Incline Josh Sawyer appreciation station

[Ontopoly]

Say what you will about the current state of Obsidian and how poe2 turned out but this guy deserves more than a Q&A thread. He deserves an appreciation station.

This guy made amazing iwd 2 and worked on iwd1, fallout New Vegas inspired a lot for the people who are into that type of stuff (I'm not personally a fan of guns), and Poe led the Kickstarter/crpg revival we are in now. Literally gave the new Golden age of RPGs an environment to flourish in and proved there was room and opportunity for a revival.

Thank you Josh Sawyer for making some amazing RPGs and for inspiring people to do the same

 

[Jenkem]

You're not Roguey

 

[Ontopoly]

You're not Roguey

Yeah, but I just saw his tweet about iwd and realized how important he's been to me without even realizing it. Ultimately, he's been a net positive on my life

 

[Snorkack]

You're not Roguey

You're not Excidium

 

[Cross]

Poe led the Kickstarter/crpg revival we are in now.

Pillars of Eternity
Initial release date: March 26, 2015

 

[J_C]

You're not Roguey

You're not Excidium

You're not Crispy

 

[Kruno]

IWD 1 + 2 are amazing games. I would easily place the combat in the IWD series above that of BG. I really wish Josh would go back to his roots and focus on combat heavy cRPGs.

 

[Thac0]

You might want to look into what Sawyerism is. Sawyer should be your mortal enemy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvyrEhAMUPo
This vid of him is hilarious, he was so smug about his new system and was mocking the grognards calling its flaws out. He even specifically mentioned the codex and said that POE 2 will sell well and keep the system.
Now that POE 2 bombed hard (although it is much better than POE 1) I can see why he got a personal faith crisis and abandoned the series. He was wrong all the time, and he smugly dismissed those telling him exactly where and why he was wrong.

 

[AW8]

Pillars of Eternity was released in 2015 (after a delay), but the Kickstarter ran in September-October 2012. Its success, the highest funded game project on the site at the time, certainly helped usher in the Kickstarter era. Divinity: Original Sin for example, was kickstarted half a year afterwards.

It is wrong to claim that Pillars of Eternity started the era all by itself however. Wasteland 2 was kickstarted half a year earlier and is probably even more influental - without it, Pillars of Eternity would not exist. The Banner Saga's Kickstarter also predated Pillars', although it wasn't even close in generating funds and buzz.

Note that Pillars of Eternity was more influental as a successful hype project in 2012 than as a released game in 2015. This isn't even critique of the game, it's just what it is. The story of a developer being able to create a dream project and fans being able to decide what game would be made by paying in advance led to a story with mass appeal - much wider appeal than what a PC-only, non-action RPG with zero to limited voice acting actually has.

 

[Sweeper]

He's the bad kind of autism.
That's the nicest thing I can say about him.

 

[m_s0]

Poe led the Kickstarter/crpg revival we are in now.

That credit goes to Double Fine, actually.

Spoiler

 

[Infinitron]

Project Eternity didn't single-handedly lead the "Kickstarter/CPRG revival", but it seems likely that Pathfinder: Kingmaker would not have existed if not for the commercial success of Pillars of Eternity specifically.

 

[Sweeper]

https://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/161302725596/balance-in-single-player-crpgs

I think it’s easy enough to make the first point through reductio ad absurdum: why not give AD&D fighters 1d4 hit points per level, a worse THAC0 than wizards, and worse saving throws than any other class? Obviously it’s because playing them would feel terrible. Why don’t we give all of the enemies attacks that do 1-3 damage, a quarter of the hit points of the PCs, and rock-bottom defenses? Because playing through that would feel boring for anyone who had the slightest interest in combat content and systems.

Kind of like Pillars of Eternity, ey Josh?

 

[m_s0]

Project Eternity didn't single-handedly lead the "Kickstarter/CPRG revival", but it seems likely that Pathfinder: Kingmaker would not have existed if not for the commercial success of Pillars of Eternity specifically.

The further down the line we get, the more indirect the relations. The fact is Double Fine was the first larger/traditional game studio to take the (desperate) "what if this could make more than a few k on Kickstarter" plunge out of several parties considering that same option at the time.

So, I doubt that Mighty No. 9 or that Castlevania knock-off were a direct result of DF's campaign, but if everyone just kept considering Kickstarter as a "what if" scenario it's likely neither of these two would've happened either.

DF were simply the ones to get that ball rolling - and cRPGs were just early in that line.

 

[Transfiguring Roar]

You're not Roguey

You're not Excidium

You're not Crispy

You're not Matt Barton.

 

[jac8awol]

He resurrected my favourite RPG series as a first person shooter. Better than nothing I guess, but bastardized and a route I'd rather not have seen the industry go down. If New Vegas wasn't 1st person, I think we'd have better RPGs these days. That's the hill I'm dying on. Ain't that a kick in the head?
Also, I know he's not the only one responsible for the SJW trend and fagging-up of games in recent years, but as a project director he could have been a better gatekeeper and slowed the decline.

The guy has talent, IWD was great. If he could retrace his steps and get his mojo back, who knows... I'll keep praying for god to send testosterone and get him banned from twitter.

 

[m_s0]

If New Vegas wasn't 1st person, I think we'd have better RPGs these days. That's the hill I'm dying on. Ain't that a kick in the head?

I think you're overestimating its importance in the grand scheme of things... Fo3 was the influential one, if either of the two could even claim that.

 

[TemplarGR]

Josh Sawyer has been more incline than MCA, and deserves much higher fandom. Plus he is not an alcoholic sexual predator, so he is immune to #me2.

 

[Ol' Willy]

If New Vegas wasn't 1st person, I think we'd have better RPGs these days.

Spoiler

When you realize that this level of detail is perfectly possible with the modern hardware

 

[jac8awol]

If New Vegas wasn't 1st person, I think we'd have better RPGs these days. That's the hill I'm dying on. Ain't that a kick in the head?

I think you're overestimating its importance in the grand scheme of things... Fo3 was the influential one, if either of the two could even claim that.

Damn, you're completely right. Somehow my memory had melded those two bland turds into a crap chimera. Ok, so he took the FPS series off in a marginally better direction. I'm still not gonna clap for a guy that took SARS and made it into MERS.

 

[SausageInYourFace]

When you realize that this level of detail is perfectly possible with the modern hardware

Where are these images from?

 

[Ol' Willy]

Where are these images from?

Guy who worked on Fallout Sonora.

https://www.artstation.com/red888guns

 

[BarbequeMasta]

I mean I agree the guy worked on a lot of games I like, and it's generally easy to ignore his recent work until (if) he comes back to his senses.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I mean I agree the guy worked on a lot of games I like,

Name three.

 

[m_s0]

If New Vegas wasn't 1st person, I think we'd have better RPGs these days. That's the hill I'm dying on. Ain't that a kick in the head?

I think you're overestimating its importance in the grand scheme of things... Fo3 was the influential one, if either of the two could even claim that.

Damn, you're completely right. Somehow my memory had melded those two bland turds into a crap chimera. Ok, so he took the FPS series off in a marginally better direction. I'm still not gonna clap for a guy that took SARS and made it into MERS.

Glad I saved a life, then. I wouldn't say FNV is bland, though - one of the things it does most notably is it injects Fo3 with flavour as it has a clearly defined vision as opposite to Fo3's... whatever the hell that was. Post-apo Oblivion with guns, with a gimmicky fix to terrible ranged combat on top, design locked? Fo3 is Game: The Game, bland as they come. Plus, there's a clear understanding of player agency in FNV which, you know, is welcome in a video game which is intended to be played by players. I've been thinking lately that in a lot of regards Fo3 seems more akin to outsider art. Inexplicably funded by a large corporation.

I consider FNV a very admirable effort on the whole, especially in how does not feel mercenary (whether you like the game or not - that's a different discussion). Obsidian was making the best out of a bad situation here - it's just that the foundation for FNV is genuinely terrible. Not a project to be ashamed of working on, regardless of its shortcomings.