recorded, but there was a [written] bark at one point where he's like 'I guess it must be a Thursday.'

"I remember talking to Dan, because Dan was writing the showdown at the very end of the game. He was writing the Tartarus prison sequence. And I was like, hey, can we do a callback to this? [Because] at the time it was still in there. So we looked at it together and came up with the idea that if you faced Charirman Rockwell at the end of the game, and you were wearing a Moon Man helmet, he would get a little weak in the knees. And if you'd read that terminal, you could really take control of the situation: 'Moon Man doesn't ask, Charles. Moonman tells.'

"You could basically talk him into getting into one of the cryopods—'assume the position, Charles'—and that was how you'd defeat him through dialogue and get him out of the way for the ending you wanted to choose."

At this point everyone on the roundtable was dying to know why the ending was cut, but the answer was unfortunately straightforward. "You asked earlier how horny is too horny?" Patel said. "I think there was a concern that it was maybe too horny, so it didn't see the light of day."

Perhaps in the post-Baldur's Gate 3 era, the upcoming Outer Worlds 2 will feel emboldened to let its freak flag fly.

You can check out the rest of the 80 minute RPG roundtable in the YouTube and Spotify embeds here, or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

 

[9ted6]

I'm shocked nobody's ever vandalized the Moon Man article.

 

[Fedora Master]

Who cares, who asked?

 

[Ryzer]

Who cares, who asked?

Infinitron

 

[The Wall]

FUCK YOU JEW, YOUR SHABBO GOY SWEN VINCKE, YOUR SHABBO GOY TED PETERSON AND YOUR SHABBO GOY THAT RETARDED FEMOID NOT WORTHY OF NAME REMEMBERING. AND YOUR SHITZRAEL


HOW'S THAT ABOUT ILLEGALIZING CRITICISM OF ISRAEL AND ITS DEMONIC CHILDREN


AND MOST OF ALL FUCK GOYSLOP MIND WEAPONS MASQUARADING AS "SHITTY RPGs" THESE GOLEMS OF YOURS MAKE

 

[BlackheartXIII]

"You asked earlier how horny is too horny?" Patel said. "I think there was a concern that it was maybe too horny, so it didn't see the light of day."

it was likely cut due to it's cringeness, it's reads like a bland sex joke.

..it was all this wordplay, with all of this business speak like 'maximizing growth vectors' and 'end-to-end optimization.'

From all of Obsidian's YA rejects and tumblr fanfic writers turned narrative designers i don't think Petal would be the obvious choice for erotic writing.

 

[luj1]

Who is Carey Patel?

 

[Cohesion]

Who is Carey Patel?

Dumb woke cunt pretending to be ((narrative designer)).
Like Kate Dollarhyde.

 

[The Wall]

Who is Carey Patel?

White woman who hates white guys so much she's fucking and married to Indian guy. Like Bil Gate's daughter. If you think you don't stand a chance with some white slut just remember she probably gigled at some Indian's messages, sucked Chinese cock, dog licked her, she had competition with her friends in high school who can ride glass bottle better, and she jerks to niggers. Yeah, just approach her with energy wanting to slap the bitch. Unfortunately for Karie Patel, no white man wanted to slap her

Outer Worlds BAD

 

[luj1]

I hope Peterson gets funding for his Daggerfall game

 

[The Wall]

I hope Peterson gets funding for his Daggerfall game

Kickstarter in May, this month. Will be fun shitshow. Maybe just fun

 

[Cohesion]

Who is Carey Patel?

White woman who hates white guys so much she's fucking and married to Indian guy. Like Bil Gate's daughter. If you think you don't stand a chance with some white slut just remember she probably gigled at some Indian's messages, sucked Chinese cock, dog licked her, she had competition with her friends in high school who can ride glass bottle better, and she jerks to niggers. Yeah, just approach her with energy wanting to slap the bitch. Unfortunately for Karie Patel, no white man wanted to slap her

Outer Worlds BAD

I hope OBS employees see your post and cope and seethe. LONG OVERDUE. They are too comfortable in neverending circlejerk with journos/retardera/reddit.

 

[Vulpes]

PC Gamer is such a shit site and their "journalists" are trash tier (just look at their coverage of Sekiro and Cuphead), so why in God's name does this need a thread? Nothing worthwhile could come from this. As if the Codex needs more reasons to hate Karen Patel, she's already a prime example of a talentless libshit bitch failing upwards.

 

[Cohesion]

Infi, don't roll your eyes, show me just one good game with good writing made by Patel or Dollarhyde?
Obsidian is dead without Avellone.

 

[NecroLord]

Pudoo Patel.

 

[Cryomancer]

At 4:45 -- Swen : "I always plays wizard" after saying that he prefers Morrowind.

Look like he has a good class taste. I hope that the next Larian game will be in a more exotic setting.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Spellcasters have it good in Morrowind too, along with thieves. Sword and sandal was replaced with robe and dagger.

 

[Vulpes]

Playing with a build that makes use of magic is the only way to actually enjoy vanilla Morrowind. All other gameplay elements are either barebones (melee combat) or don't work (sneaking)

 

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https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/b...es-blew-up-so-hard-we-just-couldnt-manage-it/

Baldur's Gate 3 once featured an even deeper co-op conversation system, but Swen Vincke said their 'dialogue trees blew up so hard, we just couldn't manage it'​

Larian tried to revisit Divinity: Original Sin's roleplaying arguments over dialogue choices, but it was just too much.

In a recent RPG roundtable I hosted for the PC Gamer Chat Log podcast, something Larian founder Swen Vincke said caused my ears to perk up: the already impressive multiplayer roleplaying in Baldur's Gate 3 was once even more involved than what made it into the final game.

During the roundtable, Ted Peterson, writer and designer of the original Elder Scrolls, pointed out that multiplayer games and MMOs have difficulty keeping their tone consistent—it's easy to tell the difference between the way a player behaves and the way a character would. That was something Vincke had in mind during the development of BG3.

"We've been trying to experiment with that—the problem is that it's so intensive to get it to work," he said. "In Original Sin 1 you could actually roleplay dialogue with your partner, in co-operative play. We actually had that deeply in Baldur's Gate 3 at some point also. But the problem was our dialogue trees blew up so hard, we just couldn't manage it anymore. So we had to cut it all."

I don't know much about Baldur's Gate 3's companions, because for me they're not much more than a bunch of weirdos who hang out at my camp. That's because I played Baldur's Gate 3 in four-player co-op, with no space in the party for NPCs to tag along and invite me into their own stories. I'd like to know what Astarion's whole deal is and why Karlach's so beloved, but I had too much fun with the chaos of playing BG3 with friends—just like I did with Divinity: Original Sin 2 before it, and the first Original Sin before that.

I love playing these games with friends, because there are long stretches of exploration during which we can chat, and enough emergent, sandboxy solutions to problems that I know we'll end up coming up with weird or creative ideas as a group that I wouldn't see solo. We definitely miss out on some of the overall story, but my character's personal journey has still been satisfying. No other developer is making RPGs this ambitious with multiplayer, and I think on the whole Larian's been getting better at it with each passing game. But in terms of pure roleplaying, it would be exciting to see a system like the one Vincke was referencing from 2014's Original Sin make a comeback:

Will we see something like that return for whatever Larian's doing next? I think chances are good. "It's still an ambition," Vincke said during the roundtable. If Larian's next RPG is a bit smaller than Baldur's Gate 3, perhaps those dialogue trees will be a bit more manageable with intra-party roleplaying added in.

You can check out the rest of the 80 minute RPG roundtable in the YouTube and Spotify embeds here, or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

 

[Vyvian]

Interesting stuff.
I feel like the Fugue Plane would be a cool thing at first but quickly wear out its welcome, it's probably best it was cut altogether. If it was an actual zone you could die and go to in order to explore and do quests in that would be different.

 

[luj1]

Swen Cucke

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Outer Worlds humor is so bland, even their "funny behind the scenes stories" are unfunny.

 

[gurugeorge]

Who asked these cunts their opinion on anything?

Not the players. The system.

 

[itsme]

I remember last time these geniuses said AAA rpgs were dead or something along the lines. Then Bald Gay 3 happened.