Broken Roads - turn-based Australian post-apocalyptic RPG with "unique morality system"

[Alienman]

I find it funny that in the Australian post-apocalypse wasteland, they apparently go "That's very machiavellian of you".

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

I find it funny that in the Australian post-apocalypse wasteland, they apparently go "That's very machiavellian of you".

Thankfully none of the colour coded morals are directly referred on dialogue.

 

[Tyranicon]

-Battle was pretty meh. AI felt bad, animations were annoyingly slow. Player can't just pull a gun and start fighting. Found only one actual combat encounter in demo, don't feel like playing it again to see if there are others.

Yeah with that description, I didn't expect a lot of combat either.

 

[Harthwain]

-Battle was pretty meh. AI felt bad, animations were annoyingly slow. Player can't just pull a gun and start fighting. Found only one actual combat encounter in demo, don't feel like playing it again to see if there are others.

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Yeah with that description, I didn't expect a lot of combat either.

Well, it says it's an RPG. Do you really need more than that?

 

[luj1]

I find it funny that in the Australian post-apocalypse wasteland, they apparently go "That's very machiavellian of you".

in an actual post apoc setting people quickly forget about politics

their setting was however retarded from day one, its not post apocalypse, its hipsterpocalypse

 

[luj1]

Infinitron Why are you spamming citation needed?

Are you stupid?

the first art for this game was a poorly drawn butch dike woman leading a chained man. There is your citation for "game was SJW from day one"

the early ingame screenshots showed a world of abundance, where towns have fridges full of food and drinks and people drink beer and play darts in pubs. The color palette also had too many colors. There is your citation for "shitty setting"

Remember this game calls itself "post apoc" and cites Fallout 1 as an influence

I understand you have low gaming standards and need something to peddle/shill but people here arent blind

 

[Roguey]

the early ingame screenshots showed a world of abundance, where towns have fridges full of food and drinks and people drink beer and play darts in pubs. The color palette also had too many colors. There is your citation for "shitty setting"

Remember this game calls itself "post apoc" and cites Fallout 1 as an influence

That sounds very much like the first Mad Max, though that was apocalyptic and not yet post-, so the devs would be at fault for not being more precise.

 

[Cpt. Dallas]

hipsterpocalypse

Stealing this.

 

[Darth Canoli]

What's hipsterapocalypse?

A world where soy, facial hair and starbucks don't exist anymore?

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

What's hipsterapocalypse?

A world where soy, facial hair and starbucks don't exist anymore?

Those aren't scarce if demo is any indication.

 

[jackofshadows]

Played a bit. In the finest Cotex traditions, can cofirm it's shit. Narrative based game and the writing is full of cringe, stupidity. It's also over-written, way too many useless descriptions, try-hard jokes etc. The core char system is primitive, stupid - even min-maxed chars vary not much from each other, let alone npc with +/- 2-3 stat here and there. All starting "classes" therefore are different from each other only by unique perks. The combat system is again, primitive, little room for player's decisions. Overall - ugh, yeah - hipsteralypse.

 

[Craig Ritchie]

Game Director checking in again. This is going to be quite the experience, I am sure, as I make my way through the comments from the last few days.

 

[Craig Ritchie]

tag this Craig Ritchie guy, plz, I cannot understand Codex' interface now

I'm here, buddy. Catching up on this for literally the first time in years.

 

[Tweed]

 

[Craig Ritchie]

Heh, not at all surprised to see the hate on Codex for the land acknowledgements and the like. Yep, we have grants, things are done a different way in Australia to how you may know them where you live, there are certain 'must do' inclusions when using Indigneous Cultural Intellectual Property, and a bunch more things that if you lived in Aus probably wouldn't surprise you in the least.

quixotic, quotes not coming up as I type this so gonna do it manually "It’d be one thing if it was a short little message in the credits or something, but it’s so tacky and overembellished, it just reeks of virtue signalling."

This is standard Australian fare. Go access some Aus websites - they have this as a pop-up you click away when you first load the site. It's normal in a lot of media and productions. We've had a similar message in the footer of our website since we announced.

You're perhaps a little on the hyper-alert side of things when it comes to this one, huh?

As others have said, there are many strings attached to getting government funding, certain things done out of respect or tradition, some things done at request, and so on.

 

[Tweed]

Can't shake the devil's hand and say you're only kidding.

 

[Craig Ritchie]

View attachment 37267

Hahahaha

Oh man. When I'm going through Codex this is apparently me:

And then on other sites, Twitter included, this is apparently me:

Pasting some stuff I said on our Discord when similar things came up over the weekend:

When we first announced, Resetera were up in arms because of whatever gets them up in arms, and codex were their usual selves, and I put some time into both to try and calm the most extreme on either side
If you had read only Resetera you'd think we were ignorant racist fools, and if you had read only codex you'd think we were woke leftist agenda-pushing snowflakes or whatever you like.

We have it as part of our company culture that we're not pushing any personal political agendas.I've told people to change their writing or rejected pitches that lean into contemporary social issues or anything which pulls people out of the fantasy of being in a post apocalyptic Australia

It's this polarisation and the absurdity of modern online Twitter bullshit and forum fools that actually influenced part of that. It's too easy to be 'with us or against us!' or forced into some false dichotomy.My thinking? Fuck off with all that bullshit and make fun games. If you want to make the world a better place, start a charity or work for an NGO. If you hate that people think differently to you or that some people live life in a way you don't like, or buy into the woke side of things too much, hey, whatever.We are here to make video games.

Any anonymous coward online can have opinions. I don't give a shit. I'm here to run a business, lead a team, make what is hopefully a successful game. We have people in our team with very very very different views. And if someone pushes something too hard, they get called out.There's a big, big, BIG centre between the loudest voices on the left and the right.

 

[Twiglard]

Wokes tend to have a 'no platform/debate' approach to any kind of disagreement or dissent from their digusting ideology. Since you're talking to the 'dex it must mean you and your team aren't completely too far gone.

 

[Craig Ritchie]

Modern devs don't make games to entertain, they make them to send messages.

Yep, too many of them do that. That's not our mission at all.

I don't expect you to believe me (why should you?) but, yeah, that's the truth of it. I'm really not a fan of the virtue-signalling, 'we have a platform so we need to tell people how to think and we need to force things into our game which is more us trying to show how good and progressive we are than anything actually relevant to the plot, character or location".

Anyway, lots of posts to get through, including why we have had to be so reductivist with some of our philosophical examples.

 

[Craig Ritchie]

Wokes tend to have a 'no platform/debate' approach to any kind of disagreement or dissent from their digusting ideology. Since you're talking to the 'dex it must mean you and your team aren't completely far gone.

I don't go in for that at all. I said, aaaages ago, back some time around when this thread first popped up, that I was a long time user of the site (and am on the Codex Discord) well before starting Drop Bear Bytes and working on Broken Roads.

This company and this project have been through a LOT of ups and downs over the years, which I will get to when I can (legally, in some instances) talk about them.

I'm not here to sugarcoat, or bullshit, or beg for forgiveness or whatever. I'm happy to engage and also to explain, in particular, the (valid) criticisms of some of the philosophical issues (why did you put this in nihilist/Mach) in the demo, the animation, some of the art stuff, whatever.

Also got bugs to fix, other marketing to take care of, metrics to assess, all the boring shit I am sure you don't care about, so responses will be slow but I do go through every post in this thread.

 

[Tweed]

Wokes tend to have a 'no platform/debate' approach to any kind of disagreement or dissent from their digusting ideology. Since you're talking to the 'dex it must mean you and your team aren't completely too far gone.

I dunno, the Sellaco dev showed up mostly to say how amused he was and then made an ass of himself over tranny colored armbands and bunny ears.

 

[Craig Ritchie]

Kinda late in development to be boasting about pig models and UI reworks.

Hahhaha, "boasting about" is one way of framing it.

Yep, it's late in development for some of the stuff we're fixing up and reworking, for sure. But they're all making for a better end product. We've been really hamstrung at different moments and had to redo a bunch of things when we made certain global improvements. Not excuses, just explanations.

 

[Infinitron]

Craig Ritchie Welcome back. Let's set aside the boring political griping.

In the end, this is your studio's first game. Nobody could really blame you if it's a little linear, the mechanics a bit poorly calibrated, etc. The question is, can you set expectations and create something worthwhile with the talent and resources you have? The worst thing is if your game's story and content just end up being boring. I feel like that's a problem a lot of "real world" RPGs have tended to have - they sort of cling to their own mundanity.

This game's overarching storyline, is it yours or Colin McComb's?

 

[Craig Ritchie]

the early ingame screenshots showed a world of abundance, where towns have fridges full of food and drinks and people drink beer and play darts in pubs. The color palette also had too many colors. There is your citation for "shitty setting"

Remember this game calls itself "post apoc" and cites Fallout 1 as an influence

That sounds very much like the first Mad Max, though that was apocalyptic and not yet post-, so the devs would be at fault for not being more precise.

Interesting to see your comment Roguey as we've specifically (internally, for artists and writers) used the imagined period between Mad Max 1 and 2 as a reference for the state of the world, how decayed society is, etc.

 

[Craig Ritchie]

Craig Ritchie Welcome back. Let's set aside the boring political griping.

In the end, this is your studio's first game. Nobody could really blame you if it's a little linear, the mechanics a bit poorly calibrated, etc. The question is, can you set expectations and create something worthwhile with the talent and resources you have? The worst thing is if in the end your game's story and content will just be boring. I feel like that's a problem a lot of "real world" RPGs have tended to have - they sort of cling to their own mundanity.

This game's overarching storyline, is it yours or Colin McComb's?

Hey - overarching is mine. Colin is one of numerous writers on the team. A few have come and gone over the years for a range of reasons. I head up all the overall direction and approvals. The overall flow, the routes through the game and the different endings possible are still mine (at the most simple level. Of course discussed with writing team, minor adjustments made over time, and other disclaimers before someone tries to use that out of context)

We're also not launching with the game in the state you see it here. MONTHS of balancing and improvements along the way, combat in particular.

In terms of expectation setting, geez, I hope so. Couple points (some have pointed them out prior):
- We have never compared ourselves to Disco Elysium or tried to get people to think that was an inspiration behind the game or that it is something we've aimed for. We've had a lot of comparisons in the media and on Reddit or wherever, and where that could bump sales, hey, we'll lean into PR or marketing opportunities
- The origin stories are all fairly linear for the first part of the game before the world opens up. There's an entire overworld map with free exploration we've not shown off at all (I don't think it's ever been seen in any screenshot or video, actually)
- The entirety of combat was reworked over the last year. Lots to do to make both cover and LOS work well together without it being crazy complex - like you say, with the talent and resources we have - and the missing tutorial elements and the UI that is not yet complete definitely don't help
- The UI you're seeing in combat in the Broken Roads demo is the radial menu designed for controllers, made to work on mouse and keyboard, but we're still aiming to have a standard 'hot bar'/icons at the bottom for PC users, and many other improvements
- There's also an intentional increase from 'normal' to 'weirder post-apoc' that comes up once you get through the early game and learn more about the mysteries of the world.