Codex Interview Brent Knowles Interview: An Insider's Look at BioWare, 2000-2009

[set]

Does Deux Ex count

Which is why I was so disheartened when I saw the latest Shadowrun kickstarter had a stretch goal for voice acting. Why? Who gives a fuck. In most cases, it does nothing to improve the game. In many cases it detracts. Only in a very few number of cases can I think of where a game is greatly improved by its voice acting. It's such a colossal waste of money. How many people just go ahead and skip it all fucking anyway.

 

[tuluse]

Which is why I was so disheartened when I saw the latest Shadowrun kickstarter had a stretch goal for voice acting. Why? Who gives a fuck. In most cases, it does nothing to improve the game. In many cases it detracts. Only in a very few number of cases can I think of where a game is greatly improved by its voice acting. It's such a colossal waste of money. How many people just go ahead and skip it all fucking anyway.

That was for narration not voiced characters.

 

[Jaesun]

Apparently set fails at reading.

 

[GarfunkeL]

He's the god of deserts and violence, not the god of literacy, give him a break.

 

[AN4RCHID]

AN4RCHID lol reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/2t4i4n/an_insiders_look_at_bioware_20002009/

The Codex' glorious reputation precedes it:

I mean I know what to expect when following a link the RPGCodex but I still managed to be surprised at what an actually shitty interview that was.

 

[Zeriel]

God what a fucking cesspit Reddit is. I made the mistake of reading deeper into that thread.

 

[Murk]

AN4RCHID lol reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/2t4i4n/an_insiders_look_at_bioware_20002009/

Durante doing the honors on Neogaf, nobody replies: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=976418

Reading the comments, it's pretty obvious that the subreddit has more idiots than the neogaf thread.

The day I gave neogaf a compliment, even if by accident. Ugh... I feel cold, I need some tea.

God what a fucking cesspit Reddit is. I made the mistake of reading deeper into that thread.

I feel your pain, bro

EDIT: I used to think that the subreddits were uniquely different enough that one could not generalize the low quality of one subreddit to another... but no... it seems the idiocy is a common factor in many if not all subreddits.

And dear god that fucking layout is horrible. Endless threading, how the hell did that ever seem like a good idea?

 

[dukeofwhales]

EDIT: I used to think that the subreddits were uniquely different enough that one could not generalize the low quality of one subreddit to another... but no... it seems the idiocy is a common factor in many if not all subreddits.

Anything amongst the 50ish default subreddits or any of them big enough to get posts which make /r/all is inevitably full of shit. Smaller ones for specific hobbies/interests are generally alright.

 

[Murk]

The most experience I had was with the shitbags in r/darksouls2 and they share a different but equally terrible "community" there.

But yeah, I suppose there's bound to be some decent shit.

 

[Sceptic]

One of these games sold about twice as many copies as the game it claimed to be a spiritual successor to, and one sold about 1/5 as many copies.

Broken Age had 87,000 backers on Kickstarter. We don't have numbers for DOTT, but I highly doubt it sold half a million copies back in 1993, considering the only game that even a approached one million back then was Doom, and that was far, far above what anything else was selling.

I get what you're saying, but while BG2 may have had people playing it for the cinematic experience and the romances, I highly doubt this way the majority of the fanbase, considering getting through some of the encounters did require you to be quite familiar with D&D intricacies (and as was pointed out earlier in the thread, reading strategies on GameFAQ doesn't count). Shrug, maybe I'm wrong though.

There's nothing very action-y about DAO, how do you see it as a hybrid BG-ME?

Not in terms of action, in terms of the cinematic approach. the EPIC!!!!ness, and the way party control actually handles. And really, look at the points Knowles himself mentions. "Party-based" even though the party control works more like KOTOR than BG (come to think of it, it's really more like a BG/KOTOR mixture). "Top-down" even though the isometric view was an abomination, almost unusable in many maps (see Circle Tower), made NWN2's camera feel easy to control, and was such an integral part of the experience that it was omitted entirely from the console version. "Large selection of abilities" even though most of them were useless, and you ended up spamming the same 2 or 3 throughout the game. "And… a Silent Protagonist", despite the fact EVERYTHING else was voiced (at no small cost, I'm sure). Maybe what some of us liked about BG2 was that there was so much variety in spells and that many of them were useful in different situations, or that there were more than 3 classes, or that there was a HUGE amount of variety in enemy abilities, immunities and strategies required to deal with them, that the side quest content wasn't picking up MMO-style quests from a questboard, that the whole mechanics of the game didn't reek of MMO cooldowns and "aggro" and all this crap, that you could make selections of which characters you were controlling and move them in groups, rather than switching back and forth between one and the other.

When I played DAO I felt like someone took the content and the way the game controlled from ME or KOTOR and slapped that on a concept someone wrote for a new BG. And as a result it felt like a lesser game than either of the others.

 

[Xorazm]

God what a fucking cesspit Reddit is. I made the mistake of reading deeper into that thread.

I actually bought Dragon Age: Inquisition because the buzz on reddit was so good, and then 10 hours into the game I went trudging back to the forum, absolutely flabbergasted that such a limp-wristed excuse for a game could garner so much praise. Googling around to ensure I wasn't crazy is what led me to the Codex.

If you really want your face to melt off, poke around on /r/games and you'll find people arguing with me that combat just gets in the way of a good RPG, and that we shouldn't let such outdated inconveniences get in the way of experiencing the pretty story.

 

[GloomFrost]

Has there ever been an actual good RPG with a voiced protagonist. I'm coming up blank. Does "Updated my Journal" count?

Alpha Protocol.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Alpha Protocol.

Gothic 1-2

 

[Durante]

All right, some responses: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=976418

Good ones, even.

The thing about GAF is that there are lots of good posters there, it's just that there are even more console fanboys. So you can get good discussions in threads the latter group never even enters (like that one), and you see amazing failure in threads where everyone feels the need to get their agenda in (like votes or anything which could be remotely constructed as attacking any given console or all of them).

 

[MicoSelva]

I actually bought Dragon Age: Inquisition because the buzz on reddit was so good, and then 10 hours into the game I went trudging back to the forum, absolutely flabbergasted that such a limp-wristed excuse for a game could garner so much praise. Googling around to ensure I wasn't crazy is what led me to the Codex.

Welcome to The Codex. I got here in a similar fashion, after being disenchanted with DA:O (which is still a gameplay masterpiece compared to DA:I).

 

[Kem0sabe]

Not everybody liked my questions: https://twitter.com/RPGShack/status/557830037886738432

My answer to Alex of RPGShack is that we're not journalists - we're a site with a mission and an agenda, and occasionally we can't get the answers we want without making that agenda absolutely clear. A non-committal "Neverwinter Nights OC was divisive, not everybody liked it" type of question would not have made it clear to that game's lead designer exactly what it was we needed him to explain.

In any case, Brent was a proper gentleman about it, so it's all good.

I'm having a back and forth with him on twitter

 

[Infinitron]

I'm having a back and forth with him on twitter

Unprotect your Twitter so we can see, bro https://twitter.com/JP_Cunha

 

[Kem0sabe]

Unprotect your Twitter so we can see, bro https://twitter.com/JP_Cunha

Ok, didnt even know i had it protected.

Anyways ill post the tweets as well:

@RPGShack @RPGCodex all the codex does is opinionate, better that than trying to pass off as actual journalists as most of the gaming press

@JP_Cunha @RPGCodex maybe they should stick to opinion pieces then? It's not hard to write an objective interview. I did it for a decade.

@RPGShack @RPGCodex how many of those pieces were PR? Codex managed to coax more info about bio than press for years

 

[ZagorTeNej]

I get what you're saying, but while BG2 may have had people playing it for the cinematic experience and the romances, I highly doubt this way the majority of the fanbase, considering getting through some of the encounters did require you to be quite familiar with D&D intricacies (and as was pointed out earlier in the thread, reading strategies on GameFAQ doesn't count). Shrug, maybe I'm wrong though.



Not in terms of action, in terms of the cinematic approach. the EPIC!!!!ness, and the way party control actually handles. And really, look at the points Knowles himself mentions. "Party-based" even though the party control works more like KOTOR than BG (come to think of it, it's really more like a BG/KOTOR mixture). "Top-down" even though the isometric view was an abomination, almost unusable in many maps (see Circle Tower), made NWN2's camera feel easy to control, and was such an integral part of the experience that it was omitted entirely from the console version. "Large selection of abilities" even though most of them were useless, and you ended up spamming the same 2 or 3 throughout the game. "And… a Silent Protagonist", despite the fact EVERYTHING else was voiced (at no small cost, I'm sure). Maybe what some of us liked about BG2 was that there was so much variety in spells and that many of them were useful in different situations, or that there were more than 3 classes, or that there was a HUGE amount of variety in enemy abilities, immunities and strategies required to deal with them, that the side quest content wasn't picking up MMO-style quests from a questboard, that the whole mechanics of the game didn't reek of MMO cooldowns and "aggro" and all this crap, that you could make selections of which characters you were controlling and move them in groups, rather than switching back and forth between one and the other.

When I played DAO I felt like someone took the content and the way the game controlled from ME or KOTOR and slapped that on a concept someone wrote for a new BG. And as a result it felt like a lesser game than either of the others.

No encounter in vanilla BG2 required you to be familiar with D&D intricacies, otherwise my 13-14 year old self with zero knowledge about D&D (and basically no internet connection) wouldn't be able to beat the game using "Haste + Hulk smash" tactic with an occasional cast of the Breach.

I wouldn't say DAO is anywhere near as cinematic (and focused on romances/relationships with crew/party members) as Mass Effect, it's a mish-mash of old and modern Bioware and very streamlined compared to BG series but there ist still enough of party based RTWP with tactical combat in it for me to consider it closer to BG than Mass Effect as an overall experience. I also think it played much more smoothly and with better overview of the battlefield than NWN2 or KOTOR.

I do think Bioware gradually replaced their old fanbase (built on BG series) with the romances/emotional engagement crowd but I feel DAO was still a game that was enjoyed by a good part of the old guard as well.

 

[Sensuki]

@RPGShack @RPGCodex how many of those pieces were PR? Codex managed to coax more info about bio than press for years

And that's why he's mad. All he can do is attack the interview style.

 

[Gondolin]

If you really want your face to melt off, poke around on /r/games and you'll find people arguing with me that combat just gets in the way of a good RPG, and that we shouldn't let such outdated inconveniences get in the way of experiencing the pretty story.

Hmmm, it sounds like a bad case of the Hepler Syndrome.

 

[agris]

No encounter in vanilla BG2 required you to be familiar with D&D intricacies, otherwise my 13-14 year old self with zero knowledge about D&D (and basically no internet connection) wouldn't be able to beat the game using "Haste + Hulk smash" tactic with an occasional cast of the Breach.

Twisted Rune, Kangaxx, Demogorgan and the random Athkatla lich fights all come to mind. Even if you used the cheesy protection from undead scrolls, you had to know the rules!

 

[Rake]

Twisted Rune, Kangaxx, Demogorgan and the random Athkatla lich fights all come to mind. Even if you used the cheesy protection from undead scrolls, you had to know the rules!

Reading in the berserker's description that his rage makes him immune to imprisonment isn't mastery over D&D rules. And my 14 year old self who didn't had a clue about what D&D is, he managed to kill every lich in the city. Same with Demogorgon.
I found Twisted Rune in my third playthrough so i can't know about that.

 

[Zeriel]

Reading in the berserker's description that his rage makes him immune to imprisonment isn't mastery over D&D rules. And my 14 year old self who didn't had a clue about what D&D is, he managed to kill every lich in the city. Same with Demogorgon.
I found Twisted Rune in my third playthrough so i can't know about that.

Adding to this to say that I learned D&D rules from BG1 & 2, you certainly didn't have to have knowledge going in, and I abused the shit out of the game. Any kid can quickly learn and break systems.

The fundamental difference is that modern games teach people to expect that they will not really have to learn anything, while older games had the opposite thing going on (it was understood that you'd probably fail horribly the first time you played any game).

 

[agris]

That's my point though, you did use the rules but you learned them as you played. Same for me, I was ~15 when BG2 came out and didn't know shit about AD&D except from playing BG1. Looking at what ZagorTeNej said, which was that you didn't need to know intricacies, I actually agree. You didn't need to know them, you needed a functioning and engaged frontal cortex.

Which is probably why it's beyond most gamers today.