Interview Nostalgic KOTOR 2 Retrospective Podcast at Eurogamer

[m_s0]

Fuck you, LucasArts.

Also: fuck you, Disney. Their deal with EA pretty much ensures Obsidian won't be able to touch Star Wars, not to mention a possibility they'd be allowed a stab at KotOR 3. I regret having listened just because of the rundown of the conclusion to the series Avellone was planning

 

[CraigCWB]

I'm the complete opposite. I don't like sandboxes and the Bethesda model is an abomination that needs to die.

Heh. You should have seen me ranting about Bethesda back in the 1990s. I thought they were destroying the genre. I found their games to be dull as dishwater, as far as story, and the fact no matter where you went or what you did the randomization and the level-based lookup tables made it seem the exact same as what you'd find anyplace else doing anything else made me bored in record time. You could play the games forever but you never ran into anything new and interesting. Even the NPCs all had the same dialog trees, based on race and location. I even felt that way about Morrowind, though they at least started heading in the direction of an actual game with that title, instead of just a fantasy world simulator. Starting with Oblivion they were moving solidly in the right direction, though. I still have a lot of issues with their design principles (that's why I think New Vegas is so much better than anything they've done), but Bioware has been heading in the WRONG direction starting with Neverwinter Nights, in my opinion.

It can be done better like in Ultima 7, or Arcanum, but they weren't true sandboxes, at least not in the Bethesda way.

No, they weren't, but they were open-world and free-form enough to make me feel like I was playing my own game my own way and I liked both those a lot. And Baldur's Gate II & Torment are on my personal top 10 list, even though they followed the Bioware model. They were done well enough that I didn't really notice how linear and restrictive they were.

And i still prefer a more focused excperience to them.

I used to think that too, until I realized how much more time I was spending with Bethesda's games than with Bioware's. They've come up with all kinds of stunts to try to make people want to replay them over and over again but I've personally never been able to get more than halfway through a second attempt at Mass Effect or Dragon Age (for instance). I wind up getting depressed about doing the exact same things, even to the point all the encounters are exactly the same, and listening to variations of the exact same dialog, over and over again.

For me i would like Obsidian to stick to MotB model. It's what they do best.

Never played that. I loathed NWN. I never made it even to the halfway point with NWN 1, and I only managed to get through NWN 2 one time. Never had any interest in replaying it, nor checking out any of the expansions. In my opinion, As Black Isle their best work was Fallout 2 and Torment, and as Obsidian their best work was Fallout: New Vegas. Of the three, Torment was the only one to follow the Bioware model but that was back when the Bioware model was still working for me

 

[Infinitron]

Starting with Oblivion they were moving solidly in the right direction, though.

I still have a lot of issues with their design principles (that's why I think New Vegas is so much better than anything they've done), but Bioware has been heading in the WRONG direction starting with Neverwinter Nights, in my opinion.

In what way was Neverwinter Nights the wrong way? As opposed to say, KOTOR or Jade Empire? One is a PC-exclusive D&D game with full-scale mechanics that happens to have a boring phoned-in campaign, the others are simplified console popamole.

 

[CraigCWB]

In what way was Neverwinter Nights the wrong way? As opposed to say, KOTOR or Jade Empire? One is a PC-exclusive D&D game with full-scale mechanics that happens to have a boring phoned-in campaign, the others are simplified console popamole.

Primarily, it seems to me they felt they were making a game engine with NWN rather than a game. And the game engine was quite bad. Maybe it's because they didn't know how to do 3D and were just winging it, but the game engine gave me an attitude problem right off the bat that I wasn't ever able to really get past. The disposal of the party based system in favor of one braindead hireling that you couldn't even control was a big disappointment for me, as well. To me the whole idea with Bioware games at that point in time was that you were controlling a whole D&D adventuring group, not that you were playing a lone hero with a few sidekicks along for the ride. Reducing the party to you + what amounts to an MMO style "pet" was madness, and again I think it's because in their minds they were making a game that people would play online with other people playing the rest of the party. Maybe for some people that was a move in the right direction, but not for me. And what passed for a "story" in that game was like nails on chalkboard to my sensibilities. I quit playing it three damn times after getting through the little starting tutorial area and listening to that emo high elf wench going on and on about Watahdahveeahn creechahs. Once more, I think they felt they only were providing a campaign as a kind of recipe for their customers to follow when doing their own campaigns for online play. To be honest I can't recall all my other complaints with NWN at this late date, but for me NWN was when I decided the genre was pretty much dead. Keep in mind I still loathed Bethesda titles back then, and Interplay was having serious issues, so Bioware was carrying the torch all by themselves in my estimation, and they fell on their faces.

The KOTOR games seem like an over-reaction going the other way. They tried to get back to basics but simplified their old recipe so much it didn't really even work anymore. And that's what they've been doing, ever since.

I agree with your descriptions, by the way

 

[Rake]

KOTOR or NWN was first? Either way, Bioware started the wrong way after ToB. DA:O was supposed to be a return to form, and it was in a way, some retarded design desisions notwithstanding. At least it was better than ME, JE, shit.

As for Obsidian, while i like them as a company and i believe they are the best RPG designers at the moment, the funny thing is that i like their earlier games more than their resent ones. MotB and KotOR2 are their only games that i realy liked. The rest were either interesting ideas, terrible gameplay, at least for me (AP and F:NV) or competently made, just not for me (SoZ, DS3). Or half assed jobs like NWN2 but thats another story.( NWN2+expansions, and KOTOR2 are the only games that i managed to finish). For AP or F:NV i had more fun reading Let's Plays than actually playing the games themselves.

 

[Roguey]

In what way was Neverwinter Nights the wrong way? As opposed to say, KOTOR or Jade Empire? One is a PC-exclusive D&D game with full-scale mechanics that happens to have a boring phoned-in campaign, the others are simplified console popamole.

 

[abnaxus]

Can you download that presentation anywhere?

 

[Roguey]

Can you download that presentation anywhere?

Just the slides, only paying members can watch the video.

 

[Rake]

Can you download that presentation anywhere?

Just the slides, only paying members can watch the video.

Can you summarise it? Especialy the part of:

• Character vs player dichotomy
• Don't demand too much
• F:NV vs DS3 companions

 

[Roguey]

Can you download that presentation anywhere?

Just the slides, only paying members can watch the video.

Can you summarise it? Especialy the part of:

• Character vs player dichotomy
• Don't demand too much
• F:NV vs DS3 companions

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/126595/GDC_Europe_Obsidians_Five_Hard_Lessons_Of_RPG_Design.php
Follow-up responses http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/57754-josh-sawyer-at-gdc-europe-2011/page-2

 

[Infinitron]

Roguey Yes, the campaigns were forgiving, but the mechanics weren't inherently so.

It is true however that due to the inability to control companions in NWN1, there was a limit to how hard you could make a battle in a module for that game without making things unfair. NWN2 did not have this problem.

 

[Rake]

Can you download that presentation anywhere?

Just the slides, only paying members can watch the video.

Can you summarise it? Especialy the part of:

• Character vs player dichotomy
• Don't demand too much
• F:NV vs DS3 companions

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/126595/GDC_Europe_Obsidians_Five_Hard_Lessons_Of_RPG_Design.php
Follow-up responses http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/57754-josh-sawyer-at-gdc-europe-2011/page-2

 

[Sceptic]

In my talk, I gave specific examples, like the shooting mechanics in Deus Ex vs. the shooting mechanics in Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Given a choice between the shooting mechanics in the original and the shooting mechanics in the new game, I doubt many players -- RPG, FPS, RTS -- would choose the former -- because it feels terrible. If you're going to ask players to aim the reticule themselves, you should probably make it feel GOOD. Are there people out there who prefer the shooting mechanics in ME1 to ME2? Really? Because in ME2, they basically just made the shooting feel more like a "regular" FPS.

You have successfully removed Josh Sawyer from your bro list.

 

[Stinger]

Get out of here stalker

Should be the standard response to anything Roguey says .

 

[Infinitron]

In my talk, I gave specific examples, like the shooting mechanics in Deus Ex vs. the shooting mechanics in Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Given a choice between the shooting mechanics in the original and the shooting mechanics in the new game, I doubt many players -- RPG, FPS, RTS -- would choose the former -- because it feels terrible. If you're going to ask players to aim the reticule themselves, you should probably make it feel GOOD. Are there people out there who prefer the shooting mechanics in ME1 to ME2? Really? Because in ME2, they basically just made the shooting feel more like a "regular" FPS.

You have successfully removed Josh Sawyer from your bro list.

Compensated by DraQ adding him (though I'm not entirely sure about ME1 vs ME2)

 

[Rake]

In my talk, I gave specific examples, like the shooting mechanics in Deus Ex vs. the shooting mechanics in Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Given a choice between the shooting mechanics in the original and the shooting mechanics in the new game, I doubt many players -- RPG, FPS, RTS -- would choose the former -- because it feels terrible. If you're going to ask players to aim the reticule themselves, you should probably make it feel GOOD. Are there people out there who prefer the shooting mechanics in ME1 to ME2? Really? Because in ME2, they basically just made the shooting feel more like a "regular" FPS.

You have successfully removed Josh Sawyer from your bro list.

Compensated by DraQ adding him (though I'm not entirely sure about ME1 vs ME2)

I understand where Sawyer is coming from, and his quest for better gameplay.
But at what point the game stops being an RPG any more? In an interview Avellone said about a desision that while made the game a better game , it made it a worse RPG. Where did you draw the line?

 

[Infinitron]

I understand where Sawyer is coming from, and his quest for better gameplay.
But at what point the game stops being an RPG any more? In an interview Avellone said about a desision that while made the game a better game , it made it a worse RPG. Where did you draw the line?

if you want to make a proper "pure" RPG, you probably shouldn't include first person shooting as a mechanic.

 

[tuluse]

So Roguey has brought up this point a lot, that guns should shoot where you're pointing, but there are a lot of "pure fps" games out there that have the same mechanic. The Rainbow Six series before it got popamole'd had characters with different skill levels and it controlled how stably they could hold a gun (and in several different situations). ARMA and Operation Flashpoint have similar mechanics.

So is Sawyer is saying that all the people who play these games don't actually like them? Or is he saying it was just too extreme in Deus Ex?

 

[Roguey]

But at what point the game stops being an RPG any more? In an interview Avellone said about a desision that while made the game a better game , it made it a worse RPG. Where did you draw the line?

As mentioned in the presentation, player versus character is a false dichotomy. As far as he's concerned, any given game is a role playing game if you can make personality choices through your character that influence the outcome of things in the world and it doesn't matter if combat involves shooting or turn based tactics.

Or is he saying it was just too extreme in Deus Ex?

This one. Fallout New Vegas guns have an innate spread and it can be compounded through not meeting the strength and skill requirements and/or not crouching and aiming.

Also it's not like spread doesn't exist in Human Revolution, there are even two upgrades you can get that remove it from scopes and the increase you get while moving.

 

[Sceptic]

if you want to make a proper "pure" RPG, you probably shouldn't include first person shooting as a mechanic.

You can still move an FPS into more complex and interesting territory by adding so-called "RPG elements". I think DraQ would actually like this more than systematic removal of any interesting element because ZOMG stupid popamolers didn't like it.

 

[RK47]

I think New Vegas 'Increased bullet damage' based on skill is the wrong way to go.
A shotgun, handled by anyone from the untrained elderly to the elite, is still deadly when discharged to the face.
Even the perks are hilarious damage boosters or critical % increments.
There should be drawbacks to the untrained, but not so much that the gun becomes nearly ineffective even when fired at point blank.

Try this instead:
-Weapon drawing speed / Weapon Swaps
Create areas where players can't have their weapons drawn etc. Untrained ones are slow, clumsy. And they'll never aim straight after drawing to reflect that.

-Walk Speed when weapon is drawn
Untrained users are clumsy, and had to move slower to compensate when their weapons are drawn.

-Reloading speed
Slow reloading speed can fuck people up in firefight, assuming the AI is smart enough to know when the player is reloading and advance accordingly.

 

[Wyrmlord]

In my talk, I gave specific examples, like the shooting mechanics in Deus Ex vs. the shooting mechanics in Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Given a choice between the shooting mechanics in the original and the shooting mechanics in the new game, I doubt many players -- RPG, FPS, RTS -- would choose the former -- because it feels terrible. If you're going to ask players to aim the reticule themselves, you should probably make it feel GOOD. Are there people out there who prefer the shooting mechanics in ME1 to ME2? Really? Because in ME2, they basically just made the shooting feel more like a "regular" FPS.

You have successfully removed Josh Sawyer from your bro list.

I wonder sometimes if I am considered completely crazy for liking Deus Ex's shooting mechanics.

Putting points into my rifle skill until my reticle was so razor thin and my weapon so still - it felt extremely rewarding when I started shooting down MJ troopers on rooftops without even zooming on them or waiting for them to hold still. Each with single shots.

Yes, your weapon will have bad aim if you don't have points in it. Of course a weapon is useless if you don't have skills in it, and of course you are not supposed to use it if you can not. It is for this reason that I always kept a weapon at intermediate or advanced at the beginning of the game. And I wonder about the people who don't. Unless they are playing pacifist, what kind of a person prefers saving an additional lockpick to - I don't know - being able to survive a gunfight against armed paratroopers? It's also a dumb complaint that they have to sacrifice on other skills. That's the point. You can't always get what you want, and sacrificing combat skills tends to be a really bad compromise in - well - almost any game.

 

[RK47]

Didn't like it. Never will.
Thing is, if you're putting things on first person perspective - and your solution to make it more RPG is to fuck up their aim controls, I'd say don't do it.

 

[Lancehead]

I've found Deus Ex shooting to be alright, but again I usually have a lot of patience when playing games, and my play speed is generally low. Still, the game didn't need the extreme jump in aiming accuracy - from waiting several seconds to focus aim to running around with completely narrowed reticule with barely noticeable recoil. One can basically use a sniper as a pistol in the late stages of the game. It's equivalent to stupid vertical power progression many RPGs have.

Also,

As mentioned in the presentation, player versus character is a false dichotomy.

Agree with this.

 

[Infinitron]

if you want to make a proper "pure" RPG, you probably shouldn't include first person shooting as a mechanic.

You can still move an FPS into more complex and interesting territory by adding so-called "RPG elements". I think DraQ would actually like this more than systematic removal of any interesting element because ZOMG stupid popamolers didn't like it.

Watching a reticule shrink isn't an interesting element. A game that has shooting should have good shooting. RPG elements are not an excuse for having unfun shooting. Otherwise you're just contributing to the trend of "RPGs as bad action games".