Editorial RPG Codex Report: A Codexian Visit to inXile Entertainment

[Kem0sabe]

They knew, but were SJW crazy butthurt because Bester called Adam Heine a cuck, and thought they could get away with shunning the codex for daring to allow that on the platform. After the disappointing sales of their latest release they realized they couldn't afford to alienate one of the only communities that cares about their games so this is major damage control. Bending the knee, if you will.

As an aside, Colin McCuck is especially buttmad because he is the head SJW at InXile so being forced to speak to the Codex is especially galling to his snowflake sensibilities, especially if they are criticizing his work. His responses are hilarious.

Exactly, the timing is just too convient. They had plenty of time for an interview like this after the game went gold and they were ramping up the PR for release.

 

[Ezeekiel]

All the same, I guess I thought it was important to remind people things are pretty far from perfect for anyone, and that it's worth trying to help each other out as best we can.

Hey, I do that sort of thing. I bought Primordia even though I was never much of an adventure game guy in the days of yore (I liked the much more logical puzzles way better than the old stuff).
In return it's only fair that you send your military to free my poor oppressed people from the merkeloids :D

 

[Father Foreskin]

First of all my condolences for your things MRY

Right, then to the issue at hand. Brian fucking Fargo. I dont know whether he has seen the light due deep meditation or sales numbers or has he seen it at all. At some point it really seemed that torment and brian were going somewhere. There was a lot of pr, a new publisher, console versions, the "return of king" article. So Brian yelled so long tier 2 fuckers while shooting for the moon. In reality he was barely flying with his ass scraping the dirt.

After the inevitable crash here we are at square 1. Inxile hasnt got much grassroots support except us, SA and some other relatively small places. I dont have a problem with their reconcialiation attempt. Time passes, asses heal. However i have relatively little faith in Inxiles ability to improve their products and sales. They have crowdfunded too much stuff while everything is late by default. Both WL2 and Torment didnt have anykind of definitive release points, just increbly long early access periods and public beta tests followed countless fixes and updates long after the official release. I think this "open development" isnt working for them because the average steamtard has no idea when the shits are supposed to be feature complete.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Yeah, the whole Director's Cut/Enhanced Edition thing is some of the dumbest business model possible, it just makes everybody wait for sale. The same goes for Pillars, since 3.0 is basically Enhanced Edition even if they are not officially calling that. I like the idea of developers continuously working and improving these games, especially since most of the golden-age classics were basically abandoned right after release. But they really need to rethink their approach because they are cannibalizing their own sales. There's enough competition on the market, it's suicidal to also compete against version of your own game that will come out in the future.

 

[Ezeekiel]

When I first read some about TTON the numanuma setting (wasn't familiar with it previously) seemed much more interesting. I was imagining a world that would be more like Blame! (with more greenery haha) or something.
The real thing turned out to be way less cool... And that's before we even get into the massive issues the game has.

Oh well. Would love nothing more than for InXile to make a really great game. Can be flawed of course, many great games are. But... Not flawed like the past offerings please.

 

[DarkArcher]

Hmmm. The interview they gave really doesn't explain quite why we got what we got. Why make the game so much more wordy than the original? I think the disappointing sales are causing them to mend fences as other people have said. Hoping to still salvage more sales when the game goes on sale.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Very interesting interview. I don't know if there was chatter about this being conducted, but I was caught pleasantly unawares. While I too must doubt that the apology would have occurred had TToN's sales not been so disappointing, Brian seemed genuine enough in that he realized that the souring of the Codex on TToN likely affected its sales. Maybe it's just my current hyper-sensitivity to PR bullshit speech, but Fargo just fucking threw Saunders under the bus. "I don't want to say I fired Kevin because I thought he badly mismanaged the scope and preproduction of a project leading to it's production process being a complete mess. I just want to heavily imply it." I really didn't expect him to go that far. Poor Kevin.

Ziets answers are great as usual. It seems likely that Ziets came off best in Fargo's eye during Torment's troubled development. If Ziets puts out a solid product with WL3 we might be able to look forward to a new Ziets-led crpg every 3 years or so. Which would obviously be fucking amazing.

Confirmation that Mitsoda didn't end up contributing any writing is unsurprising, but nice to hear as well. Hopefully he's ok.

The stuff about telegraphing reactivity is interesting. It's something I assumed the game was doing when I played it, but I can see another player not seeing the skill and reputation tags from Pillars and assuming the game was showing them all the options.


So the secret agent is MCA, right?

 

[Shilandra]

Hmmm. The interview they gave really doesn't explain quite why we got what we got. Why make the game so much more wordy than the original? I think the disappointing sales are causing them to mend fences as other people have said. Hoping to still salvage more sales when the game goes on sale.

On the "wordy" critiscism that's been getting bandied about around here. I understand it in so far as overly written paragraphs filled with purple prose are obviously not fun or engaging. But general wordiness isn't much of a problem with numenera. On the contrary, I believe it should have been more wordy. Like when the last castoff meets the changing god inside her head for the first time. That encounter was supremely underwhelming when it could have been so much more. It could have made the changing god elaborate more on himself or his motivations. It could have been a crisis seeing as how you can encounter an entirely talk based one late on in little nihilesh. Hell, make it based off the players stats too so if you do generally talk your way out of stuff and pumped int because of it, the changing god can expend tons of int effort to counter effort you spend which might lock out choices or certain actions if you fail.

And with the companions they could have had way more dialogue too. I think calistege and tybir wanted to talk once or twice that I can remember, rhin didn't really say much at all. Talking to them outside of their personal quests yielded little (though I believe calistege's opinion of you changes once but never again) and to top it all off they barely talk to each other or interject in conversations and they rarely, if ever, react to or provide helpful or personal insight into quests. This all could have been remedied if they wrote more for them and just generally gave them more to say.

Numenera should have been more wordy, and I hope that they dont take the criticisms of its wordiness to just mean "write less" or write more plainly. They need to write more, but put it in places that actually matter.

 

[Azrael the cat]

If Codex is ever going to have any influence over any game again, we're going to need to look through the anti-Bioware threads, where we're hyping up how great it used to be to have so much text, and criticising Bioware catering to illiterates - and either work out whether it's simply a product of the Codex having a different membership back then, or working out what it was we were asking for there, and how it differered to what we got.

 

[Shilandra]

The stuff about telegraphing reactivity is interesting. It's something I assumed the game was doing when I played it, but I can see another player not seeing the skill and reputation tags from Pillars and assuming the game was showing them all the options.

While I do think somehow more clearly broadcasting the games reactivity is a good direction to go I think they're close enough to doing a good job as it is. Like, I could clearly tell when people were talking about how I have honest eyes or I was trust worthy it was because of the game reacting to my dominant gold tides. It was also pretty clear in most dialogues which choices would lead to different or alternate outcomes.

Never much been a fan of pillars/tyranny reputation tags. They're reactivity, sure. And I dont really hate them. But it just feels, i dont know, to gamey? Like Im playing to fill a bar rather than roleplaying a character.

 

[Jasede]

If Codex is ever going to have any influence over any game again, we're going to need to look through the anti-Bioware threads, where we're hyping up how great it used to be to have so much text, and criticising Bioware catering to illiterates - and either work out whether it's simply a product of the Codex having a different membership back then, or working out what it was we were asking for there, and how it differered to what we got.

Could it be that the quality of the walls of text matters? Or perhaps, could it be that back then, you had to write a lot due to technical restrictions which now no longer exist and therefore, much of badly written expiatory text seem redundant? Why write "The old man rubbed his chin, his eyes darting about like a scurrying rat" when you can just have a model or animated portrait do it?

It will forever remain a mystery.

 

[Shilandra]

If Codex is ever going to have any influence over any game again, we're going to need to look through the anti-Bioware threads, where we're hyping up how great it used to be to have so much text, and criticising Bioware catering to illiterates - and either work out whether it's simply a product of the Codex having a different membership back then, or working out what it was we were asking for there, and how it differered to what we got.

Could it be that the quality of the walls of text matters? Or perhaps, could it be that back then, you had to write a lot due to technical restrictions which now no longer exist and therefore, much of badly written expiatory text seem redundant? Why write "The old man rubbed his chin, his eyes darting about like a scurrying rat" when you can just have a model or animated portrait do it?

It will forever remain a mystery.

That restriction still exists though. Tyranny tried to do the animated portraits thing (albeit combined with descriptive dialogue) and it was awful. Theres also the pillars thing where Voice acting runs over the descriptive text so you tune out one or the other. Isometric view doesn't help with the expressive models thing either.

Theres real hurdles to overcome here. I dont think its as simple as you make it out to be, though I do agree that the walls o' text thing could be improved by having them be better written.

 

[santino27]

This was fascinating to read. Kind of slimy, kind of painful, full of awkwardness, and with some blunt, obvious truths mixed in with artful (or not so artful) dodging. Brian came off like the salesman he is--which isn't entirely an insult. Jim was the definition of a PR guy. George seemed fairly up-front about everything, and Colin... Colin didn't do himself any favors.

Props to the mysterious interviewer for pressing on some key points. I do think that it's naive of Inxile to hope that their relationship with the Codex will go back to how it was. Inxile treated the Codex like shit, and within a month and about 300 pages of a single thread, that relationship was burned to the ground, then the ground was scorched, salted, and then scorched again. And that's before you even take into account the obvious and unavoidable reality that we have some utter maniacs in this community who will still be angry about the whole thing 20 years from now, (when the rest of the community has decided ME:Andromeda was a long-forgotten gem of RPGs.)

If anything, Inxile should just be grateful that Goral seems fixated on Beamdog for the foreseeable future.

For me, I think it's a question of regaining trust, not just through this apology and future press, but through the actual games InXile produces. So much about Torment speaks to a tortured development with pieces that failed to come together into anything that matched the initial vision (stretch goals completely aside). Make a better game... or even a game that seems like it was really TRYING to be better, and I think there are people on the Codex that will come back around.

Also, this fixation on word count needs to stop. 300k words > 1.6 million words, if the 1.6 million is painfully bloated purple prose. Don't focus on count. Focus on fucking quality. Please.

 

[Longshanks]

This was a good read. I do feel McComb was least forthcoming, but it seems pretty clear that these guys have come to the realisation that when pitching niche products it's not a good idea to allow stupid shit to offside significant sections of potential audience.

On T:ToN - I've largely ignored Codex criticism of it due to the "Gamescom poisoning". Accept that the reception is genuinely negative but the level of that negativity has clearly been artificially raised. Haven't had a machine to play it but will get to it soon (apparently I pledged for a boxed version I'd completely forgotten about till it was delivered).

The dumbest criticism of the game has been over wordiness. If you're making a game in the style of PST, the number one thing that differentiates it from other RPGs is wordiness. So, you need writers, good ones, probably many of them. InXile had the right focus and the extended pre-production was a good idea to plan the story and art direction (also a very important part of PST). We can criticise the quality of the end product, but I don't in any way think the focus was incorrect. There was no criticism of this approach (even deprioritising combat was approved of, a decision I strongly support) pre "the poisoning" other than from the usual anti-story types. The Codex may not be a hivemind but it has been relatively consistent and reasoned in what it values, that seems to have been lost in the T:ToN critique, with for instance some of the arguments against descriptive text falling to Bethestard level pre Fallout 3. I don't see a single design decision that is anathema to PST or to the Codex's stated preferences for a game of this type: wordy, turn-based, contemplative, theme-driven. InXile would have been crucified if they'd gone for a less wordy more cinematic type game or decided to focus heavily on combat. I'll obviously reserve my opinion on the game till I've played it, but see nothing wrong with the design focus and am a bit concerned that this is the message InXile seem to be getting.

 

[santino27]

Damn that's pretty dope. Is that what all of California looks like? In a month, my work is sending me out to Bakersfield, CA to do some home inspections. Really looking forward to it now cause Dallas is wearing me down. Yesterday I had to call the cops on a house for child abuse and in another inspection I found bullet holes in the aluminum siding. An alcoholic whose hands wouldn't stop shaking showed me the round. And then I got accosted by an addict with an arm more scab than muscle. Anyway, I'll put this picture in my sunblocker to look at while driving. California, here I come!

It's been said already, but if Stockton is the asshole of California, Bakersfield is the pimple a few inches below it. Shit city with shit weather and shit to do and nowhere near the ocean and nothing at all like the picture in the post you're quoting. You'll have a great time.

Also, I'm from southern CA, but I'm not the interviewer. :D

 

[Goral]

This whole inXile thread looks so ironic right now:
https://forums.inxile-entertainment.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=15970#p174487

tuluse

The worst part of this is the lack of a real answer about why the interview was cancelled.

InXile has two options. They can be a community driven company doing kickstarters and taking input from fans, and maybe dealing with fans who react more angrily then they thing is warranted. Or they can be a normal game dev who has a publisher that controls their interactions with their community.

If they want to be the latter, I won't be contributing to kickstarters or beta testing.

If they want to be the former they shouldn't be cancelling interviews with fan sites over petty bs.

So it's their choice.

 

[Ismaul]

The dumbest criticism of the game has been over wordiness. If you're making a game in the style of PST, the number one thing that differentiates it from other RPGs is wordiness.

Wrong.

This is a criticism that has been levelled at many games and writers before Numenera, see the Pillars review for a recent example. Wordiness is nothing without quality. Actually, I'd prefer a minimalist approach if the writing's going to be mediocre or shitty.

And it's not the wordiness that differentiates PST from other games, but subject matter and how it is approached. It makes one think. Its wordiness is nothing without that.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Why write "The old man rubbed his chin, his eyes darting about like a scurrying rat" when you can just have a model or animated portrait do it?

It's just a boring piece of information about a character I have no investment in. I'm currently reading Martin's Fevre Dream, and although the writing has a lot of exposition, it's beautiful and meaningful, it's never something bland like who scratched their chin/ass/whatever. It's so enthralling, you can't look away from the book. But you can definitely look away from how this random dude's eyes are darting.

The writing in TToN is just bad, mostly at the higher level. They didn't know what they were doing in general, there is no bigger picture to their writing. They never stopped to think about whether the reader may already be interested in this or that, it's all first degree. They just had to go through the check boxes and write this guy's quest, this guy's lines, etc.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Why write "The old man rubbed his chin, his eyes darting about like a scurrying rat" when you can just have a model or animated portrait do it?

It will forever remain a mystery.

Because it's a different way of conveying information. That's why there are still books even though we have movies. Some feelings and experiences work much better in writing. That's why I believe the "show don't tell" thing is pretty retarded if used as a blanket statement. You can't show everything. That's just stupid. Much of what made PST great was in the "tell" category and it would not translate well or at all into "show".
Leaving aside the fact that I'd rather not see some uncanny valley face rolling its eyes in their orbits in some freakish puppet way, even if we could do perfect human emotion simulation and good writer can still make it more interesting and give it more meaning.
Plus, say, the scurrying rat could be an important element... or motif in the story. And it paints a different picture than just seeing someone looking shifty.

The dumbest criticism of the game has been over wordiness. If you're making a game in the style of PST, the number one thing that differentiates it from other RPGs is wordiness. So, you need writers, good ones, probably many of them. InXile had the right focus

So you think focusing on quantity over quality was the right thing? Because that's what made PST special... a lot of empty words? Well, then I'd say you are not only dumb, but quite retarded.
To make it clear: focus on a lot words can NEVER be a good thing. You focus on quality, and if you have the resources and ability then maybe you can get a big quantity of quality. Just typing a lot words means nothing.

 

[Longshanks]

The dumbest criticism of the game has been over wordiness. If you're making a game in the style of PST, the number one thing that differentiates it from other RPGs is wordiness.

Wrong.

This is a criticism that has been levelled at many games and writers before Numenera, see the Pillars review for a recent example. Wordiness is nothing without quality. Actually, I'd prefer a minimalist approach if the writing's going to be mediocre or shitty.

And it's not the wordiness that differentiates PST from other games, but subject matter and how it is approached. It makes one think. Its wordiness is nothing without that.

No issue with the quality of the words being questioned, but if you're making a a PST spiritual successor it needs to be wordy and have a heavy story focus. Without even attempting that the game would have been torn down far worse than it has. As I said I've not played the game so was not talking about quality but design focus, and I definitely think they focused on the right areas even if the result didn't quite work (yet to see myself).

 

[Ismaul]

Because it's a different way of conveying information. That's why there are still books even though we have movies. Some feelings and experiences work much better in writing. That's why I believe the "show don't tell" thing is pretty retarded if used as a blanket statement. You can't show everything. That's just stupid. Much of what made PST great was in the "tell" category and it would not translate well or at all into "show".

I agree, but the principle still applies to Numenera, though maybe not Jasede's example. Of course, some things can't be shown in a sprite/model animation. But that's not the point, because text can be as much "show" than "tell".

The "show don't tell" principle is often misunderstood. It applies to the written word as much as visual media. It's about showing a fact, a character's personality, through his actions, his way of being, instead of telling the reader/watcher that he's for example egoistic. Show an aspect of the world through a quest, instead of a lore dump. Show a period's conflict through characters that are directly hurt by it, through their actions. Show a character's backstory though how it impacts his choices, rather than lore dumping those things in a casual conversation. "Show don't tell" is, in the RPG and book domain, the anti-lore-dump principle, at least until that lore dump has been shown to be very relevant and interesting to the reader/watcher.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Ah, sure, with that definition of "show don't tell" I agree. I was thinking of "show" in a purely visual way.

And definitely TTON is very bad at it. For example, that fucking narrator always telling me stuff my character has no business of knowing instead of leaving it for me to deduce.

 

[Ismaul]

The dumbest criticism of the game has been over wordiness. If you're making a game in the style of PST, the number one thing that differentiates it from other RPGs is wordiness.

Wrong.

This is a criticism that has been levelled at many games and writers before Numenera, see the Pillars review for a recent example. Wordiness is nothing without quality. Actually, I'd prefer a minimalist approach if the writing's going to be mediocre or shitty.

And it's not the wordiness that differentiates PST from other games, but subject matter and how it is approached. It makes one think. Its wordiness is nothing without that.

No issue with the quality of the words being questioned, but if you're making a a PST spiritual successor it needs to be wordy and have a heavy story focus. Without even attempting that the game would have been torn down far worse than it has. As I said I've not played the game so was not talking about quality but design focus, and I definitely think they focused on the right areas even if the result didn't quite work (yet to see myself).

Well the criticism is surely not against the amount of words at all. All wanting a PST successor have liked PST, and its words. No one has a problem with reading, or they shouldn't if they're looking at a PST successor. But that's not the criticism levelled against the game here. It's always been about quality. And when words are added, bringing nothing to the table but drowning the good in a sea of mediocre/bad, then it is legitimate to want less of them, to ask the writers to edit themselves. Every good one does it, and so do movies, music, etc. More isn't automatically better.

 

[Paul_cz]

Great interview. I didn't even know about all the drama, hah.

 

[Roguey]

If Codex is ever going to have any influence over any game again, we're going to need to look through the anti-Bioware threads, where we're hyping up how great it used to be to have so much text, and criticising Bioware catering to illiterates - and either work out whether it's simply a product of the Codex having a different membership back then, or working out what it was we were asking for there, and how it differered to what we got.

I'd argue that they were dummies who didn't know what they were asking for or talking about. Baldur's Gate was mostly written by one person, the sequel mostly by two, and neither one left. ME and DA had much larger writing teams. Elsewhere, I recall ages ago Bethesda boasting that Fallout 3 had more words than Fallout 1 and 2 combined. There's a conflating of Planescape Torment with every other RPG released back then.