Josh Sawyer Q&A Thread

[pomenitul]

No mention of Punch-Drunk Love?

 

[Prime Junta]

No mention of Punch-Drunk Love?

Pshaw, that's nothing compared to Going Overboard.

 

[Wunderbar]

His skyrim clone is going to feature revamped FNV faction disguise system!

 

[Quillon]

Is he even working on anything?

 

[Morgoth]

Another day, another dog whistle from Sawyer.

Time travelling Germania RPG confirmed. 100% historically accurate.

Oh jaja!

 

[FreeKaner]

Another day, another dog whistle from Sawyer.

Time travelling Germania RPG confirmed. 100% historically accurate.

Oh jaja!

 

[Sailor Woedica]

That's really cool!

 

[Sailor Woedica]

he just cycles between hitman games and bethesda games

What's extra spooky is that bethesda and ioi interactive are some of the rumours of new studios Microsoft is buying at E3 :face scream emoji:

 

[Roguey]

The tacky glitz of Las Vegas is timeless.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

That's really cool!

he sounds like those overweight middle aged men who reminisce about their highschool football career

 

[Butter]

I'm guessing Deadfire's piracy trappings go so well with the flamboyant homosexuality of the companions because pirates pumped a lot of butts.

 

[Orma]

 

[Nano]

The historical RPG is apparently still in the 'pushing for it' phase.



I thought Feargus promised him it would happen after PoE2. Maybe the hesitation is because PoE2 flopped.

 

[Roguey]

Yeah, if that historical game isn't happening now when they have Microsoft money and the longest leash they'll give them, it never will.

 

[Infinitron]

A short break, eh?

 

[Sailor Woedica]

If Pillars III is like Skyrim then maybe Josh wants to oversee that since he seems to love the world of Eora and is totally perfect for it since he was director of New Vegas!

 

[vortex]

No way poe3 will be like Skyrim. They are making new IP or pillars spin-off for Microsoft. Josh will continue poe3, the isometric one, after TOW gets done.

 

[Bonerbill]

No way poe3 will be like Skyrim. They are making new IP or pillars spin-off for Microsoft. Josh will continue poe3, the isometric one, after TOW gets done.

Fergus literally said he was interested in a Skyrim like game in the pillas universe. Seems more likely after the lower than expected sales of PoE2.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

No way poe3 will be like Skyrim. They are making new IP or pillars spin-off for Microsoft. Josh will continue poe3, the isometric one, after TOW gets done.

Fergus literally said he was interested in a Skyrim like game in the pillas universe. Seems more likely after the lower than expected sales of PoE2.

According to MCA, they're working on Chris Parker's Skyrim killer. If they're smart, they'll put Sawyer on that since he's the only one there who's directed a Bethesda game (for better or worse).

But set in the Pillars universe? Doesn't Microsoft own any better fantasy IP? I guess you can do good work even with garbage worldbuilding, but why would you want to? It would make more sense to create something entirely new rather than going back to the POE well.

 

[SpaceWizardz]

But set in the Pillars universe? Doesn't Microsoft own any better fantasy IP?

Supposedly Playground Games is making Fable 4.
Which is why I don't think were getting a Skyrim clone. Two Skyrim killers at the same time is a bit much and it is unlikely they have so quickly forgotten about what happened with Stormlands.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

I guess you can do good work even with garbage worldbuilding, but why would you want to?

What’s your problem with the Pillars setting? I was moderately underwhelmed with both games (particularly the first), but world-building was one of the few things I thought it actually did pretty well. Certainly better and more complex/nuanced than anything Microsoft would allow them to create were they to start over from scratch.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

I guess you can do good work even with garbage worldbuilding, but why would you want to?

What’s your problem with the Pillars setting? I was moderately underwhelmed with both games (particularly the first), but world-building was one of the few things I thought it actually did pretty well. Certainly better and more complex/nuanced than anything Microsoft would allow them to create were they to start over from scratch.

It's way too mundane. In a word, the problem with the Pillars setting is that it’s disenchanted. I wouldn’t describe the worldbuilding as nuanced or complex, it’s just very detailed, which is not necessarily a strength.

I appreciate Sawyer’s desire to create a grounded, logical, semi-realistic setting, but I think that kind of backdrop clashes with the imperatives of telling an epic fantasy story. And, like it or not, the story will end up being epic because that’s what the market wants. That’s one reason POE and Deadfire both feel sorta off: you have this clash of the titans level story about gods at war with each other and it’s stapled onto a fairly low fantasy world. In Deadfire the contrast between the main narrative and the setting is even more jarring.

The other reason to create something new? The big metaphysical mystery of the Pillars setting has already been solved. I was just reading an author explain that good worldbuilding details are like Chekhov’s gun. You leave them lying around and then later on there’s some payoff when they go bang. With Pillars, many of those guns have already been fired. And they’re the worst possible ones to shoot. I don’t want to know about the origin of the gods or how soul power makes magic work. Explaining these things only detracts from the setting by removing the mysterious and fantastical elements. It’s disenchanted in the most literal sense of the term.

Let me put it another way: why would you use the Pillars setting when you could create a whole new setting that’s purpose built for the new game? Why wed yourself to stuff that Josh and Eric pulled out of their asses when they were desperately trying to make POE? If you’re going to recycle a setting, it either needs to be really popular in its own right (Star Wars, Forgotten Realms, to a lesser extent Golarion and World of Darkness) or really, really cool (Fallout before Bethesda).

I thought the worldbuilding in Tyranny was miles ahead of POE and that game was put together by Obsidian’s B-team on a smaller budget (that was looted to help pay for Pillars). They didn’t even really finish Tyranny, but the setting, the story and even the gameplay mechanics are tied together in a way that’s very much absent in Pillars.

 

[lophiaspis]

Obsidian's B-team turned Tyranny into something decent precisely because none of the usual suspects had their fat, stupid, talentless fingers in the pie. If Phil Spencer had a clue about what's really up with Obsidian he would fire everyone from Feargus and Parker down to Sawyer, Fenstermaker and Patel and Dollarhyde and god knows what else they dragged in (mediocrity breeds mediocrity). Just root out this whole phony, parasite clique that's made their careers from pretending like they had anything to do with the successes of Fallout, PS:T and BG.

But that's not happening, quite the contrary. In the new Obsidian Chris Parker is king. The most incompetent and arrogant of all the sickening leeches that used to infest Black Isle.

So we can safely say the setting for their new Skyrim wannabe won't be as bad as Pillars.

It will be worse.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Obsidian's B-team turned Tyranny into something decent precisely because none of the usual suspects had their fat, stupid, talentless fingers in the pie. If Phil Spencer had a clue about what's really up with Obsidian he would fire everyone from Feargus and Parker down to Sawyer, Fenstermaker and Patel and Dollarhyde and god knows what else they dragged in (mediocrity breeds mediocrity). Just root out this whole phony, parasite clique that's made their careers from pretending like they had anything to do with the successes of Fallout, PS:T and BG.

But that's not happening, quite the contrary. In the new Obsidian Chris Parker is king. The most incompetent and arrogant of all the sickening leeches that used to infest Black Isle.

So we can safely say the setting for their new Skyrim wannabe won't be as bad as Pillars.

It will be worse.

Who intern dis is?

 

[Nutria]

The difference between PoE and Skyrim is that at least when Bethesda presents me with bland generic fantasy drivel they call them "nords" or "redmen" or whatever and don't expect me to memorize that they have the same boring elves as everything else but they call them Ill'it'ithou'ii in their game.