Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues is an upcoming RPG by acclaimed designer and creator Richard Garriott, who also designed and created the wildly successful Ultima franchise. Accompanying him in this endeavor is lead writer Tracy Hickman, noted for his best-selling novels for both the Dragonlance and Death Gate Cycle series.
Overview[]
Shroud of the Avatar is to be a completely immersive world. Unlike the current trend of level grinding to advance a character, there will be wide and varied means to interact with the game world - and those interactions and player decisions will shape the way the game plays out.
The design goal is to make the world interactive, or as Garriott puts it: "If it looks usable, it should do something". Among the announced features are different character classes, player housing, crafting, and player versus player.
While these can be found in some shape or form in other franchises, the way they are presented here is different. For instance, character will not be necessarily relegated to one class, crafting isn't meant to be another grind-fest, and PvP will be tailored in such a way as to minimize griefing.
Gameplay[]
- The game is slated to be released on PC, Mac, and Linux.
- There will be both solo and multi-player capability. It will not, however, be a massively multiplayer online role playing game. There are a wide variety of ways this breaks down:
- Single player offline: no DRM, characters can't be used in any other mode
- Single player online
- Friends play online: play with and see (in the actual world) only those you have flagged as friends. This can be toggled on and off.
- Open play online: the truest multiplayer experience
- Though post-Kickstarter sales will likely use DRM (due to how/who the game is sold through), assurances have been made that pre-Kickstarter funding sales will be DRM free.
- Players will be able to play both off-line (with no internet connection required) and on-line. The progress made off-line will not be transferable to the on-line version, but there is a chance the on-line version will be able to be transferred to the off-line version.
- There is extensive Housing in the game.
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