Obsidian General Discussion Thread

[Lacrymas]

"players don't play a design doc.."

Mhm, that's why both PoEs play exactly like design documents.

 

[Latelistener]

What's this promotion is all about? Is Sawyer ready to become the CEO of Obsidian for Microsoft and lead it into the glorious and balanced future for all eternity?

Spoiler

And possibly make a game inspired by Darklands in the meantime?

 

[Sailor Woedica]

Josh Sawyer is pretty cute, why wouldn’t you want to take his photo? (Especially when most guys in game dev are not good looking)

 

[The Bishop]

Why is anyone surprised with "people don't play design doc" quote? This was Sawyer's design ideology from day one on PoE. The whole thing about combating degenerate gameplay and how he observed people not playing games the originally intended way, all of that originates from this idea.

 

[Lacrymas]

Yes, he says that, but the final result, especially in PoE1, haven't played 2 enough yet, is based entirely on dry theorizing and plays like designed by aliens as a result. Don't get me started on degenerate gameplay, he removed one such thing only to replace it with another. My experience with history of art has taught me to never trust the artist at his word unless proven otherwise.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Josh made degenerate gameplay part of the game mechanics in PoE 2. I can give examples.

Edit: I'm sure his intentions were good, but that's how it ended up being.

 

[The Bishop]

Yes, he says that, but the final result, especially in PoE1, haven't played 2 enough yet, is based entirely on dry theorizing and plays like designed by aliens as a result. Don't get me started on degenerate gameplay, he removed one such thing only to replace it with another. My experience with history of art has taught me to never trust the artist at his word unless proven otherwise.

If PoE has anything to do with dry theorizing, then it's dry theorizing of a madman. It's a pretty messy game that hops from one thing to another without ever giving any of its themes proper attention. I mean I want to see the rationale for putting a quest about worker's right to affordable prostitution into the game. If there's a theory behind all this, I bet it's not a very rigorous one.

IMO most of everything you see in PoE is simply a result of very small but very expensive Californian team burning through their kickstarter money in a flash and then shoving what they managed to produce through the door. People like to hate on Sawyer, but in their vanity they fail to recognize his genius. The guy managed to fool almost everybody and muddy up the water so well, that when PoE came out, everyone was obsessed with how they don't like the systems, or the story, or how you have to block chokepoints etc. And nobody managed to spot the elephant in the room: that there was so very little game in front of them. Density of content in PoE is ridiculously low. And most of that content went into the game without any iterations. Calling the end result "dry" should probably be taken as a compliment.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Yup. Bell wrote a couple of beautiful tracks for PoE 1, but most of the soundtrack was bland, forgettable elevator music. He is so inconsistent it's almost hard to believe that he really was the main composer and didn't just outsource most of the soundtrack to his deaf neighbor.

And the less to be said about Deadfire soundtrack the better. The only memorable tracks are variations on PoE1 tracks, and the shanties. It was a half-assed job, and that's just not good enough.

 

[Butter]

This is a rather good theme from Deadfire:



The thing with most of these tracks is that they don't surprise you. You can tell exactly where they're going after the first 10-15 seconds.

 

[ArchAngel]

wut.

I thought the music was one of the really good parts of Pillars.

Completely agree, the music was atmospheric and generally one of the better parts

Overall it was decent but that combat music was terrible. It forced me to turn off music completely.

 

[fantadomat]

 

[Butter]

WTF I love Sawyer now

 

[Lilura]

RPGs were better when people didn't go to seminars, study groups and universities.

 

[FreeKaner]

Still think Sawyer is not an Austrian fascist? When he is so tied to his Catholic and Austrian heritage that he went so far to learn German and has "Graz" on his name? Reads books about the Empress in German? Has Graz (City in Austria) in his name?

Sawyer is a Austrian supremacist. He hamfists his racial theories about Atlanto-Hyperborean origins of Germanic Aryan race and their destined dominance whenever possible to his games.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Still think Sawyer is not an Austrian fascist? When he is so tied to his Catholic and Austrian heritage that he went so far to learn German and has "Graz" on his name? Reads books about the Empress in German? Has Graz (City in Austria) in his name?

Sawyer is a Austrian supremacist. He hamfists his racial theories about Atlanto-Hyperborean origins of Germanic Aryan race and their destined dominance whenever possible to his games.

I can just seem him bicycling around singing about his beloved Kaiser Franz.

 

[FreeKaner]

Sawyer on the right, proudly proclaiming:

"Österreich, mein Vaterland.
Dir auch weih' ich Herz und Hand.
Herz zur Lieb, die Hand zum Streit,
Beides dir in Freud und Leid.
Herz zur Lieb, die Hand zum Streit,
Beides dir in Freud und Leid. "

 

[Sailor Woedica]

you guys are better at writing fanfiction than most of the tumblrs i follow

 

[Heinrich]

Yeah, Austria posting!

 

[mibbles]

 

[FreeKaner]

What plays in Sawyer's head as he muses about possible restoration of Habsburg monarchy.

 

[Morgoth]

Fucking hell Josh showed up at my old Alma Mater and nobody told me.

 

[Morgoth]

You aren't helping, Turk.

 

[FreeKaner]

You aren't helping, Turk.

"In 1741 Ritter von der Trenck marched into Vienna preceded by Turkish music, and in the War of the Austrian Succession Marshal de Sax had Turkish music in his Uhlands."

I am just paying forward the respect.

 

[Morgoth]

That is... interesting. Mozart and Haydn have been influenced by alla turca style music.

 

[fantadomat]

The best music is the one about removing kebab!