Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - Backer Portal Delay and how Cutscenes are made

Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous has a new update announcing a delay to the rollout of the backer portal. Additionally Owlcat describe what goes into the making of cutscenes.

Cutscenes can be quite complex! Imagine you command your character to hang an artifact banner over the gates of Drezen. Control is taken away from you, the character runs to the edge of the wall, and a special animation is played. The banner appears, it unfolds with the corresponding animation and a special effect that shows the banner's magical impact on the environment. Then the camera smoothly moves to the square in front of the gates, the fog of war clears away, and you see a group of friendly crusaders fighting demons. The crusaders are inspired, the demons are weakened by the banner and try to use teleportation to flee. But teleportation does not work, so they try to flee on foot, and they die. The crusaders triumph. All this is one giant cutscene. Each crusader and each demon follows a designated sequence of commands: they hit, use abilities, die, or try to flee at the right time at the assigned locations. It's like a puppet show, where all the string-pulling is scripted in advance.

In the editor, this scene will look like a lot of parallel command sequences, which are started and stopped by different conditions and events. Depending on their complexity, cutscenes can take from a few minutes to several weeks to create.

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In most cutscenes, characters carry out the same sequences of actions as during gameplay--they run, fight, and use spells and abilities. All this is assembled in the editor by one person, usually a level designer. But sometimes we need to show special animations that have never been used before: pensively scratching one's head, hitting something with a battering ram, or running to a balcony and leaping off. Inanimate objects might need to be animated, like stones rolling down a hill, a gate breaking open, or a column collapsing. In these cases, cutscenes will require extra work by artists, animators, and FX artists.

That's why we normally use existing assets in cutscenes, but sometimes we order new unique animations and effects. Needless to say, we use the coolest cutscenes to emphasize the most important, emotionally significant moments in the game. In Wrath of the Righteous, for example, we'd like to celebrate the player's character reaching each subsequent stage of the mythic progression by adding dramatic camera spinning, zooms, and distinctive animations and effects.

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More information.

"We wanted to open the backer portal for you asap so much and rushed to give you the launch date, that we didn’t take into account some of the issues that still need our attention. Yet again, we need to apologize, as we have to postpone the portal launch for a few more days. "

Well, it sounds like it will still happen pretty soon, so I'm fine with waiting a few extra days.

I'm out of the loop, will the kingdom management part be present in this one?

That's the only thing I don't like in Kingmaker.

Originally Posted by Winterfart
I'm out of the loop, will the kingdom management part be present in this one?

That's the only thing I don't like in Kingmaker.

There won't be kingdom management, but your character will be leading an army. Exactly how this works hasn't been discussed in great detail though it supposed to be something like the kingdom management in kingmaker, also one of the succesful stretch goals was to (optionally) be able to play out battles in a tactical mode inspired by the Heroes of Might and Magic games.
I also didn't like the kingdom management in Kingmaker, and when I eventually replay it will have it set to run on automatic. I also didn't like that this option had to be turned on at the beginning of the game. By the time you get to be king and discover you don't like the system you have played the game 15-20 hours and at that point can't change it and its much to late to want to restart.

Thanks!
As long as they get rid of the unfairness in the system, I'll be ok with a little management.

Never played any HoMM but it's upposed to be the top notch in the strategy/RPG hybrid genre, so good news I guess.

If there is no Kingdom Management and there is turn based combat, then I like the sounds of this game much better than the previous. Now if they release it relatively bug free, without reused maps and an actually finished last half of the game, we have something I could sink a good amount of hours into.

The turn-based mod for Kingmaker is great (with a lot of options), made the game interesting for me.

I was curious about what happened there. Thanks for the update.

I liked the kingdom management for the most part. The town building was a bit shallow, but I thought many of the events were very imaginative and the solutions varied depending on who your adviser was. What are people's main gripes with it?

Besides the facts that town building is a trap, advisors training is stupid and chaotic characters are kinda screwed (chaotic management doesn't work, simple as that) there's nothing really specific.
I just don't like the general idea that I can screw myself and be game over for something else than good old adventuring.
It add a level of "stress" (I'm exagerating to make my point, it's just a game I know that) that I don't necesarely want to deal with, and I certainly do not want that part to failstate my entire game.

Plus, I suck at managment (in game like IRL), I simply don't like that

I'll be glad if they tone down that aspect of the game for the sequel, or just make it virtually inconsequential (maybe an option).

It is true that the kingdom management could be a bit more streamlined. Although, the ruler events were you have to decide stuff are usually well done.

That being said, I'm very glad Wrath will have build-in turn-based since I immensely enjoy my current turn-based playthrough of Kingmaker with the turn-based mod.

I found kingdom management to be refreshing take on money sink in game. This important part of game economy is often artificial and underwhelming in cRPGs. In Kingmaker it actually required some basic consideration, including time management and prioritisation, where outcomes actually mattered (sometimes) and had some impact (sometimes). It had its shortcomings, but overall I have to give it thumb-up.

I have to say it required some investment from my side to be able to enjoy it as I usually tend to be quite completionist. In this case I was able to enjoy it only after I stopped trying to achieve every opportunity and solve every crysis that arouse. Then it just took some common sense to keep management overall succesfull, not really rocket science or anything near to real stress.

Originally Posted by Darkheart
It is true that the kingdom management could be a bit more streamlined. Although, the ruler events were you have to decide stuff are usually well done.

That being said, I'm very glad Wrath will have build-in turn-based since I immensely enjoy my current turn-based playthrough of Kingmaker with the turn-based mod.

I replayed PF:KM with the kingdom management turned to auto. It mostly works fine, and lets you focus on the adventuring aspects. I didn't miss it much, and the game felt more streamlined.

To me kingdom management was quite immersion breaking. Companions being advisors, explicitly doing important kingdom projects but simultaneously going on adventures with the king. Makes no sense.

Backer Portal is now open and available.