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Leonard Boyarsky On 'Fallout's Spiritual Successor'
An anonymous reader submits "Duck and Cover have interviewed Troika's Leonard Boyarsky about their currently unsigned post-apocalyptic game. He describes it as the 'spiritual successor to Fallout', which sounds good to me."
- A strong story with plenty of side quests but wich intertwine with the main quest and wich affect each other.
- Let me be a force of good a force of evil (for the 12yr olds who call their mommy sir). I loved the "what happened" at the end of fallout. But give me real freedom. Make it possible to be really really good but make it cost you. Same with evil. So that most people will play in the middle. None of this, give 100 credits out of your one million stash and become a saint. Make good really good, evil really evil and plenty of middle ground for the less idealistic player. I hate games that just make me choose between "sorta nice" and "pointlessly evil".
- No icewind dale. I want to meet intresting characters. Not roll up an army.
- The past troika games suffered from HUGE empty areas. TOOE especially was bad in the opening. 2 screens full of empty non-enterable barn does not say "ooh nice" it says "what is this an rpg or image scroller?" Keep it tight. I never seen the need for seperate weapons and armour dealers. If there is no story need for seperate stores create a market like plaza. Don't make me walk when there is no story need.
As for the combat if they are going real time make it as complex as possible with plenty of options you can turn off for the lesser players.I would love to see some real tactically options used. Like machine guns being crap at hitting but excellent for supression fire. The thing I hate most about turnbased games is that things like supression fire and encirclement don't really have an effect like they would in realtime.
BUT most important since this will be a troika game. Get a good publisher that is not afraid to make a rated game or don't make the game rated in the first place. None of this TOEE stuff with half the game ripped out seconds before release.
And please please test this time eh. Past games have been to put it mildly a bit buggy. People are getting fed up with this.
Will I get the game I want? Doubt it. Planescape torment was extremely close to perfect (the graphics could have high-res) and didn't sell. Fallout was almost there. Sadly it been an awfully long time since then and there just doesn't seem to be any demand for games like this.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Hi, I was the person who interviewed Leonard and my strong impression is that they WANT to do a turn based game, it's the publishers who don't want to take the risk of a) an unusual setting combined with b) a 'niche' (their view) combat system (turn based). There has to be demand for the system, and as Leonard says, they got a few publisher calls based on the media and community reaction to the screenshots a few months ago. So if we make enough noise about turn based games, there's still a chance.
I don't think developers are forced to choose, turn-based vs real-time. There is a spectrum of time control: :)
Traditional turn based (pause during every turn) - Final Fantasy, UFO
Turn-based with user defined pauses - KOTOR, Baldur's Gate
Turn Based with no pause - Everquest, most MMORPGs
Real time w/ speed control - Most RTSs
Real Time - FPSs, Flight/Space Sims
I think only the first one is becoming objectionable for publishers trying to cater to the MTV generation. I do love my Civilization and Empire Deluxe games though
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It's ironic because a good turn based system can have much better pacing of gameplay than the other systems. As long as the player learns how to play the game fluently and AI/Other players don't take too long.