Codex Interview RPG Codex Interview: Feargus Urquhart at Digital Dragons 2016

[Ninjerk]

What the fuck actually got edited?

 

[Trashos]

I wish you had turned speech into proper written word (hope that makes sense).

This is a heavily edited and highly polished version of the original transcript.

With respect to the effort involved, I have to say that it is still not polished enough. You have to be really motivated to go through it in its current form.

 

[Bubbles]

I wish you had turned speech into proper written word (hope that makes sense).

This is a heavily edited and highly polished version of the original transcript.

With respect to the effort involved, I have to say that it is still not polished enough. You have to be really motivated to go through it in its current form.

doesn't scale to your level

 

[Anthedon]

I shilled this over at the Paradox Tyranny forum in an effort to bring light to the benighted masses.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Yeah. The effort is much appreciated, the questions are great and there's plenty of gold information in this. So great work there.I was worried you will just fanboy jizz over him, but this is an honest to god solid interview.

That said, the transcript needs a heavy edit. Mainly, you need to leave out filler ( like, you knows, kind of, etc.) and repetitions (I was thinking, I was thinking). It's barely readable as it is. So keep that in mind when doing the MCA transcript.

 

[Bubbles]

Yeah. The effort is much appreciated, the questions are great and there's plenty of gold information in this. So great work there.

But the transcript needs a heavy edit. Mainly, you need to leave out filler ( like, you knows, kind of, etc.) and repetitions (I was thinking, I was thinking). It's barely readable as it is. So keep that in mind when doing the MCA transcript.

Part of the issue was that Obsidian has the power to blacklist us if we try to put words in FU's mouth. That won't be a concern with Avellone, so that transcription should be done much faster.

 

[ghostdog]

Good job on the interview!

But you should have heavily reduced all those "erm..." , "em..." "..." and make the text more readable in general.

 

[Perkel]

great interview

 

[J_C]

Big brofist for Radek for the interview, you were a good interviewer. The text might need some more edit, I had to read it very slowly to understand it, but the end result is that we got some nice answers from Feargus.

 

[Mustawd]

**NOT AN OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT** **THIS IS WHAT I HEAR IN MY BRAIN**

Spoiler

Jedi Master Radek: If you ever get a chance to develop a game in the World of Darkness setting, what qualities should this potential game possess? What should a great World of Darkness game be like?


Feargus Urquhart: So, what's interesting about World of Darkness is, we were talking to White Wolf, geez, in 2008 or 2007? Maybe 2006. We were talking about doing a World of Darkness game and so I think a World of Darkness game can be done in lots of different ways. But I think like, Bloodlines is a great example of one way, and if we were ever to make a World of Darkness game, I would want to take it in that direction. I think that the other direction we thought about was. “wouldn't be it cool to take Neverwinter Nights 2 and do a World of Darkness version of Neverwinter Nights”? I mean not Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) necessarily, but we could make that story and character-based RPG that’s associated with D&D. What we could also do is then give everybody the tools to go build their own World of Darkness game using a unique RPG system we were calling…ehm, the Storyteller I think? Anyhow, the RPG system is very much about telling stories, not so much about stats. And so if we could create that , where people could now create their own worlds and run their own little servers and everything, I think that’s where we would have taken a World of Darkness game.


JMR: One of Obsidian's canceled project we know the least about is Dwarfs. Could you tell us something more about it? Will we ever get a chance to see those Brian Menze concepts that Kevin Saunders praised so much?


FU: [laughs] Yeah, I don't think there’s really a way for us to show all that. If there were I would love to share those concepts, and I should ask at some point, I should ask to see if, if Disney would be okay. I have a feeling they would say no. Particularly, you know, working with a company like Disney, we always have to ask to share things, but at this point we really don’t have a green light to do so.

But I will try to share stuff about the game that I remember. For one, it had a third person view, it had a party of dwarfs... [remembering] so it was you as the prince and then you had dwarfs as part of your party, and it was third person... Gameplay-wise you were basically running around from place to place, but it had this kind of interesting mechanic where you had a conversation system as you were moving with your companions. I can press A, B or whatever, but I could talk with my companions, but I didn't have to stop and talk to them. You could have bigger conversations outside of that, but I thought that mechanic was interesting.

Aside from that, I thought the fight system was also pretty cool. From the standpoint that it was this fight system which had these concentric rings where different things could be going on in each ring. In the end, we were really proud of the vertical slice we ended up doing. It had a sort of streamlined open world. So there was no... you just went from place to place and you did stuff here and you did stuff there and that was on a very early version of Unreal 3. And it just had all these qualities, the art was fun, the prince, etc. It felt like, I don't want to say a youthful fable. But it had more of a cartoony look, in a fun and youthful feel. And it was too bad that one didn't move forward. And there are still people at Obsidian today that still ask me about doing it. Particularly now with the announcement of stuff from Disney…Yeah, it's too bad that that one didn't keep on going.


JMR: Did it go past the vertical slice, or not much more?


FU: We were at vertical slice, so basically it was at vertical slice where it was canceled.


JMR: Okay. After you announced Tyranny, are there any unannounced secret projects that Obsidian is working on left? I don't want details... I just want to know if there are any.


FU: [laughs like after hearing a joke]. Right, yeah, yeah.

So. What was found out, I don't know how it was found out, but we hired Leonard Boyarsky, from Blizzard, and Leonard...[searches for good words] was one of the co-creators of Fallout, and one of the co-founders of Troika. So we hired Leonard, and as you know Tim Cain now works for us. So neither Tim Cain nor Leonard are working on Tyranny or Eternity or Armored Warfare, so we might be working on something and they might be the guys that are looking into what we're doing.

JMR: So are they are working together?

FU: They are working together, yeah.

JMR: Thank you, the Codex will love it. I can just imagine this [sounds like an over excited 8 year old girl]

FU: [laughs]

JMR: Was it you who approached Paradox about making Tyranny? Or was it the other way around?

FU: That's a good question! So we were talking..basically negotiating about Eternity. Mostly about how they would publish Eternity, and distribute it for us. As a part of that, they asked what was the other stuff we're doing, and we were like, “we do have this other thing, but we're not sure yet if and how we're gonna fund it". And they were like, well, why don’t you present it to us. And so we presented it to them.


We'd been working on it probably for about four or five months before Paradox saw it, and it was about a year after we were working on it that we signed up with Paradox. And so... I don't know, it just sorta happened, as a part of working together, and then like we presented it, they loved the idea and then we were as they say, off to the races. I don't know if that translates, but we were ready to move forward.

JMR: Divinity: Original Sin and the new X-COM proved that turn based combat can be popular and profitable. Would you consider making a turn-based game?

FU: [laughs] So Tim Cain and Josh Sawyer and I don't know how many other people at Obsidian would love to make a turn-based game. So I'm not against it. What's weird is that sometimes people think I'm against it, but sometimes it's just having the opportunity. So, with Eternity, because we were doing an Infinity Engine-like game it’s naturally not turn based. And so that was our promise to people.

I'm not against a turn based game. You know it's funny because Josh would really like to make a sort of very low magic medieval game. So it’s a low or no magic, turn-based medieval game. Or a sort of a medieval [sic!] American Civil War RPG, again, with turn-based. So I think if there's any time we'd ever do it is... I even told Josh this, at some point in the future, I don't know, it could be 2 years, it could be 10 years. I want to give Josh that opportunity to go make a turn-based game.

JMR: When Pillars of Eternity was still in development, you were talking about launching a new Kickstarter. It was going to be launched in September 2013 or 2014. Was this game Tyranny? Is this game still in production or was it shelved? Was Chris Avellone involved?

FU: So, when we were talking about it we had planned to do another Kickstarter. However, I think a couple of things happened. First, we talked internally and we really felt that we needed to finish PoE 1 or at least be farther along with it before doing another Kickstarter. We thought that was our obligation in order to make sure we were meeting people's expectations of PoE 1, and we had a responsibility to our backers. They've given us a lot of money, and we'd seen a lot of people try to launch a second kickstarter before really being done with their first project. We didn't want to do that. So that was one of the complexities.

I think the other thing that happened was that we were having a hard time figuring out what it is that we wanted to do. Did we want to do PoE 2 as the next crowdfunding? Or do we have some other idea for a game? In the end, which sounds like very poor business, we just got really busy, and it unfortunately became a lesser priority. Like I said before, part of that was because we felt we wanted PoE 1 to be further along before we did it.

Whether it was going to be an MCA game? Most likely it was going to be, that wasn't a definite. But I would say that the goal was it to be something that Chris himself really wanted to make.

JMR: What setting, apart from traditional fantasy and post-apocalyptic, would you love to work on?


FU: [laughs] So it's what I would like to work on, which is maybe different than what a lot of people at Obsidian want to work on…but so I like, and I don't mean Shadowrun in particular, I like sort of that modern fantasy. I can't think today, my brain is really slow today... there's the wizard in Chicago, what's his name... the name of the novel's Storm Front, I can't remember the name of it right now. But it's that idea of a modern setting with magic.

We did have a proposal that we were working on for a while. Chris did most of the work on it, which was called “Hidden”. It was that idea of, again, having a modern setting with magic…sort of fairy-tale like with nursery rhymes like, the Old Woman in the Shoe or Old Mother Hubbard. And all these types of fairy tale stories we grow up with, like Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf; that all these stories were actually real. But it wasn’t like you’d see the Big Bad Wolf out and about, but more like they were more in the shadows. But it was always there…the idea that this world existed and you just didn’t see it. And that was basically the idea of Hidden.

Sort of like Neil Gaiman’s Otherworld or Underworld [we think he meant Neverwhere?]. But basically in the book it takes place in London and this kind of world is separate but exists in the city. There’s also another series of books called the Darkside that’s very similar. Anyway so there's this idea of sort of a modern fantasy and I always think that would be cool. It's not like, sparkly vampires, or anything like that, but it really is this idea of just sort of like, doing it in such a way, that is, that feels like it fits in our world now. I always thought that would be fun to do.

JMR: That game you mentioned, did it ever get out of pre-production?

FU: Which one?

JMR: Hell... something? [Yeah, I didn't get the name when we talked, but my mishearing still got us an informative answer]

FU: Uhmm... [silence for a second or two] There's no game that we've really ever talked about that's not... I have no other game that's been... that's not gotten out of preproduction that people don't know about. So the game I'm talking about, what I'm talking about is just something I'd like to do, it's nothing we've ever done.

JMR: Who is the lead writer for Tyranny?


FU: So that is Matt MacLean. So Matt was actually here last year, and he was also the lead designer on South Park: The Stick of Truth.

JMR: How many writers does Obsidian employ on Tyranny?

FU: [laughs]

JMR: How does Obsidian plan to organize the writing on such a choice-heavy game?

FU: So on Tyranny there are currently four full-time writers, I think. It's Paul, Megan, Matt, Robert, and then...[Go go, Duraframe!] So basically there's four full-time writers, and then there's some other people that are helping out, which actually is quite a lot for us. We usually don't have that many writers on a project all at once.

Or I should say, we usually don’t have people that are only writing. We do have a lot of writing in our games, but that's done by people that were both doing area design and writing at the same time. There's often a couple of other writers that were more full time, but not with like four full-time writers for Tyranny. That's a lot for us.

So how do we organize it? A lot of it is just separating it all out. It's giving each of the writers their own thing to be in charge of. For example, let’s take Caesar's Legion in New Vegas. For that we would want a writer to kinda do all the Caesar's Legion stuff, so that they had the voice for that. We try to have a sole writer create the content for a companion, instead of multiple writers write a companion.

[Mustawd: I totally rewrote this part because it’s incoherent as hell]

When creating the C&C portion, that’s when the writers and the level designers are working in tandem. Normally, the level designers are often writing and creating the content for most of the quests. When it comes down to critical story quests, because we have specific requirements in terms of re-activity and skill checks, the writers and designers need to work out how each story point is affected by each choice in that specific quest. So in that case it’s a just a lot of coordination and planning on both ends.

JMR: What do you think of RPG Codex? Are you a lurker?

FU: [laughs] So I do go up on RPG Codex from time to time. And what do I think? So RPG Codex... So the group of people there, they feel very strongly, right? And that's great. Like I feel really strongly about certain things, like you can hear me go off on a lot of stuff, right? And I think that's great. I think that sometimes I don't know what to do with the things that is brought up. Like I don't know if there is an expectation. I go up to there to see: Okay, what's the RPG Codex saying about this thing? And you know, like, wow! That's a lot about that thing! And so for me it's hard sometimes to go up there. I don't know how to go up there sometimes and do with the information that's up there. [laughs]

JMR: Sometimes it's contradictional!

FU: [laughs] Yes.

MR: Tyranny is said to be, relatively to other RPGs, short and heavy on choices. Do you think this is a direction RPGs should go? Or is it just a specific design choice fit for Tyranny?

FU: I think it's an absolutely just choice for Tyranny. So let's say I have a hundred points of resources. Right, so let's say something like Tyranny can cost two billion to make. So then I have like a hundred points of resources. So I can spend those resources to have a fair number of sort of choices, right? But then I have a much longer game.

Or I can spend those resources widely and provide all these super crazy different options, but that of course limits how long I can make the game. That's really what it is. So with Tyranny what we said is we wanna make this game where you truly have an incredible number of choices and when you choose a path in the game. And that path is very different and it feels very different and the game reacts like all over the place to that difference, more so than even our previous games. So it's realy making that choice of do we go wide with choice and short with length? Or do we go shallower with choice and longer with length.

JMR: Age of Decadence made the same choice and it became popular, so it may be a very good choice. [And that is how I wasted the opportunity to ask if he played it]

FU: Yeah.

JMR: You lent inXile the Pillars of Eternity engine for Torment.

FY: Yeah.

JMR: Are the two companies working separately on the engine? Or are you exchanging technical updates and/or feedback?

FU: So we're not an engine support, and we’re not an engine development company, right? So with inXile the idea was that we will help you as much as we can but you're kinda taking the engine and you'll get our updates and things like that. And we get some things back from them as well.

But they’ve basically owned what they've done, so they’ve made a change to the engine. You know, it's basically like when we do technical work on our own games. Even on the Star Wars game we try to own whatever we can. So it's the same, because we want them to feel ownership over their game and how they keep on making it.

And so there is some conversation, but I would probably say... there probably could be more? You know, I would say like neither... we have not made it a priority to kind of make that happen, everyone's busy. [laughs]. If I had to say anything about it I would say, yeah, I would say that I think we probably should have made more of an effort to work together, but the teams chat about things. And when they need some help, they ask and we give it to them. For instance, we wanted their implementation of WWise which is an audio engine and they sent it over to us. So there is still passing back and forth but it could probably be more.

JMR: Yeah, you may be both fighting against the same bug.

FU: [laughs]

JMR: You said during the conference you are now innovating tools for Pillars of Eternity 2. What kinds of functionalities will this introduce to the sequel?

FU: That's a very good question and I'm sure we'll be talking about it soon.

JMR: Okay.

JMR: So what Obsidian games did you not finish? Didn't play to the end, you personally.

FU: Oh! What have I not played it to the end? So.. [begins to list the games]

-I put a good number of hours into Fallout: New Vegas but I did not finish it.

-Neverwinter 2, I have like a lot of hours, like fifty, sixty.

-So I finished KotOR

-I finished South Park

-I have not finished Eternity, but again it's like I have sixty hours into it, but I haven't finished it

-I finished Alpha Protocol

- I didn't finish Dungeon Siege. Dungeon Siege I played a lot, but I did that thing where I start again play fifteen or twenty hours, start again fifteen, twenty hours and that kind of thing.

I guess what happens sometimes is that I will get like fifty, sixty hours into the game and because... the way I play games is I do everything, that's just my style. And so sometimes it's just super hard to finish everything.

That's the thing that sucks, in a good way, about our games. There's so much content, but trying to finish is hard. Sometimes I want to try different paths for me to feel what it’s like. Like in Dungeon Siege I wanted to try different characters, so it was very hard before the game was finished to play thirty... like twenty-thirty hours, you know with four different characters and so. That's what happens. So I try to play long enough to get that feeling.

JMR: But you know how they finish?

FU: Oh. Yes, yes, yes. Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah.


JMR: Obsidian is known to be a harbor for many talented people. Most of them are industry veterans. But to be competitive in a new cRPG-filled landscape, Obsidian needs the most talented people it can hire. Is there any strategy for finding those gifted professionals and amateurs and bringing them to your company?


FU: Do you mean... we find RPG industry veterans, but we need sort of new people as well?

JMR: Yes.

FU: Oh, okay. So I guess the thing is we are always hiring. We look to hire young people. We look to hire more women. So it's this active thing of just always looking for people. And we'll do internships and we try to do junior positions. We want people there that are excited about working on RPGs.

It’s also important that we're always gonna take care of people that work for us for a long time, but there is a point at which they're not excited and they have not been excited for working on a game for let's say like, two years. Like it's been there. At some point we have to have the conversation, and say: Are you excited about being here anymore? Like I know, you could stay here and get a check and all that kind of stuff, but are you excited?

So we're trying to bring in new people, we're trying to make sure that our veterans are happy, and if they're not happy, talk to them about... is there solutions to them being happy? Because if we have both, if we have the veterans that are still engaged and we have new people that are super-excited, that just creates great games.


JMR: A question you'll like - what does Obsidian think of romances?

FU: [laughs] So I play romances in video games. I'm probably getting in trouble for saying this, but I play the romances because it gets me experience and I get perks or I get things for doing them, right? So I don't gravitate to doing them. I know that's me personally.


And because I read a lot of fantasy books, I know there's the romance part in the fantasy books, and I like that part. Not too much, right? But I like that aspect of fantasy books. I don't read romance, like full romance, but I like that part. So it's interesting, but I just don't gravitate towards it in a game.

But I know that some people really enjoy [romances]. And some people think when we don’t have romances it's like we're ignoring this whole part of the human experience. I think if we were to do them, I’d want them to not feel forced. Like I think there's a number of games out there, which I'm not gonna name, that the romances feel forced. It just feels like I'm going through the motions. I feel like I'm just clicking the dialogue. Now I think some people really enjoy them, but still that's what I wouldn't wanna do. If we do them I want them to feel real. I can't tell you if that means there needs to be full, you know, CGI sex scenes or not full CGI... I don't even know how would we do it. But apart from that, the goal is to have them feel natural.

JMR: How is Leonard Boyarsky doing? Is he working on-site?


FU: [laughs] Yes. So, Leonard's doing good. You know, it’s funny. We worked so much together in '96 and '97 and of course, then Leonard left. And I've talked to him a number of times, but not a ton since they left Black Isle, it was... it was complicated, you know.

I would say, I was angry to an extent, because it was frustrating. I now had to go make a game with par t of my team gone suddenly and Interplay needed the revenue. So I had to get a game done fairly quickly and that was frustrating to me. And while this was all going on they were hiring people away from us.

So I was sure some of it with Leonard was that I... I certainly didn't reach out. But you know, we've talked a number of times, since Obsidian started and you know it was interesting. He actually reached out to Chris Jones, who is one of the founders of Obsidian, who also worked, he worked at Troika and it was about like: Hey, you know what about and he's just really interested in doing single player RPGs again. And hey, we're the spot for single player RPGs. And so it's been easy in a lot of ways because it's like going back to someone you know and worked with so much. And we kinda know each other even though twenty years have gone by. [laughs] I think it's worked out and I think Leonard's learned an amazing amount of stuff from having to run a company and then working at a big developer like Blizzard and so I think that... no, it's been good. I'm very hopeful that we'll come up with something cool.

took some literary license in order to make it coherent.

 

[Infinitron]

Geez Mustawd, if you're really volunteering to do that, then maybe we can use you for the MCA interview.

 

[Grotesque]

fuck this shitty interview

 

[Outlander]

Didn't know Feargus was ur dad.

 

[Fairfax]

I prefer the raw transcript thing. Closest thing to the original audio, and a heavily edited interview usually puts words in people's mouths. These pauses, filler words and poor diction can also be quite telling. The Codex question is a good example.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

I prefer the raw transcript thing. Closest thing to the original audio, and a heavily edited interview usually puts words in people's mouths. These pauses, filler words and poor diction can also be quite telling.

Exactly my way of thinking.


During transcription I did get rid off smaller ehms and smaller repetitions like I..I.. I don't know if Infinitron and Crooked Bee also killed some of them, but they found out some of my mistakes, like mishearing "the novel's name is Storm Front" as "Double Stromfont"
Chris Avellone during his interview was speaking clearly,without those ehm, ehms so it will be easier to read. His language was more like a written language, which is very fitting for him

 

[Joni Odin von Hassenstein]

we wanna hire more women

 

[SausageInYourFace]

How the fuck did you even transcribe it that closely without getting suicidal, JMR? I once had to transcribe just a small part of an interview (just a few minutes) and it took a great deal of my time and a great deal of my sanity.

JMR: Divinity: Original Sin and the new X-COM proved that turn based combat can be popular and profitable. Would you consider making a turn-based game?

FU: [laughs] So Tim Cain and Josh Sawyer and I don't know... probably... I don't know, how many... a lot of other people at Obsidian would love to make a turn-based game. [declarative] So I'm not against it. (..) I'm not against it, you know it's funny... Josh would really like to make either a sort of a... a very low magic medieval game. So there's almost or is not any magic, turn-based medieval game. Or a sort of a medieval [sic!] American Civil War RPG, again, with turn-based. So I think if there's any time we'd ever do it is... I even told Josh this, at some point in the future, I don't know, it could be 2 years, it could be 10 years. I want to give Josh that opportunity to go make a turn-based game.

This sounds semi-good, but for one thing, if its going to take ten years, I'll be mad, cause I was under the impression that the Sawyer dream game was next up after PoE2; and secondly, if its going to be American Civil War, I am going to be mad, cause I was looking forward to a Darklands-like.

JMR: What do you think of RPG Codex? Are you a lurker?

FU: [laughs] So I do go up on RPG Codex from time to time. (..) You know, it's sorta like that, because I go up to there to see: Okay, what's the RPG Codex saying about this thing and you know, like, wow! That's a lot about that thing!

Ha, my question actually made it in, thanks JMR!

 

[Fairfax]

I prefer the raw transcript thing. Closest thing to the original audio, and a heavily edited interview usually puts words in people's mouths. These pauses, filler words and poor diction can also be quite telling.

Exactly my way of thinking.


During transcription I did get rid off smaller ehms and smaller repetitions like I..I.. I don't know if Infinitron and Crooked Bee also killed some of them, but they found out some of my mistakes, like mishearing "the novel's name is Storm Front" as "Double Stromfont"
Chris Avellone during his interview was speaking clearly,without those ehm, ehms so it will be easier to read. His language was more like a written language, which is very fitting for him

Both say "like" in between sentences a lot, although that seems to be common for the vast majority of americans. It's unfortunate for Feargus, because his job is heavily affected by one's diction and enunciation.

 

[Excidium II]

I don't think I ever heard Feargus talk. Does he have the same gay accent as Josh/MCA?

 

[Fairfax]

I don't think I ever heard Feargus talk. Does he have the same gay accent as Josh/MCA?

Yes.

 

[Excidium II]

This must be why they lose contracts.

 

[Mustawd]

Edited version is done. Put all kinds of words and other objects in to FU's, as well as Jedi Master Radek's mouth.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...gital-dragons-2016.108970/page-2#post-4552164

 

[Mustawd]

I don't think I ever heard Feargus talk. Does he have the same gay accent as Josh/MCA?

Yes. IMO, anyways.

Edit: I don't think Josh does, but MCA def does IMO.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Geez Mustawd, if you're really volunteering to do that, then maybe we can use you for the MCA interview.

Honestly, transcribing from audio is the heavy lifting. Cleaning up verbatim transcript is 30 minutes of work tops and can be done while simultaneously masturbating.

I prefer the raw transcript thing. Closest thing to the original audio, and a heavily edited interview usually puts words in people's mouths. These pauses, filler words and poor diction can also be quite telling. The Codex question is a good example.

Not with Feargus it isn't. His speech pattern is like that with everything, you could ask him pancakes or waffles question and it would still be 5000 of you knows with scraps of actual content inbetween.

 

[Mustawd]

Cleaning up verbatim transcript is 30 minutes of work tops and can be done while simultaneously masturbating.

This is an accurate statement.

I did it while "working". Not even the best job, with some literary license in sentence structure. Overall, I think it's more understandable at least. I skipped over half the content in my first read through because it was just incoherent.