Ember - Release Date: September 7

[HiddenX]

After 10 years in the making the classic-style RPG Ember will be released on September 7 on Steam:

About Ember

“Back in the earliest days, there was no sun and the world was dark. The heavens opened up and stars fell like beacons into the pitch black world, and they were known as “Embers”. Powerful and wise druids of a primordial race, “the Lightbringers," roamed the land searching for this luminous matter. They performed a ritual of awakening to call the “Embers” out of their deep sleep. Suddenly the world became bright, and the veil of darkness was lifted. The Embers were the embodiment of magical flame, light, and life, but as word spread about the sheer power of the Embers, they came to be hunted and captured…and so the War for Ember began…”

Gameplay overview

A passion project 10 years in the making, Ember is a homage to classic role-playing games (RPG). Enter the world of Ember as a resurrected “Lightbringer” summoned to protect the dying Embers as the world is on the brink of collapse. Beginning in the Deep Barrows, traverse vast environments divided between above ground and underground realms – ranging from lush forests to dry deserts and dark abysses – to reach the City of Light. See how the story unfolds through encounters with strangers by making pivotal decisions about your own destiny.

Key features

• Classic-style RPG with 30+ hours of epic adventure
• Epic storytelling filled with fascinating characters, lore, adventure, and humor
• Over 70 quests with diverse gameplay enabling players to choose their path
• Engaging party-based real-time combat system with tactical pause
• Over 65 combat skills for the player to use in customized battle party strategy
  Encounter hundreds of NPCs with their own tales to tell
• In-depth crafting system, from baking bread to forging magic weapons
• A seamless world with over 20 handcrafted environments and dark dungeons that are fully interactive and feature movable objects, weather changes and day / night cycles
• Adventure with different companions with their own backstory quests

More information.

 

[HiddenX]

Looks interesting!

 

[luj1]

yup I will try it… another 10-year-long RPG project after AoD and Inquisitor

 

[daveyd]

After 10 years in the making the classic-style RPG Ember will be released on September 7 on Steam:

*Classic-style RPG with 30+ hours of epic adventure

Yes, yes, so far so good.

Epic storytelling filled with fascinating characters, lore, adventure, and humor

Sure, sure. Keep going.

Over 70 quests with diverse gameplay enabling players to choose their path

Alright hopefully multiple ways to complete quests and some C&C.

Engaging party-based real-time combat system with tactical pause

Ahh, no… why? Not "classic" enough for me I guess

 

[mercy]

They lost me at real-timer clombat.. er. wombat.

 

[Carnifex]

Agreed, when I see the word classic, real time combat doesn't come to mind, turn based does. I'll be waiting to see what others say about this one.

 

[forgottenlor]

Agreed, when I see the word classic, real time combat doesn't come to mind, turn based does. I'll be waiting to see what others say about this one.

Well I guess they mean Baldur's Gate, or something like that.

 

[Daroou]

Looks promising! We'll see soon if it's good!

 

[HiddenX]

RTwP combat can be good, if it is slow enough that you can make tactical choices.

 

[SSIGuy]

RTwP combat can be good, if it is slow enough that you can make tactical choices.

Agreed but things look a little too fast and messy to me in the preview video during combat. Still, fingers crossed.

 

[luj1]

You guys realize that RtwP is just TB in disguise, right ???

 

[daveyd]

You guys realize that RtwP is just TB in disguise, right ???

No, it really isn't. I've tried to play RTwP "as close as possible" to TB; i.e., turning on auto-pause options… But you still have to deal with chaos / clunkiness of things playing out in real-time- For example, pathfinding issues as you characters bump into each other and walls and then end up making wide detours. Or end up standing there like an idiot because the action you told them to do cannot be performed. Too much micromanagement, with no discernible advantage over turn-based.

A "well designed" RTwP can perhaps minimize these issues… for example, by avoiding narrow passageways where characters are less likely to collide, having a smaller party size (it appears Ember has only 3). But at best it's merely tolerable and still inferior to tactical turn-based IMO. And I'm not currently so starved for RPGs that I'll get excited for one with a possibly tolerable combat system. I might still be interested in a RTwP game is combat was mostly avoidable / not the main gameplay focus a la Planescape: Torment but that definitely doesn't appear to be the case here.

 

[luj1]

If there are combat turns/rounds it falls under TB imho. Only the execution is more dynamic.

 

[fadedc]

I agree with pretty much everything DaveyD said. RTwP is not turn based, it's not even close. I don't always mind it, but it's a very different experience with very different strengths and weaknesses. Things that work well in one type of game often do not work well in another, and designers trying to treat the two as equivalent is a recipe for disaster.

 

[Archangel]

Main advantage of RTwP is that you can fit in more combat into gameplay without making the game take forever to finish.
Also it is more newbie friendly because you can make it so the game plays itself

 

[Silver]

Trash mobs don't take anywhere near as long to get through with RTwP compared to turn based and the dynamic elements (movement and positioning) add to the fun for me. When its challenging it can turn into a pause fest but I don't mind that with fun challenging fights. You don't really have to pause much with easy mobs. Just annoying having to wrangle with character path finding occasionally.

My only real criticism of turn based is that I don't want fights that are easy to drag on. If its challenging all good. Not sure how designers can resolve that problem other than make each encounter meaningful.

 

[Archangel]

to be fair, a well made turn based game has better dynamic elements connected with movement and positioning. For example HoMM like games (or Xcom) are all better in this than any RTwP game I know.

 

[forgottenlor]

I enjoy both, but they do play out differently. As others have said the main advantage of RTwP is speed. The disadvantage is that a well based turn based game can have much more combat depth. I think the real advantage of RTwP is that it still allows you to keep deep combat mechanics (like a big party, lots of skills, et.) while giving you faster paced combat. I'll also agree that pathfinding and camera angles can prove to be a bigger problem in RTwP (or for that matter any real time game) than in turn based.

 

[daveyd]

Trash mobs don't take anywhere near as long to get through with RTwP compared to turn based and the dynamic elements (movement and positioning) add to the fun for me. When its challenging it can turn into a pause fest but I don't mind that with fun challenging fights. You don't really have to pause much with easy mobs. Just annoying having to wrangle with character path finding occasionally.

True, but the proper solution to trash encounters is to not have them. Making one bad design decision (trash mobs) is not solved by making another (clunky "auto-pilot" combat system).

Bioware made BG RTwP because they didn't think a TB CRPG would have a big enough audience in a post-Diablo world (Fallout 1 & 2 largely proved that assumption false). RTwP is a compromise designed to appeal to ARPG fans but still somehow appease TB fans. IMO it didn't do well with the latter and while the IE games were a success I still think this is in spite of RTwP more than because of it.

And it's fine if some people actually like RTwP, but I'll never like it. Just don't tell me it's basically the same as TB and don't bother trying to convince me that I should learn to like it. There's too many quality TB RPGs being released for me to bother "slumming it" with RTwP any more.

My only real criticism of turn based is that I don't want fights that are easy to drag on. If its challenging all good. Not sure how designers can resolve that problem other than make each encounter meaningful.

It's true, trash mobs aren't much fun to deal with no matter how great the combat system is. Ideally they just should not be in the game, but another route would be to incorporate an "auto-resolve" feature. I don't recall seeing this in WRPGs, but I know of some JRPGs that do this (e.g., Earthbound).

In general I'd prefer to not see RPGs padded with filler content just for the sake of making them longer.

 

[daveyd]

Also, I'm excited to see what Whalenought does with their turn-based combat (with time based resolution) that will be in "Copper Dreams" and "A Fool's Banquet". It will allow combatants to do things like interrupt an opponent's actions while keeping the strengths of turn-based (tactical depth & the guarantee that your characters at try to perform the actions you intended).