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From the Lionheart forum at BIS:composer
The composer for Lionheart has not been chosen as far as I understand. But given BIS previous games, you can be assured that the music will be top notch. I'm sure we'll announce who the composer is given some time.
Dialogue
Currently, initiating a dialogue will pause the gamestate and there is not planned time limit. You will need to approach a character and get close enough to initiate a dialogue.
There will dialogue options that allow you to take different paths in a conversation. In a hypothetical situation, you might be get a couple of variations of yes, an even tempered regular no, an empatic no, or an even a more hostile response. In some situations, a high charisma or high intelligence might grant you additional options.
Any speech skill?
Yes, there will be.
Linearity
We are designing the game to be as non-linear as possible, in a way that Baldur's Gate allowed you tremendous freedom to do quests and explore as you like, but eventually brought you back to the main storyline. Lionheart will allow you to explore the lands and do quests in whatever order you like. There is a main storyline that threads throughout the game, although it can be alterred depending on how your character drives the story. So the answer to your question is that yes there will be non-linearity to allow you to explore, but eventually you are drawn into main chapter events of the overall story (like Baldur's Gate).
I've mentioned BG 2 because many people insisted on a yardstick to measure Lionheart against.
There are choices that you make at the beginning of the game and throughout that could possibly affect the ending encounter. Without giving away any spoilers, the ending encounter is the same antagonist, but it can play out very differently depending on how you made these choices early on and later in the game. There is no wrong choice, so you don't find out at the end that you made a *bad* decision early on, they'll all be viable.
Religion
Most of the root causes of conflict during this era revolved around religion. In Lionheart, the Disjunction changed these conflicts into something different. Many of the old religious conflicts ended completely, like the battles between the Christians and the Muslims, and thus events like the Reconquista were different.
Another example, the Reformation wars waged in France pitted the protestants and the catholics against each other, causing riots across France and Europe. In Lionheart, the Reformation wars are fought by those who favor magic and those who fear it. Because of England's presence on the northern territory, the idea of magic-use is becoming more accepted among some of the French. There is a schism between those who believe magic should be used to improve life (hey look, they use magic to summon food and water, maybe it's not so bad) and those who are loyal to the Inquisition.
You won't be asked to choose a religion in the game, although you may side with one of the factions that might be more religiously inclined.. The Inquisition is a remnant of the old church ways, and religion does play a role in the game, but 'god' won't be granting your spells.
Good magic...
Here's how an Inquisitor might interpret spirits and rationalize 'good magic' use.
In many religions, there is a concept of afterlife where a particularly good person's 'soul'/'spirit' goes to a heaven and those that are very good might serve their maker in a special way (i.e. becoming angels or cherubim) The Inquisitors might think their magic and their spirits are something akin to angels....
Story
he current story is divided into chapters for certain major events in the plot. Whether these chapter breaks are transparent or heralded by some chapter break screen...we're discussing that now.
How will the critical system work?
It is a bit early to comment, but we're considering using a paperdoll of an enemy, where you could indicate what area you would like to call for a crit.
Critical damage
The game supports multiplayer, so giving everyone the ability to pause at anytime, or choosing a crit location, could be problematic.
The current idea for the crit styles goes something like this. Each of the major areas does some percentage of extra juicy crit damage. In addition, there is some additional drawback suffered by the crit-ee. If you get crit'd in the arm, str and dmg can go down, get hit in the leg, movement goes down, head shot could result in massive trauma, blindness, or possibly insta death. You would go into battle pre-set with the location you were aiming for. I.e. some people might prefer going for the legs, so they can run away faster if the battle goes bad, or switch to the bow. Or, a hulk character might just want to go for the head.
We know a hurdle for some people will be bringing up the crit paper-doll in real-time. As designed now, you would have to have it prepped beforehand, but you could change it at any time, even during combat. We'll be working hard to make sure this system is easy to use, accessible, and fun.
NPCs joining the party permanently
I know you guys don't want spoilers, so I'll use a hypothetical example of how an NPC interaction might work. This is not a spoiler, it's something I'm making up as I type (so if you think it sucks, it's not indicative of my work, if you like it, fab)
While in Nueva Barcelona, you drop into a crowded local tavern, and notice a group of unruly Irish sailors (after Ireland sank, the Irish became a purely maritine people and some of the world's best sailors). One of the sailors seems to be accosting a Spanish merchant, apparently over a disagreement over wages. What you pick up from casual conversation is that the merchant was not able to make a profit from his latest sea excursion, and could only pay part of the sailor's wage, but promised to pay him in a matter of days. In response, the sailor broke into the merchant's quarters and took the merchant's priceless ancestral gold compass as compensation.
If you engage in dialogue, the merchant prevails upon you to make a moral judgement - was it right for the sailor to 'steal from him'? If you side with the sailor, he buys you a drink and tips you off to some quests involving his next duty with the Spanish Armada. If you side with the merchant, you can pressure the sailor into returning the gold compass. The merchant reveals himself to be an explorer whose latest adventure to the Americas ended disatrously and bankrupted him (possibly even a real historical conquistador). He tells you that the trip wasn't a total loss, since he did recover a map that shows the location of an old cache of gold and arms hidden by the Spanish navy, but now guarded by something else...He needs your help to recover it.
If you decide to help him out, he'll join you and occassionaly give you some dialogue about different areas. He will encourage you to stay on task and head for his quest area, but for this particular character, you could explore a few areas first. Eventually, if you ignore the task, you'll get a warning that he really wants to see if the map is accurate. If you ignore it again, he will leave to the site and you can then join him there.
Other NPCs might be more flexible with their time, and some might be single-minded and very quest specific. They'll all have their own agendas, personalities, and character abilities.
Control wise, the current plan is to implement the Fallout NPC controls that make sense for the game - more on that later.
Hope that helps to give you a better feel for the NPCs.
Console version?
The game is currently PC only. I have heard of no request for a console port.
Skill boosting spells
Yes, there will be a fair amount of these types of spells, as once we create one of these spells, the archetype will be there to change it to affect other skills very easily. There will also be some spells that could augment your stats for some situations, or give you other temporary abilities.
Stats going over 10
If it can be balanced properly, we are strongly considering the possibility of stats going over 10 by magical means
We're examining all the stats to make sure they'll all be roughly equal in importance for Lionheart. Magic for instance raises an interesting balance issue. The typical mana formula for magic in a fantasy RPG would require intelligence. However, with the SPECIAL ruleset, intelligence is already very powerful, arguably slightly over-balanced because of the importance of skill points. Because our spirit magic is not a typical spell system, we have an opportunity to balance other stats to make people think hard when they first assign stat points. To be more specific, the current thought for mana is to create a formula without intelligence, possibly relying on Charisma and Perception. The rationale for this is that Perception in Lionheart is both inner and outer perception, needed to attune oneself to the spirit, while charisma is necessary to force the spirit to do the caster's will. This way, more stats generate points for you as you gain experience. Our hope is that players at least think before putting massive points into intelligence.
During the game, it's possible to discover magical means to temporarily and permanently affect your stats, and we're considering a system that might allow 10+ stats. |
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Lionheart Forum Update
