Video game designer Josh Sawyer. Designer on: Icewind Dale I & II, Neverwinter Nights II. Directed Fallout: New Vegas, Pillars of Eternity I & II, and Pentiment. Interview/conference inquiries to [email protected]
In your talk about armor from a few years ago, you ended that talk by mentioning how you would iterate and do a “tier” system to simplify armor/penetration. Avowed’s equipment seems to be very emblematic of that.
To what extent is Avowed’s armor system what you had in mind for that, and if you could revisit that talk with what you learned from Avowed, what would be your big takeaways?
I've watched a lot of your presentations and talks you've given over the years and you talk a lot about setting goals for your teams which really resonates with me.
However, I'm not sure what your approach is to finding what goals are important. Do your highest level goals start by defining your audience, doing market research, getting feedback from previous games, etc?
It feels very overwhelming and abstract to start with a goal and break it down into a game. "Let's make a game that is like X but has Y" feels much more natural, but is not goal oriented.
Andreas non expectandum ferre tacite dum abbas eius acutorem cedis accusabat. Conarit cognoscare alios qui causam occidere baronem haberent.
Andreas could not be expected to bear it silently while the abbot accused his mentor* of murder. He tried to learn of any others who might have a reason to kill the baron.
(*The word here is acutorem which would more literally be something like "sharpener", I think?)
Quamquam baro in Tassio solo unius diei fuerat, apparebat Andreo baro multos hostes habuisse. Cause pro inimicitiis at baronem erant varie, et Andreas celeriter cognovit semenes eorum odii in ante annis per primum adventum a Kiersau inseminata sunt. Per omnes rationes, baro erat pusillus, atrox, et libidnosus homo. Adsuefacebat recipiendum quam voluit. Si eum desiderium non tulit, non adversabatur utens violentiam contra aliquis qui stetis in cuius via. Etiam si baronem flagitiis ignoverant, non obliti erant.
Although the baron had been in Tassing for only one day, it was clear to Andreas that he had many enemies there. The reasons for their enmity with the baron were varied, and Andreas quickly learned that the seeds of their hatred had been sown years before, the first time he [the baron] had come to Kiersau. By all accounts, the baron was a petty, cruel, and lustful man. He was accustomed to getting what he wanted. If something he desired was kept from him, he had no qualms about using violence against anyone who stood in his way. Even those who had forgiven the baron's crimes had not forgotten them.
Etiam Andreas scriptorio laboravit quoniam erat artifex, eius universita doctrina dedit ei proprias intelligentias in multas vestigiis que invenerat in Tassio et Kiersau abbatia. Et trivium et quadrivium erant commodi, et magnum fundamentum eruditionis paraverunt quibus traxit. Enim etiam eius universita doctrina, etsi imperfecta, testimonium cum sagace oculo videre permisit. Autem eius peregrinationis anni ei et conspectus et lingue actes dederunt qui eum communicare cum aliquis peregrinis incolis oppidi et abbatiae iuverunt.
While Andreas worked as an artist in the scriptorium, his extensive learning gave him insight into the traces that he found in Tassing and Kiersau Abbey. He had studied both the trivium and the quadrivium, and they had given him a great foundation of knowledge to draw from. His university education, though it was incomplete, allowed him to examine evidence with a discerning eye. And his Wanderjahre gave him skills in observation and speech that helped him to communicate with the inhabitants of both the town and the abbey.
Timor Patris Gernot de ira principis pontificis in alieno non collocibatur. Tunc a tempore cedis, erat vix ulla Benedicta monasteria in imperio. Abbas iussit fratres et sorores gerere ipsos bene, sed semper erant delicta et infractions contra legem sanctis Benedicti. Posset dicere delicta ad aliquas domus Benedictas et Cistercias erant multo perior, sed omnis error ad Kiersau erat magnificatus quod monachi et monache periter laboraverunt etiamsi sub separatis tectis habitaverunt.
Father Gernot's fear of the prince-bishop was not misplaced. At that time, there were hardly any [double] Benedictine monasteries in the empire. The abbot ordered the brothers and sisters to behave themselves well, but there were always offenses and infractions against the Rule of Saint Benedict. It could be said that the offenses of some Benedictine and Cistercian houses were much worse, but every error at Kiersau was magnified because the monks and nuns worked skillfully together, though they lived under separate roofs.
Cedes agricole vel monachi celerem quaetionem non merebatur, sed cedes baronis erat disversa res onmino. Necessitudo baronis cum principe pontifice amplius rem. Mater Cecilia impulit abbatem vocare archidiaconum princepis pontificis in Innsbruco ut ullas accusationes culpe impediat. Preter pavor abbatis initio, sapientie Matris Cecelie concessit. Servus baronis mittebatur ad Innsbruco statim, itaque archidiaconus in paucis diebus certe adveniret. Andreas habuit breviem temorem quo enodare cedem. Potuit laborare dum sol erat clarus, et etiam in noce, sed tandem pro archidiacono staret et testimonium diceret.
Violence against a farmer or a monk would not merit such a quick search, but against the baron was a completely different matter. The baron's relationship with the prince-bishop only made things worse. Mother Cecilia urged the abbot to summon the prince-bishop's archdeacon from Innsbruck, to prevent any accusations of guilt. Despite the abbot's initial fear, he yielded to Mother Cecilia's wisdom. The baron's servant was sent to Innsbruck immediately, so the archdeacon would certainly arrive within a few days. Andreas had only a short time in which to conduct his investigation. He could work while the sun was shining, and even at night, but finally he had to stand before the archdeacon and give his testimony.
Hey, I was wondering if you could clear up something about ending slides in the games you've worked on. When deciding what does or doesn't get an ending slide, is that up to the individual writer/designer working on the related questline? or is that more up to the creative director assigning what's "important enough" to get an ending slide?
[ID from ALT: Graphite sketches of Claus Drucker from the chest up. Claus on the left has a surprised look on his face, glancing at something off the page. Behind that to the right is Claus with a smile, eyes closed, thinking about Bert and Marie, who are doodled on the top of the page. END ID]
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Claus ft. Bert and Marie (who i need to draw more cause she's gorgeous) I didn't forget about Magdalene I swear she will be with us soon 🙏
Pt. 1/??? Of sketches I do during my classes instead of paying attention to the professor
Do you have any insights into or thoughts about exposing extremely granular difficulty options to players?
One of the first 'gamedev' things I ever did was a Deadfire mod that adjusted the PC's Acc/Def growth per level to let me slide the difficulty curve to however I wanted, and it's sent me straight down the path of a personalized difficulty for every game I can mod it into. Progressively scaling difficulty in Total War, +X to enemy rolls in BG3, percentage damage and scaling modifiers in Cyberpunk and Witcher 3, etc., etc., etc. This could essentially double as a list of my favorite games, and I know that I wouldn't feel the same way about any of them if I hadn't tweaked the difficulty to force greater engagement with the systems on my end.
Are there significant cons to opening up this sort of in-depth difficulty customization to players, or do we just not get it because there aren't enough players interested in this sort of thing and it gets triaged out?
(feel free to add some crazy difficulty sliders to Avowed before my anniversary replay)
Extremely narrow question that probably doesn't apply to the project you're working on anymore, but what would you change about the backer beta process you went through with Pillars 1 and 2 if you had to do it again? I've always been curious.
For context, I participated in the first game's backer beta and offered some feedback, but skipped it with the second so that the content would feel more fresh to me (I still watched some videos and checked the discussions).
The impression I got was that the balancing work done on that slice of content in Deadfire was good *for* the backer beta, but that once players had the chance to interact with the game non-linearly as intended, the difficulty at release simply was too easy to trivialize.
This makes me wonder whether the balancing work done during the beta, in that narrow slice of the content, was valuable for the overall difficulty/balance of the final game, especially considering I remember your team having to do some balance passes pretty quickly after release to tune up various encounters and the various normal/veteran/path of the damned difficulty levels.
But also, just in general, I'm curious what kinda lessons were learned during the process, especially since you didn't go on to work on Grounded which had a similarly extensive pre-release testing period, this time with Early Access.
Hey Josh, maybe this is a bit of a difficult question, but as someone who has worked in the videogame industry for a good while, what would you say are the most important skills I need to have to become a game developer? Specifically for a text heavy game. My expertise is in writing and I really like the idea of working on videogame RPGs as a writer, but I feel like that may not be enough. What else should I understand how to do if I intend to work on videogames? I'll be honest, I have no experience at all in videogame development. Are there good starting jobs or certificates I should consider getting?
Small question about Pentiment: Was the character of Vácslav and the metaphysical theories he can explain if you ask him nicely enough in any way a reference to Menocchio, the 16th Italian miller that was the subject of Carlo Ginzburg's 1976 The Cheese and the Worms?
Yes. Some players have identified Vácslav's beliefs as Gnosticism. While many of the things he says are consonant with Gnostic thought, others are not. It's really his own blend of absorbed traditions mixed with his own theories. Like Menocchio, Vácslav has taken a lot of ideas from different places and has formulated his own particular cosmology.
Another source of inspiration came from the Fournier Register, records of the inquisitorial process applied to southern French Cathar credentes, Catholics, and non-believers. Many of the people whom Jacques Fournier interrogated had syncretized their own beliefs that could best be understood as a blend of Catharism or Catholicism, local folk beliefs, and their own personal ideas.
While people like Menocchio or the character Vácslav represent an extreme level of cosmological development, I wanted to push back against the idea that common people lacked the curiosity or drive to formulate their own ideas about the world around them (and beyond).
Also like Menocchio, Vácslav cannot shut up about his beliefs. Menocchio was not condemned only as a heretic, but as a heresiarch, the founder of a heretical movement. His drive to constantly talk with his neighbors about his beliefs was seen as proselytizing.
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