Obsidian Entertainment - Josh Sawyer Interview

[HiddenX]

The RPG Codex has interviewed Josh Sawyer at the GDC Europe 2016:

RPG Codex Interview: Josh Sawyer at GDC Europe 2016

[...]

Do you have the personal ambition to ever make a game with a modern engine as powerful as the one in Neverwinter Nights 2 again?

A personal ambition? No, but I do think that is very cool. I would say it's interesting because I actually met Ray Muzyka sometime in 2007, and we were briefly talking about the tools, and he said "Oh, you guys did so much cool stuff with the tools" and I was like "I kinda wished we had left a lot of it alone." Not entirely, but it is true that the Neverwinter Nights 2 toolset allows people to do a lot more specific and detailed things than the Neverwinter Nights 1 toolset did, and the Neverwinter Nights 1 toolset was so much easier for people to use. It was so much easier, for example, to make an exterior. It was just like a tiled interior, and yes, it didn't look as visually interesting, but it meant that it was very easy for someone to say "I want to make a level" and just jump in and do it.

That's one of the things Bethesda's toolset makes very easy. It's super easy to make areas, super easy to modify, super easy to track assets, and it's pretty darn powerful. Look at this way: there's no way in hell that our team could have made Fallout New Vegas without that tool. It was just impossible. And if you look at the mods, it's astounding what people can do with it. I personally think that is very cool. I hope we get to the point where we can actually develop tools like that. I wouldn't say it's a personally driving ambition, it's something that I hope we do.

And as for our file formats, that's something that whenever I see an opportunity, just make those files more open and easier to modify. Because, for example, things like Near Infinity and all those third party tools, we didn't use those when we made the Infinity Engine games, I had to make all my .2das in Notepad. I was a web designer so I was used to editing things in Notepad or maybe Excel if you're feeling fancy, but usually it was just opening it in Notepad. So if the data formats are accessible and easy to modify, usually even if you don't release tools, people will make tools, which is cool, but if they're human-readable then you can just open them in Notepad and edit them. If you're ambitious, you can do that. I love it when people mod the games, but I also know that with Neverwinter 2, it was an extremely huge undertaking to have that toolset. I don't want to promise anything like that because I just know it's expensive.

So if you compare the Neverwinter Nights 1, 2, and New Vegas toolsets, you'd think New Vegas was the best?

Well, here's the thing. I think our dialogue tools were probably better in Neverwinter 2 just due to the way we write conversations. But the ease in which you can put stuff together, and I also think it's a bit different because of the camera views, so it's not entirely fair to look at them the same way, I do really appreciate how easy it was in New Vegas to make stuff and modify stuff. And honestly, the scripting systems in Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2 are insane. You could do really crazy stuff, usually create a lot of bugs with that scripting system. The scripting system in the Bethesda engine is also very powerful and you can also do crazy stuff as well. But I do appreciate the ease-of-use stuff they had in Bethesda's editors.

I've worked with a lot of different toolsets and engines and stuff that we've developed internally, and making an engine, making a toolset is so incredibly time-consuming and so frustrating for so long. Keep in mind that when we released Neverwinter Nights 2, there were people that said "Give us the real toolset." "Like, what do you mean?" "You didn't make the game with this toolset, give us the real toolset." "No, dude, you're right. We didn't make the game with this toolset, we made the game with a toolset that was worse than this for two years, and you got the best version of it." And that blew people's minds, because it takes so much time and it's so hard and frustrating. So being able to go into Unity and kind of like drop things is nice. There's some things with the workflow that don't quite work for us, which is why we externalize things like conversation and stuff like that.

[...]

More information.

 

[HiddenX]

Thanks Bubbles!

 

[luj1]

for the love of god, dont let him design any more rulesets !!

 

[azarhal]

for the love of god, dont let him design any more rulesets !!

On the opposite, let him design more rulesets, a lot more. It's by practicing and refining that you end up good and even great at something.

 

[Maximous]

Dialog is key to a great game.

 

[luj1]

On the opposite, let him design more rulesets, a lot more. It's by practicing and refining that you end up good and even great at something.

Maybe he'll nail it by the time he's hundred years old!

 

[Silver]

Why is Josh always saying its hard-to-do things. The hard-to-do things are what make games worthwhile doing. It sounds like he has no passion for it. The hard-to-do things are the only things worth doing in terms of making great games and you should aim to at least do one or two scope be damned. If it has been done before and is easy on the developers you are not going to impress me with your game. It is more like I am going to find it a safe and somewhat bland product that takes no chances.

 

[rjshae]

While the NWN2 Toolset is fairly powerful, I'd say one of its chief problems is what it doesn't let you do. There's too much hard coded functionality with no function calls that let you modify them. I understand implementing a more open function interface would require much more testing, but the current form limits what you can do in many ways.

Another issue is the simple database they used. 2da files are a nuisance to work with as you have to worry about edit errors and conflicts with other modders. These days it would be better to use a proper open source database like PostgreSQL.

Ideally there'd be an equivalent open source toolset that runs on many platforms and has function hooks into everything. The closest I've seen to a project like that is Xoreos, but (at present) that's just trying to run the original engine without making changes.

 

[rjshae]

Why is Josh always saying its hard-to-do things. The hard-to-do things are what make games worthwhile doing. It sounds like he has no passion for it. The hard-to-do things are the only things worth doing in terms of making great games and you should aim to at least do one or two scope be damned. If it has been done before and is easy on the developers you are not going to impress me with your game. It is more like I am going to find it a safe and somewhat bland product that takes no chances.

Nonsense. You're just asserting that "Hard" means "Hate", but it doesn't.

 

[Archangel]

On the opposite, let him design more rulesets, a lot more. It's by practicing and refining that you end up good and even great at something.

He had enough time to do that by now. At some point one should figure out they are not meant to do this and go do something else.

 

[Silver]

Nonsense. You're just asserting that "Hard" means "Hate", but it doesn't.

No I'm asserting that taking the easy path in development terms yields mediocre rewards. Sometimes you've got to be ambitious about somethings but I feel Josh is too grounded a person for that. Meaning he is always looking at the scope of a project and pushing for time and budget rather than pushing for quality.

 

[azarhal]

No I'm asserting that taking the easy path in development terms yields mediocre rewards. Sometimes you've got to be ambitious about somethings but I feel Josh is too grounded a person for that. Meaning he is always looking at the scope of a project and pushing for time and budget rather than pushing for quality.

I haven't seen any places where he doesn't want to take the "hard path" in that interview. He mentions that making a game is not something easy regardless of your job (programmer, designer, writers, etc) and gives examples.

Also, if Josh didn't keep his game development inside its budget (budget is mostly used to pay for salaries, so it is directly tied to time), he would get replaced by someone who would. Obsidian just announced a bunch of layoff, they aren't a gold mine that can squander money around just to please your taste for innovation (especially not for a series of nostalgia games all about bringing back the feels of oldies).

 

[rjshae]

No I'm asserting that taking the easy path in development terms yields mediocre rewards. Sometimes you've got to be ambitious about somethings but I feel Josh is too grounded a person for that. Meaning he is always looking at the scope of a project and pushing for time and budget rather than pushing for quality.

No that's not what you said, but whatever. It's a business, and you can't ignore the economics of the situation. When you're leading a project, it's a matter of balancing trade offs. Spending time on a hard task that doesn't deliver much value is wasted time. Thus you need to know what tasks are hard in order to assess where you spend your time. Saying that something is hard is just sensible project management knowledge, not a lack of passion. Hard != hate.

 

[luj1]

With PoE he couldnt even listen to his own advice and Tranny is even worse than PoE so I'd say he deserves all the hate he's getting.

Their next game being based in Pathfinder means its crystal clear even to Tim Cain this guy is not only a weak lead but gets lost too easily when designing a ruleset from scratch

 

[Archangel]

Well it is unfair to blame Tyranny on Josh since he had little to do with its changes compared to PoE.

 

[Silver]

No that's not what you said, but whatever. It's a business, and you can't ignore the economics of the situation. When you're leading a project, it's a matter of balancing trade offs. Spending time on a hard task that doesn't deliver much value is wasted time. Thus you need to know what tasks are hard in order to assess where you spend your time. Saying that something is hard is just sensible project management knowledge, not a lack of passion. Hard != hate.

It may be a business but you still get to prioritise features that are important including the size of the game itself ie Pillars is quantity over quality. You also don't get to decide what I meant with my original comment btw. I clarified and you are deciding to run with a different interpretation. Whatever, have fun with that.

 

[RPGFool]

No that's not what you said, but whatever. It's a business, and you can't ignore the economics of the situation. When you're leading a project, it's a matter of balancing trade offs. Spending time on a hard task that doesn't deliver much value is wasted time. Thus you need to know what tasks are hard in order to assess where you spend your time. Saying that something is hard is just sensible project management knowledge, not a lack of passion. Hard != hate.

Of course economics are involved. We're talking about a commercial, for profit, computer game. And of course its a matter of balancing trade offs. The issue is where one draws the line -- what is the final "balance".

EA draws the balance one way and have lost lots of customers as a result of their choices. CDPR draws an entirely different balance and has steadily gained lots of customers as a result of their choices.

As to Obsidian and Sawyer, Obsidian has a history of valuing getting games out the door above valuing high polish, depth and quality. Obsidian makes good games; but not great games (New Vegas was certainly close, but wasn't quite there). But given the founders' history of Black Isle and the financial difficulties causing closure of that studio, the focus on getting games out is understandable.

I agree with Silver that Sawyer and Obsidian draw their balance too far on the side of low risk; meet budget; limited depth; limited experimentation. Feargus Urquhart talked about selling Obsidian in a recent interview (RPG Codex). They might actually find a good fit with EA/Bioware.

__

 

[luj1]

I wish they'd sell that smelly carcass too

Well it is unfair to blame Tyranny on Josh since he had little to do with its changes compared to PoE.

Tranny uses the same gangrenous core systems designed by Josh...

 

[rjshae]

It may be a business but you still get to prioritise features that are important including the size of the game itself ie Pillars is quantity over quality.

Well that's purely your opinion, not an agreed upon fact. I find the quantity and quality to be comparable to Baldur's Gate, which is fine by me.

You also don't get to decide what I meant with my original comment btw. I clarified and you are deciding to run with a different interpretation. Whatever, have fun with that.

Yes, your subsequent reply is different from what you initially wrote, which is what I said. I'll just blame it upon poor communication. Have a good one back at the Codex.

 

[rjshae]

Tranny uses the same gangrenous core systems designed by Josh…

More Codex spawned anti-Sawyer vitriol, no doubt. I'll just note that the game system in PoE is better than the one used in Baldur's Gate. The latter one didn't even have skills, and the AD&D magic system is archaic. Not that there isn't room for improvement in PoE, but it does the job reasonably well.