Hey guys! Hope you’re having a great summer – considering 2020 being the Darkest Timeline – and staying safe. Here at ITU, we’re making progress on all fronts! In this Update I wanted to focus on the scale of what we’re doing with AT:O, because, frankly, when you step back and look at the big picture, it’s all kinds of awesome.
Online Store: Delays & New Releases
First, just a quick update on our Online Store status. Due to the COVID pandemic our shipping company has put restrictions on some destinations back in March. Some of those have still to be lifted, which results in delays in shipping to some parts of the world. We are looking for alternative solutions, so business as usual should resume shortly.
This is also the reason why we’ve postponed the latest releases to the store. However, you can look forward to these releases in the very near future. The miniatures coming to the Online Store next are: the Dahaka, the Demidjinn and the Gravedigger.
Story Branching
In the lead to this Update, I’ve mentioned scale. Sometimes it’s hard to show or even grasp the size or ambition of the project, as on a day-to-day basis you’re working on smaller tasks or sections and oftentimes switching gears between story, design, UI, art and so forth. I could say the story is 300 000 words long (estimations put us above this target already, btw) or X book pages, or X adventures, but these may seem like abstract numbers, at least until you get the game in your hands.
But lately we’ve been doing some design concept work to better understand the flow of some sections, work on pacing and balance story rewards. We came up with these mind maps for main Cycle story adventures and hub adventures. And… it’s kind of impressive.
That’s a lot of choices.
This is just the first part of the main story of Cycle I (I’ve purposefully made the text too small to read to avoid spoilers). Each section represents a unique story point. And that last section that all the penultimate ones lead to? That’s just the Battle that happens AFTER the story concludes. That Battle has 6 different win and loss outcomes depending on those penultimate choices too.
The amount of choices and interconnectivity is staggering. And this doesn’t even take into account the influence of adventure hub stories on the main story or the main story choices that will come into effect later down the line.
That’s a lot of adventures for a hub.
Same goes for the hubs. These present smaller adventures, but the choices you make in those influence the options you’ll get later. That’s story specific choices, because almost each choice you make also influences the Diplomacy tracks of the involved factions. And those Diplomacy ratings come into play during subsequent stories, in this hub, in other hubs, in the main story. They also influence the economy part of the game and Battles, but that’s for another time!
Famously, in the Prelude, you could go to war with the main story faction. That’s preserved and expanded in the full game. Warring with your host can make the game significantly more difficult, but on the other hand, sometimes you have to make a stand — and not compromising on your ideals may bring its own rewards.
Weapon Statistics
I mean, look at that. That’s not even the full table, not even all the Gear from Cycle I. We’ve got 5.
We’re counting, so you don’t have to!
Balancing Weapons and Gear is very hard. You need to look at each item as its own thing, in relation to other items, in relation to the Titans available and to the Primordials you’ll battle. And then you need to think bigger: compare them to each forthcoming and previous Cycle. And we’ve made our job even more complicated by the Hard Co-op mechanics and by making our Gear escalate during Battles! That’s a lot of counting.
Gear Scaling
On that subject, we’ve delved deeper into and fleshed out the rules governing Gear transition between Cycles. We didn’t want to introduce sunsetting (look it up!), but we needed to make sure a Cycle’s spotlight is squarely, well, on that particular Cycle.
Hull Sap (???) vs Wishblade (Gardens of Babylon) vs Atlantean Spada (Black Flames of Atlantis). Now just to balance this…
So we’ve expanded those Ascending rules introduced during the campaign to incorporate not only Weapons and Armor, but also other Gear, as well as Loot and Legendary items. Highly sought-after Ascending ingredients will be locked behind higher level Mnestis Theatre Battles, making the whole system very organic (I’ll talk about all the options available in the Mnestis Theatre in another Update) and the chase after that perfect loadout that much more alluring.
Tech Trees
You can almost make it out…
Speaking of scale. These are the finished tech trees for the Truth of the Labyrinth Cycle (kinda, things like Forlorn Naos or the Nymths Adyton are special cases!). Yes, that’s right, plural. You’ve got your Battle tech tree, with all the Weapons and Armor, and Gear, and Argo Abilities. Then you’ve got your Structural tech tree that deals with… everything else, from trade to diplomacy to Voyage abilities to ship Facilities to [spoilers].
Ridiculous. What even is Hope Logic?
These visual representations don’t account for everything either. Sometimes a Technology card requires a certain Primordial Level, sometimes visiting a specific place or making a specific choice - and so on! The amount of options on how to progress through each Cycle is very high: maybe you’ll want to chase after one of the pinnacle techs as early as possible, other times you’ll need to invest in some technologies early just to stay alive. You need to adapt to the events of the campaign and make your choices accordingly.
Tech UI Update
While we’re on the subject of technology, let’s look at the way the UI changes. First thing to note, there’s several types of Technology cards and each one has a distinct UI layout.
You’ve got your Core Technologies: they’re big, Tarot sized, and horizontal in their layout. They also sport a full card art of the Facility in question. Then you’ve got your Production Facilities and Abilities (Voyage or Battle), standard-sized with a vertical layout.
The various small differences between the Technology cards will help you organize your technologies better and focus on what matters: how to use them effectively!
Option Four: the text is placeholder, obviously 
Scale Scale Scale
I think the scale of what we’re doing here is unprecedented and when it’s finished, it’ll provide you with endless hours of joy, excitement and discovery. Working on AT:O can be daunting at times, but at this point we’ve got the bull firmly by the horns and are proceeding steadily to the finish line.
Sneak Peeks: KF Gloom Archipelago, the Ramfist Hekaton and…
Oh, and here are the sneak peeks (and peaks) for the month!
Kingdoms Forlorn, Gloom Archipelago: The Towers
Gloom Archipelago is one of the places you’ll visit in Kingdoms Forlorn. Once a prosperous and enlightened kingdom, it fell into decadence and later got swallowed up by the voracious sea. They say you can still reach the towering peaks of its marvelous towers by the Ferrymen’s Guild gondolas and that during certain times of the year the tides recede, uncovering the barnacle-covered streets and secrets long-drowned. All for the taking!
He didn’t like the decor.
As for the Ramfist Hekaton… well, you’ll just have to wait and see!
STAY TUNED FOR MORE AT:O!
Black Flame of Atlantis Expansion: Everything in the world has an equal and opposite Nemesis.
Si ce jeu livre en Janvier 2021 comme prévu, soit il sera mauvais, soit ces gens sont des dieux. Par contre, ça me fait toujours autant rêvé.
