Broken Roads is the upcoming debut title from Australian indie studio Drop Bear Bytes. Born of a love for traditional computer role-playing, Broken Roads provides a rich, engaging narrative in which players make their way across a desolated Australia. Blending together traditional and all-new role-playing elements on top of a classless system offering unlimited character development options, Broken Roads presents players with an original morality system: the Moral Compass. This novel design sees dialogue options and questing decisions influence, and be influenced by, a character's philosophical leaning.
Could be interesting. As it often happens in these cases the writing will be what will make or break the game, so fingers crossed for pear-free contents.
Edit:
I was reading the info that one of the devs dropped on the Codex and it does sound like a good concept - on paper anyway:
Quote:
Itemization
There's actually a lot of similarity in how things are working to what you see in Fallout 1, although we have more stat-affecting items (or perhaps that should be expressed as 'items which affect more stats') with both benefits and penalties. Focus on balance has been on a core experience which we're then going to simplify a lot for a 'story mode', where some things just aren't required. Characters who have played through the Barter Crew origin story will have some unique options related to items (no, not revealing more until this is finalised so that what we describe publicly is what actually makes it into the launch product). Trade/bartering can be important but doesn't have to be, depending on how you want to approach the game.
We're not planning item crafting but there will be ways to get 'recipes' (think getting components for Cromwell in BG2) for certain characters to create unique items or upgrade existing items.
Quest design
Mix of all - I've not played Prelude to Darkness but others on the team may have (weekend now, will see next week). We've got a very wide range of quests that range from nothing but a fetch quest because this is a CRPG, through to some serious complexity and interweaving mid-game quests where you can hop allegiances and Do Interesting Things. Some are straight mercenary 'go kill this guy' and some are more in depth 'go kill this guy but oh wait, events occur!'. Some are a series of conversations that affect key game moments. There is time in the game but we're avoiding timed quests for the most part. (trying not to give away too much here)
Combat
Lots of work on the go right now. Encounter design is a big deal - combination of locations and enemies. What do you meany by 'how much did you work on the encounter design and the "bestiary"?' - elaborate a bit so I can give a proper response, as much as I can at this time. Yes, normal/core mode has challenging combat, story mode of course much easier.
Narrative driven RPG
Meaning that players should expect a lot of dialogue and reactivity more so than dungeon crawl. If we use Infinity Engine games as a spectrum, IWD is on one end and PS:T on the other, with BG in the middle, we're way closer to PS:T than the rest. There are a *lot* of non-violent resolutions, either through skills or dialogue as well. Not at all JRPG and not like Banner Saga, but of course there are cutscenes/cinematic moments ala Sarevok killing Gorion when you first leave Candlekeep, and scripted interactions ala Pillars 2/Torment: Tides of Numenera which play out like choose your own adventure + stats + images.
In August 2021, Team17 announced that they were going to be publishing the upcoming title. Now, it has come to light that Team17 has left the project and Versus Evil has taken up the mantle of publishing Broken Roads. Versus Evil is best known for publishing Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, but they have also recently released titles such as The Hand of Merlin and First Class Trouble.
The new Gamescom 2022 trailer revealed that Broken Roads has been pushed back to 2023 too.
I've been following these guys for years. They made tremendous progress with this game.
Looks dope, from what I'm seeing.
But I'm weary of marketing stills, for obvious reasons.
That's why I'll also rather trust a 10 yo dev "Versus Evil" than any AAA one.
Their job to bedazzle me. They'll get my money if their promises are delivered. As simple as that.
But I got a shred of hype for sure
Thanks for the head's up, Nodrim
"Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life." ~Berthold Auerbach
if it's spoken with Australian english i hope there's a way to turn off voices and only have text. It's unbearable (sorry Austrlians, it's not like i would stand Swedish accent english either, it's probably worse tbh.)
if it's spoken with Australian english i hope there's a way to turn off voices and only have text. It's unbearable (sorry Austrlians, it's not like i would stand Swedish accent english either, it's probably worse tbh.)
Nope I don't have a problem with other peoples accents ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯
if it's spoken with Australian english i hope there's a way to turn off voices and only have text. It's unbearable (sorry Austrlians, it's not like i would stand Swedish accent english either, it's probably worse tbh.)
American accents/voices are easily the most irritating and annoying, whiny, and they say the word 'like' after every other word.
I love how this is half way down the page of a game review:
Spoiler:
vurt wrote:
if it's spoken with Australian english i hope there's a way to turn off voices and only have text. It's unbearable (sorry Austrlians, it's not like i would stand Swedish accent english either, it's probably worse tbh.)
The voices in this game, from clips I just watched, aren't only annoyingly Australian, but they're also just bad voice actors for the most part. I don't understand why anyone would put this much work into the game and then hire people with zero enthusiasm in their voices
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