συνεντευξις μερος δευτερο<br><span class="bbcode_spoiler">8 I'd like to elaborate a little on what I meant by 'party interactions'. How big of a role would our companions' alignment and personal quirks have during the game? Let's assume you have a religious fanatic and a man who hate them in your party. Will they stand each other? Would they want to kill each other on sight or after some replies?<br><br>It depends on their personalities. At best they’d refuse to work together, at worst you’d have to pick sides and one of them would end up dead. It’s a bit more complex than that though.<br><br>Let’s say you run into a wounded man preparing for his last stand. A rival gang of scavengers is looking for him. He asks you to help him, offering to share something valuable with you.<br><br>If you have Evans with you, he’d say that it’s too dangerous and the reward isn’t worth it. If you insist, he’ll leave you and you’d have to defend your new friend all by yourself (or follow Evans). If you have Garrett with you, he’ll shoot the man and take all he had (he’s a practical man). If you have Jed with you, he’d see a business opportunity and offer to trade the man to the other crew, etc.<br><br>9 Will one's loyalty depend on their 'nemesis' place in a party? Do you plan to include that kind of stuff for each of 12?<br><br>They are as loyal to you as an average employee is loyal to his boss. In other words they will stay with you for as long as it benefits them and not a moment longer. If you do something that breaches this fragile social contract (be it hiring a mutant freak, working for a faction they despise, acting against the Church, etc) they will leave you or double-cross you.<br><br>In most cases you’d know exactly what rubs them the wrong way, so it would rarely come as a surprise. Basically, if you travel with a machinegun-toting preacher and a Brotherhood-hating Protector Officer, and then decide to side with the Brotherhood in some quest and kill a few Churchmen, you shouldn’t be surprised when your companions turn on you.<br><br>10 We already know your passion for non-linear gameplay and replayability, so I assume The New World will preach the same approach: not a 100-hour long playthrough allowing to to everything you want with a single character/party but short one, featuring tons of self-excluding branches and requiring a couple of playthroughs to fully grasp the game's advantages?<br><br>Correct. We prefer shorter but very replayable games to 100 hours epics that you play only once. Basically, to create your own story, you need to be able to make meaningful choices. Meaningful choices require branching storylines, aka mutually exclusive content. Mutually exclusive content means shorter games as the overall amount of content is split between different paths and branches.<br><br>11 Let's talk stealth. It was seldomly used in Age of Decadence (some players might not have even noticed it unless they played a thief or an assassin, I guess) but you decided to have it as a part of a main 'trio' of viable playthrough types. What prompted you to that? Are you a fan of stealth games in general?<br><br>I do like stealth games but the main reason is that stealth is a traditional RPG element and a must-have when it comes to multiple quest solutions: fight, sneak/steal, talk.<br><br>We didn’t have a proper stealth system in AoD because we didn’t have time to implement it (to be more specific, we didn’t have it when we started putting the game together and then it was too late to add it and rework all existing quests). We did have plans for a turn-based stealth system and now we can finally do it and offer our players a well-rounded experience.<br><br>12 Age of Decadence featured a great number of endings, underlining most of our deeds, making them worth it and encouraging to try other routes to see the outcome. What's the estimated number of endings you're aiming to implement in The New World?<br><br>So far, the main quest calls for seven endings, without counting permutations.<br><br>13 Both old Fallouts and Baldur's Gates featured random encounters, but Age of Decadence completely ignores this as a gameplay element. Do you think that all "playthrough path" should be directed and thought through in advance by the game designer? Do you allow "unforseen" player actions in a game?<br><br>Mainly it was done to ensure that a non-combat character was never forced to fight unless it’s a direct result of his/her past choices. We don’t have such design restrictions in The New World but I’m not sure if that’s something we want to do.<br><br>In BG it was nothing but filler combat: “You’ve been waylaid by enemies and must defend yourself!” /fight generic enemies. Fallout had a mix of amusing encounters and filler combat. Not sure if anyone was excited to run into a bunch of rats for the tenth time or yet another Enclave patrol.<br><br>From the design perspective, we’d rather do an encounter that fits the time and the place rather than something random.<br><br>14 What's with your draw to the universes that survived the degradation? Is it just the useful trick to present the high-tech artefacts in place of fantasy settings' magic?<br><br>It’s not about high-tech baubles but about how people view the past, how this view changes with every generation because each generation has its own narrative and wants to force the past to fit said narrative (instead of the other way around).<br><br>While the actual events remain the same, our understanding of what happened and why mutates into something that would be barely recognizable by those who witnessed these events.<br><br>Anyway, while many ‘generation ship’ books feature regressed societies, often unaware that they live in a spaceship, it’s not the case in The New World. So no science-magic there.<br><br>15 What's more suitable for the RPG: utopia or dystopia?<br><br>Dystopia, of course. Utopia implies that all problems have been solved and there is no longer any need for mighty heroes eager to slay 5 wolves or deliver important packages.<br><br>16 Main quest. Some people like to do the side-quests first, delaying touching the main quest till the last possible moment and some jump straight to it, right until the point of no return. What approach do you have in mind designing the main quest for your game?<br><br>We’ll go with a chapter structure again. For example, when you start the game, you’ll have 4 locations available to you: the Pit (container town), the Factory, the Hydroponics, and the Armory. Your main quest goal is the Armory but to get there you’ll have to increase your skills first.<br><br>Other locations won’t be magically sealed but to get through the Wasteland will require much higher skills and to get into the Habitat will require a reason (for the guards to let you in), which the Armory will provide. All locations are interconnected (unlike AoD), so once you cross the Wasteland, other locations will open up, etc.<br><br>How hard it is to think of all the possible ways people would interact with it?<br><br>We try to offer as many options as we can and pray it will be enough.<br><br>17 Will we ever get a chance to somehow actually witness ship's landing?<br><br>WARNING! Spoilers! Read at your own risk. +<br><br><br>18 Name 3 biggest mistakes current RPG developers (both indie and AAA) make while developing their games? Including your own if you'd like <img src="/smile.gif" width="" height="" alt="
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" class="bbcode_smiley" /><br><br>Such things are awfully subjective. I didn’t really like Legend of Grimrock that much, but I loved Legend of Grimrock 2 because they went open-world and did it really well, in my opinion. Yet LoG2 sold a third of what the first game sold and some people believe that the open world thing is to blame. So one man’s design mistake is another man’s best design ever.<br><br>As for our mistakes, the list is long so it won’t be hard to pick top 3:<br><br>We balanced combat around ‘specialists’, which made playing a ‘hybrid’ the hardest difficulty mode. The idea was that the players would beat the game with a specialist first and then play with a more balanced but more challenging character. Turned out everyone wants to play a hybrid but not everyone can figure out the combat system on the fly. That’s why “too difficult, can’t play it” is the #1 complaint.<br><br>To be clear, the mistake isn’t that the game is too difficult but that playing a hybrid character (fighter/talker) is nearly impossible for the first time players.<br><br>Inverted difficulty. Teron is the hardest town, mainly because your skills are low and your gear is shit. As you progress, the game gets easier and easier because your skills and gear improve but you’re still dealing with human enemies (whereas in most RPGs you’d have switched to higher level monsters a long time ago). Granted, there is a difference between some low level thugs/guards and highly skilled soldiers but that difference only goes so far.<br><br>Not enough content in Ganezzar (the third town). While Ganezzar has as many faction and side quests as any other town (and even has the siege event), most players walk away with an impression that there isn’t enough content. Why?<br><br>We underestimated the amount of content it would require in general. Ganezzar could have absorbed twice as much content without making you feel overwhelmed;<br><br>We overlooked the fact that many side quests required certain past events like making a deal with Marcus Valla to get the power armor, surviving Miltiades’ attempts to kill you and then saving his ass in Maadoran and helping him, etc.<br><br>Worst of all, we made an easy to miss 5-quest fork, instead of adding five stand-alone quests available to everyone. As a result, if you missed the fork and didn’t do the pre-requisites for other quests in Teron and Maadoran, you will have fewer quests available, especially if you were kicked out from your faction.<br><br>19 Was there a feature you noticed in other RPG or game of other genre after the release of Age of Decadence that resulted in a thought 'Damn, we should have done that as well!"?<br><br>Not really. After 10 years of work we couldn’t think – even subconsciously – about adding new features. Even from a ‘what if’ perspective, what if we had an extra year, we would have focused on improving what we had (see above) rather than adding new things.<br><br>We’re fairly conservative as a studio and our focus is on story-telling and role-playing (playing the game in a manner fitting your character) rather than cool new features.<br><br>20 Regarding the chapter structure. Will some players be able to reach certain locations earlier than others by completing certain tasks or finding some secret routes? Would they get some benefits from it?<br><br>Absolutely. There are different ways through some locations (for example, when you travel through the Factory, you can take the toll road (through the upper floors) which is safe and linear, better suited for the talkers and weaker parties, or you can go down and brave the dangers and find things and access points that others wouldn’t. If you’re really good at it, you would even be able to get into the Habitat before breaking into the Armory.<br><br>AoD was weak on exploration so that’s another thing we want to focus on here.<br><br>21 Speaking of secret routes - have you considered breaking the 4th wall and place some AoD-related Easter Eggs in your next game? <img src="/wink.gif" width="" height="" alt="
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" class="bbcode_smiley" /><br><br>It’s not something we would consider.<br><br>22 Thanks for brilliant and self-critical review of AoD mistakes, Vince. Boy, I’m glad you acknowledge all of this and actually researched players’ opinions on your game! More developers should spend time doing it. Can't wait to see how you overcome these downsides in The New World!<br><br>But if you don't mind, I want to clarify what I intended by asking that question. I was hoping you'd share some thoughts on the current state of the RPG industry - what's your biggest gripe with it in general and its AAA headliners particularly? Don't you think they strayed SO off from the genre's roots and focused so much on irrelevant shit stuff like romancing and crafting, they don't know how to make an actual RPG anymore? Could or should they change their attitude regarding the genre to get back the trust of such communities as RPG Codex?<br><br>The gaming industry IS an industry first and foremost. If they “strayed” into romances and crafting, it’s because the customers demanded it. Case in point – Fallout 4. For me it’s one of the worst Bethesda games, for Bethesda it’s the most successful game to-date. Should they make an “actual RPG” and sell a million copies or should they make a crafting game with stats and sell thirty million copies? Decisions, decisions…<br><br>It’s not just about money. If you have 200 employees like, say, Obsidian, and your burn rate is a million dollars a month, you HAVE to make games that sell or you will be out of business in no time.<br><br>The problem is that ‘actual RPGs’ never sold well, not compared to action games, which is why they nearly went extinct in the early nineties. The genre was revived reanimated by two games: Diablo, which launched the action RPG genre, and Baldur’s Gate, originally designed as an RTS. That was the only way to make it work, by merging stats with action and moving<br><br>So as a developer you have a choice: stay small and make low budget games without any restrictions or hire more people to boost production values but then you have to ensure that your game sells enough to cover the costs and keep all these people employed.<br><br>Fortunately, due to the digital distribution in general and Steam in particular, we can have all three: AAA companies pouring hundreds of millions into their games, tiny indie studios working on pure enthusiasm, and mid-range companies like Harebrained and inXile, which really is the best outcome for the gamers.<br><br>23 Why squares and not hexes?<br><br>First, we can’t adapt AoD/DR pathfinder to hexes, so we'll have to write a new one, which is potentially months of work, so there is a practical reason. Second, squares work better with busy ‘urban’ maps (XCOM, Xenonauts, etc) whereas hexes work better with large, generic battlefields (HoMM, Battle Brothers, etc).<br><br>24 What do you think is more important: the fate of player's hero, fate of the world or fate of game's factions?<br><br>Depends on the setting. In Planescape: Torment, it’s your character’s fate that really matters. It’s clear that neither the factions nor the world would really change, which even adds some charm to the game.<br><br>Same goes for futuristic games like cyberpunk. Expecting your character to change a well-established world or even the corporate factions is kinda foolish. Thus in most cases the fate of your character is all you have to work with.<br><br>The crumbling world of AoD or the confined space of The New World is a different story. We can easily hit all three targets, but such worlds come with their own limits. Overall, it’s a cascading effect: your character affects the factions, the factions affect the world, all these changes affect your character.<br><br>25 In AoD our character was being constantly involved in some serious business and sometimes is thrown into heavily-scripted chain of events, like in a vortex. Which results in player having little space and time to roam the world, explore it and sink in all the little details. What are your thoughts on games like Morrowind, that players not simply play through, but actually live in?<br><br>You mean Daggerfall? Love it; it has a permanent seat on my top 10 list. Morrowind wasn’t bad either but it was dumbed down in every way to make it sellable. Of course, compared to Oblivion, it’s a masterpiece but then again what isn’t?<br><br>Anyway, that’s what I love the most about RPGs – it’s a very diverse genre like a middle-eastern bazaar where you can find anything you wish: sandbox, stealth, story-driven, tactical, strategy, action, blobber, roguelike, etc. Want to save the world? Come this way. Want to manage your own mercenary company? I might have something for you but I can’t find the damn legs…<br><br>26 Our forum features different kinds of RPG fans and the most common discussion we have on a regular basis is whether or not should RPGs have "walls of text".<br><br>What heresy is this?<br><br>Some prefer to have tons of dialogues with branches of replies to choose from for roleplay and some - to just roam the world doing whatever they can for the same purpose - roleplaying.<br><br>You mean, roam the world looking for something to kill? Don’t get me wrong, I love sandbox games, but their main weakness is repetitive, generic content which doesn’t leave much room for role-playing unless you happened to be playing fighter/mage/thief.<br><br>The downside of the latter being difficulty of roleplaying as a non-combat character and a downside of a former - selection only between pre-written replies. What are your thoughts on that matter? Is there any way to morph these RPG types into a single, ultimate one?<br><br>Not in the near future. These two types represent diametrically opposite designs. At one end of the spectrum we have hand-crafted content, limited by definition and contained within a story arc which the player must follow.<br><br>At the other end of the spectrum we have practically limitless generic content spread across a vast land mass, which makes it possible to sink in a few hundred hours, provided you don’t mind “running around and killing things”, which is what fantasy is all about, according to Todd Howard.<br><br>Take any sandbox RPG – The Elder Scrolls games, the new Fallout games, Gothic, Risen, Witcher 3, etc. No matter how good the overall design is, the fact remains that 90% of your time is spent “killing things” and looking for loot.<br><br>It’s quality vs quantity, except the quality is served in a limited and restricted fashion, whereas quantity comes with unlimited freedom to run around and kill things. Of course, the real quality in sandbox games is the visual splendor, which has been the most important gameplay aspect in the last 15 years. As long as we’re dazzled and entertained, we don’t mind killing things and playing dress-up.<br><br>I'd like to thank you for this massive, glorious amount of insight, Vince! I suppose there are two main categories of people awaiting TNW - fans of AoD, who already know about your capabilities and have high hopes for it, and people who disliked AoD or haven't played it at all but for some reason TNW appeals to them. Now, the first group is obviously easy to pleasure but what would you like to address to either or both of them?<br><br>Try the demo?<br><br>Thank you very much, Vince!<br><br>Dear Age of Decadence fans, I have a humble personal request for you - if you liked a game, please spend a few minutes and write a review for the game; even one sentence is enough! It'll take you only a few minutes but it'll be of great help for the developers!</span>
