Codex Interview RPG Codex Interview: Josh Sawyer at GDC Europe 2016

[Infinitron]

Tags: Josh Sawyer; Obsidian Entertainment; Pillars of Eternity; Pillars of Eternity: The White March

Back in August, Obsidian Design Director and Codex anti-hero Josh Sawyer gave a talk at the annual Game Developers Conference in Cologne, Germany. The video of the talk, which was a Pillars of Eternity retrospective entitled Looking Back and Moving Forward with Pillars of Eternity, has yet to be publicly released, but the original slides and a summary are available. But that's not what this post is about. Former Codex contributor Bubbles was in the audience for that talk, and after it was done he met up with Josh for what was meant to be a brief interview. They ended up talking for nearly two and a half hours.

A couple of days after that Bubbles was off to Gamesom, and unfortunately he never got around to transcribing his recording of the interview before his unfortunate departure. We did however manage to secure Bubbles' permission to allow the Codex's #1 Josh Sawyer fan, Roguey, to transcribe the interview in his stead. We sent the recording to Roguey, expecting a long wait...and were provided with a near-perfect transcript less than 72 hours later. Probably should have done that sooner. So there you have it, four months late and just in time to be the last piece of Codex content for 2016. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and enjoy the read. It's a long one.

Read the full article: RPG Codex Interview: Josh Sawyer at GDC Europe 2016

 

[Dreed]

We will be in the next current year when I finish reading this

 

[Rivmusique]

Grimoire soon.

 

[Tao]

Holy Fuck, that's a book not an interview.

 

[HoboForEternity]

 

[Fairfax]

Nice job, Bubbles and Roguey.

I even went back recently and I was reading the (???) which is a source text on alchemy that was probably originally Greek and translated into Aramaic and then translated into Latin in about the 11th century.

Probably the Turba.

 

[Invictus]

Holy shit, Sawyer knows about Grimoire!
Very interesting interview although I kind of wanted him to go deeper when talking about the concepts of Pillars evolving, was he involved in Tyranny's development at all? I feel Tyranny took some good lessons from Pillars (like the tooltips instead of mindless rambling npcs) and more enjoyable combat bout it would have been interesting to hear his take on it and to talk of some actual changes for Pillars 2
Every time he talks about Darklands. Just wish for an updated take on the game

 

[Diablo169]

What a fantastic interview. Real shame Bubbles is gone, but kudos to Roguey for the transcribing.

 

[Prime Junta]

Like Tyranny?

Like what?

Tyranny.

:D

This was one of the most interesting reads posted on the Codex in ages. Say what you will about Josh, at least he's willing to explain his thinking when designing games, without talking down to people about it.

 

[an Administrator]

Tl but i must read

 

[SausageInYourFace]

Someone wants to know what your favorite history books are.

That was me, thanks for putting it in Bubbles and thanks for transcribing Roguey! And thanks to Josh for giving such a comprehensive answer!

That whole section is also the most interesting of the interview.

The Cheese and the Worms is interesting because it's about this miller who had really wild personal religious beliefs, strange cosmological beliefs; he thought the world was formed out of cheese

Funny, I remember hearing about that book and the strange beliefs of the miller specifically in a course about heresy, read an essay or two by Ginzburg too in that one, maybe its time to go get it.

People have submitted a ton of questions about your dream historical RPG. What appeals to you about putting real history into a RPG setting?

I think it is cool to draw things from history, even if you're doing a fantastic spin on it, because you can draw a stronger connection to real history. You can, in some cases, demystify. So we have an idea of fantasy derived out of medieval or Renaissance things, but are so many stages removed from that, that now we kind of just understand history through fantasy. There's a blogger on Youtube who made a cool video talking about why it's cool to look at historical arms and armor when you're making a role playing game. And he mentioned how we're so many phases removed from the source material that we kinda forget how these things go together. For example, realism within a historical context for its own sake, I'm not that interested. I'm more interested in how it informs peoples' understanding of how things were and how they developed.

Not sure thats the video he is talking about (I would have to rewatch it) - but related to the topic in any case and for those who are interested - is this video of this guy looking at historical accuracy in Pillars. Shad is pretty good as far as these historical youtube guys go but trigger warning for Codexers - he really likes Pillars.

Spoiler

 

[Volrath]

The man just lacks any sort of ambition and wonder. He's way too grounded, it's no surprise Pillows ended up the way it did.

 

[Infinitron]

One of my favorite parts of the interview is when Bubbles was totally sure that Josh knows what a blobber is, and Josh seems to have not wanted to admit that he doesn't, and somehow it all worked out.

There's a question about the financial viability of these types of games. Is Pillars in a good place right now? There's been a discussion about how blobbers can never surpass ten thousand copies sold. What is your opinion on that: if a random indie developer makes a blobber, would you advise them to do it?

What do you mean when you say blobber exactly?

A recent blobber?

Yeah.

lol

 

[SausageInYourFace]

The next project I work on, I really want it to be a historical RPG.

(...)

I'd like to see this kind of stuff in a RPG.

Tell Feargus. Feargus was not keen on the idea of a historical RPG for a long time, but he's warming up to it.

Meh, doesn't sound like this is set in stone yet. Its probably pretty much reliant on how much Tyranny and PoE2 sell.

Also, the interview made me wonder if Josh played Legends of Eisenwald. Besides historically realistic look and feel (armor and those kinds of things) it does really interesting things in the 'Legends' department. Like folk tales you hear about and later you can find the places where they took place, how the legends you hear give you indications of what to look for and how to resolve quests, how the legends slightly change depending on location or who you ask, and so on. LoE is really incline in that regard and doesn't get enough credit for it. Anyway, the way Aterdux approached this sounds quite useful with regard to the things Josh seems interested in, like Saints and the different ways to look at the stories about them.

 

[Infinitron]

I don't think Josh knows about Eisenwald. I actually tried to get him to give the Blood of November Kickstarter a shoutout on Twitter on account of its historical nature, but no dice.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

Yes, very interesting interview, to Josh, Bubbles and Roguey.

 

[Kz3r0]

Starting with Pillars of Eternity, a lot of people have asked about the inspiration from Planescape: Torment, what that was; you've mentioned the UI for instance?

All the descriptive text was part of it.

 

[Lexxx20]

:D

This was one of the most interesting reads posted on the Codex in ages. Say what you will about Josh, at least he's willing to explain his thinking when designing games, without talking down to people about it.

What exactly happened to Bubbles, if it's not some kind of secret?

 

[Sensuki]

Basically.

Here's a fake reaction pic to go with it. Took a few gos to get the 'right' look

Spoiler

 

[Roguey]

Probably the Turba.

Zed figured out that he was saying Picatrix. I guess he forgot to share or they forgot to include the correction.

Anyway

Just saw that the interview took 150 minutes. Why didn't you guys give it to Roguey? Would've been transcribed in a heartbeat.

You were right.

I don't blame Bubbles for putting it off, it was a yuge time investment on top of the yuge time investment required for the Gamescom articles. Ideally something of this length would have been distributed to five or more people to transcribe, but you gotta work with what you have.

Also in fairness to Bubbles, I did take an axe to a lot of what he had to say whenever I felt it didn't add to the interview (his German/English accent makes him sound like the kind of person you'd find critiquing wines at a formal wine tasting party, but it's not easy to parse), i.e. he'd go on at length about a topic and Josh would keep politely saying "Yeah. Yeah. Uh huh." The biggest cut was a part where he discussed Belhifet's allegedly-nerfed stats in Siege of Dragonspear (which turned out to be inaccurate anyway according to that Beamdog dev who posted here), and Sawyer getting annoyed at him for spoiling it. Kinda funny, but since it was inaccurate info and probably 90% Bubbles talking, I felt comfortable skipping it. As you can see, the interview's length didn't suffer for these cuts.

 

[Ludo Lense]

That was quite enjoyable.

 

[Grunker]

Probably the Turba.

Zed figured out that he was saying Picatrix. I guess he forgot to share or they forgot to include the correction.

Anyway

Just saw that the interview took 150 minutes. Why didn't you guys give it to Roguey? Would've been transcribed in a heartbeat.

You were right.

I don't blame Bubbles for putting it off, it was a yuge time investment on top of the yuge time investment required for the Gamescom articles. Ideally something of this length would have been distributed to five or more people to transcribe, but you gotta work with what you have.

Also in fairness to Bubbles, I did take an axe to a lot of what he had to say whenever I felt it didn't add to the interview (his German/English accent makes him sound like the kind of person you'd find critiquing wines at a formal wine tasting party, but it's not easy to parse), i.e. he'd go on at length about a topic and Josh would keep politely saying "Yeah. Yeah. Uh huh." The biggest cut was a part where he discussed Belhifet's allegedly-nerfed stats in Siege of Dragonspear (which turned out to be inaccurate anyway according to that Beamdog dev who posted here), and Sawyer getting annoyed at him for spoiling it. Kinda funny, but since it was inaccurate info and probably 90% Bubbles talking, I felt comfortable skipping it. As you can see, the interview's length didn't suffer for these cuts.

now I'm annoyed that you spoiled it

 

[Infinitron]

Josh really should play the game that was the closest thing he has to direct competition (if it hadn't horribly flopped)

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

Josh is a good guy

 

[Grunker]

Josh really should play the game that was the closest thing he has to direct competition (if it hadn't horribly flopped)

Did Siege flop?