Eschalon: Book II Q&A Thread Updated

Basilisk Games has updated their official Q&A thread for Eschalon: Book II with a single new question and answer.

Question #13:
[MaximB] In Book 1 the quests were very liner and often had only one solution, will it change with Book 2? Are you going to make several solutions to each quest with consequences to your choices?

Good question. It’s hard to answer because the number of solutions to each quest depends on how you define those solutions. For example, one of the first side-quests you come across has you retrieving an item for someone as part of a debt settlement. Now then, you can go directly to that person and threaten them. You can can offer to buy this object from them, knowing you’ll make a bit of profit when you get your reward. You can steal it from them, either through stealth or murder. Or, if you explore a bit more, you can find something to blackmail them with. By my count that is four separate ways of achieving the final goal. Others might say “well there is still only one way to successfully finish the quest and that is by retrieving the item and delivering it.” Perhaps, but that’s not being very creative- you could just keep the item and murder the person who gave you the quest.

Often, we try to find several ways for a player to get from point A to point B within the game, whether a quest is part of that journey or not. Like in Book 1, there were 3 unique ways into Crakamir, and players found the best way for themselves through their own individual play style. Book II will have a lot of this type of “multi-path” gameplay.

As for consequences to quests- yes, we are definitely going to put more examples of this into Book II than we had in Book I. But in keeping with old-school game mechanics, Book II will still have plenty of quests that are simply “do this and get a reward”. Some RPGs are built entirely around the concept of choice and consequence. That is the gimmick the developers are going for, and it’s great to have this kind of gameplay option for RPG enthusiast. Our gimmick is that we are old-school: Lots of exploration. Tons of character development options. Stat micromanagement. Crazy monsters and powerful spells. Traps and puzzles. And in the end, we have a huge gameworld that you can make your own adventure out of: follow the main quest or don’t. That’s your choice and consequence.

They’re also giving away three rare copies of Eschalon: Book I, just in case you’re a collector or just need something cool to peddle on eBay.