Project Witchstone - Emulating the Freedom of D&D

PCGamesN spoke to the developers of Project Witchstone and asked how they intend to use AI to create a living world.

What sets Project Witchstone apart from other games in its genre is that aforementioned "living world" - an "alive" and "dynamic" world that you can interact with authentically and in which player decisions affect things down the line in a realistic way. "Like a Game Master running campaigns for their friends, our stories have a general direction, but what the player decides to do ultimately determines what happens next and which characters are involved."

This dynamic world is captured in its setting. "When coming up with the lore," Philip says, "we felt that the game's core concepts of freedom of choice and influence on the world would need a setting that would support conflict, intrigue, and lasting changes. Therefore, the idea of a frontier-like world made the most sense to us. In the mythologies of the American West and the Australian Outback, the stories are about personal freedom, danger, one's influence on society, resource control, the old vs the new, et cetera. This, combined with the visual iconography of the era, inspired and influenced us greatly."

It's not just about player agency, however. To make this experience as realistic as possible, non-player characters need to react authentically to the world - and act upon it, too. "Characters in the world of Project Witchstone go about their daily lives, react to characters and actions around them, but can also act on their wants and needs. For example, should the player attack someone in their vicinity, an NPC has to immediately decide, based on their personality and past history, whether they help someone in the fight, run away, or report the assault to the nearest law enforcement officer. As you can imagine, building such an AI and optimising it isn't trivial."

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Sounds very interesting but they need to work on the games UI. It's terrible.

Originally Posted by Old Grognard
Sounds very interesting but they need to work on the games UI. It's terrible.

Yeah it sounds interesting, but a lot of AI:s in the history of gaming sounded amazing. Oblivion's system was really hyped, but underdelivered.

Alpha Protocol had interesting reactivity and really complex consequences, but since it was hard as a player to see the less obvious ones I'm guessing a lot of players didn't even notice.

Well, I'm going to keep an eye on this game to see where it goes.

The problem I had with this game is that the way it plays in general reminds me of Sword Coast Legends, but cheap-made. Really hope it's a good game though, can never have enough worthwhile RPGs.

It's an interesting concept and I'll definitely keep an eye on it. I love reactivity in game worlds and their pitch is right up my street. Graphics remind me a lot of Original Sin, which is no bad thing.

The level of reactivity they're talking about will be challenging to develop though I imagine. In one of their newsletters they talk about "milestones", for example:

https://us3.campaign-archive.com/?u=…&id=1a61ead0e2
For this newsletter, I'd like to highlight what we call Milestones. In Project Witchstone, Milestones are major world-changing events that happen based on the player's previous actions and the current state of the in-game world. Murdered almost everyone in multiple towns and helped some cultists move into those empty towns? A Milestone about the cultists raising an undead army and going for world domination would trigger. Do you join them or fight them at this point?

Milestones are also used as act (or chapter) changes. The stake of what the player has to do is upped when Milestones are reached. We want to make sure that fetch quests aren't as prevalent when an external invasion is underway

It sounds fantastic, but it's potentially a bit of an infinite rabbit hole.

Its going to end up on Kickstarter apparently - I imagine I'll back it when it happens.

When they announced this game a year ago, they said it would be out in Q2 2020. Guess that's no longer even remotely a thing…

wishlisted immediately.

Originally Posted by Stingray
When they announced this game a year ago, they said it would be out in Q2 2020. Guess that's no longer even remotely a thing…

more likely Q1 2022.

Originally Posted by Pongo
It's an interesting concept and I'll definitely keep an eye on it. I love reactivity in game worlds and their pitch is right up my street. Graphics remind me a lot of Original Sin, which is no bad thing.



The level of reactivity they're talking about will be challenging to develop though I imagine. In one of their newsletters they talk about "milestones", for example:



https://us3.campaign-archive.com/?u=…&id=1a61ead0e2

For this newsletter, I'd like to highlight what we call Milestones. In Project Witchstone, Milestones are major world-changing events that happen based on the player's previous actions and the current state of the in-game world. Murdered almost everyone in multiple towns and helped some cultists move into those empty towns? A Milestone about the cultists raising an undead army and going for world domination would trigger. Do you join them or fight them at this point?



Milestones are also used as act (or chapter) changes. The stake of what the player has to do is upped when Milestones are reached. We want to make sure that fetch quests aren't as prevalent when an external invasion is underway



It sounds fantastic, but it's potentially a bit of an infinite rabbit hole.



Its going to end up on Kickstarter apparently - I imagine I'll back it when it happens.

If they pull it off, it will be a very interesting game to play. But that's a big "if".

The last kickstarter I backed where I suspected the devs were too ambitious was Greywalker, and it doesn't seem promising that it will ever release properly. Maybe I'll Kickstart this anyway, since I like helping with the funding of indie projects… Hmm…. Well let's wait for the kickstarter then

Originally Posted by Telstar
more likely Q1 2022.

Yeah. It is way too ambitious to be released quickly. I'm gonna guess even later than that if they want a reactive game like that.

Very nice! I think, their UI is good enough and they have turn-based combat, that they deserve a BUY. They realized the original XCOM: EU designer idea [this was pitched to Firaxis, but rejected, just as my amazing ideas were pitched to Firaxis and rejected as well, because of their extremely limited & rigid game design rules..] of turn-based battles mixed with realtime reflex elements. My favorite idea as well.

I just finished excellent SIN SLAYERS, a traditional turn-based dark fantasy game I can recommend to anyone loving animated pixel graphics and lots of mid-bosses and final bosses. There is even a final MegaBoss ingame, so it felt amazing to crush it as well.
I guess, its back to good Shadowrun Hong Kong Extended Edition, which now has a modded font-size, thanks to 'little moi'..

Or if I get hungry for GORE, back to Carrion, since that game has a prodigious amount of gore. Theatrically "Graphic" Gore™ is very important in games, I think: everybody knows its not real, but massively overdone and hilarious - like those blood fountain samurai & horror movies with flying intestines and buckets of blood thrown after them with those amazing slushy liquid sounds of guts & gore leaving the body…
So, this is why our game already has, but will have a lot more amazing GORE.

Some of our maps have sections which would make Diablo's THE BUTCHER proud as his lair was full of bloody guts & hackmeat. So, when you play our Dark Fantasy game [I love the genre] you'll have to "wade" through prodigious amounts of gore.
Our monsters are very evil.. they like to heap this stuff in their caves & lairs..

Oh, and SCREAMS. We must hire pro actors and make authentic death screams!

Sometimes I don't know whether to take you seriously, or not?

As for the UI I know it's still in early development but just look at it.

project-witchstone-gameplay.jpg project-witchstone-world.jpg

All squares it looks likes it fits a phone app game.

Yeah the UI is ugly for sure. I also don't like their choice of fonts. I don't normally notice or care about fonts, but there's something cheap looking about it. Although on second thoughts maybe it's more the layout than the font? Not sure. Anyway, if the game delivers I won't care much about these things.

Funny….it's like this concept of a living world with npc's that go about their business is something new…like no one thought of doing this before….The unfortunate part is that it has been done in the ultima's then got lost somewhere since and now people want to do it again.

We should actually be able to get even better more immersive worlds today with the difference in computer power, just need someone to want to make that type of game and invest in the tools to do so.

That UI is just temporary, I guess. It even uses windows system's boxes…

If the UI isn't temporary, the released game will be….