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Development Info Josh Sawyer's Pillars of Eternity II Postmortem at Digital Dragons 2019

Aegidius

Educated
Joined
Nov 12, 2018
Messages
32
Just watched the video and came away impressed by his feedback. I backed both POE 1 and 2. I've played a lot of POE 1 and agreed with a lot of the criticisms. I haven't been able to get into POE 2 at all, despite playing a few hours a couple of times. However, after this video, I think I'll go back and try both again. In particular, I am looking forward to trying the TB mode.

I think I will always buy his games as I respect his passion and his trying new things, even though I didn't agree with his design for Balanced character creation. I think these types of RPGs are better with imperfections that allow bad character paths as I think that also allows more variety in successful character builds.
 

Mr. Hiver

Dumbfuck!
Dumbfuck
Joined
May 8, 2018
Messages
705
Its not like you cant spend all attribute points on a single stat or two unsuitable for that class and so create a gimped character.

Bad character paths cannot increase variety of successful character builds. Thats mathematically impossible.
And what the hell can be so difficult about Deadfire, especially after PoE? Or you just couldn't "get into" the story and the main plot?
 

attackfighter

Magister
Joined
Jul 15, 2010
Messages
2,307
One flaw that gets overlooked with Voiced dialogue is that it hinders your ability to read the writing in your own head. You can read ten times faster than you can listen, and not all writing is worthy of being dwelled upon. Weak, filler writing is best skimmed through. Voice acting should be saved for words with power.

I think Josh Sawyer in the Tweets above is posturing and that he's only writing those things because he's conscious of an audience he seeks to ingratiate himself with. To all the would-be Josh Sawyers: actions speak louder than words and making grandiose statements is evidence only of your egotism.
 

new fucking guy

Scholar
Patron
Joined
Oct 22, 2017
Messages
180
Pathfinder: Wrath
He really "broke the mold" by including the good boy companion points from fallout 4 and making the accessible to everyone and shit at release
 

Aegidius

Educated
Joined
Nov 12, 2018
Messages
32
Its not like you cant spend all attribute points on a single stat or two unsuitable for that class and so create a gimped character.

Bad character paths cannot increase variety of successful character builds. Thats mathematically impossible.
And what the hell can be so difficult about Deadfire, especially after PoE? Or you just couldn't "get into" the story and the main plot?

Hi. I guess my thoughts were not about attribute points for stats, but instead the gameplay mechanics of the classes.

My hypothesis is no bad character builds requires balance which also resulted in a homogeneous play style among most of the character classes. More variety in class builds requires less balance in practice (due to exponential increases in testing effort required to balance the increased variety - mathematically solving a 1 variable equation is trivial, 2 variables requires some effort, 3 variables is beyond many people) which also results in increased potential for bad character builds.

So, in POE I think his desire for no dead end characters led to balancing the skills available to each class in such a way that led to most of the classes feeling very similar to me despite superficial surface differences. For example, many of the classes have a resource that regulates the use of their skills. At start of combat some classes might have the resource and then draw it down via skill use and other classes might have to generate the resource during combat to use their skills. I think JS balanced those classes via how much resource each character could use in an average combat encounter. To me it felt to bland. As a side note, IIRC, in POE there was an attempt by JS to not have dump stats for each class. I.e., Strength is useful to mages in POE 1 as it controls some variable characteristics of spells.

As for Deadfire, yeah, it was mostly the story that just didn't grab me as well as my lack of excitement over the classes. To be fair, I didn't really explore much of what each class had to offer as I wanted to reduce my potential for micro management in a rtwp combat system. With the Turn Based option I think it is quite possible I'd find the classes more differentiated and the game more interesting. I'm playing IceWind Dale again right now, but will try Deadfire again after IWD.
 

hexer

Guest
Fucks sake again he made Pallegina
I liked Pallegina

Admit it! You liked her only because her portrait was based of Rihanna :lol:
It is?
:prosper:

Yeah, in the portrait for the first game at least.
I wasn't the only one to notice it, here's a link to Obsidian's forums where they talk about it.
https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/78545-pallegina-is-rihanna/

8jcWg73.jpg


Later they changed it enough so she doesn't resemble her in Deadfire.

portrait_pallegina_lg.png


Same thing happened to Bioware, when an artist for NWN 1 based a bunch of portraits on actors such as Angelina Jolie, Robert de Niro, etc.
Check the originals before alterations here under Changed Portraits

https://nwn.fandom.com/wiki/Portrait
 

Quillon

Arcane
Joined
Dec 15, 2016
Messages
5,214
Pallegina was beautiful before she got manjawed.

Pallegina is not based on Rihanna: https://www.reddit.com/r/projecteternity/comments/5yafx3/found_this_while_googling_edér_not_unlikely_that/deou85j/

She's based on a Kenyan model named Ajuma Nasenyana. Aloth is based on a dutch model named Milou van Groesen.

And yes, Edér is based on young MvS.

Sorry, I don't see the resemblance between Pallegina and Ajuma.

Clearly the artist ignored Sawyer's references.
 

luj1

You're all shills
Vatnik
Joined
Jan 2, 2016
Messages
12,877
Location
Eastern block
... Josh also deserves credit for his honesty and humility...
... a lesser man would have failed this Herculean task...
.... Any lesser man would have been crushed like a bug in an instant, but Josh managed to hold...
... He is still only mortal after all...
... Many of these things were decisions forced on him...
... Josh Sawyer was kinda like Hercules...



:hmmm:

























7Drdxo4.jpg





giphy.gif
 

Sentinel

Arcane
Joined
Nov 18, 2015
Messages
6,633
Location
Ommadawn
Paradoxically, Pillars of Eternity is the franchise that both saved Obsidian and ended them. The successful kickstarter campaign of the first game kept them afloat during a rough time and that kickstarter was the only thing that saved them. The sequel's crowdfunding campaign was also successful, but the game itself fell far short of expectations. That is the reason they were forced to sell out to Microsoft and have lost their independence. Say what you will about Sawyer, but if not for him they would have went under and been bought years ago. He couldn't stop it forever, but he delayed it from happening for a few years. Maybe this was inevitable no matter what, but a lesser man would have failed this Herculean task much sooner. If you're familiar with Greek mythology, there's a myth of Hercules carrying the heavens on his shoulders for a period of time, but it was too much for him to handle and then Atlas had to step back in and resume the responsibility. Josh Sawyer was kinda like Hercules in that sense. He had to carry the weight of the entire company on his shoulders after Chris Atlas Avellone left. Any lesser man would have been crushed like a bug in an instant, but Josh managed to hold out for several years. He is still only mortal after all, but he still deserves credit for lasting as long as he did.

Josh also deserves credit for his honesty and humility in acknowledges the games failings. Many of these things were decisions forced on him by upper management. It's the same sort of issues that made Chris Avellone leave years earlier. I'm not sure why Chris seems to hate Josh so much. They both were hampered by the cruel Hera of upper management throwing hurdles their way and forcing them to complete trials and labors that no mortal man could possibly handle. The community seems to be divided into Avellonians and Sawyerites, but this sort of division should not exist, in my opinion. The real enemy is the gods (upper management) who are making these shitty decisions. But that is neither here nor there.

Now the question is what is going to happen with the Pillars franchise moving forward. I do recall reading in an interview a few years ago where Feargus said he wanted to transform Pillars into a "Skyrim-like" I.P. So I think what we will see happen with POE3 is like what happened with Witcher 3 in the Witcher series. Obsidian now has sugardaddy Microsoft to fund such a project, and considering how successful Skyrim and Witcher 3 are, I can pretty much guarantee that's what you'll see out of POE3. Gone are the days when Obsidian turned to crowdfunding to just barely subsist. Mark my words, about a decade from now a bunch of obnoxious kids will be as obsessed with Pillars of Eternity as kids are with Skyrim nowadays. Maybe they'll pick up POE1 and POE2 thinking for a similar experience, and be disappointed by the top-down perspective and think to themselves "what is this gay shit?"
Is there anything more balanced than kickstarting a company back to life and burying it 3 years later?
Josh has a true talent. He can't escape it.
 

Love

Cipher
Joined
Dec 31, 2013
Messages
371
A side option or a skill turns into a mini-game in the process of development? I've heard that one before, but I don't see how a competent developer doesn't nip this one in the bud or makes it a fun game at last. Since I don't remember any mini-games in their games I actually liked, I will chalk that up to the usual Obsidian incompetence.

I'm curious why people are so accepting of letting him blame the management so frequently. It wasn't a Kickstarter game, but it's not like there wasn't any interaction between the fans and the developers during development. We're living in thoroughly connected world and although we are now past the Kickstarter wave, we are once again being presented with the same old excuses.

Ordering a complete VO tells you a lot about how little they know their audience.
 

Mr. Hiver

Dumbfuck!
Dumbfuck
Joined
May 8, 2018
Messages
705
A side option or a skill turns into a mini-game in the process of development? I've heard that one before, but I don't see how a competent developer doesn't nip this one in the bud or makes it a fun game at last. Since I don't remember any mini-games in their games I actually liked, I will chalk that up to the usual Obsidian incompetence.

I'm curious why people are so accepting of letting him blame the management so frequently. It wasn't a Kickstarter game, but it's not like there wasn't any interaction between the fans and the developers during development. We're living in thoroughly connected world and although we are now past the Kickstarter wave, we are once again being presented with the same old excuses.

Ordering a complete VO tells you a lot about how little they know their audience.
All those features were literally demanded by and ordered by the owners - Fergus.

If you think Sawyer can refuse that and "listen to the audience" even in cases where he wants to or agrees you are delusional.
Especially after Avellone expose.
 

Jarpie

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Oct 30, 2009
Messages
6,603
Codex 2012 MCA
A side option or a skill turns into a mini-game in the process of development? I've heard that one before, but I don't see how a competent developer doesn't nip this one in the bud or makes it a fun game at last. Since I don't remember any mini-games in their games I actually liked, I will chalk that up to the usual Obsidian incompetence.

I'm curious why people are so accepting of letting him blame the management so frequently. It wasn't a Kickstarter game, but it's not like there wasn't any interaction between the fans and the developers during development. We're living in thoroughly connected world and although we are now past the Kickstarter wave, we are once again being presented with the same old excuses.

Ordering a complete VO tells you a lot about how little they know their audience.

I have never really understood the need to have full voice acting in isometric or IE-type of games, what they did in BG1+2, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, first Eternity is fine, just have some dialogue voiced so that players can get the feeling of the character, it also makes rewrites much easier in that you don't have to lock down the dialogue, like with full VO you have to.
 

Love

Cipher
Joined
Dec 31, 2013
Messages
371
Because they are the ones who make decisions and bare responsibility.

You're right. Obsidian is just a shitty company. When their developers can't complain about publishers not getting their vision, it's their dang management that is doing it to them!

All those features were literally demanded by and ordered by the owners - Fergus.

If you think Sawyer can refuse that and "listen to the audience" even in cases where he wants to or agrees you are delusional.
Especially after Avellone expose.

Avellone quit Obsidian. Sawyer was and is still there and kept communicating with the fans. He obviously was a selling point to them.

I'm not too hung up about the ship-to-ship combat, but explain to me how he as a director is not responsible for somebody coming up with it? He's distancing himself from coming up with it and from putting it into campaign. So his side of the story is, that it was so terrible even he himself couldn't redesign it.

I don't believe Sawyer thinks he is wrong about the combat for example. He might post a response to somebody on the forums, but it's going to be another explanation of his genius vision to those ingrates who are used to play RPGs on their computers instead of pen & paper!
 

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