Original creators of Elder Scrolls are creating a spiritual successor to Daggerfall

[frogx]

Julian LeFay, Ted Peterson and Vijay Lakshman.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMdyX0--eaA

http://www.oncelostgames.com/

Quotes from interviews:

"We've been calling our system dynamic composition which is basically procedural generation done right. We definitely recognize the flaws in the system we created 25 years ago for Daggerfall but with a little wisdom and some technological advances, we shouldn't repeat the same mistakes … though we might make some new ones!"

"One thing I find useful in thinking about dynamic composition in general, from NPCs to towns to dungeons, is to think in terms of "seeds" and "sub-seeds." For example, the seed may be an underground city type dungeon, which comes with certain architectural elements, texture sets, monster encounters, quests, etc and a possibility of certain "sub-seeds," like bandits hangout, vampire's crypt, basically any secondary use the structure also contains. That helps create a history around the site, from its origin as a town that was buried in a volcanic eruption to it later being discovered and inhabited by a forbidden cult forced to go literally underground by authorities."

"Yes. I am calling it dynamic generation not procedurally generated. A lot will be hand created (as it was in Daggerfall) but the code will fill in the blanks for terrain, architecture, NPCs, quests, etc"

"Dynamic" is our term, not "radiant," fwiw. It's not so binary between dynamic and fixed. Hard to explain without spoilers. I guess the plainest way to put it is there aren't any quests that won't be altered at least somewhat by things like the player's reputation with the quest giver, world and local situations, etc"

"nonlinear and branching endless quests, which evolve the world, like a great virtual gamemaster running a pen-and-paper campaign”"

"You want characters that make sense but aren’t necessarily predictable, because that’s boring. That’s a pretty important thing to grasp when designing storylines and AI, particularly in a dynamically created, non-scripted adventure."

"Real substance and depth to it, add persistence where the game learns, put in learning algorithms and neural network, where the game adapts to how you act - 'It can be done'"

[Lorgar Aurelian]

This just sounds like fable all over again where they over promise to the heavens and deliver an all right game that doesn’t live up to the hype.

[Sliske]

Yeah but does anyone even value Daggerfall now? Put it this way - would you rather play a game that came out in 2019 that was made by the people who made Warcraft 1, or one made by the people who made WC3: Reforged, SC2: Legacy of the Void or WoW: BFA?

It kinda reminds me of that Mark Kern guy - he runs around yelling that he is the team lead of vanilla WoW. Last time i checked his twitter, he had that before even the fact that he had his own games studio. You stub your toe and shout 'fuck!', this guy shouts 'i was the team lead for original WoW.'

Does anyone care? No. No one cares. No one buys his games, because his games are trash.

No one cares that you made Daggerfall.

[frogx]

I guess the point is that no one makes a game like Daggerfall anymore, it has the biggest in-game world, size of England, it has in-depth RPG mechanics which are gone from todays Elder Scrolls etc.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

I guess the point is that no one makes a game like Daggerfall anymore, it has the biggest in-game world, size of England, it has in-depth RPG mechanics which are gone from todays Elder Scrolls etc.

While the prospect seems interesting kinda like how larian breathed some new life into top down turned based games I’m gonna be rather skeptical of any game company that promises the moon as most just end up delivering some cheese.

[AwkwardSquirtle]

This sounds very Mighty Number 9 and Yooka Laylee. I'm not saying it's definitely going to be bad, but "hey, it's the team that made that game you loved 20 years ago" hasn't exactly been a guaranteed formula for success.

[frogx]

While the prospect seems interesting kinda like how larian breathed some new life into top down turned based games I’m gonna be rather skeptical of any game company that promises the moon as most just end up delivering some cheese.

Sure, i'll believe it when I see it also.

[ls-]

I can't say that Daggerfall is that exciting or interesting, I played it the same year Morrowind was released and I wasn't impressed at all. Felt empty both gameplay and lore-wise, lore in particular was meh... But it's a 96 game, most RPGs back then had really REALLY superficial and cheesy writing.

I wouldn't mind seeing a spiritual successor to Morrowind though, esp if it had some sweet sweet lore written by Michael Kirkbride. I'd pay for a week-worth of drugs for him so he'd write something as awesome as Dunmer/Chimer and Tribunal lore again

[Vash The Stampede]

As long as it doesn't have micro-transactions and DLC's I'm all for it.

[frogx]

As long as it doesn't have micro-transactions and DLC's I'm all for it.

At this point they are like an indie developer (but they are industry veterans), so it should be without them.

After all, they were the original Bethesda team up to like 1998.

[Lazuli]

I will be interesting to see what they make with that tech these days. It could be really good, just hope they're using a decent engine.

[qwerty123456]

Have there ever actually been any game developer phoenixes? Sure there are some that move to a different studio and still make good games but how many great game makers make a new studio and it becomes as good or better than the original?

[frogx]

Have there ever actually been any game developer phoenixes? Sure there are some that move to a different studio and still make good games but how many great game makers make a new studio and it becomes as good or better than the original?

Usualy when those developers 'come back' they are alone and need to hire 'new' developers because they cannot create a game alone (unless they are geeky like Notch or Tarn Adams)

Here there are 3 original developers, 3 guys can produce a game on their own.

[apelsinjuice]

sounds like something that will release in 8 years with 1/5 of what was promised

a lot of new studios love to use "original creators of x game" when hyping it up but in reality its like 1-2 guys who worked as a low level dev on the original game and just did what their boss told them with no actual overall game design knowledge of the game

[frogx]

a lot of new studios love to use "original creators of x game" when hyping it up but in reality its like 1-2 guys who worked as a low level dev on the original game and just did what their boss told them with no actual overall game design knowledge of the game

Yea but that's not the case here, they have the main coder which programmed both Arena and Daggerfall, and 2 designers

[Bigbazz]

I think the problem with these kinda games is that they are spiritual successors to games usually made by established large development teams with big budgets and now they are being made by a much smaller team with a much smaller budget, compromises have to be made on every front in order to even get the game finished and released. A spiritual successor to any main line Elder Scrolls game is going to be a monumental task, unless they have big money bankrolling this it's not going to live up to expectations no matter who is working on it.

Shenmue III is a good example, while I'm sure core fans will enjoy it the reality will set in with new players that it's a game pulled out of 15-20 years ago with more modern but still dated graphics. Yu Suzuki is a legendary game developer, but Shenmue was an extremely expensive game made by a large team over 20 years ago, and Shenmue 3 seems like a game that visuals aside could have been released in 2003.

[Tech614]

I think the problem with these kinda games is that they are spiritual successors to games usually made by established large development teams with big budgets and now they are being made by a much smaller team with a much smaller budget, compromises have to be made on every front in order to even get the game finished and released. A spiritual successor to any main line Elder Scrolls game is going to be a monumental task, unless they have big money bankrolling this it's not going to live up to expectations no matter who is working on it.

Shenmue III is a good example, while I'm sure core fans will enjoy it the reality will set in with new players that it's a game pulled out of 15-20 years ago with more modern but still dated graphics. Yu Suzuki is a legendary game developer, but Shenmue was an extremely expensive game made by a large team over 20 years ago, and Shenmue 3 seems like a game that visuals aside could have been released in 2003.

Eh, it's asinine to compare this to Shenmue 3. 3 dudes who happened to be on the daggerfall dev team vs Yu Suzuki and his own chosen team of AM2 vets at his already formed studio of YS Net before the kickstarter ever went live.

Also Shenmue 3 is exactly what it should be, the demo they have released to backers already proved this. It's not only what was promised in the game, it's a lot more then that thanks to all the extra funding they got from other sources beyond the kickstarter succeeding. I don't think they expect it to be some massive AAA success either, it was a game that was made for Shenmue fans, and it's not like they all backed the game either. Shenmue 1 sold over 1 million copies on the DC, not sure what numbers are after the re-release that finally came but it was only 70k or so backers so they're probably still gonna comfortably sell around 500k copies to non backers and it will be succesful at what it was meant to be.

This game on the other hand, won't do shit and will be a failed project. It has all the red flags you look for lol.

[Bigbazz]

Eh, it's asinine to compare this to Shenmue 3. 3 dudes who happened to be on the daggerfall dev team vs Yu Suzuki and his own chosen team of AM2 vets at his already formed studio of YS Net before the kickstarter ever went live.

Also Shenmue 3 is exactly what it should be, the demo they have released to backers already proved this. It's not only what was promised in the game, it's a lot more then that thanks to all the extra funding they got from other sources beyond the kickstarter succeeding. I don't think they expect it to be some massive AAA success either, it was a game that was made for Shenmue fans, and it's not like they all backed the game either. Shenmue 1 sold over 1 million copies on the DC, not sure what numbers are after the re-release that finally came but it was only 70k or so backers so they're probably still gonna comfortably sell around 500k copies to non backers and it will be succesful at what it was meant to be.

This game on the other hand, won't do shit and will be a failed project. It has all the red flags you look for lol.

I'm gonna buy Shenmue 3, I'm a Dreamcast fanboy with both games in my DC collection. I was pointing out how the originals were groundbreaking massive projects and how Shenmue 3 is still stuck in 2003, aside from graphics and lack of loading screens it could have literally released 15+ years ago because it has pretty much not moved forward at all.

I doubt they would have gone with the early 2000s sound design and voice acting/recording, the janky animations, the meh fighting system (which is worse than the Virtua Fighter based combat in Shenmue 1/2) and all the other elements if they were a big studio developing the game from a modern perspective. Shenmue 3 is like a game that forgot the last 15 years of game design even happened.

[Seramore]

Yeah but does anyone even value Daggerfall now? Put it this way - would you rather play a game that came out in 2019 that was made by the people who made Warcraft 1, or one made by the people who made WC3: Reforged, SC2: Legacy of the Void or WoW: BFA?

It kinda reminds me of that Mark Kern guy - he runs around yelling that he is the team lead of vanilla WoW. Last time i checked his twitter, he had that before even the fact that he had his own games studio. You stub your toe and shout 'fuck!', this guy shouts 'i was the team lead for original WoW.'

Does anyone care? No. No one cares. No one buys his games, because his games are trash.

No one cares that you made Daggerfall.

lmao 10/10 bait, you almost had me there for a second

As long as it doesn't have micro-transactions and DLC's I'm all for it.

Implying there's anything inherently wrong with DLCs.

[Tech614]

I'm gonna buy Shenmue 3, I'm a Dreamcast fanboy with both games in my DC collection. I was pointing out how the originals were groundbreaking massive projects and how Shenmue 3 is still stuck in 2003, aside from graphics and lack of loading screens it could have literally released 15+ years ago because it has pretty much not moved forward at all.

What was Shenmue 3 supposed to "move forward" into? It's 3x larger then Shenmue 2 according to Yu, it certainly wouldn't have been that big had it been released in 2003 as it originally should have. It has more mini games, larger world, more unique NPCs(over 500) so it's not just the graphics.

Also your 2nd paragraph seems like a hot take from years old footage. Play the demo, or watch it if you can't. There is nothing wrong with the animation. There is nothing wrong with the voice acting(they actually have a director for that now, something they wouldn't of had in 2003) and the fighting system is deeper then it has ever been. Not only can you customize your fighting style in so many different ways the fighting system has amazing weight and animation to it. Characters block exactly where your blows will land.

The only thing stuck in 2003 is your hot takes my dude.