Josh Sawyer Q&A Thread

[Roguey]

https://www.tumblr.com/jesawyer/702211769362415616/is-oei-tools-publically-available-for-purchase-or

doctorkaboose asked:
Is OEI tools publically available for purchase or is it purely an Obsidian thing? If not, are there any free resources you could point people towards in terms of branching dialogue tools?

OEI Tools is not available for purchase/public use (it is used by some other XBox studios and it has been licensed in the past, but it's never been publicly available).
You can get a free version of articy.draft 3 if you'd like to experiment with branching dialogue systems.

Which other Xbox studios other than inXile?

Beth might want to use it. Playground could be using it for Fable; sure in those games you're only able to communicate through expressions, but that would still involve branching on behalf of the NPCs, wouldn't it?

 

[Infinitron]

Obsidian dialogue tools in Starfield, that would be a thing.

 

[Wunderbar]

Beth putting some effort into dialogues... hahaha lmao yeah sure.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

https://www.tumblr.com/jesawyer/702211769362415616/is-oei-tools-publically-available-for-purchase-or

doctorkaboose asked:
Is OEI tools publically available for purchase or is it purely an Obsidian thing? If not, are there any free resources you could point people towards in terms of branching dialogue tools?

OEI Tools is not available for purchase/public use (it is used by some other XBox studios and it has been licensed in the past, but it's never been publicly available).
You can get a free version of articy.draft 3 if you'd like to experiment with branching dialogue systems.

Which other Xbox studios other than inXile?

Beth might want to use it. Playground could be using it for Fable; sure in those games you're only able to communicate through expressions, but that would still involve branching on behalf of the NPCs, wouldn't it?

Arkane and Doublefine also seem like possibilities.

 

[Tyranicon]

...

The best method is to go solodev so everybody knows who to blame when your games suck.

 

[Wunderbar]

yikes.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Major_Blackhart]

At this point, all I want is for him to be so distracted from doing other shit he never works on another video game again. This may be the case with him getting shelved, but we'll see.

There are hopes that Microsoft loses its shit and performs mass firings of senior staff over there at Obshitian. At this point, I'm kinda hoping for it.

 

[S.torch]

There are hopes that Microsoft loses its shit and performs mass firings of senior staff over there at Obshitian. At this point, I'm kinda hoping for it.

Would hardly change anything

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Feargus and others would be out of a job.

 

[c u in da ballpit ashren]

It makes complete sense that Josh wrote Arcade.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.tumblr.com/jesawyer/706650739267846144/whats-your-take-on-all-this-ogl-stuff

otter-blogger asked:
What's your take on all this OGL stuff?

Dumb and short-sighted, but par for the course when money people get involved. The attempts at spinning it are particularly ridiculous and no one is buying it.
I only have a little bit of experience working within the tabletop RPG sphere, but I have to say that as bad as videogame publishers can be, the most soulless people I've encountered in the broader industry are on the tabletop publishing side. Unless someone working as a tabletop publisher is reading this - you're great, of course.
Obviously someone has to worry about the bottom line, especially in an industry notorious for losing money, but when that becomes the only thing they care about - oof, what a rough way to suffocate everyone else's love for something.
No matter how great and passionate and forthright the individual devs and designers are, the people in charge can always ruin a good thing. Of course, that's true for every industry; it's just really on display right now.

https://www.tumblr.com/jesawyer/706718989499400193/do-seki-and-aedyran-belong-to-the-same-language

impoffreemarket asked:
Do Seki and Aedyran belong to the same language family? Rekke seems to pick up Aedyran fairly quickly, even if he struggles at times, something that is really hard to do if you're not in the same or close language group to your target language. Is it possible they were the same language, but diverged due to Yezuha's isolation from outside world?

Seki and Aedyran are completely unrelated. Kate wrote Rekke as being particularly adept at learning new languages, with an implication that he is already a polyglot.

 

[Curious_Tongue]

What's OGL?

 

[OSK]

What's OGL?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Game_License

 

[Infinitron]

A bit of under bus throwing here:

 

[rusty_shackleford]

found notes/logs are significantly worse/more abused
especially ones detailing moments right before someone died

 

[Wunderbar]

 

[Harthwain]

It's hilarious. I guess some people want to emulate "Drums in the deep" style so hard they fail to realize when to stop for it to make sense.

 

[Peachcurl]

Possible. Or maybe it's an intentional joke.

 

[Hace El Oso]

 

[Infinitron]

 

[0sacred]

https://www.tumblr.com/jesawyer/708273311838257152/is-there-a-particular-difficulty-you-consider

plstkme-blog asked:
Is there a particular difficulty you consider "canon" in the PoE series? Like how Bungie said that Heroic was the canon difficulty for their Halo games.

Nah.

tfw you stooped so low as to put a Story Mode in your game

 

[Roguey]

tfw you stooped so low as to put a Story Mode in your game

That was forced on him. He was a strong proponent of forcing players to step up, even if playing on easy was the best they could manage.

 

[OSK]

tfw you stooped so low as to put a Story Mode in your game

That was forced on him. He was a strong proponent of forcing players to step up, even if playing on easy was the best they could manage.

Wait... did I accidentally play "story mode" on Pentiment? How do I enable the game play?