Brockololly wrote...
They have another update on their Kickstarter page, #28.
Sounds pretty fantastic!
Yup!
To be honest, while I did donate, I am keeping my expectations tightly in check. Obsidian’s past record is somewhat…spotty when it comes to such minutiae like deadlines, bugs etc.
But I think it’s important to ‘keep them in the game’ and encourage public funding of projects I’d like to see but which ‘the big boys’ aren’t interested in (for whatever reason).
I rather liked this:
‘The size and structure of the world - This game will be... large. And it will have two big cities, exploration areas, and a 15-level mega-dungeon. Ensuring that the world is planned properly requires examination of what has worked for us in the past and what hasn't. The original Baldur's Gate had a number of wilderness areas, but low density of content in many of those areas. Baldur's Gate II had much greater content density, but fewer wilderness/pure exploration areas. We'd like to make sure we have pure exploration areas while still maintaining good content density.’
I did a partial replay of Baldur’s Gate I in 2011 (confession: I was never a great fan of it, though I definitely had respect for the achievement) and those wilderness areas, while they did a good job of creating a ‘sense of scale’, where a bit TOO empty and too uninteresting in terms of visuals. At the same time, I sorely missed them in Baldur’s Gate II, which I liked more but, well, felt more claustrophobic.
I will freely admit to being an ‘explorer’ type of gamer (well, according to the Bartle test); I swam and climbed all over Azeroth in vanilla WoW, discovering small hidden areas and getting into zones that were officially not ‘open’ yet. Went to all the nooks and crannies in content-starved zones in Age of Conan, and sailed along the coast of Eikronas in Two Worlds II.
I did notice a couple of things:
1) A lot of games apparently produce large amounts of excess ‘real estate’ (which sometimes gets into the game or not)
2) Provided they are away from the ‘main flow’ of the game (linked zones, central narrative), these areas are not ‘in the way’, but are a very welcome addition to explorer types like me. In other words, non-explorer types will probably never visit them or only briefly, but they will be like honey to busy little explorer bees :-),
3) You do need SOME content to make this exploration meaningful, some reward. Rare animals, some opposition in the form of monsters, bandits etc. Points of interest like ruins or a small hidden village; chests with goodies. Even something as ‘simple’ of visually pleasing landscapes, or the remains of a rare creature (bones of a giant, a dragon, sea monster etc.)
To give an example, I am currently replaying Two Worlds II (PC version) and I explored the coasts of Eikronas, the largest island in the game (and it’s freakin’ huuuge). Most of that island is used for multiplayer maps, and plays no role in the singleplayer game (most of the island is not even accessible in singleplayer). Eikronas’ coastal areas are actually accessible (the total amount of real estate here is actually pretty large), but there are no quests involved. It is not empty however; and some of it ‘suggest’ stories to the player. For instance, there is this area with jagged rocks in the sea, where you can find evidence of many wrecked ships and boats. Other areas have a wrecked boat or ship, and the remains of a camp on the beach, or may have some ruins, or an encampment of fish-people.
In the case of Age of Conan and Two Worlds II, much (maybe all) of the ‘exploration areas’ may be the result of a ‘misalignment’ between finances, deadlines and content creation, but the result does sort of work in terms of encouraging and rewarding exploration.
I wonder how PE will handle this. If the ‘pure’ exploration areas are ‘off the beaten track’ and indeed purely optional, that has the disadvantage of only appealing to a minority of gamers (though it may still add to the ‘sense of scale’ perceived by the rest).
On the other hand, if they are a bit * too * developed – with numerous optional quests and plenty of critters and treasure – they might end up becoming effectively part of the ‘main game’, providing lots of XP and loot and becoming de facto non-optional: Stuff most players do, if only for levelling purposes.
Modifié par Das Tentakel, 24 octobre 2012 - 08:45 .
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