Chaos Chronicles - Interview @ RPG Codex

The Codex has an interview with Peter Ohlmann, Technical Director at Coreplay, to discuss their turn-based fantasy RPG, Chaos Chronicles. An early question:

RPG Codex: With your previous game, Jagged Alliance: Back in Action (JA:BIA), you decided to ditch turn-based combat mid-development in an attempt to make the game... more dynamic. This begs the question: how can fans of turn-based combat be assured you will not decide to suddenly ditch turn-based combat with Chaos Chronicles?
PO: This statement isn’t 100% correct, because JA:BIA wasn’t planned as a turn-based game. And as a contractor we weren’t involved in those kind of decisions anyway. Our company was hired for this production and there have been serious discussions about this topic on both sides. For further details, please ask the publisher of JA:BIA. We are pleased with the introduced Plan&Go combat system, although we can fully understand those angry fans who expected the original turn-based mode of Jagged Alliance 2.
But ‘Chaos Chronicles’ is a different story. It’s our concept, our game and we planned to use turn-based combat from the beginning of the concept phase. In contrast to our previous production, we have full control about any creative decision in CC. By the way, we wrote about this particular topic on our development blog lately.

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More information.

I don't understand how RPG Codex could have the idea that JA: BIA was going to be turn-based when right from the beginning we were told it had a real time w/ pause system.

A good interview.
This game sounds really promising.

They are saying all the right things. Getting excited about this.

Reads like a Codex interview.

But what gets me excited is the picture on the developers main web site that shows all the guys not only holding their favorite CRPG but there's also a table filled with a whole bunch of other CRPG and strategy guides. That picture alone has this game high up on my WANT list.

http://chaos-chronicles.com/

click on the picture for a tad better resolution.

Dajjer said:

But what gets me excited is the picture on the developers main web site that shows all the guys not only holding their favorite CRPG but there's also a table filled with a whole bunch of other CRPG and strategy guides. That picture alone has this game high up on my WANT list.

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Nice collection…

I like the quote about Dragon Age in the 2nd paragraph on that page.. specifically what he says about DA2.

But right from the beginning turn-based clearly was what we wanted. Everything else was worth discussing but never struck us as ideal. We all played Dragon Age (the first part of course, since the second part is just a sad joke and should not be mentioned again) which has a realtime with pause combat system. But nobody here felt comfortable with the idea of having a similar combat system in our game.

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I was surprised by the 'Knights of the Chalice' reference. That game is becoming more well known. If there was a decent sale or if it was available on major platforms, I'd probably finally bite the bullet and buy it myself....

Major platforms?? It works fine on my pc, and for the price you will not find a better rpg to this day than KotC, imo.


-Carn

My bias is obvious, but I too would never hesitate to recommend KotC, or at least ToEE with Co8 as also mentioned.

"Major platforms?? It works fine on my pc, and for the price you will not find a better rpg to this day than KotC, imo."

Digital platforms, i.e. - Steam, GoG, GamersGate, Desura, etc. I like the platforms because they make it easier to keep stock of my (ridiculous) digital-only collection and because it'd be more likely to go on sale and reach more people.

Sure, it's not a bad price right now, but the lack of sales means that there's not really any incentive for me to buy now instead of waiting X amount of time. My backlog is already impressive. Also, most of my game purchases float around 5-10 bucks right now. Say what you want about that, but that's the pricing KotC has to contend against. With a large backlog and ridiculous prices on other games, I just haven't been able to convince myself to take the plunge.

"My bias is obvious, but I too would never hesitate to recommend KotC, or at least ToEE with Co8 as also mentioned. "
I tried ToEE with Co8 some. TBH, I was scared off by all the bugs that remain. The laundry list of do's and don'ts frightened me. It seemed like pretty much -any- tiny mistake could lead to my save files being corrupted.
Still, I did really enjoy my -very small- experience with the combat engine. I'm sure I'll go back to ToEE sooner or later.

killias2 said:

I tried ToEE with Co8 some. TBH, I was scared off by all the bugs that remain. The laundry list of do's and don'ts frightened me. It seemed like pretty much -any- tiny mistake could lead to my save files being corrupted.

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Fwiw, I played through ToEE long before the Co8 patch was available, and I never encountered any serious bugs. I think ToEE is one of those games where the severity of bugs is somewhat exaggerated.

Yeah, I played with the CO8 mod many years ago, and I noticed no bugs.

I also played Toee with CO8 and don't remember any major bugs.

With everything that sounds good about this game I think I'm most looking forward to rolling my characters ( i can spend hours just rolling and re-rolling) and using different classes than the warrior, thief, mage that has become almost standard now.

I'd like to know what quality people are getting in games that range in the 5-10 dollar range, and that aren't 5yrs+ in age. KotC cost me maybe 20 bucks if I remember right, but I got more value out of that purchase than I got out of ME2, 3 and DA 2....combined. Where on earth do you find current games that even come close to stacking up against KoTC?


-Carn

I couldn't get into KoTC at all. I'm not a graphics whore, but there is a certain minimum level of visual detail that I prefer and KoTC was below that level. The limitation of only three classes was also a killer for me.

KoTC 2 sounds like it's going to be a huge improvement over the original though.

"I'd like to know what quality people are getting in games that range in the 5-10 dollar range, and that aren't 5yrs+ in age."

I don't know. I typically buy modern RPG's for around 10 bucks. Divinity II DKS, Two Worlds II, Drakensang, and Risen were all purchased for around 10 bucks. Heck, I bought Mass Effect 1 and 2 for about 20 bucks put together, and I've seen Dragon Age Origins with the expansion and all DLC for like 6 or 7 bucks.

As you said, older games can also be purchased for cheap. I got ToEE for about 3 dollars. I mean, yeah, it's not new. But this is the kind of stuff that competes for my money.

Basically, I pay attention to sales and buy games I'm interested in when they reach a price I think is reasonable, given my backlog and the alternatives that exist. I do pay full price for a few games from time to time, but, by and large, 20 bucks is more on the upper end of what I'm prepared to spend on any video game.

Edit: And keep in mind my argument for sales incentivizing the short-term purchase of a product. When a desired product has a short-term sale, it raises the short-term incentive for finally breaking down and buying said product. This is true -regardless- of its asking price. For example, as a fan of 4x games, I -almost- bought Distant Worlds and its two expansions on sale recently. Of course, since they're Matrix/Slitherine games, the "sale" price was 60 bucks. In the end, I couldn't do it, but I seriously considered it.

Read through the article and the company website (thanks for the link). I'm cautiously optimistic about this. Being a fan of games we all love is certainly a good start but does not mean they know how to execute. I mostly liked JA2:BIA though not nearly as good as the original and was hard to recommend to anyone not who had not already a huge fan of JA2. They did a decent job with Plan&Go implementation at the end so that is good. Writing was not the greatest but one can argue that JA2 was the same and the portaits sucked but it was good enough.

The art in the Chaos Chronicles looks good at this point so that is promising. Now just hoping they have a good writer and can execute on a compelling story line as well as having an interesting combat engine.

I really like what they have to say about the game on their website. I hope they take their time and get this product right, it could be something big and amazing. A new game that you get to create an entire party and eat up time just rolling up stats is something I've been yearning for again, the potential is just huge.


-Carn