Codex Interview RPG Codex Interview: Josh Sawyer at GDC Europe 2016

[Nazrim Eldrak]

Good interview. I nearly read everything!

There are no outside forces forcing him to do anything in particular.

In general I would say that's true. And that's more that they would call on companions to help them than companions would just jump in front of them to do something.

I have a strong opinion that giving the player wide control over the companions is a failure, because it could (will) destroy the authenticity of the party members personality.

"A more direct connection between player actions and events," we've already discussed that I think. You're not in favor of having the storyline branch out entirely based on something you do in act one?

It just becomes really hard to author that....

A long answer for a no. It bored me!

If the writing in the game does not entertain, but let's say it says something deeper about feelings and human condition, great, but a lot of people are never going to get to that because it's not enjoyable.

In old games, for example, you could drain a moat by casting fireball, stuff like that.

You can get pretty crazy. I don't think we're going to do anything crazy, but we do want our environments to be more dynamic overall, so I'll just leave it at that. I wouldn't expect us to do anything really radical.

Well, as long as the engine evolves there is a chance that the game becomes more attractive...

 

[Crescent Hawk]

Josh is a pretty cool guy, I may not agree with him on everything, but I truly respect his love for historical, or maybe he means "believability" in medieval or classical antiquity settings, and you can tell he is not a dumbfuck.

Damn I hope he pulls it off.

Also, again, but its really sad we didnt get the Aliens rpg.

 

[santino27]

Really good read. I'm not particularly interested in his historical RPG, and I don't necessarily agree with some of his decisions (or think they at least need to have someone on the presentation/narrative side of things to balance out his systems-focused approach) he made with PoE but this was a very interesting and enjoyable interview.

Thanks to Roguey and the departed Bubbles.

 

[ghostdog]

Fucking epic.

 

[Grunker]

All the descriptive text was part of it. That was a focus for Eric Fenstermaker. He was focusing more on using descriptive prose mixing with the dialogue.

please fire eric windowmaker asap

Actually, descriptive text was one of the weakest parts of Torment as well *braces for impact*

 

[Visbhume]

One advantage of History as an inspiration for videogames is that reality tends to be richer and more uncanny than fantasy.

Last week I finished reading Patricia Crone's "The Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran" and some of the cosmologies described in the book are Planescape-level weird (in fact, they reminded me of Pillars, because a lot of the "nativist prophets" believed in reincarnation).

 

[Roguey]

With the accent it probably went more like this:

I can confirm I heard it as "Tyranny" the first time and laughed out loud at the "Like what?" response followed by the pause the second time around, which is why I left that back-and-forth 100% intact.

 

[Fairfax]

Great interview, and kudos to Sawyer for doing such a long interview.

Sawyer admitting they neglected the Skaen Temple encounters says a lot about PoE's development. As Project Lead, Lead Designer, Lead Systems Designer and with a companion to write, he ended up deeply involved with so many things that he couldn't oversee the project properly. With only 2 of these duties, he probably would've noticed the encounter and level design problems earlier, along with other flaws.

It's interesting that he said he was still trying to convince Feargus to let him to the historical RPG, but in the last dev commentary stream he suggested Feargus was ok with it.

You were right.

Quite quotable.

I don't blame Bubbles for putting it off, it was a yuge time investment on top of the yuge time investment required for the Gamescom articles. Ideally something of this length would have been distributed to five or more people to transcribe, but you gotta work with what you have.

Also in fairness to Bubbles, I did take an axe to a lot of what he had to say whenever I felt it didn't add to the interview (his German/English accent makes him sound like the kind of person you'd find critiquing wines at a formal wine tasting party, but it's not easy to parse), i.e. he'd go on at length about a topic and Josh would keep politely saying "Yeah. Yeah. Uh huh." The biggest cut was a part where he discussed Belhifet's allegedly-nerfed stats in Siege of Dragonspear (which turned out to be inaccurate anyway according to that Beamdog dev who posted here), and Sawyer getting annoyed at him for spoiling it. Kinda funny, but since it was inaccurate info and probably 90% Bubbles talking, I felt comfortable skipping it. As you can see, the interview's length didn't suffer for these cuts.

Ideally speaking, I think something this long done face-to-face would've been better as a video, but I guess Bubbles didn't want that.

You should do the next Sawyer interview. Would be interesting to see a parallel to my MCA interview.

 

[Infinitron]

It's interesting that he said he was still trying to convince Feargus to let him to the historical RPG, but in the last dev commentary stream he suggested Feargus was ok with it.

I assume you remember this interview was in August

 

[Fairfax]

It's interesting that he said he was still trying to convince Feargus to let him to the historical RPG, but in the last dev commentary stream he suggested Feargus was ok with it.

Reminder that this interview was in August

I know. I was just pointing out that he managed to convince Feargus since then.

 

[Roguey]

Ideally speaking, I think something this long done face-to-face would've been better as a video, but I guess Bubbles didn't want that.

I still prefer at least having the option to read it as text, so you're not constrained by the speed at which they talk. This is something that can be skimmed within an hour or read in about an hour, but an audio/video is two and half hours of your time.

You should do the next Sawyer interview. Would be interesting to see a parallel to my MCA interview.

I have no specific questions to ask, and I don't wish to interact with anyone directly.

 

[Fairfax]

Interesting to see that people don't seem to mind the fact this interview is long (17.4k words). No reason to worry about that anymore.

I still prefer at least having the option to read it as text, so you're not constrained by the speed at which they talk. This is something that can be skimmed within an hour or read in about an hour, but an audio/video is two and half hours of your time.

Agreed, it's why I'm doing it via email with MCA, but transcription is a shitload of work, as you know too well.

I have no specific questions to ask, and I don't wish to interact with anyone directly.

There's nothing you'd want to ask him? I doubt that. Still, if you don't want to interact with him...¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[M0RBUS]

Hard West was deterministic. And it was awesome.

Good to hear they at least have SOME interest in doing turn-based in the future. Honestly, it would fix all the issues they have with combat in their games. Although, to be fair, Tyranny is a step in the right direction, I feel.

 

[CryptRat]

I don't wish to interact with anyone directly.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Good stuff men.

 

[AW8]

Really interesting read. Props to Bubbles and Roguey.

I always love to read Sawyer's honest, insightful thoughts on previous and upcoming projects.

I really don't like class-based games personally

I would still love to make a turn-based game. By the way, if I make a historical game, it's going to be turn-based.

Based Sawyer.

 

[zerosum]

I laughed at his comment of the D&D trope of wandering homeless murderhobos.

 

[C0ckerel]

Sawyer admitting they neglected the Skaen Temple encounters says a lot about PoE's development.

Funnily enough I thought the Skaen Temple and especially its integration in terms of level design and questlines with Dyrford was one of the strongest parts of the game. I suppose because to me it was a 'dungeon' that felt plausible: multiple entrances/exits, ways of discovering that are independent from another another etc...

It's been a while now but the only defect I remember was coming across three copies of the personal letter from a father to his son or something. It was like the level designer really wanted players to experience that fluff.

 

[aratuk]

It's interesting that he said he was still trying to convince Feargus to let him to the historical RPG, but in the last dev commentary stream he suggested Feargus was ok with it.

Reminder that this interview was in August

I know. I was just pointing out that he managed to convince Feargus since then.

So what does it mean that Feargus is "ok with it"? It's ok for Sawyer to work on in his spare time, or it's ok for him to use their company resources to put together a pitch or a figstarter? Or it's ok to keep dreamin', Sawyer?

 

[Tigranes]

It's interesting that he said he was still trying to convince Feargus to let him to the historical RPG, but in the last dev commentary stream he suggested Feargus was ok with it.

Reminder that this interview was in August

I know. I was just pointing out that he managed to convince Feargus since then.

So what does it mean that Feargus is "ok with it"? It's ok for Sawyer to work on in his spare time, or it's ok for him to use their company resources to put together a pitch or a figstarter? Or it's ok to keep dreamin', Sawyer?

It means "you're overanalysing based on insufficient evidence, batman".

 

[Lexxx20]

:D

This was one of the most interesting reads posted on the Codex in ages. Say what you will about Josh, at least he's willing to explain his thinking when designing games, without talking down to people about it.

What exactly happened to Bubbles, if it's not some kind of secret?

He stared to long into the abyss.

I was hoping for a more... informative answer though. Not a regular Codex reader.

 

[oldmanpaco]

Not a regular Codex reader.

Anyway here is a 28 page summery of what went down. http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/where-my-bubbles-gone.112302/

tl;dr: He got mad at Infinitron and it was all Prime Junta's fault.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Terrific interview. Read it throughout the day during bathroom breaks and commutes, and couldn't wait for my next chance to come back to it each time. Will likely give it another, closer, read come the weekend, but I think it speaks loads of JES' character that he's willing to give an interview like this to a site that has been as... critical of him as the Codex has. At the very least, the man has some mighty thick skin. Hats off to all involved; really top-notch content.



Come back Bubbles!

 

[HoboForEternity]

Terrific interview. Read it throughout the day during bathroom breaks and commutes, and couldn't wait for my next chance to come back to it each time. Will likely give it another, closer, read come the weekend, but I think it speaks loads of JES' character that he's willing to give an interview like this to a site that has been as... critical of him as the Codex has. At the very least, the man has some mighty thick skin. Hats off to all involved; really top-notch content.



Come back Bubbles!

WHO'S THE VILLAIN NOW CODEX? WHO'S THE VILLAIN?

 

[SausageInYourFace]

Fargo and inXile shall make fine villians until PoE2 releases and the cycle of butthurt begins anew.