Interview Obsidian Media Blitz: Josh Sawyer and Feargus Urquhart Interviews

[Lurker King]

i don't understand what is so hard to believe about Sawyer's degree of involvement with New Vegas. Is it because you hate Sawyer but like FNV a lot? (...) i actually would very much equate FNV to being Sawyer's baby to a similar degree that Torment is attributed to Avellone.

Isn’t it obvious? Because his contributions to every other game were subpar, or maybe because the game used a lot of previous content made for Van Buren; or maybe because there were a lot of writers involved in the game.

For F:NV, I designed (but did not write the dialogue for) all of the companions and companion arcs. I did all of the system design and balancing. I wrote all of the high level RDCs (Region Design Constraints) that area designers used to write their ADDs (Area Design Docs).

So he was responsible for the things we don’t care, since the game only shines in the writing and reactivity department, and it is a popamole game in everything else. I don't see any of you praising Henkel’s role on PS:T, even if he did a considerable job designing a lot of things but got downplayed because he was a producer. It's double standards all the way.

 

[Sentinel]

since the game only shines in the writing and reactivity department

I think it is a very fair assumption that Sawyer, as the project director, pushed strongly for reactivity. Feargus says this, and Sawyer also mentions he and Avellone mentoring Gonzalez throughout the writing process. Also I don't know exactly what "Region Design Constraints" means, but if it has anything to do with World Design (placement of towns/cities/vaults/points of interest) then I'd say he did a fine job, because one of the many things Fallout New Vegas does better than 3 is the world design. Fallout 3 had low level areas locked behind deathclaws.

Because his contributions to every other game were subpar

What games are we talking about here? Icewind Dale 2? Wasn't that rushed out in like 10 months? I'd say it came out very well for such a low dev time.
If you're talking about Pillows of Eternity, I think that's a different story. As Sawyer has said, the Pillars players expect a very specific sort of experience emulated from Baldur's Gate. Baldur's Gate had close to 0 reactivity - it was a very much linear adventure. Considering they were on the gallows at the time with the hangman anxiously awaiting to pull the trigger, playing safe and staying true to the pitch you presented to 77k backers was probably the safest bet.

 

[Roguey]

So he was responsible for the things we don’t care, since the game only shines in the writing and reactivity department, and it is a popamole game in everything else. I don't see any of you praising Henkel’s role on PS:T, even if he did a considerable job designing a lot of things but got downplayed because he was a producer. It's double standards all the way.

I actually do appreciate Henkel for being the hatchetman who got it shipped.

Additionally, Josh was responsible for enforcing the style guidelines.

Our writing style guides are pretty long (and to be honest, we can't enforce them 100% of the time), but here are a few:

* Put more detail and specificity into skill-, stat-, and perk-unlocked dialogue options than general dialogue options.
* Always place "goodbye" reply options at the bottom of the list.
* Once a vendor's store is "unlocked", always place the store option near the top of the initial return greeting.
* Don't give the player "fake" reply options that lead to the same outcome as others.
* If an NPC continues his or her nodes in a long sequence, the player should be given the option to back out after three nodes.

Unless a response was intended to have a very specific "'tude" (e.g. provoking a fight), writers were supposed to divorce personality from the general query. My reasoning was that if you just want to ask a straightforward question, having the designer load the line with some sass can irritate the player.

In the DLCs, the writers (including I) put more personality/flavor in even the "normal" player responses because some players reacted negatively to how neutral the core game responses were.

That dry, naturalistic dialogue was all Josh, which is the complete opposite of Avellone's style (which is loud and over the top).

Avellone also broke the hell out of "Always place "goodbye" reply options at the bottom of the list" and "If an NPC continues his or her nodes in a long sequence, the player should be given the option to back out after three nodes" when he did Old World Blues.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Notice that in the same interview Sawyer mentioned that the developer should support any unusual build that the player can come out with. This is pure nonsense and the logical consequence of this principle is popamole games.

He is right. Punishing the player for making a bad build is unfair, because the player has no way of knowing which builds are vailable in his first playthrough.

Let's use an example: Assume that you play an RPG as a thief. And the game is designed in a way that stealth is available all the way through, until for the final boss, who can only be beaten by a strength build. Is this good game design?

Strawman. No game did this, even back in the 'bad/good old days'. If you needed combat to win, the game would always tell you "the world of Forgotten Realms/Sigil/Brittania is a dangerous place. Sometimes you have no choice but to fight. Make sure you level up at least one combat skill regularly, or you might get stuck!"

A game that didn't have that would be taken as inviting the player to try non-combat builds (if for no other reason than that the absence of such a warning was rare and therefore notable), and yes, it would be bad design if a game gave absolutely no warning of taking a late-and-sharp right-turn into railroaded combat, and did nothing to pre-warn you. Such bad design, in fact, that it never happened.

 

[Sentinel]

Such bad design, in fact, that it never happened.

didn't VtMB do this? I don't recall any such warning.

 

[Roguey]

didn't VtMB do this? I don't recall any such warning.

Well the tutorial did have unavoidable combat.

 

[l3loodAngel]

Notice that in the same interview Sawyer mentioned that the developer should support any unusual build that the player can come out with. This is pure nonsense and the logical consequence of this principle is popamole games.

He is right. Punishing the player for making a bad build is unfair, because the player has no way of knowing which builds are vailable in his first playthrough.

Let's use an example: Assume that you play an RPG as a thief. And the game is designed in a way that stealth is available all the way through, until for the final boss, who can only be beaten by a strength build. Is this good game design?

Strawman. No game did this, even back in the 'bad/good old days'. If you needed combat to win, the game would always tell you "the world of Forgotten Realms/Sigil/Brittania is a dangerous place. Sometimes you have no choice but to fight. Make sure you level up at least one combat skill regularly, or you might get stuck!"

A game that didn't have that would be taken as inviting the player to try non-combat builds (if for no other reason than that the absence of such a warning was rare and therefore notable), and yes, it would be bad design if a game gave absolutely no warning of taking a late-and-sharp right-turn into railroaded combat, and did nothing to pre-warn you. Such bad design, in fact, that it never happened.

You just broke the most retarded point in game design and shoved it in chainsaw's ass. Gj!

 

[Prime Junta]

Strawman. No game did this, even back in the 'bad/good old days'. If you needed combat to win, the game would always tell you "the world of Forgotten Realms/Sigil/Brittania is a dangerous place. Sometimes you have no choice but to fight. Make sure you level up at least one combat skill regularly, or you might get stuck!"

Perhaps not quite to that extent, but there are games that did that sort of thing to a significant degree. KOTOR 1 is a relatively recent offender -- play a light-side Force power oriented Consular, and you'll cruise through it until Darth Malak, who is as good as immune to most Force powers.

VtM:B is another example -- it's pretty easy to sail through it without pumping your combat skills much at all, relying on social stuff + stealth + certain Disciplines, until near the endgame when you face enemies that can only really be handled with a fire axe (or hot lead) to the face.

 

[aweigh]

i think FNV's "Dead Money" is by far Avellone's best writing since PS:T. Everything about DM is incredibly well designed, especially in comparison to the base game, and as far as the DLCs go it's clearly the best designed one and I rank it far above Old World Blues.

it's pretty amazing how they managed to take the Bethesda shit-engine, make FNV out of it, and then with Dead Money create a completely different role-playing experience that straddled completely different genres (survival horror being one of them) than the base game. sure, some may prefer the humor in OWB or the power-fantasy tropes of Honest Hearts, but it's hard not to be impressed with how unique Dead Money came out.

 

[Roguey]

KOTOR 1 is a relatively recent offender -- play a light-side Force power oriented Consular, and you'll cruise through it until Darth Malak, who is as good as immune to most Force powers.

A bright side to this is that you can use an obvious exploit to brute force it, considering you can spam as many healing and buff items as you want in the paused inventory screen (Obsidian put a cap on how many times you could do this in a single round for some reason).

 

[Azarkon]

D:OS2 was also present on Kickstarter, which is much more prominent than Fig, giving it a leg up in terms of "marginal" backers.

So was the original game. What's significant about their campaign is that the second game had double the amount of pledges as the first. Obsidian chose a different platform so their results can't be directly compared, but I would still question whether Pillars of Eternity 2 could've gotten twice the amount of pledges as the first.

They have more than one hundred people on payroll. Do you think that will gamble with their confidence by making their dream game? Especially now that they sold a lot by delivering a mediocre game? No. They will try to do the same thing, but more efficiently. They think like a publisher. This is their job. What them want have nothing to do with it. It’s checklist box design all the way. We are talking about people who made a risky choice when they're younger and didn’t know better and now are trapped in a poisonous environment. Tim Cain is just a shadow of his former self. His passion for cRPGs is long gone.

There's always a risk, no matter what publishers tell you about market check lists and safe investments. Even Electronic Arts ends up with many commercial failures, and their way of doing business is losing steam: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4099180-electronic-arts-losing-grip-video-gaming-industry

A large fraction of the most successful franchises in recent years come from commercialization of custom maps and modifications, the design of which came from players, not marketing committees. Warcraft custom maps gave birth to Dota and League of Legends. Team Fortress gave rise to Overwatch. Horizon: Zero Dawn was described as Guerrilla Games' most risky pitch. Even Counter Strike started off as a modification. Sure, there's still safe plays like Call of Duty, FIFA, and World of Warcraft. But the industry is no longer ruled by them.

But any market is small in comparison with Triple-A. The proper comparison is between BG, and the rest. If you consider that, the BG series was never small. In fact, alongside with Diablo, it was always on its own level of popularity turbocharged by D&D franchise. PoE is practically a skeleton of a game and they sold almost 1 mill units with a ridiculous price tag. That’s a lot. And it’s not just Obsidian, mind you. Harebrained Schemes delivered sub-par games as well, and sold a lot of units too. cRPG players like to think of themselves as hot shit, but they are not. They are mediocre and predictable. The mere resemblance of a traditional cRPG with checklist design is enough to satisfy their tastes. Anything beyond that it is risky and will only get you in trouble. If they weren’t, we would have more developers making risks.

While I agree with you that CRPG fans are mediocre and predictable, that's not the issue I'm talking about. You can make check list games, as long as the people you put in charge of them, actually like them for what they are. The problem I have with putting Josh Sawyer in charge of these "traditional" CRPG clones is that I don't feel he actually likes them. Reading his posts about CRPG design, it's quite obvious that he feels traditional CRPGs are broken; yet, as we've seen with Pillars of Eternity's release, his changes are not what the people who enjoy these games necessarily want.

That's why I'd suggest Obsidian put him on a game he'd enjoy developing, and be passionate about. You might argue it's a risk, but so is having him develop games he doesn't enjoy. Leave the check list games to the people who love them.

 

[Lurker King]

You can make check list games, as long as the people you put in charge of them, actually like them for what they are.

No, you can't. Good cRPG development is organic, and involves the cooperation of the team, many iterations, etc. Checklist design is artificial, and result in bland games.

 

[Iznaliu]

Horizon: Zero Dawn was described as Guerrilla Games' most risky pitch

That doesn't count as "player-made".

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Hunted: The Demon's Forge 69% positive, 156,909 ± 11,393 owners.

Never heard of it, but it appears to be an 8-hour 2-player co-operative action game likened to Gears of War that has very little in common with a Morrowind-style Open World RPG.

I should have been more precise, and noted that if Bethesda had chosen inXile to create an Open World RPG successor to the original two Fallout games, using the latest version of the Morrowind engine, then it would have been inXile with, by its standards, a smashing commercial success rather than Obsidian. This says nothing about the relative merits of the two companies. Similarly, if someone else at Obsidian had been lead designer for New Vegas, the game might have somewhat less successful or somewhat more successful in terms of sales, but either way it would have been Obsidian's greatest commercial success.

 

[Chainsaw Gutsfuck]

A game that didn't have that would be taken as inviting the player to try non-combat builds (if for no other reason than that the absence of such a warning was rare and therefore notable), and yes, it would be bad design if a game gave absolutely no warning of taking a late-and-sharp right-turn into railroaded combat, and did nothing to pre-warn you. Such bad design, in fact, that it never happened.

the absence of such a warning was rare

it never happened

pick one

 

[Fairfax]

I don't see any of you praising Henkel’s role on PS:T, even if he did a considerable job designing a lot of things but got downplayed because he was a producer. It's double standards all the way.

Henkel didn't design a lot of things and has admitted as much, he was never downplayed. He had little to do with the game's design and resigned just months before release.

I actually do appreciate Henkel for being the hatchetman who got it shipped.

That was MCA. Had it been any other BIS designer in his position, the game would've suffered the same fate as Stonekeep 2.

Henkel was actually Project Director, not just producer, but he was effectively demoted to "producer" in the credits, which shows how he did for the game.

 

[Lurker King]

Henkel didn't design a lot of things and has admitted as much, he was never downplayed. He had little to do with the game's design and resigned just months before release.

From the wikipedia entry about PS:T

Henkel said that it was his main goal to prevent the game from being "crippled" before leaving Interplay when the game reached beta status. He also made the claim that his overall influence on the game was greater than that of Chris Avellone, Eric Campanella, or Dave Maldonaldo, but since a producer often has to make unpopular decisions his role was later downplayed

Henkel was actually Project Director, not just producer, but he was effectively demoted to "producer" in the credits, which shows how he did for the game.

Or maybe it shows that being a developer can be an ungrateful job if you work with disloyal people. Let's remember that Avellone is the guy who stole the narrative premise of PS:T from "Pages of Pain", and never acknowledged that.

 

[Fairfax]

From the wikipedia entry about PS:T

I like how you bolded half the sentence and ignored the most important part, which is the fact Guido Henkel himself made that claim.

 

[Lurker King]

I like how you bolded half the sentence and ignored the most important part, which is the fact Guido Henkel himself made that claim.

And I like how you assume that his version is false without any evidence.

 

[Fairfax]

I like how you bolded half the sentence and ignored the most important part, which is the fact Guido Henkel himself made that claim.

And I like how you assume that his version is false without any evidence.

You said it yourself:

Avellone made a gigantic document vision with the characters and the story detailed explained. The main attraction of the game is the story and he wrote everything, alone.

And this is Guido's description of his own role:

As a result my primary responsibilities on that project were primarily administrative in nature. While I did some work on some of the technical design aspects of the game, I was mostly the guy who was crunching the numbers and maintained the project plans to make sure everyone knew what they were supposed to do, and got it done in time. It was also my job to shield the team from the many corporate issues that surround a project, that may simply be distracting the team from the creative aspects. It is neither a fun, nor a glorious job.

You either believe MCA wrote the whole thing by himself (which isn't true, but ok) and that's the main attraction, or you believe Guido, through "primarily administrative" work, had a greater influence. The two opinions are mutually exclusive.

 

[Lurker King]

You either believe MCA wrote the whole thing by himself (which isn't true, but ok) and that's the main attraction, or you believe Guido, through "primarily administrative" work, had a greater influence. The two opinions are mutually exclusive.

If you think that writing is enough to make a functional cRPG, you are mistaken.

 

[aweigh]

from the mouthbreathing shit guido has been spewing in recent years concerning rpg design i am fucking glad he had little input over the creative side of PS:T.

 

[Fairfax]

You either believe MCA wrote the whole thing by himself (which isn't true, but ok) and that's the main attraction, or you believe Guido, through "primarily administrative" work, had a greater influence. The two opinions are mutually exclusive.

If you think that writing is enough to make a functional cRPG, you are mistaken.

What are you even talking about? I quoted you saying it was the game's main attraction, nobody's talking about RPG design. Anyway, I'm sure you're right. Guido Henkel's administrative work (even though he quit months before the finish line) is what made PS:T a masterpiece. Too bad he didn't get the chance to make another one.

 

[Roguey]

That was MCA. Had it been any other BIS designer in his position, the game would've suffered the same fate as Stonekeep 2.

Well the guy has claimed that he was responsible for cutting features/content and firing people because no one else wanted to. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Iznaliu]

from the mouthbreathing shit guido has been spewing in recent years concerning rpg design i am fucking glad he had little input over the creative side of PS:T.

He may have acquired that shit later on, though.