SureAI

Hello everyone,

Now there have been rumors that something interesting is coming up for quite some time now, and now its time to finally drop the curtain and present you the first episode of our new video-devblog!

The idea of this blog is basically to give you more information on how Enderal is going to be like and to also share some of the thoughts we have and had during the development. We hope that all this will make the waiting for you a lot cooler! There will be several episodes till the release and we're planning to cover a multitude of different topics, ranging from Gameplay to Story, Music and Leveldesign.

In this first episode we tried to shed some light onto one of the greatest gameplay-changes in Enderal: The EP-System and the Class system.
We hope that you like this first episode! Share your thoughts with us, critize (anything apart from the quality of our webcam ) and tell us, which topics you would like to hear more about in the future.

Please keep in mind that a lot of what you see in the video isn't yet final. (for example the Logovideo at the beginning.

FInally, an interesting new composition by our musician Marvin Kopp!

Click here!

All the best,

SureAI

Thanks for the new video!

Some positive criticism:

-maybe you should make the manaimplosion animation shorter? It takes too long and looks a bit awkward this way.

-this is all still wip I know but you should really look at the mod SkyUI. The author really did a good job of improving the Skyrim UI.

-the level up part where you go into your 'mind' sounds cool but it might take too long time to level up that way if the game has to load a new level every time you want to level up.

I really liked the voice acting, it's on a professional level! It's not even as hammy as Bethasda's!

Hi Hazzmat,

Yeah, we thought a lot about the "new way" to level-up. It wasn't only an aesthetic choice, though - There is simply no way to integrate a new, visusally heavy menu into the interface. I know that you might find a workaround with the SKSE, but we cannot use that, since their creators won't allow us to put that into our bsa. Same goes for the SkyUI-Mod! There hasn't been much information on the story< yet, but this "Meditation"-solution also makes a lot of sense in terms of story.

As for the animation, yeah, we'll look into that. I hope it was clear, though, that mana was constantly drained from the enemy? Thats why the animation is very long.

All the best,

Nicolas

Hi! Thank you for the update!

First off I would like to say that it's a very nice thing; didn't expect a vlog series - rather just more screenshots or a short video.. great decision though!

And now for the comments, questions and feedback: I like the new SureAI intro - hope that one'll stick around! The webcam quality and sound was good, too. Had a very professional feel to it and it's nice to see you also introduced yourself so that new players can become familiar with the project immediately as well. You should post this on reddit - e.g reddit.com/r/gaming and reddit.com/r/skyrim - that way you'll have a lot more people checking this out and possibly even hit front page where you'll really get a lot of people to check the project out.

I don't know if you heard it, but from 1:41 and on the sound of your voice is only on one speaker (the right one) even though surround/stereo sound is enabled for the listener. It appears to only be your voice, though, as in-game sounds are 100% normal. In the next segment, at 2:41 and on, this seems to be fixed. I like the class system and the talents & memory point mechanics and judging from what you've shown us it will be very fun to play different characters to mix up combat between playing sessions - or level a lot to enable it all!

I really liked the voice acting - it was better than anything in Skyrim but I was also very surprised to hear curse words - will this also be in the rest of the game? For me, it kind of breaks immersion as I don't think humans in this world really use the expression 'fuck' a lot. It's a word that I find hard to believe even exists in their vocabulary. Have you already voiced everything or was VA done just for this scene just for the video?

I also wonder about the dragon words - for instance when you check talents, it says you have full rank on all talent abilities with 3 different "markings" (the ones on normal word walls), with recharge time displayed x3 and so on - I know it's WIP and all, but is this intended to be in the final version as well? I realize it might be hard to remove due to talents primarily being dragon shouts in disguise (if you know what I mean).

It wasn't super easy to see what happened with the brigand who got shattered - but, my question is, if a monster/enemy gets shattered, can we still get his loot? I heard noise of armor/items falling to the ground after he died, so I assume those will be possible to interact with to loot?

On to the mage part - it looks like you are wearing thalmor robes? Will those be in the game with a different name?
I really like the manaimplosion talent and can see it having a lot of potential in the game, like you said for crowd control and backup mana reserve whilst also doing damage is very good. Possibly too good?

On the terms of difficulty, will there be different game difficulties in Enderal as well? Currently, changing from novice-legendary in the vanilla game only alters hp/dmg output and monster armor, will this somehow be changed in Enderal?

PS. On the subject of SkyUI and SKSE - since you sadly are not allowed to bake it in to the TC itself, can you make it compatible with Enderal perhaps? Since it's the same engine it shouldn't be too hard I guess? Like Hazzmat said, it really does wonders with the vanilla UI.

I probably asked too many questions, but you can answer the questions you feel comfortable answering.

For me, vulgar language is a real turn-off. It is what you find in console games aimed at teenagers who think using curse words proves their maturity. It reminds me of some late-night comedy club loser who thinks anything he says will be funny as long as "fuck" is used 3 times in every sentence. It may reflect how brigands would actually talk, but I don't enjoy quite that much reality.

I don't know if it is my old eyes or my old monitor, but it was really dark in that dungeon. You put quite a lot of effort into detailing the scenery, I'd like it to be light enough to see it. Maybe in the next vlog you could do the demonstrations outside in the daylight?

So do you select a class at the beginning of the game? Are you limited to the skill options of your own class? I apologize if this was explained and I missed it. Please don't take this the wrong way, your English is excellent, but English is spoken in many countries with many accents, and sometimes the ear is just not attuned to a certain accent. If you would speak a bit more slowly, it would be easier to understand. Sometimes you spoke slowly but then started speaking more rapidly as your enthusiasm for a topic erupted.

In reply to badge's post:

I think vulgar language is realistic - when used right, with vocabulary that would fit into this fantasy world, since they are brigands after all. They are kind-of supposed to be the "scum of the earth", preying on travelers, scholars, tradesmen and so on wandering throughout most worlds.

It was dark indeed, but I think that in order to make the sneak-functions work properly it can't be as light as you'd like. Perhaps there could be some sort of spell for the assassin to see better in the dark?

As far as I understood it - regarding classes - you can choose to put memory points into any of the three class trees/stones as you see fit - provided you have the level and memory points to put them in. This would enable for a cross-class system, i.e a heavy armored spellcaster, or a mix of melee one hand combat and sorcery - another form of combat mage. In the video, you can see Nicolas playing an arcane mage - a warrior build with a combat stance mixed with the Elementalism tree - which probably is one of the three mage trees you can choose.

A lot of questions.

First of all, yeah, certain characters will be using vulgar language in the game. It didn't yet come across that Enderal's doesn't take place in an Elves & Orks fantasy world with good and evil characters, and for me as a writer it just didn't make sense that a brigand intending to cut your throat will say things such as "Give me your purse now!" or "I will hit you with my axe!". Its said that writing has to "feel right", and for me this certainly doesn't. However, not every character is using vulgar language as, for example, most of the characters in Game of Thrones do.

Its just like in a real society - People who are educated don't use it. People who grew up in the gutters where things such as robbery, prostitution and fights are on the order of the day will. How, for example, are you supposed to feel the poverty, resignation and danger in a place where bandits talk as if they've spend the past 10 years reading Goethe and studying grammar?
Furthermore, it also gives us as a writer a way to make the characters more distinguishable and authentic.
I can see where you're coming from! However, it did exist in these days and you can be certain that people used it a lot. (Wiktionary says: It is usually considered to be first attested to around 1475, but it may be considerably older). Really, I think it just takes some time getting used to. As I mentioned before, we're not doing it just for the sake of doing it, it fullfills a purpose.
Enderal is an ambivalent world - It is beautiful and mysterious, a place for bards and poets, but at the same time dangerous, dark and violent. You could say, its more authentic. Maybe because we as developers also grew up a little and saw more of the world. Keep in mind that the universe Vyn was initially created when we were 15 yrs. old.

Now that was a wall of text, and I haven't even started answering the other questions yet. Just to sum it up: We understand that the usage of vulgar langauge might polarize a little, but it just felt "right" for the above mentioned reasons. It fullfills a purpose, and only the characters with a certain background do it. I can safely say that none of the main characters do, since it doesn't fit at all into their personality and background. Trust me, I believe that once you get into Enderals writing style, which is different from Nehrims, I think you will get into it. Of course, there will still be epic and poetic speeches.
I hope we could ease your concerns a little!

Let's move on to the other questions!
Yep, that was still WIP. We didn't start balancing the talents yet, so these recharge times will, of course, be different. Some might be the same, though, since leveling a talent to rank three should make it considerably stronger.
Of course! There will be a stain of molten, magic ice on the ground from where you can access the inventory of the deceased enemy. I should have shown that, my apologies.
Most of the set use unique visuals, but currently they're a placeholder graphic for a high-level mage set. But since they're pretty good looking, we might actually use them!
Yeah, there's always the risk of abilities being too powerful. We concepted and implemented a whole lot of talents which we then had to discard again due to them being way too powerful and too easy to exploit. But Manaimplosion (and the other manipulation talent, which you could get a glimpse at in Articy Draft ) are relatively easy to balance. You could add a condition that prevents these talents to be cast on bosses or you could reduce the time that they're paralyzed.

Enderal will be a whole lot more challenging than Skyrim on the average difficulty, at least thats what we're aiming for. But of course, difficulty will be adjustable!
No, thats no problem at all. You can use any graphic mods or interface mods that don't add a .esp to Skyrim. But we're actually already using an interface-mod similar to SkyUI. It makes organizing your inventory a whole lot more intuitive.
Yeah, a lot of people critized that! We'll show more exterior or brighter dungeons in the next episode.
True, I have to work on that. Sometimes it just gets me!I really love to talk in front of an audience, however it is hard to keep the right pace if your audience is a webcam.
As for your question, you can select a class with your first memory point (The first perk/memory of a class is the "Unlock discipline"-memory) around 30 minutes into the game, after something happens to your character. You're not limited to the skills of your discipline, however, casting higher-leveled spells required a certain memory from the appropriate discipline-tree to be unlocked. Thats just our concept so far. We'll see how that plays, and we'll change it if it feels to limiting.

Woah, now that was a whole novel!

All the best,

Nicolas Samuel

Thank you very much for all your answers!

I didn't know that fuck actually was such an old word, and now that you have explained more about it I'm excited to see what other swear words you will use!

Concerning the dragon words, what I meant to ask was, are you going to make it still have the dragon markings near the talent? You know, these! Perhaps it could be possible to change the markings to stars or something more fitting since I doubt there are dragon marks in Enderal's lore that somehow are affiliated with talents?

Ah, placeholder-robes.. that explains it! I did indeed check the articy-draft list and there are quite a lot of abilities there, very nice!

More on the question of difficulty - will it use the same difficulty mechanics? I.e if you change from novice to expert or master, does the hp, armor and dmg output only change or will monsters gain additional sneak detection, better hearing (!) or a different set of spells for example?

On the question of mods - specifically mods that add .esps: have you planned to make some kind of system to port mods from vanilla Skyrim into Enderal to make it easier to still be able to use one's favourite Skyrim mods?

Thank you again for all the great answers.