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Josh Sawyer Q&A Thread

Butter

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Oct 1, 2018
Messages
8,423
It's not like you can't go north at the start of New Vegas. You just can't do it without any friction. Bethesda fans don't like friction in their games.
 

Tyranicon

A Memory of Eternity
Developer
Joined
Oct 7, 2019
Messages
7,461
World with dangerous areas > world that has flat difficulty with level-scaling.

Pretty elementary stuff in RPG world at this point.
 

santino27

Arcane
Patron
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Oct 1, 2008
Messages
2,768
My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
All mainstream devs are super out of touch with what current audiences want. That's why you see these abominations in the industry today.

Ah yes, Avowed is totally betting the farm on romances with a fish man and an ugly ferretwoman who tells you how sexy and pansexual she is on first click.






.... oh fuck that's exactly what they're doing isn't it? What the fuck is wrong with this dev generation?

View attachment 53886
Avowed doesn't have player romances, because much like everything else, they were deemed too ambitious to do. Which is probably one of the rare times where their 'do less, and then warn everyone to further lower expectations' approach has actually worked on our behalf.
 

Drakortha

Liturgist
Joined
Jan 23, 2016
Messages
1,836
Location
Terra Australis
As per usual, Josh is right. The "I should be able to go anywhere I choose and do anything I want" attitude is how you get to a game like Skyrim
But without it, we won't get to see Todd walk out onto a stage and give us his classic "be who you want, do what you want" sales pitch.
 

Bad Sector

Arcane
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Joined
Mar 25, 2012
Messages
2,334
Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Bethesda fans don't like friction in their games.

Explains the physics bugs.

World with dangerous areas > world that has flat difficulty with level-scaling.

I think few people liked that approach even here, but personally i liked the way ELEX's world is designed in terms of difficulty: instead of having clearly separated "easy" (or whatever is "easy" in ELEX anyway) and "hard" areas, you get a somewhat random spread of difficulty with stupidly hard monsters placed right next to easy ones - this creates a sense of uncertainty about if what you'll encounter next. It isn't completely random, just not predictable enough (like "easy near starting areas, hard out of the beaten path" and other similar tropes) to keep you on your toes.
 

luj1

You're all shills
Vatnik
Joined
Jan 2, 2016
Messages
15,045
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Eastern block
Sawyer was never obsessed with balance, he was obsessed with accessibility

Probably it stems from some tabletop trauma of his
 

Harthwain

Magister
Joined
Dec 13, 2019
Messages
5,270
As per usual, Josh is right. The "I should be able to go anywhere I choose and do anything I want" attitude is how you get to a game like Skyrim
Technically this is also true for Morrowind. Although in Morrowind it is possible for enemies to be stronger than you so that can keep you in check for a bit. You should also mention Oblivion as it introduced "enemies scale with you" mechanic, which helped the "I should be able to go anywhere I choose and do anything I want". Skyrim, for all its faults, is a bit better in this aspect than Oblivion was.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
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May 29, 2010
Messages
36,549
I find it difficult to believe that a person could sleepwallk through BG 1 and 2 and find the PoEs on normal difficulty incredibly daunting.
 

Riddler

Arcane
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Joined
Jan 5, 2009
Messages
2,374
Bubbles In Memoria
I find it difficult to believe that a person could sleepwallk through BG 1 and 2 and find the PoEs on normal difficulty incredibly daunting.
Perhaps he has immense issues with pathfinding so that engagement in PoE completely filters him?

Otherwise I don't know what to say, both pillars games are incredibly easy on normal and don't even have hard counters which you might not understand. You can hit everything with your one hammer and win.
 

Gahbreeil

Scholar
Joined
Feb 9, 2021
Messages
1,006
Location
Asarlaíocht
PoE had to be daunting to the person because he didn't know the TTRPG. I mean, I found myself a tad daunted when I returned to my old save after a year and didn't know which skills do what. In Hack & Slash mode (No pausing, no skills) I managed to almost clear an entire dungeon level in one go but failed.
 
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dutchwench

Novice
Joined
May 21, 2024
Messages
86
Back when Pillars was only known as Project Eternity, the legendary Japanese game designer Itagaki, best known for the brutally difficult Ninja Gaiden games, came to visit Obsidian's office to give their game a try. After spending a few hours playing it, he raged and broke the keyboard, then ran up to Sawyer and started debating how difficult games should really be, only to leave in tears. It was only after the entirety of Obsidian trapped Sawyer in the janitor's closet to add things like manual saves and remove mechanics like the wind influencing your bow's ballistics & the salty air around the sea corroding your sword 0.00003% faster than usual did Pillars of Eternity finally become a game you can beat without being mentally broken.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
36,549
Let me guess. The Kickstarter backers forced him to include manual saves in Pillars.
It was brought up, and his preference is for save points and shutdown saves, but being able to save anywhere has been an expected feature by most PC gamers since the 90s.

I think in an RPG there's a lot of monotonous crap you potentially have to redo if you're forced to rely on autosaving/savepoints.
 

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