I honestly couldn't care less about the cut Crafting System, since I cannot envision how it would've worked well in a game like this to begin with, and assuming they're truthful about the Oasis major city (which, if Pillars of Eternity is any indication, a game which also had "2nd major city" as a stretch goal once, there's no reason to believe) we're still getting a 2nd major city. So I can live with those.
In fact, promising a crafting system was insane from the beginning, and I said so back then already. It should never have been on the table. It's actually one of the things that made me hesitant to back the game.
However, moving the Voluminous Codex out of the game and cutting a third of an already insanely limited number of CNPC:s is pretty crazy.
The Voluminous Codex is something that can't really be recreated in a good way outside of the game - you'll just get handed a text document, rather than to have a codex of information available in-game, and you'll actually have to tab out of the game, jerking you out of what is supposed to be an engrossing, immersive experience, to go searching for terms in a separate document.
And keeping in mind that two CNPC:s are actually mutually exclusive (Aligern/Callistege), we've basically been reduced from 8/9 CNPC:s to 5/6. That's an absolutely stunning cut - and only one out of those 6 are a Glaive. I want to stress that 4 CNPC:s were slated to be in the game from the get-go. 5 were added as stretch-goals. Essentially, what this means, is that
3 out of 5 added CNPC:s were cut. 60% of stretchgoal CNPC:s were slashed, without
any communication!
The customization of your companions is also more or less zero. You can't change most of their equipment, and they're nonsensically locked into using very specific things. It was similar in Planescape: Torment, but at least in PS:T, there was a rationale; the physique of your companions were extremely diverse and mutually exclusive, such as Ignus being on fire, Morte being a floating skull, and Vhailor literally being his own armour.
But the worst thing is really how they handled it. They had known this for years, yet chose to say nothing. This is especially terrible because it shows such egregious hypocrisy, because inXile has harped on and on about keeping in touch with fans and having an open process. Only after suspicious fans revealed it, less than a month before release, did all of this come to light, and with their back against the wall, "apologized".
And from a personal standpoint, I couldn't possibly care less, but it's bordering on straight-up fraud to tell Italians & Spaniards that they're getting translations, and then cut it without saying anything whatsoever. I realize that
"Kickstarter is an investment, not a purchase", and I agree - people didn't "pay" for this, people certainly aren't "entitled" to it. But it shows a tremendous lack of judgement and poor form to act in this manner, whether you've got your legal bases covered or not. The fact remains that many backed this with the belief that there would be localizations for their languages, and that their pledge went towards making that a reality, no matter the sales viability of their region in terms of post-release sales.
And given how poor the UI is and how it all handles, as well as no control over your CNPC:s outside of combat (they simply follow in a row, and there's no way to position whatsoever), I have to ask myself just how much the consolization process sucked up of the budget - a process we were promised wouldn't come until after the game was released - but now we're actually set for a simultaneous PC/Console release, meaning that consolization didn't just affect the quality of the game, but money from PC gamers, fans of a PC game classic, investing in a PC game intended (supposedly) for the PC market,
absolutely went towards the development of a consolized game, with all that entails in terms of development, testing, inherent limitations and mechanical considerations and options.
We don't give Electronic Arts or Games Workshop passes when they behave in manners befitting snake-oil salesmen, globalist corporations or internationalist organizations; there's no reason why we should give inXile one, as much as I've loved to support inXile in the past. The company is rapidly going down a path which I and many others feel we cannot follow, the Wasteland 3 pitch with it's multiplayer focus and inherently limiting "cinematic" dialogues, and ever-problematic consolization being only the last in a line of worrying signs.
This kind of behaviour and it's consequences shouldn't be disregarded or derided. People have very real reasons to be legitimately upset at inXile, the development of the game, and how the funding of it was handled.
jeska wrote:Is this à common practice to cut funded goals?
It's common, and it's honestly not that strange. The real issue here is the sheer
number of cut goals and content, some of it being quite "key" content for many backers (localization, for example; some people only buy games in their native language)
all of which inXile kept secret not only until it was less than a month until a release that has been delayed several times, but that was only revealed because fans/players data-mined content and started noticing discrepancies.
Had it not been because the whole thing was discovered, there is no indication that inXile would ever have told anyone before release. And only people that take an active interest specifically in CRPG:s, such as by paying attention to RPGCodex, are even aware of this, because there's been no official wide-scale announcement of any of this information. Imagine Italian fans on the 28th, or Spaniards expecting a non-South-American localization, signing on to download the game on release and finding that they can't play the game.
And I really do mean "can't play the game" here. I personally do not care about localization even a little, but these types of games (if the Early Access game and the fact that it's the "spiritual successor" to Planescape: Torment) have - with some degree of legitimacy - been referred to as "interactive novels" by detractors and critics. It's complicated language, often using words that may not even exist (I remember my young self, me not being a native English speaker, wondering about what "berk" actually meant in PS:T). Not only is the language itself advanced, but you need to have a certain level of language reading comprehension to even understand which words are actually "real" and which are "made up".
There is no way, no how, that inXile didn't know pretty much exactly what things were going to be cut by the end of 2015, at the very least. It's had a long and difficult development cycle, and none of the things that have been cut (that we know of) could possibly have been cut in the last couple of weeks or months. They knew full well that there wasn't going to be some localizations, that The Oasis wasn't going to be a major city, that the in-game Codex wasn't going to make it, that 1/3 of the Companions were going to be cut, and that tons of development money donated by PC gamers and fans of traditional RPG:s were going to be sunk into consolization development a long,
long time ago.
Au_I wrote:Au_I wrote:Grotesque wrote:- Mark Morgan live orchestra music
We contacted Morgan about the soundtrack yesterday. If he answers, we'll inform you.
No good news, sorry

If he's got any kind of engagement with inXile, the contract likely includes a gag order or loyalty clause. This is not to take a dump on inXile or imply that it's shady, by the way - such things are incredibly common and basically a contractual staple. And even if this is not the case, he might just not want to piss on any relationship (current or future) he might (or might not have) with inXile.
So this is not a case of "no news are bad news", but actually just "no news.. are no news".
