Interview w/ TES II: Daggerfall Lead Designer Ted Peterson | The Wayward Realms

the Wayward Realms is the spiritual successor to dager for a game I'm sure many of you who have watched the channel will be aware of set on a group of over 100 realistically scaled Islands known collectively as the archipelago kingdoms will strive to maintain dominance upstarts seek to earn a place at the top and dynasties set generational plots into motion the player on their own quest for Fame and Fortune will venture through strange lands delve into forboden Dungeons and Traverse kingdoms full of humans elves Orcs dwarves and other Fantastical races head in this project are exper to softworks employees Julian Lefay and Ted Peterson lead programmer and lead designer of the Elder scws Arena and Daggerfall respectively with a Kickstarter campaign for the waywood Realms launching on the 30th of May I was fortunate enough to interview Ted to ask all about his newest project je thank you for taking the time out to do this oh yeah no definitely my a pleasure so for those who are unaware would you like to introduce yourself and the way with Realms sure well uh yeah so my name is Ted Peterson uh I am uh CEO and uh creative director of uh what games uh working on the game called the whe drums but my background is uh I served in the industry uh about 30 plus years ago um first worked at uh bethesa softworks uh right out of college and um and uh start like my fourth game third game something like that was Al rolls Arena and um was a lead designer on that and uh diger fall which was the second eldest rolles games and uh went on to do a number of other things but uh you know always uh certainly you know one of my pride and maybe regrets was uh what we didn't do with Daggerfall and Elder Scrolls uh early on uh I worked on uh Elder Scrolls three morind and four Oblivion and uh was not brought on for uh the last one um for some reason uh maybe we'll figure it out in this this talk uh but uh and move back to the ghost and um had uh gotten back in contact with Julian and we talked about what we you know wish we had done uh with that uh with that game and uh how the series had progress kind of how our RPGs had progress in in general and uh thought that we should uh dip our toes back into it and just if we wanted it done we should do it on our own fair enough so the the way with Realms then is would you say it's a spiritual successor of Daga fall yeah I think that's what we' been calling it uh yeah so so it's really just kind of saying like this is what we you know obviously did Arena um and it's not the spiritual successor to that um really because um it was not uh everything we wanted it to be not the Daggerfall was but it kind of set us on a path um and uh so this is the path that we're continuing well I've talk about a lot about the waywood Realms in this uh interview but I had the community asked me some questions and they were very interested in your past Works um if you don't know on the channel we've had some retrospectives about dagger fall and Arena which are very popular so in regards to that one of the I'm I'm aware of your channel so great app I appreciate the the things that you've uh you said and and done for it you know so thank you so in regards to that then what are your thoughts on the renewed interest in Daga fall and Arena I'm super flattered uh you know and um and it's interesting what they going to do with Arena um I don't know like Daggerfall you know obviously Daggerfall unity and uh and making it basically playable uh in this year uh is uh fantastic to see um so uh yeah I guess flattery is is uh is the the best way to put it like I'm so happy that you know something I did 30 years ago or something like that is still uh resonating and uh making people happy MH yeah D for Unity has really been amazing for bringing back dagger fall um and that's what exciting about a know as well is it's a oneman project but there is someone working on a an open- Source version of Arena that's going to be on a more updated engine I'm not sure where they are in uh the progress of the project but hopefully one day we might see res surgeons of Arena as well uh yeah they be very cool and then one more just to do with dag fall it might it would be as better to ask someone like I guess Mark Jones or Eric he in this but from what you remember uh what were the influences for dagger Fall's art style like the the build and architecture the enemy designs as well as like the music well I mean the the obvious influences uh that uh High Rock area was definitely um you know very uh I guess English tutor style uh in then uh the morind area not the morand um hammerfell was much more uh you know Northern African um uh Middle Eastern uh type of uh influences on that uh for architecture um so we'd have like domes and and you know things like that in in that area and uh but for the art style um I mean Mark is an amazing artist and you know I'm sure you've seen a lot of his sketches and stuff like that so you know he was tremendous yeah I think those are probably biggest influences but you know certainly we're going for kind of a you know elevated realistic style which is uh I think what we ended up landing on it with waver Realms uh we call it like fantasy realism so like everything you know is like we're going we're not going for like you know like a a super Fantastical you know look but everything should be dialed up to of them ah so moving on to the way with Realms then I'm sure some of these questions have been answered in various promotional posts across your social media but I'm sure it's good as well to have a deeper exclamation on them here for the kickstarter then when will this go live for people who don't currently know of the released date my understanding is the 30th y 30th of May so coming very soon confirming for me yeah thank okay and um what are some of the ways fans may be rewarded for donating or are you not sure on that side of things um well obviously the game yes of course uh I I'm working on a novel uh that's going to uh hopefully predate the game um if I don't get uh writers B in the middle of it so uh it's going to be a kind of I would say a prequel to it it's going off in different different directions um but uh that'll be that'll be part of the incentive pack as well okay so is that setting setting up the world for VAs or is it almost setting the stage for the actual game itself it's really not setting the stage for the act like honestly if I had done this like in a kind of like logical like oh I I I want to do a game that's all about this uh particular setting for the Early Access uh you know which is what we're you know doing the kickstarter for I might have come with a different plot but uh I'm halfway through a novel that uh you know definitely uh so iar is where the uh the prequel for the game begins or you know or Early Access begins so it's like a DOT you know off the coast of the archipelago which is where most of the game begins and um that was kind of always our starter out is um but the storyline having to do with how the king and queen got together and what the Civil War is that preceded you getting in there was the beginning of this novel um so uh that's what I started writing and what I'm still writing right now it's literally in front of me on this computer screen uh so uh it's yeah iar is part of it but it's not a big part of it okay we touched on this earlier about dagger fall being a spiritual Wayward realm sorry being a spiritual successor to Dall what you say that this is almost your and Julian's attempt to I don't want to say perfect Dall because of course it's its own game but kind of correct the wrongs yeah in some ways yeah I'm going to fill in your words cuz you don't want to say something mean uh to but I appreciate that um yeah no no no there there are Parts where we go like um with today's technology there's a lot of things that we really struggled with obviously 30 years ago um and uh nowadays uh with with our own engine uh like back in the day we had to create our own engine and nowadays if we can just like use unreal and honestly use unreal development team and uh you know bounce things off of them and uh you know get things figured out what where it has to do with any type of questions of I mean obviously talking about proc gen and creating thousands of NPCs that are live and doing things all at once um there's less having to do with um kind of Storytelling procgen um but there's stuff there that we can still latch on to and you know move forward um and and and we've developed a lot of stuff and it moved it on part of the deal with us getting uh we got a mega Grant from uh epic uh a couple months ago and part of the deal was that like things that we did and figured out we would pass on to them so that's kind of the quid BR of that um so uh it's um you know yeah like I said we were trying to correct things that we would have done differently so like the the pillars of what we're doing are definitely that but we're not ignoring what's happened in the last 30 years as far as changing and interface and obviously we're doing everything in 3D now so like things we we recognize the passage of time but we also think that like some things could be uh course corrected yeah so I guess relating to that is that games in the past including dag for and Arena they relied more heavily on imagination to fill immersion gaps and now there is a higher expectation for visuals to replace that how has that changed your approach to design decisions from dager fall to the Wayward Realms I'm still counting on the imagination of players so like I I'm not wanting to look the players off the hook um but but certainly you know there are are aspects like you said of like you know uh you you want some cool stuff up front so know that that it's definitely changed and uh we're understanding embracing that okay so Daga Fall's development seemed to suffer um and this is kind of subjective I did a lot of research on it but we can never confirm this um from adding maybe too many features with too little time or maybe too close to release how do you plan to limit feature creep and how far along would you yeah how do you plan to limit feature creep um well in fact I would say that's my fault with with a good chunk of Julian's fault that uh that uh Julian would be classic for uh we go out to lunch and I'd say like we certainly didn't plan for vampires for example in D and I said I think we could have vampires I think the player not only do we have vampires but the player could become a vampire it's like what would that mean I was like it would you know change this and this and this and he's like all right I'll throw that in and so like that would be our typical lunch like he was like if I were an alcoholic he was a Neer just like yeah yeah that's that's cool and and you pitched it that it would work um which is a fantastic working relationship up into the point where like you say feature creep happens and uh he's to um the good thing is is that uh for the last uh what 3 four five years we've been working on this project and no one's gotten paid and uh we have been designing the hell out of it so um yeah we uh we all knew we wanted to do better from uh Arena to diger fall uh at the time and uh it was an easy pitch to say is in the school let's put this in I'll tell you how it isn't a big deal um and nowadays we can you know like we've had enough time to be able to you know really say what we're trying to do and um make it so it sound a thing where it at this point it's not feature creep once we get into I guess you're still in the design stage so it's at the moment you're allowed to add as much as you like I guess we are we're we're in the blue sky thing of well we're past the Blue Sky thing we we've we have a design document and everything's been pretty much set in stone there things need to be filled out um but uh like nothing is planned to be added to that the programmers have signed off on it okay so what' you say then in terms of like where would you say you are in Raywood realm's design process or like what you say it's designed done and you're now almost moving on to the next stage uh yeah yeah I think that's fair to say okay well when I say we're ready to move out of the next stage like also programming has done tons of R&D we've got lots of uh concept art and actual you know 3D art one of the advantages of unreal is that uh we have access to their whole Library so like when we want to create a forest we just create one oh yeah don't we we'll be replacing with our own stuff but it's super easy to just say like hey how does this look in basic and so if any of our videos we're it's saying like this is what it's going to look like that's you know N More more than 9/10 probably uh you know mostly you know uh you know accessible uh art that we have access to so we've been able create but it it's not going to be like that in the final game so yeah when those gameplay videos say in development they very much still mean in development yeah no no pre-alpha pre-alpha you should think pre pre-alpha okay when I was first hearing about the the Hundred Islands of the archipelago I personally envisioned The Legend of Zelda the windbreaker are there any unexpected influences for away with Realms from Games books films and so on that people may not immediately associate with a grand RPG um I think we we we've got tons of uh wouldn't call that game particularly a an influence but certainly um when we figured out that we're going to set it in these islands um that uh you know water travel on top of the water and underwater uh was something we we we thought a lot about um but uh yeah certainly nothing no recent uh influence uh on on that the steam page mentions factions and kingdoms V in for power do you intend to integrate a procedural War system like in dagul where provinces would make peace and declare war on each other uh well that certainly the plan and and and that's one of the things that has been high on my list uh about um how to how to do this game was that we had a lot of the stuff I mean when people talk about like Hey when's your beta for um uh wer drms coming out I was like it came out in 19 1996 um it's it you know like not to say this is the game we're going to be creating but like this was the the prototype for it MH um and um one of the things that uh you know that that game did was had all these factions and different relationships between them and one of the things that we didn't really do a good job was is Translating that to to players so you would you know do a quest for you know the order of the Rose in Daggerfall and uh do well but that would piss off the order of the serpent you know for some I can't remember all the names of the different groups um but because they're uh you know opposed to them you know at this time or always and uh you didn't know that would piss them off until you went to this town in remote hammerfell and they would all hate you yeah well why why why do they all hate me and they like yeah no piss off and uh and that's the sort of thing you're like okay well it needs to be clear you know not overly broadcast but it needs to be clear that um you know like doing this for this faction does like the the same idea of a of a web of influence and these uh people uh matter to uh matter and they will uh react to you accordingly and also some of the things um it should be a thing where like your reputation changes like if you do something super secret and you uh are working for you know an order that has a different uh you know relationship with this one but you do it like super Undercover then that's not going to make a difference so it's the you know both messaging is number one and number two like if you're doing this in a way that's not going to you know broadcast what you've done to other people um then uh those are things we we think about a lot yeah so it's making the reputation system more obvious I guess than it was originally hidden away yeah yeah okay exactly so in terms of those reputations and uh I did mention there for example how provinces would make peace and declare war and that was never visually shown in dager fall but people would mention it in like rumors and such is there uh an intent to show that in game in the Wayward Realms will it just be so it's yeah so in Dall like it was like new dialogue and rumors so will there be like skirmishes between K kingdoms or anything between that okay yeah skirmishes um like sieges all that Stu is is going to happen oh brilliant and that s is going to be procedural and kind of sorts itself out I guess and you can stumble upon it is it yeah oh yeah no I mean you can stumble upon it you can participate you know wow like yeah all of that is is part of part of the works that sounds really exciting so some of these factions have been revealed like the law Masters the Inquisition and the variety of different races and kingdoms will they play a part in the main story to some degree and will the player be able to influence who benefits and who loses as the game progress oh yeah for sure I mean like you you should be someone who joins a faction and you know Rises them up to at least the highest that their Ambitions uh go for um so uh there are I always called them uh I guess story beats world events uh that will happen at some point uh during the course of the game and will influence the game and the player can slow them down speed them up uh things like that but you know there are some inevitabilities so uh that that is that's kind of how we organize the storyline of the game to say Obviously the difference between a player who is is a thiefy character who gets involved in the under uh underworld and uh mostly sees the uh the game from that point of you as opposed to someone who's like an aristocrat and you know hop noobing with the the wealthiest people uh they're going to see the game from a different point of view uh and both of them have an opportunity to uh you know uh change change well they they they can change the world but they uh like some things are going to happen no matter what they do okay yeah so there will be set Parts in the story and you can there are again they're flexible it's not it's not a thing like on August 15th the king will die but the king is mortal and will die at some yeah at some point that's my dog face who's just decided to I guess you did mention that a faction can only rise as far as its Ambitions lie so I guess there will be a variety of different sized factions so I guess some like kingdoms and then will it be smaller on oh sure no no for sure like like a faction can be a fa a faction I guess could be a faction of one we don't we don't have that but like it's um you know a village that you've done a number of things for could be a faction um so there's a lot of overla faction so usually within uh within any any size faction there are subf factions so there's one who um and I'm not going to give away its name because it would mean I've releas it but like there's a a faction that their overall thing is like they're off after the undead um but there are uh subf factions within them that are after for the undead because they want to L learn uh about necromancy so there's within that subf faction like they're all going to do the same thing but one of them is doing it for a different motivation and if you fall in with them then they are going to do uh have you do things that may be a little wickedy so of course that would I guess lead into the conflict between factions and how you can influence that right and conflict within the same faction yeah like that's that that's uh I I I don't honestly I don't think that we've invented a faction that doesn't have subactions or conflicts within the faction as well because there's nothing more boring than like it's a faction that just says you know yeah we care about this and that's all we care about and all of our members are on board you know that doesn't sound like reality MH regarding these factions then will they have uh like skill requirements that limit say the availability of their quests upon the character build um there are skill requirements but it's not like a mathematical uh check to see you like hey you need different archery skill of 15 to uh to join it it's more like you need to you know hit this target you know so many times so it's more of a real like an entrance that's right uh in some cases in some cases it's mostly about your behavior so if you're someone who's um assassinated a bunch of people that this group might be interested in you whether you're you know uh you know your way of doing it was poison you know uh Magic you know archery whatever uh if if you if we're looking for someone who doesn't have a qual with killing people then uh we're looking for you so in regards to actually writing then what would you say and I guess this is relating to your book as well what would you say as your process for like wrri on a story story where do you start where do you develop from the initial idea and how do you decide what to and what to not include oh well I you when you're talking about the the the story beats um I definitely one of the things when we talking about the spiritual successor to dagger fall and Arena um that uh I think was uh a big reason why side quests uh in in a proc jny way let people down was that there was you know a sameness and also nothing that emotionally connected you with them so uh one of the uh things I've given to my writers and Quest designers is to say think of a five act structure and uh really the first and Fifth Act are the most important like most of us can come up with a uh second to fif fourth act which is you know hey I have to go to the dungeon and rescue this princess and and do whatever but like act one where you know something's gone wrong or this is the the background and this is what you know why this is important like if it's a princess thing like hey you know um someone has been missing from the the palace for a while and you can you know start poing your poing your rod on that and then fifth when you uh say when the princess is brought back some people happy some people are not uh that that you know changes changes uh the narrative and where things are read and like the world should change based on you know what you've put down um so that you that's important for the game yeah as far as uh creating the quests and uh thinking of it kind of that structural sense um honestly I'm totally un um I don't follow my own advice when it comes to writing like I kind of had a to me good idea for uh the book um we'd written a lot of stuff and a lot of the stuff is uh that happens the book happens before the game begins uh so like the writing the book uh is to me just you know a pure orgasm on the page where you just like okay I just this is this is fun for me um the perspective of the main character on that he's not a main he's not a uh main focus of um like he's not a main character in the background it's not like the king or the queen or you know anybody who's going on on that um but I like to rate uh books from the point of view of an underdog and uh kind of captured one uh at least in my imagination hopefully hopefully people will like it you were mentioning the quests there will the quests ever repeat or they kind of a one and done per playthrough no the quest will never repeat um there there you know that's hopefully the way that the procgen uh programmatic system works where we set up a structure um I guess some of this I probably shouldn't get into uh about how things get mixed up but I guess if you can think about um what's the best way to put this like if if you think about a you know like I said look five act structure is what I always think about as being the the proper way to do it but if each of those acts um could because of either Randomness or the player's action lead to a different act um and so you can I mean you can still have a situation for example on the game where you walk into a village and there's a lot of dead bodies so like that is the beginning like that that that's a standard you know storyline um but there could be a lot of uh dead bodies because there's a werewolf on the loose or a necromancer reception no good or whatever so you have to investigate it so but that scenario is the same as maybe you might have faced another Village that had a lot of dead bodies it's a Middle Ages as we know yeah things happen it's it's not the best time we call the dark ages for a reason um so uh that initial plot Point could be repeated uh we'll try to have a ton of those and there's ton of those you can you can imagine but it'll go off in different directions either because of the players actions or uh because it was already designed to be that way okay so like the the Act One setup you might think you know where it's going to go and then there's a lot of different scenarios it can Branch out into that's exactly right okay regarding the story then will the the main story Force player agency immediately or allow them Freedom within the world until they decide to take on the main quest and I guess regarding that as well does that even matter cuz in dagger fall the emperor says like this is an urgent matter but you can just ignore him if you want to yeah no no that's a great great question um so uh it it short ansers it's not going to make you do anything you don't want to do okay um but uh one thing that we've definitely learned from diger fall and I think we learned this pretty early on I mean there are some things where videos are still coming out where s talking about uh what's going on with this on dager fall and and things like that where we go like oh yeah I guess we didn't mean uh we should have explained that where we um didn't want to hand uh handhold the the player too much in dager fall but we could have done better like the the beginning of dager fall was you uh you get a letter from the emperor Asian and that happened like 30 days into Tiger Fall or something like that and so many people like I've watched videos where they go like like step out of the stter dungeon and the stter dungeon was supposed to be like okay well all you need to do is escape but once they escape they're like now what and uh and there's a whole lot of at the time and 30 years later people are still going now what so uh like there are options given to the player early on so you can ignore them I mean I'm I'm I'm happy to have you be a player who's says yeah I'm going to go off my own path and you know [ __ ] all y'all uh but uh but if you are someone who needs a little little bit more uh you know early on then that'll be provided like I I'd rather have you be the the player who ignores uh you know advice rather than someone who has no idea what they're supposed to do next right yeah cuz some people I'm sure uh myself as well I love that freedom initially in dager where you didn't have anything guiding you but I can understand as well from another point of view that if you aren't so Keen to just explore and find things you you get a bit lost I guess yeah I wouldn't say you and I are the minority but you and I are in uh some some portion of that group that you know likes that freedom but there's a big chunk of the world that says uh I need a little bit more yeah just a little bit of guidance to get get them in okay so I've seen that there are some law books already available on the Raywood welms website do you have a rough idea of how many you intend there to be for in the game I think what we did was we began I mean you know this is maybe a lame way of of of doing it but I began with how many books there were that we wrote for dager fall and there are like maybe 30 or 40 yeah and I said well we need to double that and then you know keep on adding like I have no limit that like we we want to write them throughout the development and anyone has an idea for a book and a lot of times things will come up in conversation where um uh we're talking about some stuff that's going on in an iar right now and they will uh say oh you know this should be hidden in and uh when I'm like well obviously if there's some information or history that's been hidden theyy get away with you need to write what that history is that's being you know hidden away so uh yeah know so uh books books come out of like complete imagination when we're talking about uh the the background and then sometimes they come out of like what's needed for a quest so uh yeah goes varus wise yeah well I I guess you answered it then so I guess the the bcks will sometimes tie in the quests yes absolutely okay no I have one going on right now and I um I can't really say talk about too much there's one guy who wants who's part of a group that wants to keep the knowledge of that group off of uh Beyond RAR hidden and so I'm like well obviously now I need to write about that group that uh you know he's you know wants to keep away like it's available he's trying to hide it you know that kind of thing so I guess yeah so you can read that law and then you can make a decision wherever you want to go find them or not and yeah okay right so I've seen that there's been some released pre-alpha designs for the character sheet what will the the process of character creation itself look like can players like choose from pre-made classes if they would like uh answer questions to have one selected for them like in Arena and dager fall or are they can just give complete Freedom like the custom class straight away yeah no so um we're like I said we're the spicious successor to those games so we're going to do it the way we did back then but improve on it sure so uh yeah so you can quickly say I'm G to be a warrior and jump right into the game um the the question thing was always interesting uh and uh we're going to include that but but you know uh make it a less tedious experience sure uh and obviously you know uh creating your own character was something that you know I think was a big thing that we did in Agra fall that made it different and you can still like I said still see it uh on people who are playing uh diger fall uh uh Unity builds and you know saying okay well you know like let me do a pure language uh based character and uh going like okay well that wasn't you know it wasn't implemented very well on Daggerfall but uh you know with improvements it's uh gotten to a character that's kind of fun to watch anyhow and also to play yeah I tried that myself it was it was very interesting just trying to get out of private here's hold cuz you essentially have no combat skills made it quite difficult yeah yeah yeah we didn't make it easy for you for sure but but there's always I mean one of the the things it's been kind of fun about uh uh you know in the Years senses that I really well I had a conversation at the time we I was doing I think it was Daggerfall I don't think it was Arena uh but it might have been with Scorpio who was uh the computer game uh gaming world's uh president uh crpg uh person and uh she kind of like said these are the things she likes and these are the things she hates and and uh some of the things that came out unlike some of the things like obviously a very wise person who's played many more games than the two of us combined um you know with saying things like you know don't uh include a lot of things of like you have to gather up food and you need to do these kind of realworld needs uh and so we consciously left those out and since then there's so many games with like survival modes and things like that that come out they going like okay well some people like this and we're going to have that be an option um so uh you know again like we we'll we'll have that kind of thing be so there will be like a survival mode like an optional survival mode there are and I don't want to give too many things away like I kind of feel like if you want to be survival mode then I'm going to put you at 11 because I have some other things that like you actually need to be thinking about about in the Middle Ages uh and uh that really make survival mode like I'm test so would it be like diseases for example I'm I'm not saying I'm not saying what what what I'm thinking about but uh do know that like like if you want to say oh you know I want to do it this way then we're going to we're going to dial it up okay it's going to be very much a survival mode then that's right right well you mentioned the languages then do you have um do you intend to implement less useful skills in the Wayward Realms like like those languages well we we want to make sure that the languages are actually useful I me the problem with the languages in dagger fall wasn't that languages wouldn't be useful is that we didn't have time to implement them correctly um so like like there there's no language or not language no skill that um isn't going to be implemented uh you know to to its you know what we imagine it's fullest um so uh I think it would be great I mean if if people have ideas for you know uh things like that that we saw in you know dager fall Unity of like I came up with this really crazy uh character said um I mean that that's a lot what discussed with our uh designers every week where you know we say like you know is there a way to play this game from the most unobvious you know Adventure game uh Thief Warrior uh Mage point of view uh and you know I you know I I'll challenge myself and I challenge them to think of different ways so um that's what that's the point of the skill set is to say you know how can you mix and match these things into something that it's really fun to play okay so stay on the Character Creator then will there be a return of the advantages and disadvantages system yeah but I mean well it yeah and and they should be advantages and disadvantages and it should be a thing where like I don't know for me disadvantages are more fun sure trying to F like how how am I going to play around a version sunlight yeah will that system also affect like the speed of leveling is it just is it essentially what one to one with Daggerfall cuz it's not one to one to dager fall but but like that's a good way to inspired by it okay can you actually reveal what skills are included in the game or like just an example or or is it going to be pretty similar to what we've seen before are there any skills should it's going to be very dissimilar um but I can't reveal and honestly part of the thing reason why I can't reveal we haven't figured it all out yet sure so uh there there's uh you know even in the course of of uh designing it and playing it through and like oh we really need the skill like that's a different type of skill um so uh yeah I mean we're going to have at least as many skills as we did in dager fall but they're going to be different um and but we're like that's certainly been a trend in the yellow Scrolls is like the number of skills has gone down which um I think was a very conscious uh decision on their point of uh point of like okay well you don't really need need to have uh you know three different skills having to do with you know I'm actually trying to think of an example but I know that they were trying to winnow it down to say you know in the basic Thief Warrior Mage thing you don't need to have this many uh skill types okay but we're not of that mindset so you know we uh want to think of all the different ways if you create a quest and your object is to kill the Necromancer what are what's you know 20 different ways you can do that and uh and make sure that we uh CT them all so there won't be there there's not going to be Quest that a build can't complete is it I'm sorry say say that again if say a barbarian will they be able to successfully complete a stealthy Quest although maybe not successful in the way say a Thieves Guild might expect it like you you you tuck the item and you retrieved it but you also tore apart the the the building at the same time is that sure well I think we we we think of quest less having to do with like success and failure as as opposed to completion you know obviously if the overall thing is like getting it as simple as getting an item back to the the questgiver um the consequences of that and the consequences can vary you know if if if you had to kill half the town in order to get this item then that's uh going to follow you sure uh and if you did it in a total selfy way uh you know that's going to uh be different if it is someone who uh needs it to be done a certain way like let's say it's an assassination Quest or we we'll stick with your uh stealing this item but they can't know that um it was like yeah maybe yeah like it's a crown jewels and they need to uh be taken back to the questgiver but no one can know that they were taken um you know figuring out ways of like swap Indiana Jones cell swapping them out or uh you know distracting someone or or doing it in a less subtle way that I'm just GNA hack and slash my way through this this Palace and do that like they uh honestly they would like uh that's you did that in a terrible way and you and you walk back to our our headquarters and let them know where the crown gos are um I think this is worse than a failure but it's again our mind not not a failure it's a okay there are consequences sure I think you might have revealed this before but but is leveling going to be XP based or is it uh skill based like skill going to level as you use it's skill based it's not XP base sure and that's going to work is it similar to D for where as your skills level up that will affect your main level yeah you know obviously tweaking it you know yeah but but similar will the magic system be as customizable as we've seen oh Much More Much More are you attempting to balance that or are you still going to let it kind of be where as if you can make it you can make and afford it we were balancing it um yeah no in fact I don't know if we've really broadcasted like the idea of this world is that I really want to bring um like as opposed to the setting of Elder strolls where we had like a mag's guild on every corner um magic is exists in our world and uh you know Mages exist in this world world but it's not a there's a mage on every corner it's still like if you're if you're in our world and you cast a fireball down the street people are going to freak out okay so still very like that's so it's not like that they haven't heard of this and it's you know uh but it's not typical sure um and so uh a lot of what we're doing with magic uh is that you know it it needs to be I play Mages in in all RPGs um so I'm not trying to make it less fun for me but it needs to be uh more difficult than the average skill of getting better like you can go to the Village wise woman and learn a couple healing spells like that's not going to be super hard to do but once you're getting beyond that then you're really going to be questing to help your skills improve yeah because it's not it it's not the same as like archery or you know something like that where you can probably find tons of people who are pretty good at it it can help you out so yeah you have you will have to earn the higher level spells then or the those custom spells yeah so there's no like like level limits we don't think of it like mathematically like that but we are thinking that it's a thing where as you get better in the skill it becomes harder to get better beyond that okay we've seen some early very early examples of of the dungeon generation on the once lost games YouTube channel in terms of size are they going to be as large as in dagger fall or more condensed and to that end will there be a variety of sizes as well uh no they're not going to be as crazy as dag okay um there will be some that will be you know we we don't want to you know lose the dream entirely uh but I think it was certainly a thing on Daggerfall that uh once we kind of came up with the proc gen on on uh on uh dungeons we um Let it Loose without you know without without really considering like oh [ __ ] like this is going to be uh crazy uh so you know but I even think in dager Falls we had um ones that we I'm not even sure we call them dungeons we I think we call them more like Crips or whatever that you could just like go down into a graveyard go down some steps come into a big room you know face a vampire or whatever so like even then we we knew like that you know there you can have small done still needed small on yeah that's right um so yeah so we I I I guess to the overall note is like th those those of you who like crazy lein and dungeons will have a couple of those but we're uh that's that's part of the spiritual successor thing that we're uh taking with a um with a bit of salt sure for of the combat then how would you describe the like the actual combat system like is it is it dice rolls be hidden behind every weapon swing or was it more of the the modern action game approach um I think it's probably more of the latter sure um with with with you know not really so it's not a dice roll thing but but like certainly we take your skills into account uh when saying yeah you know if if if you swing the weapon correctly if you're you know not facing the other way and uh and you swing you your sword correctly you will cause damage um but how much damage do does we do have to look at your your skills to figure out like what the maximum amount of damage that you can cause on that is yeah so if it looks like you hit them you you did hit them it's just how effective that is is dependent on your skills and I think we even like again Crum did that in dager I don't think we did like a a swish sound if you uh you know failed to hit I think we even gave up blood splurt and then you know you didn't cause any damage which is you know again like I said like part of the problem is messaging like yeah maybe maybe we could have gotten away with that if we said you missed you missed you missed mhm I think that was something especially in dagger fall and Arena and morwin actually that that was an issue a lot of people had was that that the switch noise wasn't enough to make them know that they had missed yeah yeah no I think again if you have crummy sword skill like if you and I have you know yeah have noidea I don't know what your swordsmanship is like but uh if if you or I had a sword and we swung at it you know some guy broke into our house uh you know and and we hit them then like you know yeah it's going to scratch the guy may may not incapacitate him but you know it's it's going to cause him to go hey yeah something will happen just maybe not what it was intended that's right so I've noticed that you you've used on the steam page the IDE of a virtual game master and I guess that comes originally from Julian's whole idea of having like a virtual dungeon master for that was what he explained was behind dager fall in regarding to like how a game master Works in D and D then do you intend to dissuade save scum as you did in Daggerfall like a fif Us in his connections or speech kill to be declared not guilty uh yeah no no we're definitely uh I think that's a major part of our conversation when it comes to Quest design was to say all right what this all you know goes south and uh you are uh you know doesn't work out how can we make this interesting and not make it so they have to start over um and you know this is a a crummy example but unfortunately when I use with my quest designers all the time where like can they can a player basically be almost dead in the in the dungeon and then have some group come over and you know carry out their body and send them off to healing and uh like involve themselves in a whole new Quest um so uh that's the kind of thing where we're we're we're trying to make it into a thing where if you take something that's above your head and uh and you're trying your best that it can actually be more fun and more interesting and reveal more than just like barreling ahead and you know yeah doing it in the most obvious you know uh you know Victory away yeah so I guess that obviously goes into your your five ax and allowing that kind of expiration in the quests um all right that sounds yeah very interesting in terms of like the Wayward Realms is archipelago traveling from the the snowy mountaintops to the human jungles in dager Fall you know from hammerfell into High Rock and such uh one of my viewers said like they no other game they feel has captured that will the raid Realms have that sort of same diversity of biomes oh yeah no no that that that that's high on the list and I think that it's a big thing that when we are um when we decided to uh uh you know do this early access build as opposed to like doing the whole game all at once it was a thing of like there are a lot of environments that we had designed out that you know iar for example would be able to cover um so we said okay well we can we can do you know biom or two in iar uh for the Early Access and hold off on the other ones uh for later but yeah certainly um it it it you know uh the archipelago takes place over the same amount of terrain as as uh Daggerfall if not bigger um so the idea was to certainly make it as as uh stretched out and like you said with Transportation um you know different ways of of of you know getting around the place uh obviously being an archipelago boat is a major way um and you know considering so there's the above above uh the the wave uh you know temperate Transportation on there to below the waves okay so below the waves is is that magic is there going to be submarines or are you not at Liberty to not going be submarines certainly not modern submarines um but there are uh there are other ways of of uh getting around you you've mentioned the ships there are they going to be controllable or just a means of fast traveling between the islands it it's going to be a little bit of both I mean to some degree uh you know keeping in mind uh the people who you know really I mean there are regular fairies I guess is the easiest way to say like there there are ones where like especially between major ports you can just jump onto a boat and get from point A to point B but it's not probably going to get you exactly where you want to be it's G to get you to like the the the the port area that's moves adjacent to that and and that's fine probably for you know a huge percentage of people who are not going to want to you know take control of of every part of it but you know we we already have in the game uh you know some pretty good boat controls and we'll keep on refunding them okay obviously I guess that means you can own your own vat eventually mhm I I imagine this would be in there but I I assume there will be tiers of votes as in like you could start with something small and it would you could get buy better on yeah yeah yeah and and there's going to be the part where obviously uh we do have you kind of Ally NPCs who are you know so if you do get something that's you know requires more than one person on board to uh to help out that they can you know jump in so you'll have to like hire a crew I guess yeah okay is there any combat involved with boats at the moment oh like Bo boat Bo or like firing back and forth well it's it's not implemented but it's a plan I've got a question here will thieves be able to steal a ship obviously okay I guess you could also my God what's the point yeah I'm all I'm all about supporting my thie so as you mentioned the arip pegalo is going to be huge what is the the actual scope of procedurally generated content in dagger fall there was some handcrafted stuff like the main story uh dungeons is there a similar mix in waywood Realms or is it yeah no it's probably a similar similar mix um and uh it and even in in Daggerfall you know like you said we did have handcrafted uh stuff put in there and sometimes a mix between them where you you go like I mean I I could be wrong but I I feel like you know the Palace of Daggerfall was handcrafted but then when once you go on a door into the dungeon that that might be parg so um I think we like any other tool we're using it you know uh when when appropriate um almost any certainly throughout throughout the world we have uh some kind of landmarks and we're going like okay well that's obviously you we need to you know create that yeah we're kind of doing it as an as uh as needed basis but you you know obviously having a world this big um we are uh anticipating a fair amount of BR stuff yeah regarding that then the procedural generation on dager Fall was kind of it was one and done like it was done in uh at the time of fez's offices and then everyone played the same world is the word Realms going to be the same thing like everyone has the the same world it's not going to be random yes okay yeah so it's yeah it's not going to be every time you play it like you know this to your left instead to your right yeah sure in terms of expiration then and you mentioned their landmarks and like points of interest is there going to be more of that than we originally saw in dager fall or is it going to be similar oh yeah no no definitely uh I I think one of and that's part of thing in the proc gen thing it was like I think we took with the the overall message and and this is certainly a message that uh Julian might have gotten before I did um was that uh you the proc gen can work but for these issues of having you going to do with kind aess of train a sameness of environment um you know once youve seen it once you've seen it a bunch of times so all those things we've definitely taken to heart to say like okay we we we think we can still keep the philosophy and improve it so uh you know like I said uh in a way of thinking dager fell was was our beta uh or or or whatever to say like okay well we see what we did right on that and we saw saw what we did wrong and we're not going to you know uh we might make new mistakes but we're not going to make the same mistakes this one I guess has already been covered or uh in what you've mentioned before but will we be able to negotiate prices at vendors oh for sure absolutely brilliant I think it it'll be it's weird probably in the medieval setting for you not to not to haggle just yeah haggling is part of the deal okay so what would you say is you mentioned you worked through mwind and on to Oblivion what is your opinion on the the direction of the Elder Scroll series has gone since uh you were no longer the lead designer and from that are there any game Design Elements you've actually considered adapting from those newer titles for the Wayward Realms um well I mean obviously we would be doing this if we agreed with them so I guess yeah and obviously say the OB uh say the obvious that um you know they have uh done very well so uh and giving a lot of people um a lot of pleasure like I'm not going to dismiss you know all the things that have gone on I think that there's I mean and I wasn't a lead I was a a um a consultant and a storywriter on morind and like that game particularly uh really did some interesting uh stuff with World building uh that uh you know you know sometimes blew away and every every one of them um and I'll even go up to like uh older trolls online that uh you know there are things that um and then sometimes it's flattering where where it'll be an idea that I had that I put in Arena Daggerfall and then they you know kind of brought it to life and you go like oh okay well that's that that's a really unusual experience where you're not consult like you had a kernel of an idea you dropped into something you know 25 years ago and then uh you see it uh you know in real life and you're like oh yeah yeah I wrote that and you know okay well nobody asked me how how to do that but just happened uh that's really cool um so I mean all that being said I think that um certainly from D you know and one could argue that uh dager fall was technically smaller than Arena um I mean but Arena you couldn't yeah Arena was endless it didn't actually connect so that's right so so yeah so you get what I'm saying um but ever since I think Am I Wrong is has every game been smaller and smaller like morind is uh larger than oiv Oblivion was slightly larger than mwind but Skyrim was then again smaller than Oblivion much smaller I think yeah um so there's there's a part of that where I think that you you get to the stage where like when you when your sandbox is minuscule then you go like okay well you need to you know Broad out a little bit yeah um so I think that's a big part of it uh I think that they like like we talked about before with skills the shrinking of skills uh makes for Less creativity for what um what kind of character you're going to be uh be creating and also what kind of the skills factor into the NPCs too so the NPCs become less interesting and more cookie cutter so um I I would want to you know blow that up more yeah um so a lot of those are are the kind of the reasons why we made these decisions and again like also every story line people criticize and I think rightfully so because it it really screwed up things for the sequel uh like the five endings of dager um and I can get why that's hard um to follow up when uh by the way we have that plan for okay just just to jump on that um but but I get why that's hard you know after all the creatives uh who were working on uh Elder strs to had left um but to make every game to be into a you are the chosen one and you need to have this epic battle uh at the end of the game and you know finish it go like I that's gets boring after after a while so you know so all of these things are the things that we said uh we would like to see with today's technology and uh what not rectified if if the Wayward Realms ever had a sequel and hopefully it does one day have you do you know how you would actually Rectify that problem yep yep okay so you already got something in mind I give a solid yep um but uh I mean again I think um how do I put this uh because like I said like we think about the world we think of terms of story beats so we have a story beat where the world needs the sequel U and you can continue playing it but at that point events are triggered that are going to be in the sequel and I guess the other only other hint that I would say is that like there were games again back in the 90s that uh had sequels which spun off of the choices you made in the other one and you could bring your saved games over to the second one and uh and it would change events slowly so I guess maybe that's sort of my hint of what we're thinking okay and yeah hopefully getting it to work because unfortunately it was removed from dagger fall before release yeah famously I very miserable about that you've been mentioned in dager for Unity a lot have you checked out any of the the mods do you take any inspiration from those oh oh for sure and and and and and again some of the mods are ones that well some of the mods I think are more or less essential um but there are some of the mods where we were talking about the survival mode you know type of thing where you go like oh it's not for me but hey look how popular it is okay well that's that that's the thing we're we're gonna uh certainly address and I think Mo mostly what we've been doing On Wayward drms is say uh we need to be mod friendly so uh and Daggerfall was not I mean the fact that it's you know people have modded it uh you know obviously they had to uh mostly do over Unity although I think there probably some mods that exist were yeah but the original yeah um which you know is crazy like the the amount of hackery that had to happen to to make that happen yeah a lot of them were additional quests cuz I think the quests were actually stored as a text file so people were able to add additional quests that way into the additional game yeah that makes sense um so yeah so you know be being mod friendly in general was I think that uh you know when we started doing Wayward drums we said like these are these are the major pillars you know of you know dager fall or Arena or Elder rolls or whatever we were thinking like with with the major things that made people come back to it but uh a thing that we would was not a pillar but was kind of like an additional pillar was being mod friendly so this the way with realm then intend to also have mod support oh yeah yeah uh and that in what capacity will there be mod tools or is it just going to be I guess it's un real engine so is it just letting people do what they want to if they have I me there'll be Parts where uh you know we'll we'll do whatever we can to uh support AET and support it um but like you said it's unreal Eng so um like there already many steps up yeah uh I think that's actually covered all of the questions I had for the wward realm so I have a slightly unrelated question have you seen Tim kan's creator of fallout's YouTube channel I haven't uh you know what uh a couple months ago Julian and I went to uh GDC for um uh you know to talk about the 30th anniversary of Arena and I remember uh cuz I I hadn't done like one of the GDC speak uh speeches before and I saw Tim kan's like I pulled that up as being like hey how people done these classic you know uh RPG you know uh postums before and I pulled that up on that so I've so that's a long answer to your question which is no no he essentially how how the YouTube channel where he will kind of answer questions about why he did certain things in Fallout as well as just general like game design questions and he's kind of just letting like all his knowledge out there and I was just wondering if you'd ever considered doing something similar for sure no I thought you were about to say and he's on right now I'd be happy to um I mean there there's some parts of of like what we're actually doing for wer drums that I probably can't you know yeah get into for uh well in some degrees we're working them out so I can't say like Hey we're gonna do this and like oh [ __ ] we didn't um but you know certainly I'm I'm I'm happy to uh talk about you know the process and why I made these early decisions and what I might do differently uh so yeah that' be cool I think that really covers anything so yeah thank you for your time and all your answers it was really cool cool absolutely my pleasure thank you to Once lost gains and Ted Peterson for their time and remember to keep an eye out for the wward Realms Kickstarter campaign launching on the 30th of May links to which will be in the description of this video thanks for watching and a big thank you to all of the patreon and YouTube members who helped make this content possible I'll see you in the next one [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Jwlar

Views: 21,104

Keywords: jwlar, ted peterson, daggerfall, tes 2 daggerfall, tes II Daggerfall, Arena, Tes 1 arena, tes I Arena, wayward realms, interview, ted peterson interview, wayward realms ted peterson, julian lefay, wayward realms julian lefay

Id: bkI2goN7xEA

Length: 72min 31sec (4351 seconds)

Published: Sun May 26 2024