Thorvalla - Update #3, Party Building

Dhruin

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Guido Henkel writes about party-building (and a new pledge tier) in Thorvalla Update #3:
The game then starts with this one character and very soon, our hero(ine) will meet an NPC who is willing to join the party. What happens next is putting the control back into your hands.
While the NPC willing to join you might be a centaur and you may not have an option to change that particular fact, you will now get back into a character generation screen that will allow you to make modifications to that centaur character. You will roll the attributes, but more importantly, you will be able to determine the class of the character as well, along with his traits. It’s not just a question whether he’ll be strong or weak. We are talking the entire gamut here. It means that the centaur who just joined you can be a Warrior for one player, but a Sorcerer for another player. The choice is entirely up to you, and it is my way of giving control back to the player, even though he is dealing with a recruitable character.
To me it combines the best of both worlds. The player is mostly free to shape the characters he is playing with and from a dramatic standpoint, we can use these NPCs to great effect in the storytelling. It is additional work, of course, to accommodate actions, reactions and behaviors for the different classes within the story, but ultimately I think it will pay huge dividends. It will increase replayability of the game dramatically and it will allow us to throw in some wicked plot twists in the story, directly surrounding and affecting these characters. It will even allow us to unlock entire new branches in the story, because to us, as designers, they are not an unknown quantity any longer. They are still planted NPCs, but with so much flexibility that we begin to blur the lines.
There's also a new concept art piece.
More information.
 
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Some interesting new ideas - I like that.

Remember:
In the Amiga days nearly every game had a new game engine/concept/idea.

Nowadays you see the same proven game concepts often over and over again.
-> No risk to make something new -> no fun.

Mixing old school hardcore gaming with some new ideas - NOT bad!
 
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The recruiting ideas are very interesting. I'm not sure about the new tier though.
 
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The recruiting ideas are very interesting. I'm not sure about the new tier though.
I just read the update and I agree that the recruiting idea is interesting. Although it must be a huge amount of work to write new dialogues and reactions based on the chosen class for each NPC. But if done well, it is certainly a welcome idea.

However, about the EXCLUSIVE dungeon. I really think that they haven't done their homework.
 
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Well, there is already a backlash in the comments, so maybe they'll do the right thing.
 
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Mixing old and new elements seems to be a theme with Thorvalla. This game is either going to hell or gaming heaven.
 
Totally called it on Shaker II.

How long til they pull it? One week? Two?
 
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I thought of that system before, but I think allowing the player to choose the class is actually too restrictive for the story. The way I thought would let you create the NPC stats after you meet him/her, but the (core) class would be set. For example, you would meet Joe the Wizard, then a character creation screen would pop for you to create the wizard the way you want. I feel the story would suffer if the writers don't know what Joe is, it would have to be too generic (or else the writers would have to create different versions of many story elements for each class)
 
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From the Kickstarter comments:

Thank you so much for the vote of confidence, GirkinFirker. Your sentiments are most appreciated. Kickstarter is the right place to pledge because if we won't make our goal here, the game simply will not happen. There won't be any restarts or anything. We're throwing everything we have behind this one campaign.

I guess that's it then unless some miracle happens.
 
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