Greetings, tacticians.
This is a recap of the 3rd edition of our Town Hall series, where we answer questions directly from members of our community! This is an officially curated series of questions answered by Ocean Drive Studio’s Creative Director for Lost Eidolons, Jin Sang! This town hall occurred last month as a celebration livestream at the end of the Lost Eidolons Kickstarter campaign. In addition to that we’ve added questions that were asked up until now in our Discord. Check out this edition’s questions asked below.
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❈ Town Hall | yomalovah: “I had a general question based on an observation I have made over the years of gaming. A lot of Asian developed games have Greek terms in them. I heavily noticed this in FF games etc, and now I see that you have a Greek word on your title. Care to share if there is a reason behind this or what was the thought process behind choosing the name of the game?”
- CD Jin Sang: “I guess it’s because most developers grew up playing Japanese games more than western games. I, myself, played lots of Japanese roleplaying games such as Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, etc. I don’t think devs intend to use or prefer using the Greek terms over others, but perhaps it simply may just be what they are used to from their playing habits or memories.”
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❈ Town Hall | Severance Bane: “Do you guys plan to add more depth than what we currently know about? For example, runes or weapon sharpening, etc.”
- CD Jin Sang: “Currently, we do have some plans on adding more depth. Like you just mentioned, runes or weapon sharpening is already in the queue and I’d love to add those features, but I just can’t really say when I will be able to add them if at all. Also, I’ve mentioned that I’d like to add more depth by adding online features, but this isn’t planned for now, and we’re solely focused on the single-player experience until it’s perfect.”
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❈ Town Hall | Remco: “By leveling up, units gain aptitude points in their different stats up to a max level of 50.” How will it be decided which stats will increase with a level up? Is that based on growth rates á la Fire Emblem, or is there another system?”
- CD Jin Sang: “Simply put, it would be randomly distributed until each stats are maxed out at max level for that particular unit. If one is to gain up to 100 strength at max level, it would be randomly gained along the way until it reaches 100 (no matter what happens, this character would always reach 100 strength, but in one playthrough they might gain it a different rate than another).”
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❈ Town Hall | Alex14ac: “There’s a lot of people who have asked about romancing options in Lost Eidolons since it was a really popular feature in Fire Emblem and there seems to be some form of affinity-building in Lost Eidolons. Would the development team consider this?”
- CD Jin Sang: “I really loved that feature in the Fire Emblem series as well. However, I found that it isn’t as easy as I thought it would be. N to M relationship with all kind of dialogues is very complex and hard to come up with (respect to the FE team). So, what I’ve come up with is that we would come up with 1 to N, with N being really small. So Eden may have some relationship dialogues which will make his relationship deeper with some of the characters. It’s kind of like a simplified version of affinity, maybe more similar to something like Mass Effect in respect to how the relations focus on the main character.”
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❈ Town Hall | Taffy Cub: “Will there be flying units?”
- CD Jin Sang: “Nope.”
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❈ Town Hall | Dee: “Noticed one thing when it comes to animations, that doesn’t make much sense to me: archers pull their bow forward when releasing the string which would completely derail the arrow in real life. How realistic are you looking to be with animations in general? Or does the visual of the animation matter more than realism?”
- CD Jin Sang: “It’s always hard to make things realistic when you are given limited resources. I had to make choices where it is hard to implement or it would take up too much resources to make things look more real. But, well, our goal is trying to make as much sense as possible. But I’d like to go back and check that arrow thing, and resolve it…”
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❈ Town Hall | Rob the Game Guy: “I noticed when the combat pans down to eye level during a critical hit for example that suddenly new combatants appear to be fighting all around, where there are far fewer combatants present in the top down view. This makes the zoomed in mode seem more thrilling but feels like it misconstrues the amount of fighting participants in the encounter. Have you heard this feedback before and what were your design considerations with implementing this feature?”
- CD Jin Sang: “This is the first time someone has commented on this feature. If you look at the combat map and individual units placed on it, you’ll notice that the characters are huge compared to the houses and others objects in the background. What it means is that characters aren’t the same size as the background. When the combat actually happens, it zooms in to show the actual size of the characters and soldiers who assumed to be following your characters. Design decisions were made so that we can show this isn’t just hero vs. hero action but rather army vs. army. We had a lot of options to choose from such as huge characters with small (ant size) soldiers on characters’ feet or total war like real army without any huge characters, etc, etc. I thought the way we implemented is one of the best way to show what we are trying to show.”
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❈ Town Hall | Argonaut: “In the upcoming Demo will there be intermission / camp gameplay? I mean between the missions. And if yes what features?”
- CD Jin Sang: “In the upcoming demo will there outgame content between the episode 7 and 8 battles. We are trying to have some interactions with characters along with a few simple quests. There’s also the training system mini-game that you can try out.”
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❈ Town Hall | Argonis: “The game will voiced in English right? Will there be any big name recognizable voices?”
- CD Jin Sang: “Yes, the game will be partial-voiced in English (not every single dialogue will have voice acting). But I am not sure about the big name recognizable voices yet. The demo won’t have voice acting in it yet.”
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❈ Town Hall | Dee: “Do you plan on having special animations for critical hits? The shown gameplay so far only showed a bit of screen shake and the word “crit!” on the screen.”
- CD Jin Sang: “Time slows down during the whole animations as well additional screen shake and critical! effect on the screen. As for the special animations, we aren’t considering this since it would take too much assets. Instead, my original idea which hasn’t been put in yet is to add some screen effects such as the camera lens being broken (glass shattering effect?) and/or blood being splattered on the screen. We could also try cut-in animations with characters screaming but I’d rather add this for skills!”
❈ Town Hall | Dee: “How much playtime are you guys aiming for for Lost Eidolons?”
- CD Jin Sang: “I am aiming for minimum of 30 minutes to a maximum of 1 hour for each episode in an average playthrough. We are going to have 27 episodes and that would be 13.5 hours minimum to 27 hours maximum just for the episode alone. There would also be be some extra battles for level grinding and sub-stories. With these in mind, I’m aiming for 30-40 hours on average of a full playthrough.”
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❈ Twitch Chat | StartgameSocial: “With that said, about the investors- I have to ask. Since this is all extra income from KS, will the stretch goals still be implemented?”
- CM Pat: “In respect to the funding, Permadeath was succesfully funded, so we’ll try to have that ready by Early Access. Hell Mode was also successfully funded, and we’ll try to have that done by Full Launch, and not a post-update.”
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❈ Twitch Chat | Dangercreed: “The game seems pretty done, what kinda stuff is even left to do?”
- CD Jin Sang: “The battle itself may look done, but a lot of polish is still needed. We’re also working on cutscenes where all the stories are told, and that’s already a lot of work.”
- CM Pat: “There’s definitely still a ton to do. Fonts, music, polishing, voice acting, all of the scenarios (you guys have only seen episode 7 and 8, and not even the outgame portion of it).”
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❈ Twitch Chat | midkemianavenger: “So progress towards the last listed stretch goal from it?”
- CD Jin Sang: “We’re going to work on the Permadeath togglable option and Hell Mode (extra hard difficulty) on top of our existing priorities. Additional features beyond that may or may not be implemented depending on the situation, workload, and timeline.”
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Have a burning question that you definitely want answered at the next Town Hall? You can have your question featured at the next Town Hall by asking it in the #town_hall text channel on our Discord!
Want to reserve a copy of Lost Eidolons in advance or pick up a physical Collector’s Edition? You can do that on our BackerKit.
You can also wishlist Lost Eidolons on Steam now!
