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

[Immortal]

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

Software developers are famously the worst writers ever. We have some kind of short circuit in our head.

About all that exposition.

I disagree that it was necessary for you to know, for example, what a biawac was before it hit. Odema's "Run for your souls! It's a biawac!" would've been entirely sufficient, leaving you to puzzle out what the fuck happened later on. All it would take is to have the possibility to ask "What's a biawac?" from suitable people.

The same goes for a lot of exposition like that. Basically, the Pillars early-game made the same mistake T:ToN is making -- dumping a shitload of information on you from the get-go, where it would've been much better to dump you in the middle of a mystery and sprinkle the information around where you have to actively pursue it.

Smartest thing you have ever said - this is why the complaints about Obsidian "playing it safe" even came up.
People are tired of having their hand held.

Instead of droning on about all the ~narrative stuff you need to know~.. Have us run against these things in the world and let us get curious and ask about it if we want.
Stop force feeding your lore.

 

[Gregz]

He studied CS? No wonder the writing was bad. It's bad enough they hire no-name novella writers to write for video games, but then they hire programmers to write? Jesus Christ. I'll read the interview later. Please tell me he's got SOME academic background somehow related to literature?

He's a Harvard grad and a programmer, which almost guarantees that he's 10x more intelligent and better read than you are. That was one of the most articulate interviews I've ever read.

Still, creativity is the most important ingredient, and the most difficult to hire for or reproduce. The greatest artists tend to be lacking in many areas. So I agree with you in a sense.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I'm a programmer who has studied literature, linguistics and history for 7 years and I have a degree in history, never formally studied the stuff I work with. Whoever says you can't make a good writer out of a CS graduate should widen his horizons.

Edit:
Immortal : Meanwhile, sorry that there are people not as narrow-minded as to only have interests in the field in which they work, or in which they have a degree

2nd Edit:
I never claimed to be a writer. And I don't claim to be a developer either. It's written in my contract, and has been so for the last 9 years.

 

[Trashos]

Josh's words in some recent interview, about how they had to provide for different players with different attention spans, also made the same impression on me. What attention spans? I doubt Black Isle and Bioware used to think in terms of attention spans when they were making the now-classics.

It was Eric's words in the Obsidian forums (unless I missed a Josh interview saying exactly the same thing).

 

[Immortal]

I'm a programmer who has studied literature, linguistics and history for 7 years and I have a degree in history. Whoever says you can't make a good writer out of a CS graduate should widen his horizons.

Bullshit. You are either a shit writer or a shit developer. Nobody has had the heart to tell you which one yet.

He studied CS? No wonder the writing was bad. It's bad enough they hire no-name novella writers to write for video games, but then they hire programmers to write? Jesus Christ. I'll read the interview later. Please tell me he's got SOME academic background somehow related to literature?

He's a Harvard grad and a programmer, which almost guarantees that he's 10x more intelligent and better read than you are. That was one of the most articulate interviews I've ever read.

Still, creativity is the most important ingredient, and the most difficult to hire for or reproduce. The greatest artists tend to be lacking in many areas. So I agree with you in a sense.

I am loathe to defend Bester but in fairness, English is not his native language.
Who knows, maybe he is a beautiful soothe-sayer in his native Vatnik tongue.

 

[Infinitron]

I think games writing has become more self-referential with regard to "lore", and I'd like to suggest a perhaps unconventional reason for why that is so: It's because of the Internet, and in particular, because of hyperlinked wikis.

All that lore is at writers' fingertips now, easily available while they're writing quests. In contrast, in the 90s, writers had to work with cumbersome books and documents. It made sense to make things relatively "lore-neutral". They used the broad strokes of the lore, sure, maybe read their books and fleshed it out a bit later, but in general things were more "archetypal", and exposition was not required. The Iron Throne in Baldur's Gate was just some evil guild, you didn't need to know more than that and nothing in the game's story required you knowing more than that.

 

[AwesomeButton]

For the most time, I never cared to know more (about the Iron Throne). So you mean it's probably easier to create lore dumps now because it's easier to dig up a piece of lore from the relative document, paste it in place and rephrase it?

 

[karfhud]

What a brilliant interview! Great questions, great answers.

The cuts came for length. The three limiting factors were time to implement, art resources for the dream sequences, and VO budget. There was a target length we had set upfront for all companions, and we had to stick to it. Otherwise we'd be, for example, voicing maybe one out of every six lines for Durance and the Grieving Mother, and it'd be conspicuously incongruent with the other companions, who had maybe 2/3 of their lines voiced. Unfortunately in this case it meant cutting down characters that had had a lot of research and creative energy invested in them, and there were some good ideas there that it would've been interesting to explore. It was a shitty thing to have to do, but we'd never have been able to implement the original versions in time to ship.

Really surprised about this answer. If the other companions had 2/3 of their lines voiced, would that mean that the Grieving Mother and Durance were passed over that late during the development?

 

[Infinitron]

For the most time, I never cared to know more (about the Iron Throne). So you mean it's probably easier to create lore dumps now because it's easier to dig up a piece of lore from the relative document, paste it in place and rephrase it?

That too, but what I mean is that nowadays it's more tempting for the writers to use a more complex sampling of the lore because they can easily access it in its finest details. So instead of just putting the Iron Throne in Baldur's Gate as a generic broad strokes baddies guild, they might add a subplot about how the Iron Throne was evicted from Sembia, and other "lorey" stuff like that. And stuff like that requires some explanation.

 

[Excidium II]

I think games writing has become more self-referential with regard to "lore", and I'd like to suggest a perhaps unconventional reason why that is so: It's because of the Internet, and in particular, because of hyperlinked wikis.

All that lore is at writers' fingertips now, easily available while they're writing quests. In contrast, in the 90s, writers had to work with cumbersome books and documents. It made sense to make things relatively "lore-neutral". They used the broad strokes of the lore, sure, maybe read their books and fleshed it out a bit later, but in general things were more "archetypal", and exposition was not required. The Iron Throne in Baldur's Gate was just some evil guild, you didn't need to know more than that and nothing in the game's story required you knowing more than that.

Shouldn't that mean we need even less exposition since the player can just alt+tab and get all the info he could ever care about?

 

[AwesomeButton]

I think games writing has become more self-referential with regard to "lore", and I'd like to suggest a perhaps unconventional reason why that is so: It's because of the Internet, and in particular, because of hyperlinked wikis.

All that lore is at writers' fingertips now, easily available while they're writing quests. In contrast, in the 90s, writers had to work with cumbersome books and documents. It made sense to make things relatively "lore-neutral". They used the broad strokes of the lore, sure, maybe read their books and fleshed it out a bit later, but in general things were more "archetypal", and exposition was not required. The Iron Throne in Baldur's Gate was just some evil guild, you didn't need to know more than that and nothing in the game's story required you knowing more than that.

Shouldn't that mean we need even less exposition since the player can just alt+tab and get all the info he could ever care about?

Yes, unless the designers are concerned about attention spans, and imagine their players as rather... less than intelligent and less than interested in the game.

 

[Excidium II]

I forgot CRPGs are primarily made for people who don't like CRPGs.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

That too, but what I mean is that nowadays it's more tempting for the writers to use a more complex sampling of the lore because they can easily access it in its finest details. So instead of just putting the Iron Throne in Baldur's Gate as a generic broad strokes baddies guild, they might add a subplot about how the Iron Throne was evicted from Sembia, and other "lorey" stuff like that. And stuff like that requires some explanation.

As someone who read all those lore dump books the first time I played BG because I thought they may be important in the game ( ) I tend to favour other explanations like writers wanting to outdo what has come before (and not do simple 'generic' baddies), and even different sorts of people working in the industry. Also, as others have mentioned, minimising exposition is a skill and it would be possible to add more meat to the Iron Throne stuff without overdosing on exposition.

 

[Infinitron]

Sure. And of course there's the fact that most developers create their own settings today, and when you create your own thing, Chekhov's Gun logic demands that you use every bit of it. In contrast, when you use somebody else's setting, you're already committed to a process of adaptation ("I really want to tell MY story, not these guys'"), so leaving stuff out comes naturally.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

Sure. And of course there's the fact that most developers create their own settings today, and when you create your own thing, Chekhov's Gun logic demands that you use every bit of it. In contrast, when you use somebody else's setting, you're already committed to a process of adaptation ("I really want to tell MY story, not these guys'"), so leaving stuff out comes naturally.

I sometimes wonder about the Forgotten Realms games and how restrictive the license was at the time, how many things they had to keep vague to avoid disturbing possible future WotC story arcs, but I guess that's getting off topic so I'll take that elsewhere.

 

[Tigranes]

ITT people think English degrees in contemporary universities are about learning how to write gud video games

 

[Prime Junta]

Sure. And of course there's the fact that most developers create their own settings today, and when you create your own thing, Chekhov's Gun logic demands that you use every bit of it. In contrast, when you use somebody else's setting, you're already committed to a process of adaptation ("I really want to tell MY story, not these guys'"), so leaving stuff out comes naturally.

Using the lore doesn't mean you have to spell everything out in excruciating detail though, quite the contrary. Take your questline related to how the Iron Throne was evicted from Sembia. How it should work is that some weird shit happens that you don't understand; as you progress in the quest, things start to make more sense, and maybe eventually in an apparently unrelated thing you'll get the final pieces which make you go, "Ah-ha, so that's what that was all about." If it starts with "Well so the Iron Throne was evicted from Sembia, and..." then you're doing it exactly wrong.

Pillars did do it right in a few places too. The Skaen temple quest for example -- the dungeon might not have been the most brilliant design ever, but the story unfolded really nicely. You're just looking for a missing young noblewoman, and the whole thing only makes sense at the very end, by which time you've learned a quite a lot about Skaen as well. No starting loredump with "Well, see, Skaen is the god embodying the rage of the oppressed against their oppressors, and what they do is these big bloody torture rituals to create something called the Effigy, and so..."

But no, it's no Mask of the Betrayer or Planescape: Torment. Of these two, I think MotB actually handles the lore better, although I prefer PS:T for other reasons. Everything is really closely tied to the lore, whether it's the funky witch-and-spirit stuff of Rashemen, the planar stuff, the shit that went down between Myrkul and Kelemvor, Akachi's crusade, or the curse itself, but none of it is plonked on you in huge infodumps. Instead it just unfolds naturally, and the game isn't afraid to leave you confused for a quite a long time.

 

[tripedal]

I really like the things he said regarding game length and companion count. I would instantly trade one of the boring companions for 2x GM/Durance. Or even the entire third act, to make the second act play like the Raedric's Hold questline. As he said, it's all zero sum...the more content, the less polish.

There should be no shame in selling short but high quality games.

 

[Ninjerk]

I think games writing has become more self-referential with regard to "lore", and I'd like to suggest a perhaps unconventional reason why that is so: It's because of the Internet, and in particular, because of hyperlinked wikis.

All that lore is at writers' fingertips now, easily available while they're writing quests. In contrast, in the 90s, writers had to work with cumbersome books and documents. It made sense to make things relatively "lore-neutral". They used the broad strokes of the lore, sure, maybe read their books and fleshed it out a bit later, but in general things were more "archetypal", and exposition was not required. The Iron Throne in Baldur's Gate was just some evil guild, you didn't need to know more than that and nothing in the game's story required you knowing more than that.

Shouldn't that mean we need even less exposition since the player can just alt+tab and get all the info he could ever care about?

Yes, but paradoxically, I think having access to that information so quickly tempts the writers into including it to save themselves time. If you have x hours to write something and you're reliant on flipping through physical lorebooks, I should think you're much more inclined to concern yourself with writing the story in such a way that the lore can inform it rather than the lore getting sucked into your production. I'm not sure if I'm being clear here, but I look at it like the convenience killing the craft.

 

[felipepepe]

Fenstermaker's Folly since you're posting here, what was the deal with the Godlikes? I like their crazy abilities, but they don't feel integrated into the game...

I created a death godlike that looked like an eyeless horned demon, which the game describes as "commonly killed at birth because many cultures consider them harbingers of doom", yet no one seemed to care. I walk into a religious & paranoid town, the ruler's son immediately dies and not a single person points fingers at me.

Hell, I don't know why would religious, god-fearing people ever casually call me "Godlike" instead of freak, demon, chupacabra or whatever. Fallout had that fun interplay of "smooth-skins, stupid tribals and mutated freaks" which helped make the world feel alive, but I think all the reaction I had in PoE was a little girl asking how I could see with no eyes...

What happened? You guys didn't want a race that would automatically make the world hate you, or was it just lack of monies & time?

 

[Mozg]

I think the MotB spirit eater system, provided you're playing as a high craving eater, is actually an excellent way to produce character motivation without (really) causing any problems for an "explorer", because poking around in more corners of the map finds you more stuff to eat. It only becomes a time limit when you've denuded that area of stuff to do anyway. I hope Obsidian realizes that if they'd had a system as "demanding" as spirit eater crap in a highly marketed game that explained the gimmick to people before they bought it, regular assholes wouldn't actually have a problem with it slightly perturbing their normal OCD fog-of-war-lawnmowing RPG playstyle. It's only in a borderline budget game that it will become the nucleation point for criticism people wanted to dump on it anyway, similar to middle of the road "bugginess".

 

[Tigranes]

I think the MotB spirit eater system, provided you're playing as a high craving eater, is actually an excellent way to produce character motivation without (really) causing any problems for an "explorer", because poking around in more corners of the map finds you more stuff to eat. It only becomes a time limit when you've denuded that area of stuff to do anyway. I hope Obsidian realizes that if they'd had a system as "demanding" as spirit eater crap in a highly marketed game that explained the gimmick to people before they bought it, regular assholes wouldn't actually have a problem with it slightly perturbing their normal OCD fog-of-war-lawnmowing RPG playstyle. It's only in a borderline budget game that it will become the nucleation point for criticism people wanted to dump on it anyway, similar to middle of the road "bugginess".

Pretty sure that people would whine a lot about it in any kind of release. Hell, people won't shut up about camping supplies or Fallout's quest timer...

 

[Diablo169]

Fantastic interview, was nice to get some insight on Eric and his way of thinking too.

 

[Harold]

I think the MotB spirit eater system, provided you're playing as a high craving eater, is actually an excellent way to produce character motivation without (really) causing any problems for an "explorer", because poking around in more corners of the map finds you more stuff to eat. It only becomes a time limit when you've denuded that area of stuff to do anyway. I hope Obsidian realizes that if they'd had a system as "demanding" as spirit eater crap in a highly marketed game that explained the gimmick to people before they bought it, regular assholes wouldn't actually have a problem with it slightly perturbing their normal OCD fog-of-war-lawnmowing RPG playstyle. It's only in a borderline budget game that it will become the nucleation point for criticism people wanted to dump on it anyway, similar to middle of the road "bugginess".

Fenstermaker designed the spirit-eater mechanic iirc, and what Obsidian took away from it is that they should never again design something that's so 'punishing to the player' because morons whined a lot that the moron-detector was too accurate.

 

[Ismaul]

Great interview! I just want to say this: I like my games short and tight.

I've played Fallout 1 and AoD more than once, because they have little to no filler, and are of good quality during the whole game (and also especially for AoD the different paths make it worthwhile). Long games usually get abandonned, or sometimes I finish them but they've ovestayed their welcome and I end up with mixed feelings.