Modders founds company, will make "Skyrim-like RPG"

[Avilan the Grey]

Sounds very interesting to me.

Skyrim with meaningful choices?? Shut Up and Take My Money!

[Morph Bark]

Especially interesting to me, considering I'm just now figuring out how to make mods, among other things. Thanks for that link!

EDIT: Lowlanders and Highlanders? Are the humans going to be Scotsmen and Dutchmen?

[Closet_Skeleton]

Sounds over-ambitious for a kickstarter. There's a reason nobody has actually made an Elder Scrolls killer even though most publishers would kill for one (okay, actually its probably because the investors dumb enough to support all wasted their money on failed WoW killers instead).

Especially interesting to me, considering I'm just now figuring out how to make mods, among other things. Thanks for that link!

EDIT: Lowlanders and Highlanders? Are the humans going to be Scotsmen and Dutchmen?

Scotland has highlanders and lowlanders. The Dutch only have lowlanders, but you don't need to bring them in to round out the Scots. My grandmother was lowland Scots, Scottish Highlanders are called that not because Scotland is higher up than England (much of it isn't and Wales has mountains too) because there were two different people living in Scotland with two different languages, the Highlanders mostly speaking Gaelic (eg Irish, a celtic language) and the lowlanders spoke Scots (a Germanic language that's usually just considered an English dialect). Scotland's major cities and population centres are in the lowlands but since a lot of Highlanders were kicked out in the 18th century they're what Canadians and Americans think of when they say 'Scottish descent'.

[erikun]

I'd be a bit hesitant to support this project. The only thing I know about the developers are that they mod Elder Scrolls games, meaning just that they can design models. I'm not seeing any indications about story or how they plan to implement this open-world aspect in their game.

Especially considering this forum, I am quite familiar with people having large plans but not really having the resources or know-how to implement them. It's very easy to say an open world where choices dictate how the game story resolves, while it is very hard to actually make it work - to the point where most people have trouble pointing out a good example in a video game which did it right.

[GolemsVoice]

There's the upcoming The Witcher 3 which promises to do more or less that, and from what I've heard it looks pretty good.

While I wish the modders best of luck, I fear they won't achieve what they planned to, and I'd also wager it takes more than 500.000 do even try. But still, they might just do it!

[Avilan the Grey]

There's the upcoming The Witcher 3 which promises to do more or less that, and from what I've heard it looks pretty good.

While I wish the modders best of luck, I fear they won't achieve what they planned to, and I'd also wager it takes more than 500.000 do even try. But still, they might just do it!

Witcher is a completely different game, because of the fixed, rather unlikeable character. TES is all about complete customization.

[Avilan the Grey]

I'd be a bit hesitant to support this project. The only thing I know about the developers are that they mod Elder Scrolls games, meaning just that they can design models. I'm not seeing any indications about story or how they plan to implement this open-world aspect in their game.

To be fair, Bethesda has hired a large number of Modders over the years; they are frequent visitors to the Nexuses and other forums and keep tabs on who makes the best mods. That the TES / FO:X crowd produces a number of really really good designers is no secret.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Witcher is a completely different game, because of the fixed, rather unlikeable character. TES is all about complete customization.

Its the fixed character that allows the Witcher to do more with choices and consequences than TES does.

The problem with this ideal game is that there are just so many variables. When you have limited development time and other resources, you removing some choices to make your more ambitious ideas practical is the way to achieve things. If this game was possible, we wouldn't have waited for modders to do it. Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines came close but was a lot less open than The Elder Scrolls and sent its developer into bankruptcy.

Being a modder is a good background for a game studio employee, I'm merely doubting the ability of any studio to pull this off, the kickstarter/modder origin of the studio makes it even more dubious to be sure, but it isn't really the most rational of the reasons to be doubtful.

[Winthur]

Meh, bar is set too low.

Now, if they tried to make a Morrowind-like RPG, it would be a feat.

[Ailurus]

*checks Kickstarter page*

As much as I'd love to see this project succeed, I'm quite doubtful. While some of their mods were solid, looking at their resume page does not inspire me with confidence. There's a HUGE leap between using mod creation tools and actually creating a game from scratch and (at the risk of sounding like a complete jerk) it really doesn't look like many of them have any real programming experience. Game/level design, artwork, story, character design I'm pretty sure they'll do great on, but I'm very doubtful they'll be able to write the game from scratch, much less a 3d open world game for 3 separate platforms.

Think I'll file this one under "if it turns out good, I'll buy a copy" but I'll be surprised if it does end up good.

[Airk]

*checks Kickstarter page*

As much as I'd love to see this project succeed, I'm quite doubtful. While some of their mods were solid, looking at their resume page does not inspire me with confidence. There's a HUGE leap between using mod creation tools and actually creating a game from scratch and (at the risk of sounding like a complete jerk) it really doesn't look like many of them have any real programming experience. Game/level design, artwork, story, character design I'm pretty sure they'll do great on, but I'm very doubtful they'll be able to write the game from scratch, much less a 3d open world game for 3 separate platforms.

Think I'll file this one under "if it turns out good, I'll buy a copy" but I'll be surprised if it does end up good.

Basically this. I mean, the thing is clearly "A bunch of people who think the fact that they can put together some good mods means they know anything about actually producing a game set out to make the biggest, hardest to create type of game imaginable and claim they will do it better than the hugely successful AAA competitor" This is CLEARLY a money pit as far as I am concerned. Open world games are brutally expensive and hard to make.

Also, honestly, I think the idea of an "open world game with real decision making consequences" is, as Closet Skeleton asserts, essentially impossible. Not literally impossible, but more expensive than any game could ever hope to make up on. I think it's a very, very apt point that the games that come the closest to offering "real choices" are also the ones with fixed protagonists. (I'd consider Mass Effect to have a fixed protagonist here - yes, fine, you can pick gender and appearance, but you're always making Commander Shepard, not Space Force Employee #37.)

Essentially, the more open world you make a game, the more you dilute it's ability to tell a compelling narrative, because events can/will happen in random order, or not at all. The player kills the NPC who might eventually have been involved in another quest/stage of the story/whatever? Well, oops. And so on.

Skyrim is a fun sandbox, it's a terrible storytelling medium.

[nooblade]

But if they're so good at modding they should be able to take this engine, go over some hurdles to make things work, and then plow through a lot of content. Might even be less buggy than a TES game. But it really looks like they haven't tried to do the engine part yet. If it were me, I'd want to get that out of the way first. Worst case scenario: it's actually a mod not a separate game.

I have no idea what is with their plans.

Good to see more indies, but since there's not much out about it I'm more interested in this bunch (minus Starbound): "top 10 indies to watch".

[warty goblin]

An Elder Scrolls game takes what, forty or so people a couple years to make? And that's working with familiar and in-house technology. Yeah, not paying for that with $500,000.

[shadow_archmagi]

If you want an open world game with meaningful choices, just cyrogenically freeze yourself until Dwarf Fortress is ready. Which reminds me, I need to make my monthly donation!

[wiimanclassic]

Isn't one of the guys making it that guy who thinks he knows more about ES lore than the people making the games and tried to shove his fanwank down everyone using his Open Cities mod by placing ugly Oblivion gates in every town?

Something about how what happened in Oblivion when a gate closed, you know, when they collapse, was a concession made for the game and that they totally wouldn't collapse when closed in Skyrim for no reason and no one would ever move these eyesores that belched out demons before. Yeah.

I see no way this can go horribly when that guy disagrees with the others on the lore or plot of the game.

I think I actually have the write up someone did of that mess and what else happened because of it somewhere.

Edit
Yup. It is that guy. This is going to go horribly, hilariously wrong the moment he disagrees with the writers about the plot or lore or anyone says bad things about what he makes. Dudes a good modder but he can not handle criticism or people saying anything against his artistic vision(like how you shouldn't shove oblivion gates in an Open Cities mod for Skyrim). I get the feeling the game is going to die under the weight of his ego.

Found it.
http://pastebin.com/XVcSie4q

[Hiro Protagonest]

If you want an open world game with meaningful choices, just cyrogenically freeze yourself until Dwarf Fortress is ready. Which reminds me, I need to make my monthly donation!

Extra Credits is spot on about depth and complexity in games. The game is deep, but until they fix the interface, I ain't touching it again.

I don't care if some people think the best moments are when your dwarf on the front lines suddenly retreats because he's not using his favorite axe, no tutorial, not even anything that tells you what the keyboard keys and mouse buttons do, and it's an incredibly deep civ-building game as opposed to something much simpler like most roguelikes? Way too complex.

[Ailurus]

But if they're so good at modding they should be able to take this engine, go over some hurdles to make things work, and then plow through a lot of content.

Again, its a lot more than that. Using Oblivion as the starting point (just because that's the one I have the most experience modding myself), its very easy to add dialog/conversation options to an NPC - renting a room at an inn has around 100 separate lines of dialog in the base game because of the ease of adding new ones in.

However, doing this from scratch would be a lot more work - you need to set up (in a very brief, simplified sense) a system for the quests (Oblivion even treats renting a room as sort of a quest), a system for storing the dialog (even if its just text dialog), a system for associating the dialog with NPCs, associating particular dialog with particular quests and a system for associating NPCs with quests they're involved in. And then look at the fact that that is only dialog, and Skyrim itself was estimated to have 60,000 lines of dialog. And that's not even getting into tracking when NPCs die, NPCs start and stop becoming involved in a quest (say one innkeeper gets killed and another takes his/her place), and more. Even more if you have to think about audio and lip-syncing (if you want it to be voiced), plus changing facial expressions depending on their mood (oblivion allowed that, at least to a small extent).

Worst case scenario: it's actually a mod not a separate game.

I'd be all for that (assuming its something like Nehrim: At Fate's Edge, or even Tale of Two Wastelands or Skywind/Morroblivion), but since they seem to be doing this commercially that's not gonna happen. There's no way Bethesda is gonna let them sell a Skyrim mod. It will have to be their own engine.

[nooblade]

I guess the engine they picked doesn't handle most of the game? Havok looks like it's only for physics. Aww.

I remember Morrowind modding through some script editing. Everything that everyone could ever say, and all the things you could say back, quest rewards, and perhaps some other things, all of it was collected and compiled into a giant dialogue ... thing.

I wonder if there are any free, open source scripting/dialogue editor sort of like Morrowind, or if that much comes with game maker engines or things. It does sound like a pain to recreate from nothing. I sort of expect just about everything to be available open source since SDL and openGL and a few other things are awesome like that.

[GoblinArchmage]

Hm. The article says that they need to hire developers? Oh I see, these modders are just the "ideas guys." They'll totally release their epic game once they can find people to actually make it.

Isn't one of the guys making it that guy who thinks he knows more about ES lore than the people making the games and tried to shove his fanwank down everyone using his Open Cities mod by placing ugly Oblivion gates in every town?

Something about how what happened in Oblivion when a gate closed, you know, when they collapse, was a concession made for the game and that they totally wouldn't collapse when closed in Skyrim for no reason and no one would ever move these eyesores that belched out demons before. Yeah.

I see no way this can go horribly when that guy disagrees with the others on the lore or plot of the game.

I think I actually have the write up someone did of that mess and what else happened because of it somewhere.

Edit
Yup. It is that guy. This is going to go horribly, hilariously wrong the moment he disagrees with the writers about the plot or lore or anyone says bad things about what he makes. Dudes a good modder but he can not handle criticism or people saying anything against his artistic vision(like how you shouldn't shove oblivion gates in an Open Cities mod for Skyrim). I get the feeling the game is going to die under the weight of his ego.

Found it.
http://pastebin.com/XVcSie4q

Holy crap, it's that trainwreck? This should be good.

[Ailurus]

I remember Morrowind modding through some script editing. Everything that everyone could ever say, and all the things you could say back, quest rewards, and perhaps some other things, all of it was collected and compiled into a giant dialogue ... thing.

I wonder if there are any free, open source scripting/dialogue editor sort of like Morrowind, or if that much comes with game maker engines or things. It does sound like a pain to recreate from nothing. I sort of expect just about everything to be available open source since SDL and openGL and a few other things are awesome like that.

Similar exists for Oblivion, Skyrim, FO3 and NV as well. But Bethesda created all those editors.

[Castaras]

This's gonna collapse in a pile of burning rubble. Then again, I couldn't look at the site for more than a couple of minutes after I tried to work out who it was on the team and they decided that it would of course be a good idea to use different colours and different brightnesses of colours on their "Who we are" page....

Maybe I'm a little petty. But still... not really anything that inspires confidence.

[Artanis]

Considering what happened to Magna Mundi, I don't see any way this won't crash and burn so badly that it leaves a radioactive, mile-wide glass crater. Really, the best possible thing for this project and its creators would probably be for the kickstarter to fail miserably.

[Avilan the Grey]

Well in any event, I hope talented people get recognized. Even if this implodes.

[GolemsVoice]

To be honest, much of what they promise sounds like what you can get already in Skyrim or Fallout.

[Morph Bark]

Isn't one of the guys making it that guy who thinks he knows more about ES lore than the people making the games and tried to shove his fanwank down everyone using his Open Cities mod by placing ugly Oblivion gates in every town?

Something about how what happened in Oblivion when a gate closed, you know, when they collapse, was a concession made for the game and that they totally wouldn't collapse when closed in Skyrim for no reason and no one would ever move these eyesores that belched out demons before. Yeah.

I see no way this can go horribly when that guy disagrees with the others on the lore or plot of the game.

I think I actually have the write up someone did of that mess and what else happened because of it somewhere.

Edit
Yup. It is that guy. This is going to go horribly, hilariously wrong the moment he disagrees with the writers about the plot or lore or anyone says bad things about what he makes. Dudes a good modder but he can not handle criticism or people saying anything against his artistic vision(like how you shouldn't shove oblivion gates in an Open Cities mod for Skyrim). I get the feeling the game is going to die under the weight of his ego.

Found it.
http://pastebin.com/XVcSie4q

Oh dear. Doomed from the start, huh?

I hope he's gotten better since then, or that he has a position in which he can be overruled by other members of the project.

[Studoku]

Wow. I can't make a prediction on how this is going to fail because there are just too many possibilities.

If I had to bet, I'd go with them running out of money in a year, begging for more and the guy in charge throwing a hissy fit when people don't donate because "nobody appreciates his vision".

[Divayth Fyr]

I hope he's gotten better since then

He didn't. One of his earliest comments about Dragonborn was
"Brilliant move Bethesda. Dragonborn.esm also wipes out the body part data from Update.esm that's needed for riding dragons." followed with "No, it's from a lack of proper QA. No other explanation for this is plausible. How this even gets out of testing is beyond me. It can't have been an issue on the XBox or one would expect there to have been holy hell raised over it." after someone argued that dragons got new skeletons, so the old data might not be needed. And guess what? Turned out it wasn't needed. Similiarly, he moaned about the people in Bethesda deleting a navmesh (which may be a potential source of crashes if we go to the cell which had it before - however the one they removed was in a cell inaccessible without cheating). And to use the base staves which were already coded into the game for Dragonborn's staff enchanter they changed their names and costs (5 gold was rather cheap even for an unenchanted staff). His comment? "Someone wasn't paying attention when designing the staff crafting either. They've overwritten several of the base staff templates that the rest of the game builds on. It's good that they're providing us new features, they just need to be more careful." Though one could say not claiming they ruined the game/community is a step in the right direction ;)

[Avilan the Grey]

Edit
Yup. It is that guy. This is going to go horribly, hilariously wrong the moment he disagrees with the writers about the plot or lore or anyone says bad things about what he makes. Dudes a good modder but he can not handle criticism or people saying anything against his artistic vision(like how you shouldn't shove oblivion gates in an Open Cities mod for Skyrim). I get the feeling the game is going to die under the weight of his ego.

Found it.
http://pastebin.com/XVcSie4q

...Forgot to post this...
Maybe the other modders ARE from his "entourage"?
In any event it might be good for him to mess up his OWN lore for once.

Also, I LOLed. But I enjoy things like this. This is why I always read local papers wherever I go, because the petty fights on the pages where readers can send in letters are always HILARIOUS.

[Morph Bark]

He didn't. One of his earliest comments about Dragonborn was
"Brilliant move Bethesda. Dragonborn.esm also wipes out the body part data from Update.esm that's needed for riding dragons." followed with "No, it's from a lack of proper QA. No other explanation for this is plausible. How this even gets out of testing is beyond me. It can't have been an issue on the XBox or one would expect there to have been holy hell raised over it." after someone argued that dragons got new skeletons, so the old data might not be needed. And guess what? Turned out it wasn't needed. Similiarly, he moaned about the people in Bethesda deleting a navmesh (which may be a potential source of crashes if we go to the cell which had it before - however the one they removed was in a cell inaccessible without cheating). And to use the base staves which were already coded into the game for Dragonborn's staff enchanter they changed their names and costs (5 gold was rather cheap even for an unenchanted staff). His comment? "Someone wasn't paying attention when designing the staff crafting either. They've overwritten several of the base staff templates that the rest of the game builds on. It's good that they're providing us new features, they just need to be more careful." Though one could say not claiming they ruined the game/community is a step in the right direction ;)

Well, that's just perfect for their team, then.

But yeah, if he's going to screw up, I hope it doesn't affect other promising modders on their team too much. No need for a lunatic to drag everyone down with him.

Also, I LOLed. But I enjoy things like this. This is why I always read local papers wherever I go, because the petty fights on the pages where readers can send in letters are always HILARIOUS.

It's like internet arguments, but on paper!

[Divayth Fyr]

But yeah, if he's going to screw up, I hope it doesn't affect other promising modders on their team too much. No need for a lunatic to drag everyone down with him.

Well, he is responsible for "Level Design, Content Design, Quality Assurance". I can already see the discussion going on:
- You idiot! You forgot to include the code for feature x!
- Have you tested it? I moved some parts of the code, x should work fine.
- Oh, I guess that's ok.

- Why did you change the way Y works in Z?
- Well, we agreed that we wanted Y to work differently.
- But I want it to work in Z the way it did. I even have an explanation (...)
- That doesn't make sense compared to all the other Ys
- You don't know what you're talking about. Change it at once!