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Interview Josh Sawyer interviewed at Dealspwn and PCGamesN

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Tags: J.E. Sawyer; Obsidian Entertainment; Pillars of Eternity

One of the gaming news sites that got to see the Pillars of Eternity gameplay demonstration in that game's recent publicity blitz was Dealspwn. A few days ago, they published a 37 minute Q&A session they held with Josh Sawyer after the demo. It's actually a pretty fun little interview. Josh talks about topics such as the game's races and cultures, his character system design philosophy, his arguments with grognards who don't know what they want, the game's disposition and reputation systems, and more. As a bonus, at the end of the video (starting from around 33:30), Josh demonstrates his favorite feature. I won't ruin the surprise:



On the same day that video was published, PCGamesN published their own Pillars of Eternity preview/interview. Among other things, it has some interesting information about the game's soul-based metaphysics, and about its summoning-focused Chanter class. Here's an excerpt:

Things you’d normally regard as intangible and immutable are far from it in Eora, gods for one thing but, more importantly, souls, too. Sawyer was keeping shtum on the details but driving the main plot of Pillars are animancers, a group of people who have started dissecting souls.

“Think of an animancer as a physicist,” Sawyer explains. “They're using technology and machinery to explore and understand the soul in a way that people haven't been able to before. It's like spectography, when we first started separating out light and going 'Holy shit, dude. It's made out of all kinds of stuff.'

“A lot of people think that personality defects or mental illness are due to problems with a person's soul. Animancers think they can fix that which is very contentious. Some people don't want to mess around with that, either morally they think it's wrong ,they think that if you mess around with souls the gods will be angry with you. A lot of people think that the gods regulate reincarnation in the world. Animancers are saying 'No, no we have to learn how this stuff works. We can make peoples' lives better.'”

Obsidian are throwing you into the thick of the debate. “Defiance Bay is our first major city and it's the centre of Animancy research in the world,” Sawyer says. “There are a lot of bad things that have come of it but good things have happened, too. It's like a technology debate, like the ethics of technology and how it's being built, and how it's being monitored, or not monitored. Of course, there are parallels to real world stuff.”

This isn’t all a metaphysical debate that’s separate from the nuts and bolts of the action of the game. It bleeds into every layer of Pillars. The most creative example of this is one of the new classes, the chanter.

The chanter acts as Pillars’ primary summoner class. Like poets in our ancient history, they’ve “learned phrases that are kind of like 'Swift Achilles blah blah blah', iconic phrases from the literature of this world.” But, unlike our poets, “when they say it they're calling out to the unconscious collective knowledge of all the dead people present in the world and all the dead people make the spell effects from them.

“There's one like 'And who else was buried under that hill none can say' and it summons skeletons. Those phrases get linked together into chants, those chants are buffs, and as you say each phrase that gives a little, short-term buff, and it ends and drifts for a little while as another phrase starts. After you've said a certain number of phrases then you can use an invocation which is an powerful spell cast, like summoning ogres.”

Chanters will play unlike any other character in your party. You’ll need to play them with a rhythm where they’re always moving onto the next chant and have that chant be informed by the previous one to build to a large invocation.

Naturally, Obsidian are also giving you the chance to dabble in this animancy business yourself. Depending on the character, some of your companions will lead you down quests where you can dissect and alter their souls, or the souls of people they know. Changing the demeanor, abilities, and perspective.​

Enslave entire nations with animancy!
 

Volourn

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"his arguments with grognards who don't know what they want"

This is why no matter how fun this game is, Sawyer will always be a piece of shit no better than the 'grognards' he bashes and loathes. What a retart.
 

crawlkill

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I usually find gaming parallels to real-world antiprogressive bullshit exhausting, but Obsidian is Obsidian, so maybe they'll make it cool.

"the sciencification of magic" is one of those things that's as overdone as it is yearning for a worthy treatment. I mean, if you live in a world where souls are a thing and you can work with them empirically, presumably you -would- try to systematize and explain it. I just hope it's not too bloated with...I dunno, what's the fantasy equivalent of "technobabble?" you gotta be careful when you're using made-up words that refer to made-up things, or all context evaporates. at least they're saying soul and the vaguely familiar anima. bonus points if people have Ba, Ka, Ren, Sheut and Ib. -there's- an underdrawn well, classical Egyptian mysticism.
 

roshan

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Why is it that each and everything in this gameworld has something to do with souls? I mean cohesion is nice and all but this setting sounds like a one trick pony. The whole soul thing is already getting boring and tedious and the game hasn't even been released yet.
 

deuxhero

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Fucking with the souls of companions? Way more than I expected they'd do with animancy.

I'll be interested in seeing how it works out though. The only time I can recall a companion EVER getting a radical personality/outlook/whatever change was Virgil who 1: was literally an entirely separate character programing wise to my memory 2: Virgil was the only companion in Arcanum who actually said anything beyond the voice barks after they joined and you weren't talking to them directly with any frequency. How they'll make sure all the minor dialog reflects this will be interesting.
 

Hormalakh

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"his arguments with grognards who don't know what they want"

This is why no matter how fun this game is, Sawyer will always be a piece of shit no better than the 'grognards' he bashes and loathes. What a retart.

If Josh Sawyer's game proves to be fun, then I think everything he says about the grogs is deserved and then some. If he's right, somebody's got to shut up the morons who think they know how to design a game. Aww did Sawyer spank them too hard for you? Fair's fair. If people give devs shit for their decisions, it's just as fair for devs to give the shit right back when the "retarts" are proven wrong.

Not to be petantic, but it's retard.
 

Rake

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If Josh Sawyer's game proves to be fun
How will you measure that? I don't need the game to be released to know how "fun" it will be. Some will love it, some will hate it and some will be "good for what it is".
Which group is right? Fun for whom? There is no way Sawyer will design something that is universaly loved or hated, because something that is considered excelent design and "fun" for some people, others will find boring shit exactly for the same reasons the first group liked it.
 
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Sawyer has yet to make a game, any game, with fun mechanics during his tenure at Obsidian. So far, Obsidian games have been all about decent to good writing, plot, characters and abysmal to mediocre game mechanics, so it's extra virgin ironic every time he opens up his mouth. His position isn't particularly any different than any random grognard in this regard.
 

Volourn

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"f Josh Sawyer's game proves to be fun, then I think everything he says about the grogs is deserved and then some. If he's right, somebody's got to shut up the morons who think they know how to design a game. Aww did Sawyer spank them too hard for you? Fair's fair. If people give devs shit for their decisions, it's just as fair for devs to give the shit right back when the "retarts" are proven wrong.

Not to be petantic, but it's retard."

You are an idiot.
 

crawlkill

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Sawyer has yet to make a game, any game, with fun mechanics during his tenure at Obsidian. So far, Obsidian games have been all about decent to good writing, plot, characters and abysmal to mediocre game mechanics, so it's extra virgin ironic every time he opens up his mouth. His position isn't particularly any different than any random grognard in this regard.

On the other hand, he's never made a game remotely as shitty as AD&D's many incarnations, so maybe it's not an all-or-nothing deal?
 

Jasede

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I absolutely disagree. NWN 2 and Kotor 2 were way less fun to play than the AD&D IE games, or Dark Sun, or any Goldbox game, so I am really not sure what you mean. We're talking about games here so don't look at the system by itself, but as the way it was conductive to a fun game or not.
 

Rake

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Sawyer has yet to make a game, any game, with fun mechanics during his tenure at Obsidian.
Josh would consider your opinion marginal and ignore it.
The general consesus is that Fallout 3 was a better game than New Vegas, that BG2 was better than IWD2, and that 4E D&D was shit. Your opinion, and Sawyer's opinon are just as marginal and should be ignored. :smug:
 

jiujitsu

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Fallout 3 was better than New Vegas? Did you even play the Fallout games?

Well, it did have Liam Neeson, but...
 

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