Winter Voices Revealed

Beyond the Pillars sent us a press release announcing a 7-part episodic RPG named Winter Voices. The official site has a teaser trailer, some art, screens and music, an overview and titles of each episode. Apparently an episode will get released every seven days after launch for 5 Euro. It's hard to get a good picture of the gameplay but, from the emphasis on the story, I'm guessing its jRPG-inspired. From the PR:

The first role-play in game-series on PC and MAC

A drama is unfolding in a tiny village buried in snow, lost in the depths of a Three-River Principality valley. A sudden death, a now-hostile home, new sensory capacities rising like a storm and the departure towards the unknown, the only means to escape besides death, has become inevitable…The newly-orphaned heroine is pushed to leave her father’s village by the voices of her unconscious mind. The long journey to find answers will lead you through many events to overcome anger, sadness, pain and fear and finally unveil what is whispered by the voices of Winter.

A unique adventure, a stunning scenario to discover in one season

Winter Voices is a solo role game on PC AND MAC purchased by downloading 7 episodes at 5 €each (tax included). Each new episode, made available every 7 days, constitutes a decisive narrative step towards resolving the plot.

Beyond the Pillars, play better to live better

Beyond the Pillars, a startup creating digital game worlds and founded in Paris in late 2008, is designing a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) that is multifaceted, full-web and cloud-powered. The release of Winter Voices is a preview of the project whose codename is LNW.

…and from the gameplay information on the site:

The game alternates real-time phases for dialog, world exploration and turn-based combat that requires reflection and strategy, with a choice of more than 100 skills for a unique confrontation with your destiny.
In this innovative game experience, each week and up until the end of the first season; you are provided with new elements in your character's adventure
Totally immersed in Three-River Principality, you incarnate a fragile and vulnerable female character, with many hidden resources currently damaged by a troubling past. She is seeking answers.
Above and beyond the adventurous journey to the heart of Winter, your aim is to fight the character's personal demons and thus save her from herself.

More information.

The artwork and screenshots look absolutely gorgeous!

I watch anything with turn-based combat. And I'm only disappointed about 19 times out of 20.

Wow. That's beautiful.

This game looks adorable, hope it has the gameplay to compliment that!

Art is indeed great and very distinctive, I hope that the story and gameplay are on par.

I'd love to see a demo of this, but with the way they've decided to release it - episodic content, I think it would make a bigger splash if they give away the first chapter for free (probably won't be very long if they think everyone will finish it for 7 days) - that would hook them lots of players if it is good and also put them in the headlines of more sites. Everyone loves freebies. :3

It looks interesting but "turn based combat"? why ?

Why the hell not?

Originally Posted by Tragos
It looks interesting but "turn based combat"? why ?

Because its now a gameplay style almost completely abandoned by AAA developers - hence a good niche for indies.

Originally Posted by Dhruin
Why the hell not?

+1

(at least 10 char thingy - ignore)

Huh ? I'm speechless. It (the game, as seen from the graphics, I mean) clearly shows the superiority of carefully drawn graphics over 3D.

At the same time it reminds me vaguely of the adventure called "Broken Sword".

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
Huh ? I'm speechless. It (the game, as seen from the graphics, I mean) clearly shows the superiority of carefully drawn graphics over 3D.

+ 10^4


Good god!… somebody made a game that looks good without spending millions on it!
Which makes me wonder: is this really an RPG? The majority of low budget games that I can think of that don't look like someone is trying to reproduce a photograph in MSPaint are Adventures.

It didn't look much like an RPG to me, either.

But on the other hand I don't know the result of this development.

Originally Posted by holeraw
+ 10^4


Good god!… somebody made a game that looks good without spending millions on it!
Which makes me wonder: is this really an RPG? The majority of low budget games that I can think of that don't look like someone is trying to reproduce a photograph in MSPaint are Adventures.

Well, TB combat, a nice skill (talent) tree - I'd say it looks like a RPG. Being so heavily episodic, I would expect it to probably be quite linear, though.

Sorry, but I don't get the "OMG!" reaction over the visuals. While they're certainly not bad, I don't see anything particularly impressive about them.

The graphicsa [i9as such[/i] aren't that impressive … it's rther how "smooth" they look like. There aren't any harsh edges, for example. It is not like 3D polygonale models where you can assume that the object's texture goes this way … Plus, the graphics of this game have very good … what's the word … "transitions". Everything looks just so smooth … Sorry, but I haven't got any better words to describe what I mean …

I think it looks great. Nice 2D graphics, isometric view and turnbased combat is something pretty rare these days so I'll give it a shot.

I'm wondering why they went with episodic content though. It's gonna come out every seven days, which seems pretty frequent so why not just release it all at the same time? Get people hooked for 5 euros and get them to keep paying for episodes instead of forking out a bigger sum at the get go?

I just came across some kind of … easter egg …

They named themselves "Beyongthepillars" … Okay, that's a fairly generic name, but there IS in fact an RPG with that name … but not "out there". It was never finished, that's why.

The full name was "The Pillars of Avalon", and it was meant to be a sequekl to "Siege Of Avalon", you know, tht episodic RPG that came out so long ago, and which still has an active German community around it (or had, at least).

Well, maybe I'm thinking too much, seeing networks between things everywhere.


Besides : Someone there has an interesting drawing style : http://www.beyondthepillars.com/en/company/team