Josh Sawyer Q&A Thread

[Infinitron]

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.

...but the Elder Scrolls is actually much worse about its elves:

Aldmer • Altmer • Ayleid • Bosmer • Chimer • Dunmer • Dwemer

And for the humans you have terms like Atmorans and Yokudans for the lore nerds. I don't think Elder Scrolls and PoE are all that different in this respect tbh

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.

Who intern dis is?

A fan of Paul Kirsch and Megan Starks?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

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.

...but the Elder Scrolls is actually much worse about its elves:

Aldmer • Altmer • Ayleid • Bosmer • Chimer • Dunmer • Dwemer

And for the humans you have terms like Atmorans and Yokudans for the lore nerds. I don't think Morrowind and PoE are all that different in this respect tbh

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.

Who intern dis is?

A fan of Paul Kirsch and Megan Starks?

You're both right in a way, elder scrolls lore can be largely ignored and the player can immerse themselves in the world.
Then you fall down the esoteric lore rabbit hole and learn about the godhead, CHIM, mantling, dwarves who tried to become gods but accidentally banished their entire race(sans one... maybe) to another dimension, the argonains aren't argonians, metaphysics, akatosh the dragon has a spaceship, subgradients

 

[Nutria]

Aldmer • Altmer • Ayleid • Bosmer • Chimer • Dunmer • Dwemer

At least there's no fucking apostrophes. That's at least one notch upward.

 

[FreeKaner]

I hope we never see more of the Pillars setting which really is a vehicle for Sawyer's fascist fantasies.

If you want to make a low fantasy, grounded setting with realistic problems and solutions. You make a story that is also smaller in scale not about literal gods.

Let's take dumpsterfire for example. Why does it even have anything to do with gods, why is it a direct sequel? It makes no sense, these are all major mistakes that very likely ruined the end product. Beyond what it could be too. Why couldn't it just be about the factions and with a personal hook. Gods feel tacked on at best and jarring at worst.

Tyranny is definitely a better setting, better game too despite being basically unfinished.

I blame in part the success of BG2. The epic story for fantasy RPGs being mandatory comes in part from that. However BG2's whole silly nature works for it. It plays into it. Especially as a very linear game.

 

[vortex]

I hope we never see more of the Pillars setting which really is a vehicle for Sawyer's fascist fantasies.

If you want to make a low fantasy, grounded setting with realistic problems and solutions. You make a story that is also smaller in scale not about literal gods.

If you mean low fantasy with wizards and dragons, sword and sorcery than yes.
Deadfire went to abstract with gods and Eothas thing most people didn't connect with it.
Poe 3 should focus on real disturbing villains occasionally grazed with gods.

 

[FreeKaner]

The fatal flaw was the direct sequel. Both for the quality of the game and its commercial success.

 

[santino27]

The fatal flaw was the direct sequel. Both for the quality of the game and its commercial success.

Agreed. I suspect they felt not making a direct sequel would hurt their fundraising efforts though, as it would diverge from the POE=BG, POE2=BG2 narrative.

Instead, making it a direct sequel both hurt their narrative AND likely contributed to the vastly reduced sales figures as people who bounced off POE1 said 'eh, no thanks.'

 

[Prime Junta]

It was a supremely stupid decision. Direct sequels with the same protag are the exception, not the rule, and for good reason.

 

[Efe]

if would have worked so much better if it was set to 15+ years later and you were child of watcher with vela as your big sister thief/wizard multiclass (renamed to neomi).
explains the class change, level reduction, etc and cleans the slate for character stats instead of carrying over everything while still retaining consequences of previous protagonists actions

 

[2house2fly]

Aldmer • Altmer • Ayleid • Bosmer • Chimer • Dunmer • Dwemer

At least there's no fucking apostrophes. That's at least one notch upward.

ah yes all those apostrophes in pillars of eternity

 

[Mikeal]

ah yes all those apostrophes in pillars of eternity

D'o'n't y'o'u k'n'o'w t'h'a't a'p'o's't'r'o'p'h'e's m'a'k'e e'v'e'r'y't'h'i'n'g s'o'u'n'd c'o'o'l'e'r a'n'd m'o'r'e a'l'i'e'n? That's like 101 of fantasy writing.

 

[Sailor Woedica]

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.

They're currently hiring a senior character animator "with experience creating melee combat for first-person games to join us in crafting our next high-profile, role-playing game"! It totally has to be Pillars of Eternity 3!!!

(Here's the link: https://www.obsidian.net/jobs/open-positions/animation/1113-senior-character-animator)

 

[Orma]

 

[Nutria]

ah yes all those apostrophes in pillars of eternity

You actually knowing that there aren't apostrophes in the names of PoE races is way more embarrassing than me being wrong about it.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

They’re called diacritics, you goddamned savages. But, yeah, English doesn’t really use them and it was not smart to load up the made up words in the game with accute acute and grave accents.

 

[santino27]

They’re called diacritics, you goddamned savages. But, yeah, English doesn’t really use them and it was not smart to load up the made up words in the game with accute acute and grave accents.

Also, if you're going to rename vampires and stuff, make the new names sound cool, ffs. I know Josh put a lot of work into the language side of things (via his usual autist thing of trying to etymologically reverse engineer words and then going with an existing language's almost-analogue), but if the end result is that the new name (a) sounds dumb, and (b) is so close to the original that it sounds like someone just decided to do some letter swaps and call it a day, what was the point?

 

[FreeKaner]

People really overplay this naming thing. It is not really that present or even a big deal. The most specific case is the vampires and ghouls, which they called fampyrs and ghuls. They made their own undead lore in which it progresses to worse, from fampyr to ghul to skeletons as they degrade in humanity. Fampyrs are just nothing like the usual bloodsucking "aristocratic" vampires and calling them vampires would have a lot of baggage that just isn't there in pillars.

I swear the same people would do the same if they weren't here the first time for "vampire" or "ghoul", which are both foreign words to English. Go on about why they are not called "undead" or "walking corpse" or whatever.

 

[Mikeal]

 

[Sailor Woedica]

 

[Mikeal]

 

[Prime Junta]

His Ariosophist agenda is showing again.

 

[Jarpie]

Has he tweeted anything about Pathfinder: Kingmaker?

 

[santino27]

People really overplay this naming thing. It is not really that present or even a big deal. The most specific case is the vampires and ghouls, which they called fampyrs and ghuls. They made their own undead lore in which it progresses to worse, from fampyr to ghul to skeletons as they degrade in humanity. Fampyrs are just nothing like the usual bloodsucking "aristocratic" vampires and calling them vampires would have a lot of baggage that just isn't there in pillars.

I swear the same people would do the same if they weren't here the first time for "vampire" or "ghoul", which are both foreign words to English. Go on about why they are not called "undead" or "walking corpse" or whatever.

None of this changes the fact that they could have made the new name something that DIDN'T look like a bastardization of vampire and avoided the ridicule in the first place. Call it something else and nobody's going 'oh look, they decided to change the word vampire to be special'. But Sawyer's going to Sawyer and thinks deep dives into etymology and foreign language approximations make him seem deep. (When it's really the tatoos that do that, I'm sure...)

 

[FreeKaner]

Considering people also disliked stuff like xaurip and bunch fo other stuff, I am going to have to disagree on that.

 

[Tigranes]

Oh come on. Fantasy has pilfered from etymology, foreign languages, old mythological names, etc. for its entire history, bringing in plenty of mouthful syllables into common usage. It's not some obscure bullshit deep dive that was totally different from the norm. If Duc or the faux-Italian is such a sin, then surely you blew your skull off at Kara-Tur, which literally contains nations like Koryo (the actual name for a 500-year Korean dynasty that was bastardised by Westerners into "Korea")?

It's such a stupid thing to get worked up over, I don't think anyone would have minded Fampyrs if they were in Arcanum. There's a debate to be had about whether Pillars' effort to blend historical inspiration & the original setting ended up getting into a weird uncanny valley, and there's certainly well worn criticisms about loredumping and all, but listen, there was no magical conspiracy or some unprecedented sinful act going on.