Codex Interview RPG Codex Interview: Eric Fenstermaker on Pillars of Eternity​

[Russia is over. The end.]

Much rather have somebody with CS background leading writing in videogames than someone with formal literature educashun.

Why's that? Austin Grossman graduated in English literature and then wrote for System Shock, Deus Ex, Clive Barker's Undying, etc. Now compare these genius titles to PoE, lol.

 

[Excidium II]

Because it's useful for a game developer in any leading role to understand how things are actually implemented.

MCA also graduated in English and he only mention it being useful for introducing him to a variety of literature which is not something you need to go to school to. The most important thing for writing well is reading (and of course writing) a lot.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

The most important thing for writing well is reading

Nah, bullshit. It's like saying that watching a shitload of movies will make you a director, cinematographer, script writer, or whatever else. No, you need to go to school for that.

And I mean look at PoE's writing.

 

[Excidium II]

lol no it's not. For an editor or something like that, sure.

 

[Trashos]

Mr Fenstermaker sounds like an intelligent guy who cares about his work. Maybe there is hope.

Two big ones had a substantial impact on the story, although both happened early-ish in production, so the content was never built. One was that we cut the next-to-last level of the game - or rather compressed it down to a single map, which contained little content. (This is Breith Eaman, the prison.) That cut hurt pacing quite a bit. The end came up very abruptly. I'd have loved to spend more time at least doing some more repairs to that part of the story, but that wasn't possible. The time just wasn’t there, and I think I also underestimated the impact.

Not sure I agree there. I enjoy short endings. They help me finish my later playthroughs. When I want to wrap up the playthrough, I want to wrap it up quickly, not go through a very lengthy process. I, for one, am glad that the length of the ending dungeon is what it is.

You fuckers really knock it outta park wi your editorials, shit all over supposed professionals.

True! Congratulations, Infinitron, for the great interview.

I would have liked to hear more about his attitude towards appealing both to the hardcore audience and to the more casual plebes (how he goes about this challenge). Especially after his recent post at Obsidian's forums about the Maerwald situation. Too bad you had sent your questions way before that. Still, a great interview.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Interesting quote from the interview:

We know that during the early development of Pillars of Eternity, there were multiple competing pitches for its storyline. Obviously, your pitch won. Can you tell us more about those alternative storylines, and why they didn't make it?

In retrospect, I don't think we would take that approach again. It's very difficult to gain momentum because everyone has a dog in the fight, and nobody is quite as excited for your idea as they are for theirs. And actually we didn't go with my pitch, either. Everything was kind of a stalemate at that point - there was no consensus favorite.

The good part was that all the pitches had something interesting about them. So after that I worked with George Ziets on a new draft that built on some of the favorite elements from all of the pitches. That got us closer, and there are a number of key elements there that made it into the final story. Thaos and the Leaden Key existed in a form in that draft as the antagonist, and the baby plague was in there, and some of the key events and locations. But the reception on that draft was still a little tepid. So there was one more iteration after that. That was where the twist about the gods was introduced, among other things. Was the reception any better for that one? Maybe, slightly. But at that point it was time to write the game, and I thought I could run with it, so that's what stuck.

So he basically admits that nobody was overly enthusiastic about the main plot they came up with, but they decided to run with it anyway, because they couldn't come up with anything cool and ran out of time trying? Lol, what a joke. A studio "renown for its great writing".

And then...

Once we got into production, the story did not change very much - there simply wasn't time to iterate on it.

You don't say?



Pretty cool:

I mentioned this at our ComicCon panel, but I was hoping we might do low-INT dialogue, and I had a pet idea that we would also have low-INT journal entries, since our journal is written in first person.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Interesting.

I'd have liked to do more with the insanity end of the player's affliction to help push immediate motivation. In an ideal world I'd have wanted to push it almost into Eternal Darkness territory, trying to make it more present and memorable. But that would've required quite more time and a greater resource investment.

It's a surprisingly difficult balancing act to motivate a player along the main quest of your game. One reason for that is that different kinds of players resent that kind of push to varying degrees. Players who self-identify as explorers may hate you for making them feel rushed if you employ a ticking clock device. (That was one major source of criticism on Mask of the Betrayer re: the spirit-eater system.) I think that's why you see a lot of open world games dispense with the ticking clock entirely and just decide it's not a big deal if the player wants to forget about the main plot and goof around. New Vegas took criticism for its early-game motivation, too(do I really care about getting revenge on this guy?), but I think it's easier to forgive in a systemic sandbox engine where the distractions and side paths are the stars of the game. For us, we did have to be careful not to push so hard that we didn't give people an opportunity to explore this new world on their own time, but I think there was more that could've been done in terms of motivation.

I always said Sawyer must probably be the explorer on the Bartle chart. So this quote semi-confirms my theory. Seems like Sawyer pulled the blanket entirely on himself and asked Fenstermaker to tone down the motivation till there was none. Seems like Fenster here knows there was a problem with it, but couldn't do anything, because "need to appeal to assplorers".

 

[Endemic]

Interesting quote from the interview:

Sounds like a case of too many cooks. This is where some stricter project management would benefit Obsidian, preferably from outside of the creative team.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

A weird quote.

Nobody likes writing exposition. You feel unclean when you've written it. It's boring and it doesn't advance plot or do anything worthwhile at all. Unfortunately, in this case, there was a lot that had to be conveyed for you to even understand what was going on. You had to know what a bîaŵac was before it struck. You had to know what adra was. You had to know what a Watcher was very shortly after becoming one. You had to know who Glanfathans were and why they would be mad at you for being in their ruins. You had to learn about animancers and the Saint's War and a slew of other things that led to the world being in the state it was in.

Who said you needed to know what a biawac was before it struck, etc? There are other ways, you know. Show something, explain it later, make the player go "ohhhhhh, that explains it". Some even consider it more rewarding. Who insisted on everything being spoonfed beforehand in meticulous details? Whose idea was it, I'd like to know.

Later on in development, we got kind of a hyperlinked tooltip system that explained certain highlighted words when you'd mouse over them. This was used to explain systems primarily, but if I'd have known about the system early on, I think I could've made a lot of the early dialogue cleaner by offloading those explanations into some database the player has to opt into. Wouldn't have solved everything, but wouldn't have hurt.

Would've been a real wikipedia experience.

 

[Excidium II]

Would've been a real wikipedia experience.

Would've been nice. A lot of things you have to ask about I'd expect my character to already know since it's not like he was dropped in the world from outer space when the game starts.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

In the past few years, we've set ridiculously high expectations for our narrative design candidates, and the ones we've hired are truly a cut above. So I can say that I personally am very excited to watch these talented writers grow into their roles and make stellar contributions to our next titles

Interesting. First of all, they kept hiring writers while Avellone was still there? What was that about?
And second, who are these superstars? Is it known at all, besides that crazy cat chick who writes trashy fanfic romances or what was it. Is she part of that wave of genius writers?

 

[Septaryeth]

Mr Fenstermaker sounds like an intelligent guy who cares about his work. Maybe there is hope.

Not sure I agree there. I enjoy short endings. They help me finish my later playthroughs. When I want to wrap up the playthrough, I want to wrap it up quickly, not go through a very lengthy process. I, for one, am glad that the length of the ending dungeon is what it is.

I don't think he meant that the ending dungeon was too short. It's the problem with the "other-worldly" gods only starting to have a real presence in the later part of Act III.
It felt rushed and wasn't really foreshadowed, whereas the light God's revengein the first two acts was thrown aside, and was concluded by an optional companion's monologue.
The Leaden Key was supposed to be the link that connects all three acts, but Thaos' presentation near the end of Act II was almost laughable and his confession at the very end is also not believable.
Act III being the shortest act also didn't help much.

Speaking of the competing ideas, wasn't there a discussion about how they have writers going on-and-off during development? They changed the writers teams like three times?

 

[Urthor]

Much rather have somebody with CS background leading writing in videogames than someone with formal literature educashun.

Why's that? Austin Grossman graduated in English literature and then wrote for System Shock, Deus Ex, Clive Barker's Undying, etc. Now compare these genius titles to PoE, lol.

Because correlation implies causation?

See it'd be a neat point you're making if a) what you think of as an English Literature major is was close to what an English literature major actually is, and b) if you think you get through a liberal arts school like Harvard without getting the basics of writing hammered into you.

Even if he had a MFA, that's still a good step away from what you're actually doing in video game writing in most cases, churning out portions of film scripts rather than actual novels. Not every job in the world has a vocational degree attached to it, or requires one.


All in all, there's a good way to beg for money for your upcoming Kickstarter, and there's a bad way, and delivering a bang up interview which real recrimination on the mistakes you made is definitely the good way.

 

[Fenstermaker's Folly]

Hey dudes it's Eric. Bester, fwiw I basically have a minor in English as I spent almost all my electives in it but my college doesn't give out minors, because who gives a shit about a minor?

I do think Excidium's comment is dead on. While it's true not everyone who reads a lot is a good writer, good writers generally read a lot. (And write a lot.) Studying lit in college is a path to getting practice at that but not the only one. When I read narrative job applications, I get plenty of mediocre ones from English majors and good ones from people who studied something else. The best people have both talent and lots of experience, but that's wholly independent of their degree.

(I also think English departments tend to put too much emphasis on analysis and not enough on writing, but that's academia for you.)

If there are aspiring writers here who didn't study English in school, don't sweat it and just keep getting good.

 

[Fenstermaker's Folly]

(Also, just made this account, so there'll be a delay until the mods approve )

 

[Infinitron]

Holy crap Roguey, you've done it again.

Crooked Bee DarkUnderlord Developer badge, Obsidian Entertainment

 

[Jaedar]

Pretty nice interview. However

We had two major themes we wanted to work with, both of which seemed natural and important to discuss for this particular story and setting. I'll suggest that people who think one of them is about faith might want to broaden their perspective a bit. Both themes are present in the player's story and at least one is present in each companion's story, though which theme it is varies. White March (taken as a whole) puts a spin on both, but tends to focus on one in particular.

I still have no idea what the two themes were. And stuff certainly didn't feel very connected by themes when I played the game.

There is a series called the Malazan Book of the Fallen that has a similar level of involvement (probably heavier than ours), and someone referred me to it. Might've been Chris. I have only read a small part of the first book, but I think it was good to see a sort of "proof of concept" of that kind of a setting.

You certainly dodged a bullet there.

Personally, I would like to see us make shorter games (e.g. 30-40 hours instead of 60-80) where we cut the worst of our content and spend time iterating on the best.

Yes. There are very few (but some) stories/systems/games that need to be 60 hours long. PoE could in my opinion easily have explored the setting and systems as much as it did in 30 hours. I'm not going to the obsidian forums to spout this though. Frankly, the focus is way too much on the number, instead of how appropriate said number is for the game.

A separate, but equally large part of it was the exposition. Nobody likes writing exposition. You feel unclean when you've written it. It's boring and it doesn't advance plot or do anything worthwhile at all. Unfortunately, in this case, there was a lot that had to be conveyed for you to even understand what was going on. You had to know what a bîaŵac was before it struck. You had to know what adra was. You had to know what a Watcher was very shortly after becoming one. You had to know who Glanfathans were and why they would be mad at you for being in their ruins. You had to learn about animancers and the Saint's War and a slew of other things that led to the world being in the state it was in.

Later on in development, we got kind of a hyperlinked tooltip system that explained certain highlighted words when you'd mouse over them. This was used to explain systems primarily, but if I'd have known about the system early on, I think I could've made a lot of the early dialogue cleaner by offloading those explanations into some database the player has to opt into. Wouldn't have solved everything, but wouldn't have hurt.

Disagree. I don't have to know anything about biawacs to tell I should probably flee when it happens. It has ominous purple glow, lightning, seems to do something to corpses and the guide(or some other generic npc) is terrified of it. That's plenty, and could have worked just as well without any exposition about *souls* and soulstorms. Also, if you can move a piece of writing to a database (codex as bioware calls it), you may as well not put it in the game, because it's clearly not important enough to be in there (as evidenced by you wanting to take it out).

 

[Infinitron]

We had two major themes we wanted to work with, both of which seemed natural and important to discuss for this particular story and setting. I'll suggest that people who think one of them is about faith might want to broaden their perspective a bit. Both themes are present in the player's story and at least one is present in each companion's story, though which theme it is varies. White March (taken as a whole) puts a spin on both, but tends to focus on one in particular.

I still have no idea what the two themes were. And stuff certainly didn't feel very connected by themes when I played the game.

Come on, really. All those companion quests that end with the companion not getting a clear answer to what he was looking for didn't clue you in that the game was trying to tell you something?

 

[Jaedar]

We had two major themes we wanted to work with, both of which seemed natural and important to discuss for this particular story and setting. I'll suggest that people who think one of them is about faith might want to broaden their perspective a bit. Both themes are present in the player's story and at least one is present in each companion's story, though which theme it is varies. White March (taken as a whole) puts a spin on both, but tends to focus on one in particular.

I still have no idea what the two themes were. And stuff certainly didn't feel very connected by themes when I played the game.

Come on, really. All those companion quests that end with the companion not getting a clear answer to what he was looking for didn't clue you in that the game was trying to tell you something?

I really don't remember "companions not getting a clear answer" as the ending to their quests. Maybe my memory is poor, maybe I didn't reach the ends of their quest, maybe it is all just a blur of exposition and snoozeworthy combat.

 

[Anthony Davis]

(Also, just made this account, so there'll be a delay until the mods approve )

Welcome to the party, Eric!

 

[Athelas]

(Also, just made this account, so there'll be a delay until the mods approve )

You really didn't need to make your username Roguey's nickname for you, though I suppose signing up on the Codex could be considered folly as well.

 

[Trashos]

I really don't remember "companions not getting a clear answer" as the ending to their quests. Maybe my memory is poor, maybe I didn't reach the ends of their quest, maybe it is all just a blur of exposition and snoozeworthy combat.

Eder and Kana were two obvious ones. Eder wanted to know why his brother fought for Readceras, Kana wanted to find an ancient tablet.

I was actually really pissed with Eder's quest when it finished, but then I finished Kana's and the pattern started to form.

 

[Infinitron]

The other theme, I think, is something related to submitting to vs subverting authority (most obviously seen in Pallegina's quest)

Perhaps Eric likes Sagani's quest conclusion because it manages to clearly relate to both of the themes.

 

[J_C]

Great interview. I just want to quote one thing:

I would like to see us make shorter games (e.g. 30-40 hours instead of 60-80) where we cut the worst of our content and spend time iterating on the best.

I wish people would start to realise that 30-40 hours is perfectly fine for an RPG, and stop being butthurt about it. I would have also liked if Obsidian would have realised this and make the game in a way Eric mentions. Make the game shorter, and use the extra time polishing it.

 

[Brutan]

Great interview. Also, I' m playing 3.0 now and it's a much better game than 1.x. They've done great work.