Josh Sawyer Q&A Thread

[Roguey]

New Vegas was certainly the last hurrah for Avellonesidian, yes, with all subsequent titles using a more orderly, intentionally blander process.

 

[Infinitron]

Hard Truth: Except for Avellone, Obsidian was never that good at writing. And even he only shined when he wrote certain types of characters - Cass is fun but nobody is really all that impressed by her.

What they were, and still are, is generally less juvenile than their competition.

 

[Roguey]

Hard Truth: Except for Avellone, Obsidian was never that good at writing. And even he only shined when he wrote certain types of characters - Cass is fun but nobody is really all that impressed by her.

What they were, and still are, is generally less juvenile than their competition.

Ziets, Fenstermaker, Stout, and Gonzalez were notable enough to become Names to Remember.

Of course three of those were responsible for the intentionally-bland writing of DS3, but Avellone did a worse job with NWN2 OC, so it evens out.

 

[Fairfax]

Ziets, Fenstermaker, Stout, and Gonzalez were notable enough to become Names to Remember.

Gonzalez only made a name for himself now with Horizon: Zero Dawn, even though he did a much better job with FNV. The other 3 are only known among RPG aficionados such as Codex users. The majority don't know who's behind their favourite games unless they're out there showing their faces and promoting the game. Few writers are good at it like Avellone and Levine, and I guess some are afraid they could damage their reputation and/or hurt the game (like Emil Pagliarulo did).

 

[Rev]

Hard Truth: Except for Avellone, Obsidian was never that good at writing. And even he only shined when he wrote certain types of characters - Cass is fun but nobody is really all that impressed by her.

What they were, and still are, is generally less juvenile than their competition.

Ziets is the creative lead behind MotB, Obsidian's best written game, other people (the ones Roguey said) did a good job on a lot of other games, Avellone didn't do do anything outstanding in New Vegas base campaign but he wrote a lot of great stuff in other titles. Not all Obsidian games had terrific writing, but most of them were at least good and sadly they lost some good people over the years.
They're still better than most of the other companies, but that's because the only rpg company with good writers is CD Projekt RED, all the others range from terrible to mediocre/decent.

 

[Infinitron]

Hard Truth: Except for Avellone, Obsidian was never that good at writing. And even he only shined when he wrote certain types of characters - Cass is fun but nobody is really all that impressed by her.

What they were, and still are, is generally less juvenile than their competition.

Ziets, Fenstermaker, Stout, and Gonzalez were notable enough to become Names to Remember.

Of course three of those were responsible for the intentionally-bland writing of DS3, but Avellone did a worse job with NWN2 OC, so it evens out.

Yes but none of them have anything that compares to MCA at the top of his game.

IMO, the FO:NV base game doesn't actually contain a lot that I couldn't imagine the PoE writing team producing. It's pretty straightforward stuff on the whole, and the bits that do stand out are often Sawyery (eg, Hanlon & Caesar). Well, I guess the PoE team's ability to produce the kind of humor that FO:NV had is still untested.

Avellone's DLCs, on the other hand, I can't imagine anybody else at Obsidian creating, not now and not then. His ability to generate these incredible thematic pile-ups on demand makes Obsidian's other writers, including the "names to remember", look completely unremarkable.

 

[Sentinel]

Hard Truth: Except for Avellone, Obsidian was never that good at writing. And even he only shined when he wrote certain types of characters - Cass is fun but nobody is really all that impressed by her.

What they were, and still are, is generally less juvenile than their competition.

Ziets is the creative lead behind MotB, Obsidian's best written game, other people (the ones Roguey said) did a good job on a lot of other games, Avellone didn't do do anything outstanding in New Vegas base campaign but he wrote a lot of great stuff in other titles. Not all Obsidian games had terrific writing, but most of them were at least good and sadly they lost some good people over the years.
They're still better than most of the other companies, but that's because the only rpg company with good writers is CD Projekt RED, all the others range from terrible to mediocre/decent.

I don't know about CDPR, I feel like they're extremely hit and miss, and I haven't seen them write anything great that isn't hand holded by an actual professional writer with the exception of Vernon Roche.
What I mean by that is that the great characters in Witcher 3 were almost exclusively ports from the books, their personalities as well - example: Yennefer, Anna Henrietta, some of the quests in the base game, O'Dimm (imported from a folk tale), Regis. On the other hand, the characters that ended up not so well were those that CDPR changed/came up with, namely: Ciri, Detlaff, Eredin and his generals, Dijkstra, Syanna...

I guess they deserve recognition for carrying some of the characters so faithfully, but I'm still holding out judgement on them.

 

[Grunker]

Hard Truth: Except for Avellone, Obsidian was never that good at writing. And even he only shined when he wrote certain types of characters - Cass is fun but nobody is really all that impressed by her.

What they were, and still are, is generally less juvenile than their competition.

I agree overall, but even if KotOR II is lacking structure, it is otherwise very interestingly written at least, and a great deconstruction of the fiction. The script is miles ahead of anything else Obsidian has done.

FTR, I think a lot of the blame here is on teams getting bigger and structure coming before the good ideas and the focus on writing. It makes the product feel more professional I guess (writing lines up with developer pipeline) but also seems to drain the creativity.

 

[Quillon]

but that's because the only rpg company with good writers is CD Projekt RED, all the others range from terrible to mediocre/decent.

Obs did C&C or the illusion of C&C better than most other devs and serviceable writing is enough to deliver it, which most other devs can't even accomplish(serviceable writing). CDPR has good writers but they worked on their own Tolkien's established book franchise & characters which are also unkillable along with many NPCs with quests & conversations only branch in two ways most of the time etc which allows them to be better at storytelling cos they don't have to deal with most things Obs allows players in their games. CDPR writers still have to prove themselves with blank slate protag with much more player agency.

That said if they had continued the story of W2 with most choices carrying over and impacting the events during the incoming invasion(not 6 months into the invasion stalemate) and did a good job with it, I'd have been revering them as gods among men.

 

[Rev]

I don't know about CDPR, I feel like they're extremely hit and miss, and I haven't seen them write anything great that isn't hand holded by an actual professional writer with the exception of Vernon Roche.
What I mean by that is that the great characters in Witcher 3 were almost exclusively ports from the books, their personalities as well - example: Yennefer, Anna Henrietta, some of the quests in the base game, O'Dimm (imported from a folk tale), Regis. On the other hand, the characters that ended up not so well were those that CDPR changed/came up with, namely: Ciri, Detlaff, Eredin and his generals, Dijkstra, Syanna...

I guess they deserve recognition for carrying some of the characters so faithfully, but I'm still holding out judgement on them.

Not counting O'Dimm and Heart of Stone just because it's inspired by folklore is a bit unfair imo, if we go by that principle then pretty much everything else is also derivative or inspired by some other tale/story anyway. It's true they had it easier because of Sapkowski's work, but from TW2 onwards they made their own stories and characters instead of relying too much on the books and its structure, and they made a pretty good job at it. Also, a lot of characters in the game were not really fleshed out in the books (basically anyone who is not Geralt, Dandelion, Yen, Triss and Ciri) and so I think they deserve credit for what they did with them.
The other rpg companies are Bethesda, BioWare, Larian (I like D:OS but its writing was mostly bad), inXile and the like and none of them stand out for their writing, except Beth and nu-BioWare for being terrible. Obsidian is the only other company with decent/good writing in most of its games, and even without Avellone, Ziets and the others is more than a few steps ahead of the rest of the bunch.

 

[Sentinel]

I don't know about CDPR, I feel like they're extremely hit and miss, and I haven't seen them write anything great that isn't hand holded by an actual professional writer with the exception of Vernon Roche.
What I mean by that is that the great characters in Witcher 3 were almost exclusively ports from the books, their personalities as well - example: Yennefer, Anna Henrietta, some of the quests in the base game, O'Dimm (imported from a folk tale), Regis. On the other hand, the characters that ended up not so well were those that CDPR changed/came up with, namely: Ciri, Detlaff, Eredin and his generals, Dijkstra, Syanna...

I guess they deserve recognition for carrying some of the characters so faithfully, but I'm still holding out judgement on them.

Not counting O'Dimm and Heart of Stone just because it's inspired by folklore is a bit unfair imo, if we go by that principle then pretty much everything else is also derivative or inspired by some other tale/story anyway. It's true they had it easier because of Sapkowski's work, but from TW2 onwards they made their own stories and characters instead of relying too much on the books and its structure, and they made a pretty good job at it. Also, a lot of characters in the game were not really fleshed out in the books (basically anyone who is not Geralt, Dandelion, Yen, Triss and Ciri) and so I think they deserve credit for what they did with them.
The other rpg companies are Bethesda, BioWare, Larian (I like D:OS but its writing was mostly bad), inXile and the like and none of them stand out for their writing, except Beth and nu-BioWare for being terrible. Obsidian is the only other company with decent/good writing in most of its games, and even without Avellone, Ziets and the others is more than a few steps ahead of the rest of the bunch.

Well, yeah. I hadn't really realized that was the only competition they had. That's pretty depressing. But when you put it like that, you're absolutely right.

 

[FreeKaner]

Dijkstra is really good character.

 

[Sentinel]

Yeah, in the books and for half of his questline he's a really cool character. Then at the end he attacks you, head on, for no reason in a wishing-for-death way. It's not only retarded, it's also completely out of character.

 

[Roguey]

CD Projekt just wanted to save you the trouble of having to hunt him down should you choose to side against him.

 

[Sentinel]

Doesn't make it any less retarded and out of character.

 

[Rev]

Dijkstra is really good character.

He's great up until his last mission, in which he acts completely retarded (and out of character) instead of the spy mastermind he is supposed to be.

 

[Sizzle]

 

[Sizzle]

 

[Sizzle]

 

[Erikolaiz]

Must admit I'm a bit surprised that Sawyer is so familiar with Varg Vikernes' RPG. Didn't think he'd go there.

 

[Sizzle]

For all you Sawyer and Battle Bros fans :D

 

[Orma]

 

[Infinitron]

Sawyertalk:

 

[Lahey]

 

[Lahey]

Sawyer reminiscing about Souls: