Interview Codex interview with JE Sawyer

[Vault Dweller]

Tags: J.E. Sawyer; Obsidian Entertainment

We've had <a href=http://www.rpgcodex.com/content.php?id=127>a chat</a> with J.E. Sawyer about good ol' times and various design elements:
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<blockquote><b>13. Long time ago, answering a question about the future of RPGs at NMA, you said that they are going "straight to hell" and that "Troika is one of the last pure PC RPG developer in the U.S." How would you answer the same question today?</b>
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To my knowledge there are no pure PC RPG developers left outside of very small outfits like Spiderweb Software.
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Welcome to hell! </blockquote>You tell us?
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[Gonchi]

To my knowledge there are no pure PC RPG developers left outside of very small outfits like Spiderweb Software.

Welcome to hell!

Well... there are still some eastern european studios turning out RPGs now and then, but I guess they can be thrown into the very small outfits' bag.

 

[Zomg]

I wasn't keeping up with the BIS FO3 stuff too strenuously, but that seemed like a good defense of his system changes. There was clearly a lot of thought put into it, at any rate, which seems more and more precious as time goes on. I'd like to see someone say full on that the little mini-era of dual RT/TB games that came out in the early aughts was retarded, though.

I like this no-bullshit zone the Codex interviewees have drifted into.

 

[spacemoose]

To my knowledge there are no pure PC RPG developers left outside of very small outfits like Spiderweb Software.

Welcome to hell!

Well... there are still some eastern european studios turning out RPGs now and then, but I guess they can be thrown into the very small outfits' bag.

And they've been doing it for years with not a single quality game released.

 

[Seven]

That was a nice interview. That said, after IWD2 and some of Sawyer's admitted "contributions" to FO3 I have to say that I don't really trust him. IWD2 was a ridiculous game and worst of all Sawyer seemed to be almost spiteful when he was making it. I remember 3-4 days after release he came on the BIS forums to gloat that no one had posted about completing the game because they had made it so difficult. To me he took what was a nifty dungeon crawl and turned it into a tedious level mill and then had the gall to be proud of that.

 

[Jason]

"I like the world of Elric and Stormbringer."

I'd buy an Elric game made by Obsidian in a heartbeat, even if it was just an action RPG. So they officially have my blessing to make it. Get started.

 

[Spazmo]

I love his response to question 13. If you're wondering why I hardly do anything around here anymore--that's why.

However, I'm disappointed that he still hasn't answered why it's a good idea to force Diplomat Boys to diversify so they can't just pump up a single gamewinning skill while it's also a good idea to merge all the gun skills... and create a single gamewinning skill for Combat Boys to pump up.

 

[Twinfalls]

Some nice, straightforward answers in that interview.

Even by popular standards, there are no role-playing elements in Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows. The reason I asked to not be listed in the credits is because I felt like I contributed virtually nothing to the released game. The story was completely changed, the character advancement system was torn out, item collection was removed, complex combos got the axe, and so on. The only bits that remained from me were superficial things like cultural elements that made no sense in the story's barebones framework.

Ah, the wonderful influence of focus grouping.

 

[Stephen Amber]

Interesting that he had separate perks to apply to different weapons (not unlike d&d proficiencies I guess) on top of the guns skill. Wonder what the math was behind that...

I don't mind puzzles in games as long as they are intuitive in some way... Icewind Dale2 puzzles were for the most part unintuitive and a failure in my mind. And the game's story was a mess with an incomplete/superficial usage of 3.0 rules. But he pretty much acknowledged that.

 

[kingcomrade]

I love his response to question 13. If you're wondering why I hardly do anything around here anymore--that's why.

However, I'm disappointed that he still hasn't answered why it's a good idea to force Diplomat Boys to diversify so they can't just pump up a single gamewinning skill while it's also a good idea to merge all the gun skills... and create a single gamewinning skill for Combat Boys to pump up.

I'm pretty sure it had something to do with the expense and scarcity of ammunition, and a boosting of the effectiveness of melee weapons. Overall, I'm more in favor of having less skills so that the player can spend points in the lesser skills (in both of the Fallouts I never put any points into anything but small arms, speech, lockpicking, science, and repair, and those last two I only really used in Fallout 1). Sometimes I'd spare 10 points into Traps because those things are frickin annoying.

 

[Stephen Amber]

My favorite turn-based combat is in the Front Mission games and Final Fantasy: Tactics.

But not Fallout? Is FF:Tactics really that good? It's available on game boy advance and I might get it. I've had more fun with gba than any of the modern consoles.

 

[MrBrown]

However, I'm disappointed that he still hasn't answered why it's a good idea to force Diplomat Boys to diversify so they can't just pump up a single gamewinning skill while it's also a good idea to merge all the gun skills... and create a single gamewinning skill for Combat Boys to pump up.

It's not like there was much diversity in guns in FO1 or FO2. While you had 3 different skills, there was really only 2 different functional modes for guns: burst and single shot. The number of skills doesn't really matter if you only need one of them to win anyway.

I guess JE was going for both diversity in character design and actual gameplay

 

[Zomg]

But not Fallout? Is FF:Tactics really that good? It's available on game boy advance and I might get it. I've had more fun with gba than any of the modern consoles.

Fallout combat is fun and characterful (dare I say... visceral?), but only very intermittently strategically interesting. The FF:T that's on the GBA is not the one he's talking about, and in fact is pretty mediocre. I don't think the original is terribly good, either, mainly due to some critical problems in otherwise good design, but it's complex as holy hell and many scenarios are very interesting.

 

[Walks with the Snails]

I forgot he pretty well got the shaft for a few years. BG3 and FO3 both getting canceled and then getting the rug pulled out from under him on Gauntlet. He sounds appropriately bitter. Maybe he needs to go kill some bums, it's a good pick-me-up.

His FO changes seemed reasonable. I was never really a fan of the Fallout gun skills. I never liked the beginning/middle/end nature of them. You generally were better off struggling in the beginning to pick up energy weapons later or use small guns throughout even if they weren't as good at the end. It would have been more fun to just be gun boy who can use all the fun toys he can find when he finds them and still have skill points for other stuff. Oversupply of ammo annoyed me, too. Splitting up speech didn't make much sense unless he just didn't want to make it too easy (firearms + speech = t3h w1n).

 

[kingcomrade]

My favorite turn-based combat is in the Front Mission games and Final Fantasy: Tactics.

But not Fallout? Is FF:Tactics really that good? It's available on game boy advance and I might get it. I've had more fun with gba than any of the modern consoles.

No! Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and Final Fantasy Tactics are NOT THE SAME THING. FFTA is AWFUL. It SUCKS.

FF:T, on the other hand, is one of my favorite PSX games ever. It is a lot of fun, one of the best turn based combat games out there.

 

[Briosafreak]

Vault Dweller is becoming my favorite interviewer in the internet.

 

[kingcomrade]

His FO changes seemed reasonable. I was never really a fan of the Fallout gun skills. I never liked the beginning/middle/end nature of them. You generally were better off struggling in the beginning to pick up energy weapons later or use small guns throughout even if they weren't as good at the end. It would have been more fun to just be gun boy who can use all the fun toys he can find when he finds them and still have skill points for other stuff. Oversupply of ammo annoyed me, too. Splitting up speech didn't make much sense unless he just didn't want to make it too easy (firearms + speech = t3h w1n).

The big problem is that most of the skills in Fallout weren't terrible useful, you COULD do a t3h w1n setup from the get-go. If you tag lockpick, small arms, and energy weapons, take good natured, you've basically got the game covered. There are a lot of skills, like doctor and first aid, and several others, which I never used and never put any points into. They just weren't useful. I'm writing a little thingy that I'll post (if I finish) in RPG Discussion about an alternative system for Fallout, but its basically like a cross between a 4X tech tree, perks, and Silent Storm's skill tree.

 

[Elwro]

A very interesting interview. It's good to see the site has more and more content. :D

 

[Atrokkus]

Damn good interview. I think Sawyer was being quite honest in most of the questions, with little evasion (unlike MCA...).
I liked the fact that he admitted the shortcomings of IWD2, and even took responsibilty for them. IWD2 was indeed quite a ramshackle sequel, lacking all the charm that the original IWD radiated. However, it wasn't worse than IWD1:Expansion...
Anyways, both were just hack-n-slashes, so not really relevant in this conversation.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I'm pretty sure it had something to do with the expense and scarcity of ammunition, and a boosting of the effectiveness of melee weapons. Overall, I'm more in favor of having less skills so that the player can spend points in the lesser skills (in both of the Fallouts I never put any points into anything but small arms, speech, lockpicking, science, and repair, and those last two I only really used in Fallout 1). Sometimes I'd spare 10 points into Traps because those things are frickin annoying.

It never made much sense that ammo would be more scarce in Fallout 3 than in Fallouts 1 and 2, two games that mention in several places that ammunition is still being actively created. It also doesn't make sense that J.E. Sawyer was going to toss out 10MM weapons, something pretty damned standard in Fallout and Fallout 2, in favor of 9MM weapons. The logic that California had different weapons than Middle America is pretty hokey.

As for the skills, I have to agree with Spazmo. J.E. Sawyer said he was splitting up speech in to multiple skills because he didn't think you should be able to win the game with just one skill. I'm okay with that. I like the idea of multiple types of speechcraft. However, to say that, and then to turn around and combine all the gun skills in to one skill is just stupid.

The problems with the weapon skills wasn't the skills themselves, but the item availability. For example, where the starter big gun? Or energy weapon? Fallout 2 at least gave players a late game small arm, but they didn't give early big guns or energy weapons.

 

[Oarfish]

I like the world of Elric and Stormbringer

Some of Moorcocks stuff (especialy stormbringer) would make a superb game setting. It has lots of moral ambiguity, scary dangerous magic - human sacrifice required for summoning and screwing up can get you killed. No bloody elves / dwarves / goblins.

In fact, thats probably why no one has attempted the setting..

 

[Vault Dweller]

http://www.snowball.ru/stormbringer/

Stormbringer: Elric of Melnibone is an RPG/Adventure based on the first novel of Michael Moorcock's Elric saga. It is a story of a man struggling with his fate, a man trying to escape his destiny. It is a story of Elric the Kinslayer, the last emperor of the ancient race of Melnibone. A story of the battles for his love, his empire and his sanity, a story of the many generations of tradition and the destruction of that tradition in a single stroke of a sword... but above everything else, it is a story of the tragedy faced by the albino prince when trying to make meaning out of his own existence.

Developed by Snowball Interactive in conjunction with Master Moorcock, the game was set for release in 2001 on the PC and the next generation consoles but has been frozen due to the lack of publishing partner (see full text here).

 

[Oarfish]

Jesus, that makes it even worse. And MM was involved (unsuprisingly, he has always been something of a technophile, nice bloke too, had a chat with him at a book signing once). Stupid game industry.

 

[kingcomrade]

It never made much sense that ammo would be more scarce in Fallout 3 than in Fallouts 1 and 2, two games that mention in several places that ammunition is still being actively created. It also doesn't make sense that J.E. Sawyer was going to toss out 10MM weapons, something pretty damned standard in Fallout and Fallout 2, in favor of 9MM weapons. The logic that California had different weapons than Middle America is pretty hokey.

Yeah, but in those games the ammunition was being created by like 1 or 2 guys. Secondly, it would be fine with me to just act as if ammunition were more scarce in those games. Throwing out 10mm for 9mm is pretty stupid. In the thing I mentioned I was writing I added in 9mm as your starting weapon (10mm is still there, it's just a medium cartridge, IRL it's basically a more powerful .40) for a balance reasons, and because it satisfies my own beliefs that the 9mm is a piddlydink wuss cartridge and satisfactory as a starting weapon.

The problems with the weapon skills wasn't the skills themselves, but the item availability. For example, where the starter big gun? Or energy weapon? Fallout 2 at least gave players a late game small arm, but they didn't give early big guns or energy weapons.

What do you mean? You shouldn't start with a big gun or an energy weapon because both of those are far more powerful than a small arm. Why would anyone pick small arms if you started out with anything more powerful, which only got more powerful as time went on? Energy weapons and big guns are the mages of sci-fi games, they start out weak and are strong in the end, small arms are the warriors, they start out strong and top out midway through the game. Though the gauss rifles were a nice addition.
Also, I doubt rocket launchers and laser guns are just lying around tribal encampments or Vaults.

 

[Twinfalls]

God that's sad.

In terms of the genres, there's the adventure part that's essentially the storyline and dialogues and all kinds of biographies and mini-stories within the game, and then there's the RPG heart of it all where you have all characters defined in a set of clear parameters and the realistic inventory system, and then there's the part where you actually fight as Elric (tactics) and command your legion (strategy), go around the world and see places (exploration), make choices (quest) and it's all linked together by the Elric character and his story.

Jonric: In your opinion, what will the game's most important and strongest features be?

Sergei Klimov: I would say that by far we are trying to break away from the traditional "list of features" that would have a lot of big numbers and tech words and summ up the quantative side of the game rather than the actual quality. We're trying to build a game around the figure of Elric, his character, his philosophy, relationships, strengths and weaknesses, the choices he has to make, and get a player to live through the part of the Stormbringer saga as Elric himself, which means having feelings and emotions and being passionate about the choices you will make along the way.

We have our own visual standards, we have the artists that owe their homage to the traditional Russian School of art, and our goal is to have the game score great at the traditional scale of things, like if my parent would be playing it and actually recognizing things without that need to be "that Generation Y that knows polys and stuff" ).

Full interview:

http://rpgvaultarchive.ign.com/features ... inger.shtm