It will be up shortly. To speed up the process my intro and outro was not edited and cut out. Here there are, in their all unedited glory!:
Are there any Codex representatives on Digitals Dragons in Cracow? It was the question I asked Infinitron a week before the conference, hoping I could see some of my beloved game developers on the stage. Feargus Urquhart ,Chris Avellone are names I cherished for many years as my heroes. Who knows? Maybe if I were lucky, I would even get a chance to say hello and have a handshake. Surprisingly, it turned out, there were none. After having accreditation document filled I sent it to the organizers. They were impressed by the power of mighty Codexia so much, they replied after five minutes, clarifying I was clear to go. Surprised how smooth everything went, I was informed by Crooked Bee that she is working behind shadows to get me interviews with Feargus and Chris. I was shocked.
A few days later I found myself inside a train, and a distance between me and the Cracow was decreasing with every second. The last time I were there was ten years ago and I was just passing by then, so I was anxious to see the city.
Although I didn't have a quest compass, using my classical cRPG player super powers, I found way to my hostel without difficulties. I was enamored with the city I was passing by. XIX century tenements were everywhere, I quickly lost a count of Gothic cathedrals I have seen. I seen classicism, renaissance, secession. The atmosphere and beauty was certainly strong with this place, which made the Cracow a popular city for tourist. I may have ever meet there more tourist than indigenous Cracowians. The city was far better looking and more beautiful than my hometown of Warsaw. Being not razed and burned to dust by the Nazis may be the reason. I was surprised by the Vistula river. In Warsaw we have the same river, but it's double the width. Vistula there looked like a joke, like a baby river. And those bridges... there were not like serious bridges, more like toy bridges. Finding something I could be making fun off boosted my confidence.
The next day, the first thing I did was to go and eat pizza, the thing that didn't change for the rest of my staying in Cracow. Digital Dragons were only a very short, one kilometer walk from my hostel. I get there. I got the ID with a big "RPG Codex" insciption on it. I felt proud. The lectures were taking place in XIX century buildings with all of their beauty.
Being only ten minutes early I was surprised how nearly all of the seats were empty, although five minutes into the speech this was reversed and then, there were only a few single, empty seats in the sea of about three hundred people. I annexed the place from the first row, behind me I heard two clueless Poles talking: “I don't know who is he” which was replied with “I only know he made the South Park game”. Pearls before swine. I noticed Feargus. He looked somehow strange from the side, must have been too used of seeing him staring right into camera lens.
His speech started. It was a good and honest speech on how to manage people properly. It will be in a few weeks on the internet so I will not recap it and just recommend to see it. New information from there about the games was that breaking The White March into two parts was a mistake. It happened because Obsidian believed DLCs should come out as fast as possible and did not consider the costs and technical difficulties partitioning created. For those reasons, future DLCs made by Obsidian Entertainment will be like New Vegas DLCs. The team was updating tools and working on Eternity engine instead of developing the sequel, seeing this as investment which will made the sequel a better game, a movie I consider very smart. As the development of Pillars of Eternity 2 was the worst keep secret in the history of Obsidian, Feargus did not shy from mentioning it in cases I brought up, effectively ending the silly charade of being coy about the sequel.
I had an appointed time, but we still did not discuss the place for the interview. I approached him after the lecture and started with thanking him for the opportunity to meet him and for his time. He looked at me with that “There are at least three hounded people here. Is everyone going to thank me now? Boring! I guess I will go through the motions ” look of someone used to meeting his fans.
Then I touched my ID.I was not going for any dramatic reveal, I just was playing with my ID all day long. He looked and it and then understand everything.“OH! That's you!” Feargus exclaimed laughing out loudly. We decided on the site and I left the lecture hall.
The place was behind the Technology Museum, on the bench, close to firetrucks. I arrived twenty minutes early and was waiting for the interview. Feargus was late and out of schedule, but still kindly gave me promised half an hour of his time.
......
I got a photo with Feargus. Then he went to other interviews. I was excited and happy with the meeting. I got the vital information about the existence of Cain and Boyarsky game! Didn't know at that time, this piece of information was something Feargus was going to share with other interviewers, which retrospectively looks like the obvious movie.
At the end of the day there was the Digital Dragons Award ceremony for the best polish games. Although my reasons for being there and priorities had nothing to do with this ceremony, and not a single person on Earth would ever care if I attended or not, I still thought not going would be disrespectful to our hosts (too much anime can warp ones mind). The event was a bore, a crowded bore to be exact. The rooms were barely big enough to hold something like three hundreds people attending the event. For every category the nominees were the same (I do approve of the inclusion of Hard West, good game, check Ludo Lense's review of it) and in every category the winner was the same – Witcher III. This could be considered either boring or hilarious, depending on your preferences. Half of the audience, those closer to the podium were quite and took things seriously, the others were talking all way long and making fun of the ridiculousness off the ceremony. I loved how Americans games were all put into the Foreign Award category and were competing for only one statuette – give Americans they own medicine. Four pretty and talented girls were playing live the music from nominated games on string instruments, probably the best thing in the whole award ceremony. The second best was food. After the ceremony the DJ came and tried to make a party, poor DJ, only like five people were constantly dancing, and ten people were the absolute record of people dancing simultaneously. Would join them, but was tired. Then the waitresses started dancing at the bar. If you were ever suspecting that most of nerdgirls were lesbians, then you might have a point, because of the small numbers of girls among our humble neckbeards brotherhood, most of them looked not less interested in the show than boys. The boredom was crawling quickly with every second and then I went back to the hostel.
In the next episode: Interview with Chris Avellone.
