Couchpotato's Random RPG News

SEGA/ATLUS are at EGX presenting upcoming titles, including Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise, the high-intensity action-adventure RPG based on the beloved manga, developed by the Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio behind the acclaimed Yakuza series. Also on show are EGX exclusive demos for Persona 3: Dancing In Moonlight & Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight, featuring new content for Persona and Rhythm game fans a-like!

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Jeff Spock, writer on the Endless series of strategy games for Amplitude, explains how to write for genre, and the difference between literary genre and game genre. How can narrative and theme shape level design? How can you avoid confusing players? A must-see for game writers of any experience.

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Like many kids drawn to fantastical settings, I grew up taking comfort in the way fantasy situates violence within a moral plan. Fantasy novels are chock-full of bullied young protagonists, last survivors of near-universal slaughter, and heroes who seem helpless and hopeless against villainous might. This suffering is not just a preamble to, but a prerequisite for, later salvation. It is not merely that the wicked are punished and victims avenged; those who have been wronged find themselves, Job-like, even richer than before. (As a boy, I entirely believed that, say, Luke Skywalker could somehow be more than compensated for the trauma of coming home to the still-smoldering corpses of his murdered family. But it turns out that old wounds only ache worse as the years go on, and there is no psychic currency with which early losses can be offset by later gains.)

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The much anticipated Homecoming revamp is soon to arrive, and with it — fundamental changes to the way we all play GWENT. This marks the next GWENT Masters tournament as truly special. Open #7 will be historic, but not only for that reason. For the first time ever in an official GWENT Masters tournament, we will see a female participant competing for the lion’s share of the $25,000 prize pool.

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Bioware has announced that Anthem has passed its Alpha milestone, meaning that every part of the game is in, and functioning. As such, the team will now move almost entirely to bug-fixing, testing, and tuning in order to polish its title and have it ready for its February 22nd release.

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The fourth episode of The Council, the narrative adventure game redefining the genre with RPG mechanics and consequences for every choice, releases today for all Complete Season and Season Pass owners. Episode 4: Burning Bridges sees allegiances explained, rivalries come to a head, and the ghosts of the past begin to catch up to the inhabitants of the island. Your decisions will haunt you as you decide the fate of Louis, Mortimer, and the world itself.

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you said:

Hum. THat reminds me what happened to that game consortium ?? The council for some reason keeps reminding me of that game but it seemed to have mostly vanished from the news feeds.

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“So it turns out Jagged Alliance: Rage is not-terrible,” our Alec declared in his cheery way after playing the latest revival of the venerated real-time tactical combat series. It was surprising, seeing as many other attempts have ended up bleh, but even more surprising is that it was due to launch barely six weeks after being announced. Well, that part at least was too good to be true. Having previously planned to launch it tomorrow, September 27th, publishers THQ Nordic today announced Jagged Alliance: Rage is now due December 6th. I’ve asked, and they say the delay is for “Balancing and fine-tuning.” To tide folks over, they have blorped a new trailer.

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Couchpotato said:

Already was but after almost two years I lost the will to do so.

It wasn't until earlier this year that I started to post news links on the forum.

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Ahead of the game’s debut we’ve had the chance to interview Narrative Designer Chris Avellone (the legendary writer and designer behind RPGs like Fallout 2, Planescape: Torment, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: Sith Lords, Neverwinter Nights 2, Fallout: New Vegas to name a few) and Creative Director Aleksandr Mishulin. They discussed the game’s design choices, the changes from the PnP game and much more. Enjoy!

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Pathfinder: Kingmaker Explorer Edition was just released on Steam and you can already get it for 20% off via Fanatical, the online video game discount retailer. The isometric RPG set in the beloved Pathfinder tabletop universe normally retails for $39.99 but is temporarily on sale for $31.99. The deal ends in two weeks.

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At a Bethesda event during PAX West, we spoke to Arkane Studios’ Lead Designer Ricardo Bare about the recently released expansion Prey: Mooncrash and the ideas that came with developing a roguelike title while keeping the core elements of Prey intact. We also spoke about what could be next for Arkane in the future, though Bare was on his game when it came to not giving us too much to work with.

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Larian Studios have become a household name for PC gamers. Their release of Divinity: Original Sin 2 has only served to further establish them as a bit of an authority in regard to full-blooded RPGs, and it's no wonder that they've got some opinions about the tools that allowed them to get where they now are.

One of these tools is, naturally, Steam, and in an interview with a German video games magazine Gamestar, Larian Studios' founder and CEO Swen Vincke has very resolutely defended the fact that Steam takes a 30% cut off video game sales.

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New screenshots of the recently announced Resonance of Fate 4K / HD Edition have come out by way of the game’s newly launched PlayStation Japan page.

If you missed it at Tokyo Game Show 2018, watch some gameplay footage here.

Resonance of Fate 4K / HD Edition is due out digitally for PlayStation 4 and PC via Steam worldwide on October 18 for $35 / €35 / 3,700 yen.

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Coming to in a pool of presumably our own vomit the scene begins to fade into focus – a cheap hotel room strewn with the remnants of what looks like a good night. Seems like we’ve got ourselves in quite a mess, haven’t we? This is confirmed by the searing pain indicators shooting across the screen and the self-deprecating inner monologue telling us we’re worthless.

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We learned in 2018 that a slew of Final Fantasy games would be coming to the Nintendo Switch and Xbox One before and during 2019. I was excited and when my friends and I talked about it, we typed Final Fantasy VII – X-2 a few times. It was assumed that Final Fantasy VIII would be included, and it took a few moments before it occurred to us that no, there actually wasn’t any mention of the game. But why?

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War is nothing new to video games. The medium has always been fascinated with combat and war, from the wave of World War II games in the 90s to the deluge of modern-focused titles after Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. While there are plenty of war video games out there, both based on actual history and not, few of those titles actually manage to say something meaningful about the nature of war, and its consequences. This is part of what made the original Valkyria Chronicles such a massive surprise when it released in 2008, as, despite its gorgeous anime aesthetic, the title really manages to say something, and bring up themes that most war games gloss over. While other Valkyria games haven’t had nearly this level of commentary, Valkyria Chronicles 4 also manages to be a fascinating look at the horrors of war.

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Max Mittelman has been very active in anime and video games over the last few years, and you might recognize him best as the voice of Ryuji in Persona 5 or Saitama in One Punch Man. Mittelman plays the role of Claude Wallace in Valkyria Chronicles 4, the main character of the story and the leader of Squad-E.

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Ripper said:

I tend to agree. There's a lot of info in this thread that would be much better as individual newsbits, IMO. Then there's the scraps of conversation in between that get a bit lost in the turnover.

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Couchpotato said:

Yeah that's my fault as I post a ton of links.

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Ripper said:

Don't you fancy posting them as newsbits?

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The demo for Thronebreaker was short but impressed me as I wasn’t expecting a smaller side project like this one to be as deep and chock-full of content like a proper AAA outing from other companies. This isn’t just a rushed single player mode for a F2P game. This is a proper Witcher game played in a brand new way. I can’t wait to actually play the rest of it at launch and find out how the rest of the game will connect to the plot from the books and the games. October 23rd can’t come soon enough!

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What makes Thronebreaker so special is that unlike the mainline The Witcher titles, it’s that it’s not an action game. Instead, you guide the queen across a huge map, visiting different locales of her domain, engaging with NPCs, and most importantly, getting into scuffles, the point where the game switches to a Gwent board. While I’m still not particularly good at Gwent yet, having had played it only a handful of times since it was initially released, the tutorial parts of the demo did a fine job teaching that the basic concepts of Gwent, and for the few encounters I played through, I was able to quickly grasp the fundamentals and have a good time.

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This Cthulhu Mythos RPG is a retro styled horror RPG containing modern elements. What terrors await you in the abandoned mansion…? Create the protagonist "YOU" to your liking. Select your companions and unravel the mystery of the mansion.

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Story Mode de-emphasizes combat, placing a greater focus on narrative so players can enjoy Dr. Jonathan Reid’s journey with less challenging gameplay. On the other end of the scale, Hard Mode makes combat much more difficult. Players will receive less experience from killing enemies too, forcing them to rely even more on embracing citizens to grow in power. Upon starting a new game, players will be given the option to choose from these two new modes or a third ‘Normal Mode’ if they wish to play the original Vampyr experience.

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Greetings warriors of Calradia!

There is a fine balance that needs to be maintained when presenting information to players. Too little, and players fail to grasp a game mechanic or are forced into making uninformed decisions. Too much, and the information becomes overbearing or confusing. And it isn’t just the volume of information that needs to be taken into consideration. A good user interface (UI) should convey information to players quickly and clearly. It should be as non-invasive as possible, so that it doesn't get in the way of immersion, while still containing all of the information that the player needs, in a way that is functional, yet aesthetically pleasing. It has to be almost transparent, helping you in the experience without reminding you constantly that you are playing a game.

These are the kinds of considerations that the UI team have to make on a daily basis. It is down to people like Emre Özdemir to take these designs and make them a reality, bridging the gap between the player and the underlying code of the game.

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Today marks the last day of the campaign, what a ride! We wish it would have ended better financially for us. $800K was ambitious especially for a new team looking to get the resources to go further with our prototype ideas and story. We learned a lot about what might have worked better, where we made the right calls and where we could have made better ones.

But, what makes us most excited is the Starflight community coming together, letting us get to know it more and really changing how we thought about Starflight 3. That’s right, will be. Starflight isn’t going away. We have no idea what the future holds for it but we know it’s not going away any time soon.

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We take an early look at Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales with its lead writer.

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As it turns out, CD Projekt RED have decided against releasing Thronebreaker on Steam, and Gwent's standalone singleplayer offshoot will now be released as a GoG exclusive. Unless 'PC version ONLY on GOG.COM' reads otherwise in some odd way?

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At its roughest edges, The Bard’s Tale IV shows its retro revival roots in some not so positive ways. It may not be special enough for me to easily overlook these technical shortcomings entirely, but it’s an RPG that’s brimming with enjoyable, challenging fights, elaborate and entertaining puzzles, and plenty of visual and musical flair. And that was more than enough to keep me humming along contentedly to its tune more often than not.

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I feel absolutely certain this will find an audience who’ll defend it, no matter how flaky the tech, how awful the writing, how outstandingly dull the characters. (Oh, they try to do BioWare Bants between themselves, which is so far off the mark, and only laughable because, despite wandering them around for hours, I’d literally no idea what their names were, let alone if they had a personality.) Because people love old things made new, and people love pretending that something crappy now reminds them of something crappy from back when their backs hurt less and they could stay up past 10.30 in the evening without feeling it the next day.

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Overall, The Bard’s Tale IV is a rare new game that feels just a little old. People who only care for the newest thing with the newest mechanics might not appreciate the cosy, slightly dusty tenderness of Bards Tale, but it does have this delightful feeling regardless. Even if you’ve never heard of the series, or played RPGs from the nineties, The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep is a special game not to be quickly dismissed.

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There is so much going on that is good that it’s hard to even mention it all. You start with plenty of customization options, not just with character creation, but within classes and skills. All told there are somewhere between sixty to seventy skills per class. I haven’t even mentioned the puzzles, which I found to be just the right mix of difficult, neither boring nor too hard. The story is great, even with the occasional self-spoiler. Combat has a lot going for it and keeps things interesting, but it’s always possible that not everyone feels that way on that front. The few performance issues aside, it’s a game that’s hard not to like. Interestingly enough, prior to release InXile Entertainment CEO Brian Fargo said that if The Bard’s Tale IV sells over two million copies over the first eighteen months he’ll attempt to buy back Interplay. Is this a two million seller over the next year and a half? It very well may be.

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Without the bugs, The Bard’s Tale IV is okay at best. With them, it’s perhaps best to preserve your nostalgia and play the HD remaster of The Bard’s Tale I to III instead. Several bugs were cleared up between us getting code for the game and the review version, however as it stands the version we’re currently playing still has several technical hitches and is a mediocre experience even when it runs smoothly. It could be better, but it’s hard to recommend in its current state, even to die-hard fans.

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Enter the arena with a team of heroes. Fight hand in hand with Guardians and vanquish your opponents in this tactical, turn-based game - featuring a range of characters with a unique abilities on a mission to restore the peace in a fantastic world of Thasys.

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Today Beamdog Producer Luke Rideout and Marketing & PR Manager Lee Guille shared the latest studio news, updates and plans on Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition and the Infinity Engine EEs. Luke showed the current state of Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition on Android (everything showcased is still work in progress).

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Created by modder ‘kelester’, this mod for Dark Souls 3 changes the icons for the PC version. However, this mod is not complete yet. For example, there are some issues with currency of letters (the game shows Roll as “Q” for example) and some icons have not been changed yet. After all, and as the title, suggests, this is a WIP mod.

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20 years ago, video game RPGs were either stagnating or going from strength to strength. How could it be both these things? The answer depends, as usual, on perspective. Fans of the genre had recently been enjoying the original Fallout, a turn-based apocalyptic world that would eventually morph into the much-loved series of today.

Yet even with PC gamingenjoying a huge surge in popularity, the RPG remained a relatively niche type of game on a platform dominated by first-person shooters, flight simulators and real-time strategy titles before, in 1998, BioWare and Baldur's Gate changed that forever. Founded in 1995 by medical doctors Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk and Augustine Yip, the Canadian developer began life by publishing Shattered Steel, Brent and Trent Oster's mech simulation, to moderate success. A series of events then conspired to realise what would become the most successful RPG of the decade, and for some time to come.

Baldur's Gate began life as Battlegrounds: Infinity, a tech demo of an engine devised by Scott Greig, one of BioWare's first employees. Around the same time, the developer's publisher, Interplay, secured the Dungeons & Dragons licence from TSR, and were keen to publish a video game that emulated the famous world.

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It seems that Fallout developers and fans have been at war from the outset. Every sequel can be seen as a degeneration of what Fallout was supposed to be. Beyond the petty squabbles over isometric vs. first/third-person and turn-based vs. real-time, Fallout always mutated into something that deviated from its original setting, while simultaneously reinventing itself with new ideas that attempted to revitalize it. Some of those ideas hit the target, and others not so much. In its more recent incarnation, Fallout has been completely stripped of “ethics in a post-nuclear world” to become a nuke-your-opponents simulator.

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After the first three hours of Call of Cthulhu were over, I was pretty sure that I would be playing game. It was like a first episode of a TV series tailored for my brain: Calculated to draw me in, interest me, and keep me going for a bit longer until I'm fully hooked. "A bit longer" comes soon: the game releases on the 30th of October.

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And there is a lot of drama in Call of Cthulhu. Lovecraftian stories concern themselves with seemingly ‘normal’ people gradually losing their sense of reality, and my demo ended with a cult in an underground cave, squirming fish guts and tentacles coming from places where tentacles shouldn’t be coming from. It’s fun and a little scary, and I’m looking forward to the full harrowing journey Cyanide promises to take me when Call of Cthulu comes out just in time for Halloween, on October 30th.

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One of the first things I did in Call of Cthulhu was drink. Edward Pierce, the grizzled detective protagonist that drips cliche, reached for a bottle of whiskey. This prompted a choice between “Drink” or “Don’t drink”. Obviously, I chose to drink. I was immediately told it would “affect my destiny”. A man came in, gave me my case, and berated me for being a lousy drunk. He still entrusted me with finding the truth behind his daughter’s death. I guess drinking on the job is fine after all.

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When Call of Cthulhu from Cyanide Studios was announced, I sat straight up in my chair. This was a game rising from the briny depths, tentacles in tow, just for me. The first collection of horror stories I ever purchased as an adult was The Best of H.P. Lovecraft edited by Robert Bloch and my first e-book collection was The Complete Works of everything he’d published. Over the last three years, I’ve read more than 50 modern horror novels written by “Lovecraft’s Children,” that wonderful group of authors ushering in “the new weird.” If anyone was primed to love this game, it was me.

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You’d think they would churn out a Cthulhu game each and every Halloween, such is the dark being’s ability to chill despite being fairly well exposed. Just from playing Call of Cthulhu’s demo, simply seeing the malevolent behemoth in the background of the main menu was enough to set me on edge.

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With tons of RPG titles covering nearly every game console or system today, it’s not too difficult to come across one that’s truly memorable in its own right. However, there are some series that seem to stick with us long after their arrival – and in some way we’re hoping they’ll make a swift comeback to the modern era.
Here are 5 RPG series, or titles, that we’d love to see rebooted to fit today’s generation of gaming.

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Eldest Souls is a top down, pixel art RPG game with a focus on tight fighting mechanics and lore. So I got to play a section of the game where I took on The Guardian. A huge bad-ass knight who kicked my ass a few times.

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Darkest Dungeon: The Color of Madness releases on Switch, XBOX One, and iPad October 11th for $4.99 USD! Along with the release of the The Color of Madness, The Musketeer DLC will be released for FREE to the above platforms as well as the large game balance patch that has been live for the PC version of the game since June.

The Color of Madness storefront pages will go live on Thursday September 27th on both Switch and XBOX One, so please help spread the word to friends and fans alike!

Ancestral Edition Digital Bundles

With the release of the new DLCs we wanted to update the Digital Ancestral Bundles on the console marketplaces. To do this we had to take down the old bundle and put up a new bundle with all the DLCs included.

That said, if you purchased the digital bundle BEFORE the 11th, you will still need to purchase The Color of Madness separately. AFTER the 11th, the digital Bundle will include all currently available Darkest Dungeon content for $39.99 USD.

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Fallout: Miami is an upcoming mod for Fallout 4. Welcome to the monthly progress update video for September. We hope you enjoy the new content.

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Well I'm finally confident enough in what I have here to put a stake in the ground and say for sure that Build 11 will release on or before Nov 16 2018. In this video I explain why.

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It has been a long time coming, but we're finally dusting off the last elements of the mod that are unfinished or unpolished in some way. Our release will certainly be a BETA, in that a few things will be left to adjust based on mass player feedback, but in a state of completion that I doubt most people will ever notice anything missing. It's just bugs you don't catch til 5000 people play your project in a weekend and all report the same unexpected things!

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A Grim Misadventure is upon us. Last time, we took a deeper look at some of the Oathkeeper’s zealous arsenal.

Today, fresh from the art team, we have for you a first look at some of the Legendary gear coming with the Forgotten Gods expansion. In total, over 200 new Legendary items are coming, scattered across 12 new Legendary sets and a vast array of stand-alone equipment.

These items are not just going to support the upcoming Oathkeeper mastery however. You can look forward to powerful new procs and skill modifiers for existing masteries as well!

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In case my four-part coverage has not made it clear, by reason of its reactivity, resource management and tactical considerations, along with its replayability, attention to detail and overall polish, I hold Rogueknight 333's Swordflight in especially high regard. In fact, to my mind, Swordflight is not only the best single-player campaign to grace the Aurora platform but also one of the best RPGs ever, amateur or pro.

With the imminent release of the highly-anticipated fourth installment of Swordflight (currently in beta form and being playtested), Rogueknight 333 has kindly agreed to my written interview request. So, without further ado, let's get to it!

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