Two Narrative Designers:
Q: How did you end up in the gaming industry? What was your experience and past experience on working for games?
A:
Narrative Designer 2: I literally saw Owlcat opening. It is my first job in game development. I've had some experience in game development with friends in the indie scene. None of those games were ever released. Pathfinder: Kingmaker is my first game.
Narrative Designer 1: There was a pretty obscure game that never released in English. The game was an urban fantasy like. There are some paranormal elements to the game. That was my first game. There was a sequel to this game. I was in the team that wrote the sequel for it. I have also wrote a role playing table top game. It was horrible. But it was a priceless experience. Also lots of fan fiction. A big secret, your fan fiction can work as your resume.
Narrative Designer 2: I have also sent a lot of fan fiction as part of the test for this job. Some skills you gain from writing fan fiction can apply to your job as a writer as well.
Q: What was it like working on Kingmaker? Was it difficult adapting the table top module to a video game? What problems did you encounter? What was the most easiest thing to deal with?
A:
Narrative Designer 2: Compared to Wraith of Righteousness making Kingmaker was easy. Wraith of Righteousness is more complicated with more nuance and story to consider. Kingmaker was like a walk in the park compared to what we are doing now.
Narrative Designer 1: When I learned which AP is going to be the next game. I doubted that we'd be able to do Wraith of Righteousness. I thought it was impossible. There was no way it could be done. And now are more than a year into development. And I still doubt it and have no idea if it can be done. But were working on it. Speaking of Kingmaker, I remember a quote,"It's really hard to write a dialogue between one potential dead person and another potential dead person. About an event that either did or did not happen". And that's what we are doing all the time. And the game(Wraith of Righteousness I assume he speaking on) is surprisingly linear. It has a certain degree of linearity. But we are always keeping in mind all of these different open paths and trying to maintain some balance.
We can't write infinite content. Every new decision can cause sudden and unexplained and unforeseen consequences. So we have to keep a balance. We have to railroad, I don't really like that word, but we have to put boundaries. It is very challenging. Anything can have unforeseen consequences.
Q: What other table top games have you played besides Pathfinder? How much time have you spent on table top? What is your experience on table top? Do you prefer table top or video games?
A:
Narrative Designer 2: I have played countless board games. As for table top games I have played World of Darkness, D&D, and also some homebrew games in my childhood. I like video games, but I also like tabletop games too.
Narrative Designer 1: I played some free form table top in school. I have also played the game that I worked on, the sequel was horrible. I have never played D&D ever. I have only started playing Pathfinder when I joined Owlcat. I don't like all the math in Pathfinder. To me Pathfinder is horrendously over ruled. So many rules. Pathfinder feels like a war game.
Narrative Designer 2: I disagree with you. I actually like the math, and I like the complexity of Pathfinder. All of that math facilitates you to create an interesting character.
Narrative Designer 1: Yes, yes it does. But in Shadowrun you by math by design outline the social connections. Because systems matter. In Pathfinder you can play a deep social game by ignoring some rules and making up others. Where else in Shadowrun the system itself makes you come up with those choices. Your friends, your enemies, you contacts. My favorite system(Apologizes but I couldn't understand what system exactly he was referring to. Twitch Chat said it was Savage Worlds.) that I personally use is very versatile. It allows you to create anything you want. The system can adapt to anything. You don't need to do a lot of tinkering. The system is not like GURPS. You can create a character and start playing. The system hits that sweet spot between free form and has at least some rules that let you structure your game.
Q: What do you like about Wraith of Righteousness?
A:
Narrative Designer 2: I really like the beginning. The beginning has a mix of social interactions and fighting.
Narrative Designer 1: The Wraith of Righteousness is a straight forward AP that assumes you will play as good with good people. It assumes you will have a good paladin in your party. And one of the reasons why I said it was impossible was because players are not going to play as good with good companions. Players will play with different alignments with different motivations. This is why I love the game that we are working on. The table top version is far linear and more on rails. We have taken the story from tabletop and given the player lots of way to basically derail it.
Narrative Designer 2: We've just given you different rails.
Narrative Designer 1: No, no, there is the original story and there are different paths to derail it. What we want to do is allow the player to take the story and make it their own, but its harder to do that with a game we write. But we can least stimulate the experiences taken from one place and take it into a different direction.
Q: What other Pathfinder APs would you like to write?
A:
Narrative Designer 2: Actually I would like to write my own AP.
Narrative Designer 1: I am currently playing Rise of the Rune Lords. If there is one game I would like to make it would be a fantasy Shadowrun game. A game that is bit like Disco Elysium. Where you have to go around and talk to people and talk a lot. Disco Elysium is majestic because it has rules it has stats it has roles but it has no combat. It has a lot of rules that modify the game, and none of them has anything to do with combat. I want to try that. Maybe one day.
Q: Did any of you play Numenera? It's a very simple system, with a great focus on story and player freedom.
A:
Narrative Designer 2: I have not.
Narrative Designer 1: I know it's a sequel to Planescape: Torment. Which is a great game. Planescape: Torment is an example of a kind of a game I would wish to make. But no, I have not played Numenera.
Q: What makes Witch and Oracle so cool, and why did everyone want them so much?
A:
Narrative Designer 2: The cool thing about Oracle is the curses. Oracles are a class that comes with huge advantages and huge disadvantages. The class has some cool curses that add something interesting to the class. It is a pretty story driven class. Right from character creation the class already contains a story.
Narrative Designer 1: Oracle is an interesting character. A character that I would like to play if I start another Pathfinder game. Oracle on one hand is a spiritual person who has divine spell casting, but also doesn't have to devote to a specific deity. This is an interesting thing to explore.
Q: What about Witch?
A:
Narrative Designer 2: There are some cool Witch builds that are insane. It will take too long to talk about. Witches are cool.
Narrative Designer 1: The other thing about Witch is that just like Oracle she's not completely in control of her powers or destiny. Because a Witch has a patron they may not know who it is, and might be walking around doing magic furthering an agenda for an unknown entity. That is a cool thing about the class.
For Wraith of Righteousness when we started writing we got to offer one specific person who may end up in the actual party. Mine, since its a game about a crusade, I was always fascinated by the idea of the crusade of the children.(I believe he might be referring to this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children's_Crusade) In a fantasy world it might just work, so I added a character who is a essentially a child crusader and she is a witch. She is a witch who does not really know the source of her powers. We came up with a special archetype so that the child witch does not rely on intelligence. The character is a charisma based person.
Q: In some reviews were complains how if you are new to the RPG games and Pathfinder rules you have really hard time trying to first create PC, then start playing. Will there be somekind of "easy" start quest or "how to create your PC" guide this time?
A:
Narrative Designer 2: This is more of question aimed better at game designers. As far as I heard yes. We are planning some tips and some help for character creation. But I don't know any specific details.
Narrative Designer 1: Here is the thing. This why I find Mathfinder a hard game for me to play personally. It does have all the stats and all the math that you have to balance. We understand that it was difficult for new players. We know that it is important to balance the experience for new players. Here is the thing we are making a niche game. We're not making a Call of Duty that is for everyone. We're making a game for a specific niche and that group is what rely heavily on. They want the original Pathfinder rules. And we need to stick to that as close as possible. But on that hand there are all the people who want a different experience. Like for example some individuals come in expecting a less Baldur's Gate experience and more of a Fallout 1/2 experience. And there are people who want less math and more story. Well there are automatic scaling there are automatic builds. There is also the best mode, which is the story mode. Where you can just ignore the fights and go to the story.
Q: Twitch user is spamming the chat with questions about waifus and romances.
A:
Narrative Designer 1 and 2: There will be romances.
Q: Is it safe to assume the scale of the game is similar to Kingmaker?
A:
Narrative Designer 1: Yes.
Narrative Designer 2: It's different. Kingmaker was much more of an sandbox. It's hard to compare the scale between the two games.
Narrative Designer 1: There is a lot of content that is exclusive to the different mythic paths.
Q: Considering Wrath goes into epic levels, how does that factor in the overall narrative?
A:
Narrative Designer 1: It doesn't go into epic levels. We completely retooled the mythic system. You advance by class, in addition to you have a personal mythic journey. Can be any class. So Fighter/Lich. Mythic goes on top of your powers. Some powers become mythic. Some mythic give new original powers. It does affect the story. For example being a Lich does have an influence on the story.
Q: Will the class you choose affect the story?
A:
Narrative Designer 1: Here's the thing. We have some reactivity with your race. We can't really add reactivity for classes, because you can change and multi class. We feel it would break immersion rather than add to it.
Narrative Designer 2: It's also very expensive and too demanding.
Narrative Designer 1: Nearly everything we do is a trade off. We are small, and there is only so much we can do.
Q: Will there be more text?
A:
Narrative Designer 2: It will be a little less in one playthrough. It will be shorter for a single playthrough. But more replayability due to mythic.
Q: Will the deity you worship affect the story?
A:
Narrative Designer 1: This is a feature we would like in the game. But it depends. We would like reactivity, and in a perfect world that's what we'd do. But the problem that is a feature that takes time. Its always a trade off.
Narrative Designer 2: We are at the early stages of the development, in the middle, but still we can't answer these types of questions because there will be changes. We would like more reactivity. But we can't make promises.
Q: I've seen a lot about Good/Evil. What about Neutral? Does that sort of playthrough make sense?
A:
Narrative Designer 2: Yes. We tried to bring all possible player tiles into the game.
Narrative Designer 1: Mythic progression do gravitate towards different alignments.
Q: Which game is more linear? Wraith or Kingmaker?
A:
Narrative Designer 2: Wraith was more linear. We changed it. It's less linear.
Narrative Designer 1: There are more branches. Different from the AP.
Q: Will we be able to customize the base if there is one?
A:
Narrative Designer 1: You will liberate a city and become a commander of it. But how much of that will be customizable we can not talk about right now.
Steam timestamp: 1:26:53 - 2:15:57 Source:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/525811375