Obsidian, Kickstarter, and the bright future of gaming

I'm very happy.

At the time I'm writing this on the 15th of September, less than 24 hours since it was unveiled, Obsidian's new Kickstarter-funded game called Project Eternity has not yet reached the $1.1 million of pledges that it requires to receive its funding. But it will. There's no doubt about that. It has raised 87% of that goal so far, in less than a day.

The game will be an isometric, realtime-with-pause RPG in a similar style as the Infinity Engine games, such as the Baldur's Gate series, the Icewind Dale series, and Planescape: Torment. This is exactly what I foresaw in my bright future when I saw the Wasteland 2 project, and why I was so happy to see it happening. The genre is being reborn!

I'm also pleased by what I hear in their pitch video. Free from the restrictions of the publishers and IP holders, which they say is the reason they could not include mature themes and content, they're looking forward to making an M-rated game (aka PEGI-18). I wholeheartedly approve. It will be extremely refreshing to see more games in a fantasy setting that aren't restricted to child-friendly content.

I have only two concerns. One is that since it will be a new, original IP, it might not have the amount of depth, detail, and variety as licensed properties. I saw that in Bioware's move from D&D to their original Dragon Age setting. I really want a complex, detailed, and difficult game. Obsidian has good, creative people, though. Some of the best in the genre, in fact! So I think there's reason to be optimistic that they can create not only a solid, detailed fantasy world, but also a solid ruleset that'll satisfy fans of those Infinity Engine games.

And with their emphasis on mature content, I'd like to think they won't treat us gamers like the fragile-egoed children that publishers seem to think we are, making games so easy they've become hardly worth playing. A casualty of the crass pursuit of the mass market. Not so with a project like this, where they can focus on a hardcore niche audience.

The other thing is not so much a concern, but a small disappointment. I wish it would be turn-based rather than realtime-with-pause. RWP has always been a compromise -- better than nothing, but with its own problems and annoyances (wizards having to "lead" their AoE spells, for instance, or trying to wrangle the actions of a full party of characters who are all acting at the same time).

Still, it's better than pure realtime. I'd guess that decision was made to ensure that all the Infinity Engine fans were strongly on board, but with the phenomenally fast funding (it's gone up to 88% in the short time I've been writing this), they probably could have taken the chance. I notice that they list the Temple of Elemental Evil in the credits of the works of some of their members, which has the most detailed turn-based RPG engine I've ever seen.

At least Wasteland 2 will be turn-based. And with the assured success of this game, I look forward to a future project -- a party-based, fantasy-themed, turn-based, isometric RPG. So far we've gotten two games with 3 out of 4 of those elements each! Not bad at all! The future is bright for gaming!

Path of Exile

Earlier this year, I signed up for a weekend stress-test of the upcoming game Path of Exile, a hack & slash game in the tradition of games like Diablo and Torchlight. I played it for the full weekend, and enjoyed it. It has good gameplay, fun loot, a nice visual style, and an extremely large skill bush (the view that you see there is not the full image. Drag it around to see the rest of it). The quests had a good amount of flavour, as well. I played as the Witch.

I mention it because I just got an email that says they're having another free stress test this coming weekend, from the 14th to the 16th, so if you want to try it out, that would be a good time. I won't be participating in the second stress test, since I don't want to repeat the early content at this time, and I'm low on hard drive space, and also busy with my modding and other playing, but I thought others might like to know, if they weren't aware of it.

The Privation of WoW

Since the Starter Edition came out for World of Warcraft, being an unlimited free trial with a cap of level 20, I occasionally drop in and play the post-cataclysm low-level quest content that was all new to me, or try different races and classes.

I typed up all my experiences and impressions of that content, but never finished the article or uploaded it here. The basic summary is that they had stripped the gameplay and the leveling experience of at least half of its previous depth. Perhaps in the future I'll explain why I feel that way.

Now, with the new expansion Mists of Pandaria, Blizzard opened up the goblin and worgen playable races to the Starter Edition, enabling me to create a new character of each of those races and experience their unique 1-10 leveling zones.

In so doing, however, despite the new (to me) content to experience, I found that they've removed even more gameplay, depth, and immersion from the game.

At one time, you got to know your choice of class through interactions with your class trainer and class-specific quests, which provided a grounding in what it means to be whatever class you chose. New abilities were given as rewards for going through certain rituals or rites of passage, and class quests would send you out to assemble unique items perfectly suited to your class, which taught you what kind of gear you should be looking for in the future, though these class quest rewards were often so good, you'd be using them for the next 10 levels before you could find anything better.

In general, class quests were integrated into the questing experience at least all the way up to level 55 (pretty much the end of the vanilla game), when every class was funneled into the Sunken Temple for their class quests, so really, you could go through the entire game and experience new content all the way through just by picking a different class. They really made classes feel distinct and interesting, with plenty of backstory.

Cataclysm removed most of the class quests. What previously was a reward for a chain of interesting quests was turned into something you just pay to learn at a trainer. If you didn't play it before, you'll never experience the flavour that used to give it meaning.

They also removed most of the class-specific items. Warlocks don't really need soul shards anymore. Hunters don't need ammunition or pet food. Rogues don't need to brew their own poisons.

Okay, so that's all just a little summary of a couple of the small things that were changed in Cataclysm (instead of the long unfinished article on that and many other things), as a lead-up to what I've just experienced in the changes brought by Mists of Pandaria.

The biggest thing is that now, in MoP, they give you all your class abilities automatically, for free, with no training. Trainers are now nothing more than providers of basic information and respecs. The last tenuous connection to that old sense of involvement in the game world is now broken. I no longer feel like I'm a part of something, at all.

Moreover, what was previously a gold sink is now gone. What am I supposed to do with all this gold, now that I don't have to pay for talents or class-related materials?

Really, the only vestige of what class quests used to be is now only to be found in the repeatable quests for cooking and fishing. There are 5 randomly-assigned daily quests in each major city for each of those professions that send you off to do things related to that profession, with the quest text providing some feeling of being a cook or a fisher in that world, and giving quest rewards related to that profession. That's fun! And it's a shame the classes have had that sort of thing taken away from them.