Yeah, makes sense. There is little gameplay to watch, so we’re spinning our wheels waiting.
But it might be the first game ever that my wife and I are both drooling over. She loves detective stories, and she is totally into psychology and competing inner voices. And I am super enthusiastic about roleplaying games that do interesting things with things other than just violence.
This gives me a bit of a Planescape: Torment vibe (the original) for some reason. It looks like one of those games that’s so ambitious it’s either going to be really, really good or really, really bad. It looks fascinating and so I hope it’s the former.
Leveling up the inner aspects of your personality like you would sidekick companions is certainly something new and I’d like to see some game-play to see how that works, exactly. Same thing for their combat system, which seems to be very different.
I felt I was getting a reasonably good sense of how the inner voices compete by pausing and reading the text on the right side in this video (also linked above, but to be clear which link I am repeating it here)
It seems that if you have a given number of levels in an aspect of your personality, this affects dice rolls as to how likely you are at achieving various things. A few are physical, many are interpersonal, but the really interesting ones are internal. “I have this urge to blurt out this totally inappropriate thing, can I say something responsible or reasonable instead?”
That opening paragraph. sharp intake of breath
This game seems like an amazing work of art that I have no hope of ever coming close to finishing.
There are a couple gameplay previews of the opening minutes of the game out. This link appears not to be in English, but the video simply shows gameplay without commentary, and the game is in English. (Obviously spoilers)
One takeaway:
It appears that although there are 24 voices or skills making up your personality, at the outset of the game you have to begin the six within any one group sharing a rating. So all six Motorics skills might be set at Good (a 4) and all six Intellect skills might be set at Weak (a 2)… with the ability to then add one single point to one specific skill, which is then referred to as your signature skill, and this also makes your learning cap within that group one higher. (This also prevents a min-max strategy of using that extra point to rescue the one sole skill you might care about in an otherwise less interesting group.)
The interface shows that you can add to individual skills through learning them (at level up, maybe other ways also), through items, and as a bonus due to thoughts. Later, you can see that his clothes raise and lower particular skills.
RPS visited the studio and interviewed a few members of the team:
Is flares the facial hairstyle of the main character? I’ve never heard a reference like that.
Aka… Bell Bottoms.
.
As someone who lived through and sported bellbottoms, I can say that I have never ever heard them referred to as flares.
It’s a Guardian piece, so maybe it’s another bit of horrific Ukish slang, like nappies or maths.
Yeah, this is supposed to be an alternate universe with similarities to the 70s (whether western or eastern Europe or a mix, I don’t know). So maybe this is supposed to be the term for bellbottoms from that world?
Not that I ever followed real life fashion and its terminology. :)
In the seventies, we called them flare-legged pants (I can remember my mom referring to them that way when she was buying my school clothes) but not usually “flares” as a term, though in later years seeing it in context throughout the 80s and onward in a Nick Hornby novel or essay or something similar, it was easy enough to work out.
In the US, flare-legged pants were those that were the next step of wider cuffs than boot-cuts, which were in turn wider than straight-legged. And bell-bottoms were the step beyond flare-legged.
I watched this American vs Australian slang video the other day which I came across on facebook, I thought of you.
Sparra Fart? That can’t really mean Early? @krayzkrok
also do you own a Bum Bag? :D
Not even from the Eric Clapton song?
Flares in NZ too although I had heard of bell bottoms also. Certainly by the early ‘80s flares were, In my experience at least, the epitome of uncool…the trousers your mother would buy you.
I’m not commenting on this game in particular, as I have little knowledge of the details nor do I care much. But the statement “it’s a game,” as in, “it’s just a game,” used to exempt the game from any serious critical analysis or examination, is fundamentally flawed. “It’s a movie.” “It’s a book.” “It’s a TV show.” Would we say that when someone tries to examine other media in any depth, or to find meaning and significance in creative choices there? We shouldn’t do it for games, either. And if you do think that all creative media is “just” whatever fictional narrative it is, and that there’s no real meaning or significance, then, why play/read/watch/listen to it? If something is meaningful, it has impact, significance, consequences. The level and degree and importance of these things can legitimately be debated, for sure–it’s entirely possible that you could build an argument that this particular game’s treatment of addictive substances is a crucial part of the narrative and serves to model addictive personalities in a way that highlights personal struggles and creates a great context for the player’s decision making.
But you can’t just handwave away critique by dismissing the value or significance of the medium, while simultaneously participating in a group discussion about that medium, on a board devoted to that medium, and expect to have anyone take you seriously.