SureAI

Thank you for getting everyone up-to-date, Wigbold

As for Witcher textures, there are also some landscape textures from W3 in Enderal - nothing too fancy (as that would break the Creation Engine in half) but some grass, dirt and other "small" textures ^^

W3 is certainly a typo? You mean W2, don't you?

W3.

How cool is CD Project Red for letting the modders use all their assets in other games? Actually more then cool is a smart business choice, every single witcher mod ported into another game it's free publicity, A LOT of free publicity. Even Fuck-Konami decided to give full access to their assets to modders, that's why we can see all that ported contents from MGSV The Phantom Pain into Fallout 4. I know you guys want to become a real development studio after Enderal, you should totally consider to use the winning policy in the videogame industry: no DRM (it's useless against piracy and can be a big pain in the ass for paying customers) and free use of the assets for modders.

But... such a shame The Witcher Wild Hunt didn't get the toolkit we were promised... I can't believe all the mods we are missing because of that (but I still think they will release it after the last expansion is out).

Yeah, CDProjekt seems like a very genuine studio. Not to mention that, in my opinion, W3 is one of the best RPGs ever made. If we had more games likes this (or Pillars of Eternity), games would have an easier time becoming recognized as "equals" among books and movies. Actually, I'm thinking about applying at CDProjekt once Enderal is out (and after my 4 month Asia journey).

Oh that's just a generational problem, it will be solved when the generation change, so still 20 years is my guess.

But... I was hoping you guys create new studio to produce commercial RPGs
Kickstarter is great if you need startup money.

We'll see about that - right now the core team is quite burnt-out and engaged in other exciting projects with other studios or on their own (such as I). We don't want to be yet another mobile-game developing indie studio in Germany, so if the time isn't right, we'd rather step down in honor (after Enderal) than have SureAI associated with failure. Actually, we did start a commercial project (and I still think the concept is great), but we simply didn't find enough people who shared our work ethics and ambition (If you asked those we did find to stay longer than 5PM, they'd start giving you the Wage-Slave Speech™. Mind you that we all worked pro-bono, even the project leads who usually stood in the studio until late night). Right now, there are only about 6 people at SureAI with whom I'd personally risk going commercial and that's not enough to develop the game we want to develop (and no, our secret project was not a full-fledged 100 hrs. RPG, we know our limits, but it was something our fans would have loved). Truth be told, the German games industry isn't exactly what you'd call "inspiring", though, of course, there are exceptions.

Right now, after 5 yrs. of working for free, we all need a break. Still, your support means a lot to us and the plans for going commercial still aren't off the table.

Yeah I was expecting a commercial project too after Enderal (many years after Enderal, of course). Well, you know if it ever happens, there is a small fan base who will remember you, unless it's a mobile game.. I hate mobile games.

Btw, I'm still waiting for Luddermann answer, he didn't connect to the nexus since I send him a message (two days).

Gamestar updated their Enderal Special with two new articles. The first one covers the character system, the second one focuses on the storytelling. Nothing new in the first one, but the one about the story telling is interesting as it shows two short scenes from the mainquest and the author is giving his opinion so far. According to him the charactes in the game have a lot of backstory and are believable most though not all of the times. The whole game develops in the pace of the main story. There are some interesting sidequests, but the focus is heavily on the main plot.

Overall he likes it a lot and the quality is astonishing for a mod, though, he thinks it's not flawless. In general the story has a dark, melancholic sometimes depressing feel to it and focuses heavily on the fates of it's protagonists. It tries to make the player think about deep questions like the sense of human life and orientation for acting. To do this the game takes it time. Sometimes too much time in the opinion of the author. Dialogues and monologues of npcs are good, but can be very extensive, sometimes several minutes. And especially in the beginning the player is overwhelmed by a lot of informations and dialogues. Furthermore there are some moments that don't feel like they are right timed a for deep discussion with an npc, thinks the author. Still he enjoyed every second of the game so far.

The quest snippet, that is shown, takes us on a quest with master Bartar and two novices (one beeing Calia, one of the two companions) to investigate a ritual site. On the way they become witness of a scene, where a man, diseased by the red madness, is ravaging on the corpse of his dead wife. He doesn't react to them calling him to stop and the male novice loses control and kills the man in horror. Once the reach the ritual site, there is an argument between the male novice and calia. The novice is accusing her of beeing a witch and not beeing worthy to be a member of the order, because of a certain incident at a village in the past. Eventually Bartar calls him to order, but the atmosphere is very tense.

Overall I like it a a lot so far, but SureAI is tackling some really difficult topics when it comes to storytelling. So far it worked out very, very well, because the dialogues are overall believable and the voice actors do a good job in conveying the emotions. I especially like Bartars voice a lot. It's really good. The voice of the male novice is sometimes a bit off, i think, but not i a way that it's hurting the atmosphere. I really hope they managed to find some equally good english voice actors and the translation worked out well, because, I think, it's really a thin line for theese dialouges, dripping with emotions, to either suck you deep into the story or just make it feel ridicolous, when not done really well. Luckily the german version does a really good job so far. I am immensely impressed!

Edit: I also can't stress enough how well done the presentation is, in the limits of the skyrim engine, of course. But I really enjoyed the scene where they meet the "mad man". The setting, the music and the dialogues are very well done. Just a minor flaw in my opinion is the positioning of the male novice and calia. Calia gets pushed aside in the beginning and overall they stand a bit too close to the coffin, i think. Nevertheless, great work. I can't wait to play it myself.