Editorial RPG Codex Report: A Codexian Visit to inXile Entertainment

[J_C]

And why is he advertising Atari company and not his? Does that mean they're so poor they need to wear used clothes thrown by other companies?

Or, you know, he just likes that shirt. I know this sounds totally unbelievable, but that's a possibility.

 

[MRY]

Never noticed before that the Bard's Tale iconography went from a Star of David in BT2 in the top left to an Iron Cross in BT3. Physician, heal thyself!

 

[Fairfax]

Then we find out the embargo really wasn’t broken, but that information didn’t come out until later.

That's why it all went to shit. They should've checked if the embargo had been broken before blacklisting and antagonizing the Codex. I guess someone (Brother None, I assume) simply told them Infinitron broke the embargo and they took his word for it.

At this time, a slim, youthful man with angular features and a perspicacious aura slipped into the room. I did not recognize him at first, but I knew who he was, as Brian had said earlier that George would be joining us for the interview, and there was only one George at InXile that he could have meant.

The Codex emissary didn't know who George Ziets was, or at least what he looks like.

the guy who helped invent Planescape had invented another world which we thought was kind of unique.

Zeb Cook created Planescape and was the only designer to work on the Campaign Setting book. Monte Cook did write a bunch of Planescape modules, but he didn't "help invent it".

How much did Torment: Tides of Numenera cost to make? How big was the team? How long was the production period?

Brian: It depends on if you count pre-production as production. It really got into full production in late 2013. The crowd funding was finished around summer but there was a lot of writing and pre-production for 5 or 6 months. We didn’t really start rolling until the end of that year. So a little over three years.

Brian: The team size varied a lot.

George: In the early days it was quite small for quite a while.

Brian: When it was running at full capacity it was 30 or 35 people.

Can you give a bit more detail? How long was it quite small?

George: That’s a good question. I do know that pre-production it was quite small. When we entered production, it gradually ramped up.

Brian: A one person per month sort of thing.

Colin: In pre-prodution, it was really just narrative guys: Adam, Kevin, me, George, Steve Dobos, and I think Erin Myers.
George: I even came on pretty late for pre-production.

It's Aaron Meyers, not Erin Myers FFS.

Also, this confirms the speculation about the game being understaffed because of WL2/WL2 DC. With one person per month, that's ~15 people by the time WL2 came out, and many of the new additions were writers or artists as well.

Kevin Saunders left before the end of production. Can you talk about why he left and how his departure affected production?

Brian: I can’t talk about an employee’s specific performance, but what I can do is to provide you with a factual history of things. Kevin left the project in late 2015, right? At that point, we were roughly two years into production. At that point, we’ve gotten the first pass of combat. The story was not yet at first pass. No abilities or weapons were in outside of the alpha systems. And so, at that time, if we had gone along that route, the game would not be done until the year 2018. I could not afford to stay on that path. I had to change what we were doing.

And, to talk about scope, the product was wildly over scoped. Even today, after we made the “cuts,” the original specification for the game was 600,000 words. You know how many we are at now? It’s 1.6 million words, probably a world record for a single player game. I think the only games that have more word count is MMOs done over a long period of time.

George: When recording, the guys who were doing the recording were saying, this is like one of those big MMOs, and they were shocked that it was a single player game.

Brian: After cuts, it ends up being several times what we wanted it to be. Planescape: Torment, the number that was thrown around a lot was 750,000 words. But when you talk to Avellone, he would say we actually double counted some sentences, so it might not even be that high. I think the Bible is like 700,000 words so that seems plenty of words to do a narrative piece, something that is as big as the Bible.

So basically, after two years in, I had to change plans. So those are the facts. I’m not trying to disparage Kevin, I don’t want to talk negatively about him in any way, but I can at least speak to the facts behind what was going on at that point.

I guess there are two ways of looking at this:

1. He held Kevin personally responsible for the things he mentioned.
2. He didn't know it was all Kevin's fault, but that's where the buck stopped and something had to change.

Either way, it's still a strange explanation. In hindsight, the project may look over-scoped, but was it really? As Fargo himself pointed out, the game was meant to have about as many words as PS:T, but ended up with ~2.5 times more. That wasn't part of the promises, however. The bloated word count only became a selling point after the fact.

They also had Obsidian's engine, a licensed setting, less combat (so a lot less resources spent on creating, balancing and tweaking encounters, enemies, etc) and a bigger budget than PS:T. If it wasn't for the writing bloat, there's little to suggest it couldn't have delivered what was promised, despite the small team early on. For better or worse, PoE fulfilled almost all promises almost 2 years before TTON was released, for example.

The cuts may have been first discovered by Codex member Fairfax.

I appreciate the credit, but the first time I posted about the cut companions was in early 2016.

During the Kickstarter campaign for Torment, you guys had plans for an extended preproduction. In retrospect, many large changes were made to the game over the course of its development. In retrospect, did the game's development reveal the limits as to what can be achieved in preproduction, or would you stick to the same process for similar games in the future?

Brian: In this particular case, I would say no. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do pre-production. But in this case, I don’t think we got as much benefit as we should have seen.


How would you fix this process?

Brian: I’m a big believer in iteration. I like to use iteration as quickly as possible. I even place more importance on it than preproduction, if I had to choose between the two. I think I have a more like-minded person on the project now than perhaps I’ve had in the past.

How were they supposed to do these quick iterations with most animators, programmers and scripters working on WL2 during the first 2 years?

A long pre-production wasn't the problem. Fargo said in the other reply that pre-produciton lasted until late 2013. PS:T's pre-production was just as long (almost all of it with only 1 writer) and it didn't hurt the game at all. As for the quick iterations, it's not like they had enough people to make them, which is why 2 years later they only had that barebones systems alpha to show for it.

Brian: The majority of the entire company was on Torment, that was very much the case.

You just said that wasn't the case for at least 2 years.

Maybe we could’ve moved the start time up a couple of months while we were doing Director’s Cut things. Maybe.

Maybe?

I’ve been involved in a lot of products before as you know, and whenever we’re doing something different or innovative, they’re messy behind the scenes. Fallout 2, behind the scenes, was a mess. Planescape: Torment was a mess.

Why didn't the interviewer ask anything about that? Even though some here already know part of these stories, it's a relevant topic and would've been informative to the vast majority of readers.

The original producer for that project was replaced.

I doubt the interviewer knew enough to notice, but this was another interesting bit. Fargo is implying this was Interplay's call, while Guido has always claimed he chose to leave. If he was fired, that would confirm some speculations about PS:T's development.

George: He wrote Oom, or rather he wrote the initial drafts of Oom. Now Gavin is doing additional work on Oom. But because Oom was ultimately cut, his work was not in the version of the game that was shipped, it’s going to be in the update.

Huh, that's weird. Wasn't the Toy supposed to be Adam Heine's? He even wrote a blog post about it IIRC.

Comment: I was wrong here because it’s the Beta portraits that I was thinking about.

10/10 research.

Brian: I think it was Nils.

Colin: It was Nils.

Should've included a note: [Nils Hamm, concept artist] and at least one of the pieces they're talking about:

Brian: But I don’t remember there being a complaint about the quality going down from the Beta.

There was, but it was mostly here. Why didn't the interviewer mention that?

Colin: We decided, early on, that the world of Numenera was weird enough, and so we wanted to focus on telling weird stories, rather than having weird looking companions. We could've easily turned Aligern into a sysygy ghoul, or made Matkina a silver orphan. But that's all just surface stuff. Where I think we have done things very differently is that we gave them interesting back stories. I mean, if a woman who has fractured herself across different dimensions is ordinary, then I guess I'm pretty out of touch.

"The world is weird enough, the characters don't have to be". Out of touch indeed.

Colin: The people who are open to enjoying this game are enjoying the hell out of it. There's a reason the professional reviews are just ecstatic. I saw some guy claiming today: I started playing Planescape: Torment again and I have to admit I'd rather be playing Torment: Tides of Numenera right now. This is a subjective thing, people enjoy the things they like and there's no accounting for taste.

Colin is in denial and his answers were all terrible.

Brian: And that's the thing, and I'm not just blowing smoke, because there's some really smart people on the Codex, like MRY is a great example. I worked with him and the guy is smart as hell, he's a district attorney, and he came to the office one time and I was just absorbing... He had really great input, and I would love to get back to where we could get more of that from you guys because we are on the same side more than most.

I love how Fargo considers MRY a codexer who worked on the game rather than a developer who posts on the Codex.

What can the Codex do better?

What the hell is the point of this question? Why would anyone want to be lectured by them?

We did too much at Interplay.

I guess he'd agree with some of the criticism I've posted here.

--

Besides the apology (which would've happened regardless of the questions) and some info about the game's development cycle, the interview wasn't informative or even interesting. Whoever did this interview was more concerned with asking questions from a list rather than paying attention and asking relevant follow ups. Several interesting thoughts were not expanded upon because the topic was suddenly changed by the interviewer.

 

[mondblut]

The interviewer is extremely self referential and full of himself. Codex this, codex that, what do you think of the codex, what advice would you give to the codex, blah blah blah. And not a single good question about the game. Extremely retarded guy, whoever this is. I take it back, Adam Heine is no longer a cuck, this interviewer is.

Who cares about some shit game? The Codex is far more important.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Zeb Cook created Planescape and was the only designer to work on the Campaign Setting book. Monte Cook did write a bunch of Planescape modules, but he didn't "help invent it".

While technically he didn't help invent it, both him and McComb created a lot of material that expanded the setting (they were not the only ones, of course) so in the end they should receive plenty of credit for what Planescape was.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

What kind of assfuckery is this?

"Secret agent?"
What happened to transparency and the balls to be yourself, say your piece? Here of all places, not like anyone's disallowed to express their opinion, is it.

Some special faggot is too sensitive, so O.K.? Anonymously? Are we gonna be like SHIT sites, where "guest writers" shill or write at their whim? No consequences?
What the fuck is this guys? We are like, so not like that.

I understand why you'd all want this article up in the front page, why you wouldn't wish to let such an opportunity slip by the Codex. With you; but we do things a certain way here. This is a bad kind of a first.
Men have names and the balls to stand by their words.

DarkUnderlord Boss sorry for tagging you but for the love of God, don't let them do this again. It's a slippery slope and content/context depending, it can lead to even more assfuckery.

edit: because someone's bound to mention this. Yes, i know it's our questions. It's setting the precedent that bugs me. And come to think of it, since it's our questions, not the guest writer's, why would this sensitive faggot feel the need to post anonymously and why would we allow it? After all he's just a "representative", right?

The Codex relies on volunteers to handle visits like this. Given we can't pay said volunteers, it means we're limited to people who aren't stupid, and who live near the physical location in question. In order to then get those people to actually visit said location, there might be other conditions or things we need to give up based on their circumstances or skill-set (like naming them, getting them to film the whole thing, or accepting that they take shitty photographs and really need a new camera and some lessons) otherwise it doesn't happen.

Given the quality of the output, those conditions were acceptable to us on this occasion.

 

[MRY]

Every part of his description of me is a little off (maybe a lot off when it comes to my smarts), but I can't really complain as it's all very complimentary. It's like Joker's ambiguous origin story.

I think the production timetable might be off -- possibly Brian misspoke or the interviewer jotted it down wrong. According to all of the Kickstarter updates and interviews from that time period, the game was in pre-production (or something less than full production) until late 2014, not late 2013.

The December 2013 Kickstarter update explained:

For a while now, some of you have been asking when we’d be transitioning from preproduction to production. With Wasteland 2’s recent early beta release, you may be aware that the inXile team will be spending more time on that game to get it done right—one of the fundamental benefits of Kickstarter is that we have the direction from our backers to emphasize quality over punctuality. This decision impacts Torment because most of the production team (e.g., programmers, artists, animators, etc.) will be moving onto Torment later than originally expected, which means we’ll be in preproduction for a longer period of time.

In April 2014, George joins the project full time as leader area designer, explaining that "until now, this position hasn’t really been necessary, but with production starting soon, area creation will become a major focus for our team."

In June 2014, the project was "starting to ramp up" and they "started welcoming some folks from Wasteland over to Torment." The update mostly calls this period still "preproduction" but also calls it "limited production" because some content is being created. The team is also interviewed by RPS, and the leads answer questions premised on the game's being in preproduction. In part two of the interview, Kevin is asked when he is hoping the project will enter production, and he answers it is in "limited production" until more of the WL2 team can be shifted over.

In September 2014, Beekers explains that the project is "closer to full-scale production."



So I think there may be some miscommunication afoot. I might check with Brian to see if I can clarify.

 

[FeelTheRads]

I noticed how MRY calls everyone there by their first name but not BN. Also I remember a post where he was telling about his good experiences with inXile people which he named, but BN was not among them.

Did they never meet or is BN really the twat that he seems to be? Speculate!

 

[MRY]

I really like him. I think I use Beekers because that's what everyone seemed to call him. I owe him a big debt of gratitude, too, for helping get me the job, something I think I've mentioned several times before (but don't mind mentioning again).

 

[Perkel]

Great interview ! Hats of to Fargo. One man creating CRPG industry and then pushing another golden age of CRPG to finally lie down with cigar once future of CRPGs is safe.

 

[FeelTheRads]

I owe him a big debt of gratitude, too, for helping get me the job,

Beware if he ever puts you on a train.

 

[PlanHex]

Speaking of people, what did Brian Mitsoda actually contribute to the game?

George: He wrote Oom, or rather he wrote the initial drafts of Oom. Now Gavin is doing additional work on Oom. But because Oom was ultimately cut, his work was not in the version of the game that was shipped, it’s going to be in the update.

(Almost) called it: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...te-9-chris-avellone.81527/page-2#post-2560593
Except it's Gavin, not Chris, who will be doing the rewriting this time.

 

[Irenaeus]

Zeb Cook, Monty Cook, Colin McCook... What difference, at this point, does it make?

 

[Azarkon]

Every part of his description of me is a little off (maybe a lot off when it comes to my smarts), but I can't really complain as it's all very complimentary. It's like Joker's ambiguous origin story.

I think the production timetable might be off -- possibly Brian misspoke or the interviewer jotted it down wrong. According to all of the Kickstarter updates and interviews from that time period, the game was in pre-production (or something less than full production) until late 2014, not late 2013.

The December 2013 Kickstarter update explained:

For a while now, some of you have been asking when we’d be transitioning from preproduction to production. With Wasteland 2’s recent early beta release, you may be aware that the inXile team will be spending more time on that game to get it done right—one of the fundamental benefits of Kickstarter is that we have the direction from our backers to emphasize quality over punctuality. This decision impacts Torment because most of the production team (e.g., programmers, artists, animators, etc.) will be moving onto Torment later than originally expected, which means we’ll be in preproduction for a longer period of time.

In April 2014, George joins the project full time as leader area designer, explaining that "until now, this position hasn’t really been necessary, but with production starting soon, area creation will become a major focus for our team."

In June 2014, the project was "starting to ramp up" and they "started welcoming some folks from Wasteland over to Torment." The update mostly calls this period still "preproduction" but also calls it "limited production" because some content is being created. The team is also interviewed by RPS, and the leads answer questions premised on the game's being in preproduction. In part two of the interview, Kevin is asked when he is hoping the project will enter production, and he answers it is in "limited production" until more of the WL2 team can be shifted over.

In September 2014, Beekers explains that the project is "closer to full-scale production."



So I think there may be some miscommunication afoot. I might check with Brian to see if I can clarify.

My guess: Kevin Saunders and Brian Fargo didn't have the same time table in their heads. Kevin was in charge of the project at that time. Then "changes" were made because the game "wasn't going to finish until 2018."

 

[MRY]

Well, what Brian said in interviews back in days of yore was that Torment wouldn't leave pre-production until WL2 shipped: "A key part of our messaging was we did not want to start a second production team but instead wanted to make sure our core group would roll onto a second game once Wasteland 2 was complete." In early 2014, he explained that : "It's great when you have pre-production without the overhead attached. That way they can take their time, hone it in, craft it, argue about word choice for a week if they want." Who knows? I wonder whether part of the problem was underestimating how long content creation would take once WL2 wrapped and full production of TTON began. Various aspects of TTON would make production slower than WL2 (can't use Unity Store assets, much more writing, more complex level design, complicated Crises in lieu of standardized combat, etc.), so maybe part of it rested on an expectations gap there. Still, it does seem like production didn't begin until late 2014 rather than late 2013 -- though I suspect the line between pre-production and production isn't so bright.

 

[Azarkon]

Well, what Brian said in interviews back in days of yore was that Torment wouldn't leave pre-production until WL2 shipped: "A key part of our messaging was we did not want to start a second production team but instead wanted to make sure our core group would roll onto a second game once Wasteland 2 was complete." In early 2014, he explained that : "It's great when you have pre-production without the overhead attached. That way they can take their time, hone it in, craft it, argue about word choice for a week if they want." Who knows? I wonder whether part of the problem was underestimating how long content creation would take once WL2 wrapped and full production of TTON began. Various aspects of TTON would make production slower than WL2 (can't use Unity Store assets, much more writing, more complex level design, complicated Crises in lieu of standardized combat, etc.), so maybe part of it rested on an expectations gap there. Still, it does seem like production didn't begin until late 2014 rather than late 2013 -- though I suspect the line between pre-production and production isn't so bright.

During the Kickstarter, they said they would deliver the game at the end of 2014. Then it got pushed to 2015, later 2016, and eventually all the way to 2017. I doubt any of this was planned, and I also wonder how they could have possibly thought late 2014 was a practical delivery date when the Kickstarter was in early 2013, especially since, as you said, their team was still on another game at the time.

 

[Roguey]

Ah, 2013, back when Fargo seriously believed that Wasteland 2 would be able to ship before the year was out. Dangerous optimism.

 

[Fry]

But D:OS sold like hotcakes. I think the lesson to take away here is not that isometric games don't sell (hell, Diablo 3 of all games is isometric of a sort!), but that boredly phoning in a game obsessed with nostalgia and nostalgia alone won't cut it. When there's no passion, fans can tell.

PoE and D:OS were awhile ago now. Lots of people bought based on hype, and discovered groggy isometric RPGs weren't what they were looking for. I really hope PoE2 does well, but I doubt it.

Bakersfield, here I come!

Hate to tell you, homes, but if Bakersfield had beaches (nope) or beach bunnies (definitely not) they'd look like this...

It's a farming and oil production town. Good luck.

 

[TT1]

Well, maybe Kevin was right... The game sure need more content and time.

 

[Urthor]

Well, maybe Kevin was right... The game sure need more content and time.

Game didn't need more content as much as it needed better content. The length was fine. Criticisms boil down to a) the combat & encounters, basically the crisis system shat the bed and the attempt to combine dialogue and combat through them just failed b) the companions, and c) the storyline and ending in my mind.

It wasn't a bad game visual novel, but InExile still have a misunderstanding of what parts of turn based games are enjoyable, and how to make a good one. Two narratives of shitty combat and "lol wat u betrayed dem backers" probably fed into the sales being so awful.

 

[laclongquan]

And why is he advertising Atari company and not his? Does that mean they're so poor they need to wear used clothes thrown by other companies?

Or, you know, he just likes that shirt. I know this sounds totally unbelievable, but that's a possibility.

Agree! Not all company shirt are created equal. Possibly the Atari guy in charge of that splurge on quality material~

 

[MRY]

I wanted to add a short response to the criticism of Colin, which I think is misplaced.

To begin with, I think the assertion that he's full of himself or incapable of hearing criticism is flat out wrong. Colin has always been sharply critical of his own work. While he has always demonstrated the "pride of authorship" that compels him to work hard on his craft, he never showed the excessive "pride of ownership" that stands in the way of editorial criticism. In fact, in every instance where he invited me to review and edit his work, his directions were always: (1) be as harsh as possible and (2) make as extensive changes as you want. Where he rejected my suggestions it was because he was right (or at least I was persuaded he was right; maybe we were both wrong). Thus, I find it simply impossible to believe that he is tuning out criticism of the game. To the contrary, I am certain he is listening attentively to it, probably to his dismay.

Second, I think the expectation people had for his role in the interview (i.e., that he would confess TTON's narrative was an inferior work and that the Codex's criticisms of it were well taken) was very unrealistic. It is perfectly consistent with PR norms to criticize the process of the game and its marketing, and thus the mea culpas you heard from others were a reasonable way to talk about a game that is still in its early sale cycle and less than two months post-release. It is not consistent with PR norms to criticize the game itself, even to a more thoughtful publication like the Codex that might be able to pick up the nuances. "Even Lead Writer admits TTON's story sucks!" would run the comment threads. Moreover, while it is perfectly consistent with being a good person to take blame for your failures and for your colleagues' failures, in this case many of the criticisms of the story are not really directed at his work but at his colleagues, and to endorse the criticisms would be crap on his colleagues' work publicly. For instance, he would never say, "Yes, the Meres turned out to be a bad idea, they were too dense and a large number of players got bored," even if it's true, because he would be looking to catch my flak, not to put a spotlight on me for enemy AA. Which is all to say that neither Colin's professional obligations nor his personal values would permit him to do what you guys want, not because he's arrogant or in denial but because he's a responsible person, and sometimes being responsible means putting a good face on things rather than engaging in criticism and self-criticism to obtain public absolution. I suspect that two years from now, when the marketing imperatives are different, you'll get to read interesting and self-critical post mortems.

Finally, even though there is lots of criticism of the game's writing, which seems thoughtful and persuasive to me, there are also people who have said very nice things about it, and it seems a little unreasonable to expect Colin to disregard the praise entirely. God knows the world is bitter enough that we should take the sweet when it comes.

To be clear, I'm not saying that you're wrong to criticize the game's story, or the writers, and or ultimately Colin as the lead writer. He would be the first to say that the buck stops with him and that good criticism is the key to good writing. I just think you're wrong about his attitude here, almost entirely backwards, and it seemed unjust for me to say nothing about it. (As I've said before, though, I feel obliged to speak up for my colleagues in this respect, so I'm absurdly biased. Still, I think I'm right on this.)

 

[Tigranes]

More or less what MRY says - it's much less likely for a game lead to say "yeah the story sucked" 2 months after release than, say, a singer-songwriter admitting that one song wasn't so great years down the line.

It's also worth noting that Colin doesn't necessarily have to agree with the Sekret Interviewer's points for him to be open to criticism. I don't think, for example, that lack of areas or cut content or the pacing of Crises or the high word count were themselves crucial factors that made the game not very good, even though each of those things are obviously problematic for numerous reasons and even though I thought the game was so poor I stopped playing halfway. It just means Colin either has to agree with those particular assessments, or he has to disagree then give different reasons the game wasn't great (which wasn't really how the questions were structured for him to do), or he has to just defend his views on those specific criticisms - which is what he does, and it's a bit naive to extrapolate that Colin just doesn't accept criticism.

 

[Zeriel]

But D:OS sold like hotcakes. I think the lesson to take away here is not that isometric games don't sell (hell, Diablo 3 of all games is isometric of a sort!), but that boredly phoning in a game obsessed with nostalgia and nostalgia alone won't cut it. When there's no passion, fans can tell.

PoE and D:OS were awhile ago now. Lots of people bought based on hype, and discovered groggy isometric RPGs weren't what they were looking for. I really hope PoE2 does well, but I doubt it.

Bakersfield, here I come!

Hate to tell you, homes, but if Bakersfield had beaches (nope) or beach bunnies (definitely not) they'd look like this...

It's a farming and oil production town. Good luck.

D:OS 2 should be the game you're watching. D:OS sold better than Pillars, and is less of a nostalgia project in general. If isometric games really are doomed (a thesis I don't agree with), then D:OS 2 flopping would be proof of that. Pillars 2 underperforming wouldn't convince me.

 

[Goral]

I wanted to add a short response to the criticism of Colin, which I think is misplaced.
[OBJECTION !!!!]

No wonder you're an attorney.