Obsidian General Discussion Thread

[Sentinel]

Very good for sleeping.

 

[fantadomat]

Infinitron could you please ban that retard....again?!

 

[Quillon]

Now that I see music must have played a role in pillows' boredom, especially in early game...then in mid game, and late

 

[Carls Barkley]

I agree there should have been more upbeat music.

 

[Sentinel]

It's not even about being upbeat, there's plenty calm music in videogames that's excellent. That's just fucking boring trash.

 

[Roguey]

The only decent tracks in Pillars and Tyranny are the ones deliberately trying to evoke something else.

 

[BING XI LAO]

Goddamn PoE, the series so autistic and balanced they created an entire detailed setting from scratch only to have everything be basically generic. Fampyrs...

The SINGLE original idea in the whole setting is the artificial Gods, but they TOTALLY GIMP EVEN THAT by failing to write a specific, compelling motive for the creation of those Gods. Unless I really missed something, the Gods are there merely because of concern that people need Gods in order to be moral. There's logic to that concern, but it's far too subtle for a fantasy computer game. You need to paint in brighter colours. It could've been a good underpinning theme, but it should not have been the surface-level in-universe explanation as well.

If they'd instead had that there are real Gods, but they're Lovecraftian horrors of madness and unreality, and the Engwithans created their artificial Gods to distract people from those real Gods - to spiritually protect them - everything would have felt so much better. That's not a complex idea, it's basically Warhammer 40k's Emperor vs Chaos Gods. It's also a sort of inverse Gnosticism I suppose. It first occurred to me when the entropy God, Rymyrgand, had me thinking at one point in PoE2 that he originated from outside Eora, and could thus not have been made by the Engwithans.

The theme of morality needing religion, or objective truth needing a single truly objective observer (a God), or creation needing an Uncaused Cause (a God) and so on - whatever it was they were aiming for, that would still have been present in the games. But it would've been restricted to the underlying thematic level where it belongs, rather than being explicit. The lovecraftian Gods would've symbolised the atheist's lack of moral foundation, or the chaotic philosophy of the postmodernist, or the decadence of a society with no fear of divine punishment, or primordial chaos that defies causality rather than initiating it - you get the idea.

The antagonist of PoE1, the guy with the antler headdress - he wouldn't be talking about those themes, he'd he talking about evil monstrous Gods and the need to protect those less mentally strong than himself, even if deceit is necessary to do it. You would have an actual moral quandary - have the advanced nations of modern Eora become strong enough to cope with the truth? Instead PoE had a basically pointless lie that can be ended mostly harmlessly, a debate so one-sided they ended up writing Eothas as inevitably settling it in favour of truth in PoE2.

It's like they were close to something very interesting, but they were themselves just too liberal, too estranged from religious attitudes, too agnostic-atheist to get it. And it's ironic, they write this stuff about gods being needed to have meaning or moral motive or whatever, but they themselves couldn't think of a solid, compelling motive for the Engwithans to have made the Gods.

 

[BING XI LAO]

Damn, it's been years and I'm still butthurted by PoE's writing

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I wasn't aware there was such a dislike for PoE's music, I rather liked it.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

artificial Gods,

But they're not. For all intents and purposes, they are gods. If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. Them being mortal at one point is irrelevant, plenty of gods throughout human mythologies were human at some point.
The problem is that they never gave us a reason to believe they're non-gods, but treat them as if they are.

 

[Quillon]

Why the Infinitronception?

ed: dafuq, thought couple of you were trolling... but I guess...

WE ARE INFINITRON!!!

 

[Quillon]

I wasn't aware there was such a dislike for PoE's music, I rather liked it.

There are some tracks I really like then there are sleep inducing stuff...

Best of Justin are Tyranny's theme and The Watcher Prevails for me, tho the latter is a remix.

 

[G Ziets]

The SINGLE original idea in the whole setting is the artificial Gods, but they TOTALLY GIMP EVEN THAT by failing to write a specific, compelling motive for the creation of those Gods. Unless I really missed something, the Gods are there merely because of concern that people need Gods in order to be moral. There's logic to that concern, but it's far too subtle for a fantasy computer game. You need to paint in brighter colours. It could've been a good underpinning theme, but it should not have been the surface-level in-universe explanation as well.

If they'd instead had that there are real Gods, but they're Lovecraftian horrors of madness and unreality, and the Engwithans created their artificial Gods to distract people from those real Gods - to spiritually protect them - everything would have felt so much better. That's not a complex idea, it's basically Warhammer 40k's Emperor vs Chaos Gods. It's also a sort of inverse Gnosticism I suppose. It first occurred to me when the entropy God, Rymyrgand, had me thinking at one point in PoE2 that he originated from outside Eora, and could thus not have been made by the Engwithans.

I found this post to be interesting, and it discussed some issues that arose from the particular way PoE’s story was designed, so I thought I’d write a quick response.

As you may already know (from some interviews that discussed this a while back) - in the very early days of PoE, a number of people (Chris Avellone, Josh Sawyer, Eric Fenstermaker, me, Bobby Null, Jorge Salgado, possibly others I’m forgetting) all submitted story concepts for consideration. This was a very different process from previous projects, where one person (usually the lead narrative designer, but not always) developed the story on their own, largely in isolation from the rest of the team. On PoE, I think the goal was to draw ideas from multiple sources and generate greater narrative buy-in from key team members.

In practice, the most interesting ideas from multiple people’s stories ended up being pulled together into the final narrative. As you might imagine, this was sometimes good and sometimes bad. For example – the “artificially constructed gods” idea was taken from my story (so I’m glad you liked it), but it was separated from its original context, so it may not have worked as well when combined with ideas from the other stories.

(It’s also interesting that you thought Rymrgand had originated from a non-Engwithan source. That’s exactly what he was in his original conception.)

Narrative design is always a challenge in game development, and getting team buy-in is equally tough. I’ve seen it attempted in a number of ways, from a dictatorship-of-one to design-by-committee, and everything in between. What has worked best in my experience is when one person is ultimately responsible for the story, but the narrative (and the person in charge of the narrative) is flexible enough to incorporate ideas from many other teammates, while maintaining the right to occasionally veto ideas that just don’t fit. If you communicate the narrative vision effectively, the latter is usually not necessary, or you can at least twist an idea to make it work… but not always.

Ok, that was a longer answer than I’d intended, but hopefully it provides some insight into the RPG narrative process.

 

[Roguey]

What has worked best in my experience is when one person is ultimately responsible for the story, but the narrative (and the person in charge of the narrative) is flexible enough to incorporate ideas from many other teammates, while maintaining the right to occasionally veto ideas that just don’t fit.

Couldn't save Deadfire though.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

In practice, the most interesting ideas from multiple people’s stories ended up being pulled together into the final narrative. As you might imagine, this was sometimes good and sometimes bad. For example – the “artificially constructed gods” idea was taken from my story (so I’m glad you liked it), but it was separated from its original context, so it may not have worked as well when combined with ideas from the other stories.

An "artificially constructed" god is still a god though. I never felt like there was an "ah ha!" moment as if the gods were tricking the people.
For an obvious parallel, Faerûn has plenty of so-called "artificially constructed" gods. Mortals that elevated themselves to becoming a deity(I think they even made a game about this, hm…) I was never under the impression that this was a less than valid way of becoming a god, or it made you less of a god.
The talk with Iovara was — to put it mildly — disappointing. I was quite enjoying the story up to that point and it felt like someone with a grudge decided to beat me over the head with their interpretation of the story.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

TES also has mortals turned gods.

 

[Riddler]

Goddamn PoE, the series so autistic and balanced they created an entire detailed setting from scratch only to have everything be basically generic. Fampyrs...

The SINGLE original idea in the whole setting is the artificial Gods, but they TOTALLY GIMP EVEN THAT by failing to write a specific, compelling motive for the creation of those Gods. Unless I really missed something, the Gods are there merely because of concern that people need Gods in order to be moral. There's logic to that concern, but it's far too subtle for a fantasy computer game. You need to paint in brighter colours. It could've been a good underpinning theme, but it should not have been the surface-level in-universe explanation as well.

If they'd instead had that there are real Gods, but they're Lovecraftian horrors of madness and unreality, and the Engwithans created their artificial Gods to distract people from those real Gods - to spiritually protect them - everything would have felt so much better. That's not a complex idea, it's basically Warhammer 40k's Emperor vs Chaos Gods. It's also a sort of inverse Gnosticism I suppose. It first occurred to me when the entropy God, Rymyrgand, had me thinking at one point in PoE2 that he originated from outside Eora, and could thus not have been made by the Engwithans.

The theme of morality needing religion, or objective truth needing a single truly objective observer (a God), or creation needing an Uncaused Cause (a God) and so on - whatever it was they were aiming for, that would still have been present in the games. But it would've been restricted to the underlying thematic level where it belongs, rather than being explicit. The lovecraftian Gods would've symbolised the atheist's lack of moral foundation, or the chaotic philosophy of the postmodernist, or the decadence of a society with no fear of divine punishment, or primordial chaos that defies causality rather than initiating it - you get the idea.

The antagonist of PoE1, the guy with the antler headdress - he wouldn't be talking about those themes, he'd he talking about evil monstrous Gods and the need to protect those less mentally strong than himself, even if deceit is necessary to do it. You would have an actual moral quandary - have the advanced nations of modern Eora become strong enough to cope with the truth? Instead PoE had a basically pointless lie that can be ended mostly harmlessly, a debate so one-sided they ended up writing Eothas as inevitably settling it in favour of truth in PoE2.

It's like they were close to something very interesting, but they were themselves just too liberal, too estranged from religious attitudes, too agnostic-atheist to get it. And it's ironic, they write this stuff about gods being needed to have meaning or moral motive or whatever, but they themselves couldn't think of a solid, compelling motive for the Engwithans to have made the Gods.

In some ways the story of PoE is quite a bit like The Last Jedi. There are holes in the narrative where you think some sort of revelation or meaning is supposed to be but instead there is nothing.

Rymrgand being from the outside or the gods being created to protect humanity against some sort of eldritch horror seem like fitting extrapolations. You might very well not go there because you feel it would be "obvious" but you still have to take the narrative somewhere.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

First game had a decent soundtrack.

Second game unfortunately didn't have a single memorable tune. Aside from shanties that is, those are excellent.

 

[Tigranes]

First game had a decent soundtrack.

Second game unfortunately didn't have a single memorable tune. Aside from shanties that is, those are excellent.

The real question is why the entire soundtrack wasn't composed of shanties.

 

[Latro]

What has worked best in my experience is when one person is ultimately responsible for the story, but the narrative (and the person in charge of the narrative) is flexible enough to incorporate ideas from many other teammates, while maintaining the right to occasionally veto ideas that just don’t fit.

Couldn't save Deadfire though.

sawyer's just not a good narrative guy.

 

[Ismaul]

Justin Bell is now the *Studio Audio Director*.

This perfectly illustrates how Feargus has pushed Obsidian to become a wasteland of mediocrity over these past few years.

naw, justin bell does greeat work. The music is sometimes just okay, especially pillars 2, which imo have worse music than pillars 1, but the actual in game sounf effects, ambiances, etc are really damn solid. From thr sounf of ship sailing, combat effects, etc are all p great

His effects are serviceable, they've felt pretty adequate, or rather I haven't noticed them being great or bad which is a good sign, but the music is baaad. Bad enough that it pushed me to look him up and make a mental note of him.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

What has worked best in my experience is when one person is ultimately responsible for the story, but the narrative (and the person in charge of the narrative) is flexible enough to incorporate ideas from many other teammates, while maintaining the right to occasionally veto ideas that just don’t fit.

Couldn't save Deadfire though.

Not sure this really describes Deadfire at all, though (have you played it yet?). They ended up making Patel co-lead because Sawyer didn’t have time (IIRC), so I don’t see how this applies.

I mean, there’s gotta be a big difference between “one person has final authority over the story, but they’re forced to delegate way more than they want because they’re also the game director and responsible for the ruleset and writing a companion and god knows what else” versus “one person has final authority over the story as a full time job.”

 

[BING XI LAO]

artificial Gods,

But they're not. For all intents and purposes, they are gods. If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. Them being mortal at one point is irrelevant, plenty of gods throughout human mythologies were human at some point.
The problem is that they never gave us a reason to believe they're non-gods, but treat them as if they are.

A mortal rising to the status of a God is different from a God being created by mortals. The former can be judged genuinely superior to his erstwhile mortal fellows, but the latter will always be implicitly inferior to his creators, who in turn were not categorically superior to the other nations of Eora, only more knowledgeable and wealthy.

 

[Quillon]

Why did they specifically make such a dysfunctional pantheon to begin with? One them wants all life to end, how does that make sense?

Cos otherwise everything would be peachy...Pillows of Lalaland. What you are asking is like asking "Why god let this bad shit happen?" IRL.

Personally, beside the disconnect with faction stuff and gods, I don't like or rather I hated how most of them visually represented in Deadfire. I don't like weird, PoE isn't that weird.

 

[Roguey]

sawyer's just not a good narrative guy.

Not sure this really describes Deadfire at all, though (have you played it yet?). They ended up making Patel co-lead because Sawyer didn’t have time (IIRC), so I don’t see how this applies.

Of course not.

The Deadfire story:

Fenstermaker and Carrie Patel developed several treatments of the game’s story. In one, a magical apocalypse laid waste to a society. That germ of an idea morphed into the game’s inciting event.

“Eric and I worked over the months of preproduction to flesh out specific story beats,” Patel said, “how the player encounters factions, how the player encounters Eothas, how we keep this off-screen antagonist—or is he not an antagonist?—present in the player's story, but also tie in things the player is doing to the factions of Deadfire and things that are happening locally.”

By late 2016, Fenstermaker and Patel—with plenty of input from Sawyer—had outlined Deadfire’s major story beats. Then Fenstermaker, a new father, resigned. His parting was amicable. He had realized dreams by working at Obsidian for so many years. Now, he wanted to raise his child.

“White March benefited from many such lessons about writing style, lore distribution, design and writing process, collaboration, et cetera. I was excited to see what we could do with a full-sized game after all that. And then of course I totally bailed on my team. Sorry, dudes,” Fenstermaker said. “By the time I handed off my duties to Josh, I think we'd laid out the places you'd visit, the basic sequence of events, and the role the major factions would play. Call it a first draft. It had holes in it, and a lot of the details had yet to be added or continued to evolve afterward.”

Looks to me closer to "one person is ultimately responsible for the story, but the narrative (and the person in charge of the narrative) is flexible enough to incorporate ideas from many other teammates" though Fenstermaker, Sawyer, and Patel ended up playing hot potato with it.