Josh Sawyer Q&A Thread

[Major_Blackhart]

Does anyone know how he feels about Underrail? Styg has Sawyer ever said anything that you know of? What about Age of Decadence? Vault Dweller anything said one way or another?

Part of me hopes it's a lot of green with envy, considering both games are masterpieces as RPGs. And you guys had minimal staff as indies, doing what he couldn't with double A bucks.

 

[Ol' Willy]

Sawyer says some good things and I agree with a lot of his remarks considering the RPG mechanics, but when is he going to put the money where his mouth is? Make us some good RPG system, Joshy. PoE looks like some kind of shit that I don't even want to touch it.

 

[Ol' Willy]

Does anyone know how he feels about Underrail?

He said: "Who the fuck does that Serb think he is? Comes out of nowhere with one of the best RPG systems while I spend my last twenty years working on mediocre shit and reworking Special system."

 

[Wunderbar]

Does anyone know how he feels about Underrail?

He said: "Who the fuck does that Serb think he is? Comes out of nowhere with one of the best RPG systems while I spend my last twenty years working on mediocre shit and reworking Special system."

he saw Underrail, flew to the Serbia and infected Styg with sawyerism. This is the only explanation of why Styg would nerf quick tinkering like that.

 

[Ol' Willy]

This is the only explanation of why Styg would nerf quick tinkering like that.

You can spec that, though

 

[Wunderbar]

This is the only explanation of why Styg would nerf quick tinkering like that.

You can spec that, though

yeah but that means 15 levels with a subpar feat.

 

[Ol' Willy]

yeah but that means 15 levels with a subpar feat.

Meanwhile, Psi wizards enjoy nigh unlimited EK Imprint...

 

[Roguey]

What about Age of Decadence?

As I recall, he barely spent any time with AoD but sunk a few hours into Dungeon Rats which was more his thing.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Nano]

I don't really think console limitations were a big deal

Havok Physics needed to be upgraded several versions because the version used in F3 would not compile with date-compliant Sony SDKs

And sure, the PS3's split memory pool was a pain in the ass

That's why the Strip, Freeside, etc. wound up being split up late in development. The areas just wouldn't run as we had originally built them

 

[Major_Blackhart]

So he doesn't think they're a big deal but consoles drastically changed areas and took weeks out of dev schedule to fix?

 

[aweigh]

So he doesn't think they're a big deal but consoles drastically changed areas and took weeks out of dev schedule to fix?

When something is expected it isn't a big deal. They were making a game for consoles so console limitations were expected. PC port of the game is completely incidental and has nothing to do with its development.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Even if its expected it can still suck and cause problems. They had to redesign the city completely.

 

[Roguey]

Even if its expected it can still suck and cause problems. They had to redesign the city completely.

It wasn't that severe, they just added walls and loading screens. There's even a mod that removes all the walls from the strip.

 

[Ol' Willy]

It's a long known fact: console limitations (both hardware and controls-related) are the shackles that drag down a lot of good games.

 

[Ol' Willy]

My guess is never mate. He will live off the controversy forever, like a travelling beggar, with Infinitron dug beneath his balls like a tick. I don't think Soyer is a bad designer to have on the team, but he proved beyond all doubt that he is a TERRIBLE lead. He just can't handle the pressure. Dude made beginner mistakes and he supposedly has 20 years of tabletop experience...

Yeah, I agree. He can be good, but G-d forbid to give him the lead in any project.

 

[luj1]

Ol' Willy What's worse is that these OBVIOUS issues from Pillars were ignored and instead of fixing them for Dumpsterfire, which any sane designer would do, they focused on pathetic eye candy magic effects, "giant" bosses and other shite like flail physics or talking parrots. So in my mind Soyer got two strikes, not one.

Anyway the whole team just sucks. They also added a ton of feature bloat (masking the lack of quality with quantity) which is a common sign of lacking vision.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

It wasn't that severe, they just added walls and loading screens. There's even a mod that removes all the walls from the strip.

Must have been a common problem with that generation of consoles, because it sounds similar to Mass Effect elevators, and Witcher 2 cities where extra sections of walls was added to hide loading.

 

[Flying Dutchman]

So he doesn't think they're a big deal but consoles drastically changed areas and took weeks out of dev schedule to fix?

Would be surprised if it took that little time, since every DLC added more memory they probably had to keep doing it.

Overall, I don't think anyone at Obsidian was in charge of level design constraints until too late. Could have saved some time that could have been used to fix more bugs. Or add another version of Caravan.

 

[Infinitron]

Josh Sawyer, lover of oozes:

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Amorphous blobs with no personality. He likes them.

What a surprise.

 

[Takamori]

Anyone have a clue on what he is working on with? Its an RPG?

As for PoE being a guy that played both 150+ hours, the issue was story telling, exposition to the world. There is some few good moments but most of the game when you tried to get in contact with felt like a slog in PoE 1. Now Deadfire, I understood what the fuck he was trying to achieve with the whole entropy and its useless to fight a god, but he failed with one the basic things that is player agency in the story telling in Deadfire, why in the nine fucks we couldn't go for a full warpath and build another god hammer and tell Eothas to go fuck himself? It could open for a catastrophic ending for sure but fuck I would feel satisfied that my character could go for full anger fury ending.

Missing Gonzalez and Avellone fucked up a lot Obsidian, and Josh seems like guy that don't like to take much risks and when he did like in Deadfire he stumbled all over his shit.

 

[Desiderius]

Yeah I'm at the point of dropping off Bearn and Eder's like Eothas (obv Eder) has a lot of explaining to do and naturally your next move is to get Eder to start explaining but nope, we just abandon the kid again and can't even talk to Eder about it.

What is that even about?

 

[Efe]

a glimpse into meaning of life and family for danger hairs.

 

[Nano]

Sawyer advocating game piracy: