Pentiment - Anniversary Interview

[HiddenX]

Toucharcade interviewed Josh Sawyer one year after the release of Pentiment:

Pentiment Anniversary Interview: Josh Sawyer on His Influences, Going From Playing D&D to Designing, a Potential Pillars of Eternity 3, RPG Mechanics, and More

I loved Obsidian Entertainment's Pentiment last year, and with its upcoming anniversary, I figured it was a great time to chat with Josh Sawyer (Studio Design Director at Obsidian) about the game, RPG mechanics, his career, the games he is playing now, and a lot more including a few non-gaming topics. This is one of the longer interviews we've done. Usually, I'd want to split a feature like this into two parts, but I'm sure fans of Josh Sawyer's work like reading a lot anyway. This interview was conducted on a video call. It was then transcribed and edited for brevity in the case of some portions.

TouchArcade (TA): For those who don't know you, tell us a little bit about yourself, and your current position at Obsidian Entertainment.

Josh Sawyer (JS): My name is Josh Sawyer. I started in the video game industry in 1999 at Black Isle Studios. I originally started as a website designer. The first game I worked on was Planescape Torment, designing the website for that, and then Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate 2.

I then became a designer on Icewind Dale, and I worked at Black Isle until it closed or just before it closed. I then went to Midway for a couple of years that didn't really work out. Then I went to Obsidian. In 2005, I worked on Neverwinter Nights 2, and then after that I directed Fallout: New Vegas, Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2, and Pentiment. I've been the studio design director at the studio for five years.

[...]

TA: I'm glad you mentioned that, because I was gonna ask what you thought about Baldur's Gate 3. I'm slowly playing through it. I know you are as well. I think you mentioned how Baldur's Gate 3 ended the real time with pause versus turn based debate. I also wanted to know what you specifically would like to do in your own game if you didn't have to worry about what the audience wanted.

JS: I'm still concerned about what the audience wants, but I prefer turn based as well. I just think it's easier to design more intricate combats. I like games with a lot of stats, obviously. (he laughs). But the problem with real time with pause is that it's honestly very difficult for people to to actually parse all of that information and one of the things I've heard a lot from people who've played Deadfire in turn based, is that there were things about the game like the affliction and inspiration system that they didn't really understand very clearly until they played it in turn based. Other mechanics like penetration, they didn't fully understand until they played it in turn based. So I'm not saying that all those systems are perfect, but I do think like I like doing more crunchy stuff with systems, and that is it's just easier to make that stuff clear and work in a turn based setting.

So I would do something like that, I've said before the camera in BG3 which is essentially the Divinity Original Sin 2 camera. I don't prefer that because I like designing for a specific perspective.

I think you could do that with a scripted camera in 3D. I think that would be super cool. You can do that and it can work and be a lot of fun and. I think that's that's the thing. For me, most of the problems I have with BG3 have to do with the interface. It has to do with the camera or the interface and how you manage abilities and click on things and some of that stuff is kind of a headache to me to be honest. I really, at least for Pillars and Deadfire, I tried to keep the interface, given that it's a very complicated game, I tried to make it as simple to interact with as possible, and I think we did a pretty good job on it, so that would continue to be my focus.

Any time I'm gonna make a game where I know that there's a lot of complexity in it, I want the complexity to be not in interacting with the interface, but in the mental part of it, not the physical part of it.

[...]

Thanks Couchpotato!

More information.

 

[rjshae]

He mentioned that a lot of people still like a physical release, which is a bit of a surprise for me. I suppose there's a nostalgia factor among older games, but I'm glad I can now just download a copy across the network.

I agree that crunchy tactical combat is a big draw for turn-based games, at least for me. It also seems to help drive more interesting tuned combat scenarios, as opposed just slaughtering endless cannon fodder. Real-time is probably better for larger scale combat situations, where turn-based would get tedious.

Crossing my fingers on a Pillars 3. I think enough time has passed.

 

[Redglyph]

He mentioned that a lot of people still like a physical release, which is a bit of a surprise for me. I suppose there's a nostalgia factor among older games, but I'm glad I can now just download a copy across the network.

Same here. I liked the boxes and manuals, and I liked the idea of owning the game and being able to give it or sell it to someone else, but all those boxes were piling up and taking too much space, so I'm happy to just download the games. Anyway, it doesn't make sense with all the updates, and we don't own the games any more.

Apparently, many still like the boxes, which is understandable.

 

[Carnifex]

Count me as another that vastly prefers being able to download the game....and then quickly unplug, load it up and enjoy it. I do miss the manuals yet not the boxes and all the other mess that often came with each and every game. Although I still have a few Ultima cloth maps and an akh or three lurking around....

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Regarding physical releases, I wrote down a thought here : https://rpgwatch.com/forum/threads/a-thought.2602/post-1061732374

A part of me thinks that non-physical releases were put on us by The Industry, because that keeps us people from making pirate copies. Non-physical releases are so much easier to control for The Industry, because well, they are located on servers, and nowhere else. Even better are software-as-a-service non-physical game releases.
And that people wideöly accepted that via / through steam et. al. .

It feels to me as if The Gaming Industry somehow made "us" "gamers" happily accept some kind of feed of which we would know that it is unhealthy. But it tastes so good ...

It kind of feels like brainwashing to me.

On the defense of the Indies, however, I must admit that physical releases eat up so much from the profits of a game - and that in times where proper game development gets so expensive that no-one is actually about to immerse oneself into those insanely high numbers of spent money for development costs.
Game development, however, partly became so much expensive because people want better and better graphics, for example.
I'm not an expert, but I *personally* believe that the " gamers' " desire for great graphics is almost the main factor in driving development costs so high.
Plus, this desire is fed by graphic card manufacturers, too.

That great graphics don't necessarily add up to the "fun" aspect of a game, well, that can overly be seen by the example of Stardew Valley.

A heretical view could be, however, that the "fun" aspect ismn't the motor or the driving force in games anymore. "Fun" feels so much diffrent to me that what I currently see being delivered by most bigger game companies.
To become an even bigger heretic, I'd dare to even say that it's the "adrenaline factor" which is driving game development these days, not a "fun factor" ...
And adrenaline, in my opinion, it makes people become addicted ... to an "adrenaline rush" ...

 

[Taluntain]

He mentioned that a lot of people still like a physical release, which is a bit of a surprise for me.

There is a substantial (and growing) big box collectors' market. A lot of people are spending large amounts of money building their big box collections and are constantly on the hunt for new big box releases as well as they are rare at this point.

 

[Stingray]

I still buy all my games physical whenever possible (and physical collector's edition for guaranteed classics). The normal boxes, and their contents, nowadays aren't much compared to the big box era, but it's still nice to have something to collect for a game that meant something to you. If gaming is your main hobby, I don't know why you'd have an issue with dedicating some shelf space to it.

Pentiment was a pretty great experience. Actually one of the more memorable "games" I've played in recent years. I'd probably buy the physical for it. Doubt it would be priced all that high.

 

[Pessimeister]

Purchasing games is deplorably lacking in impact as an experience these days when it comes to just digital files. I like Collectors Editions but after the largely empty box I got for Deadfire, the reality of the new era pretty much set in. I'll always reserve space for games but these days most of my boxed purchases are for older titles and for my C64 collection.

 

[bjon045]

Purchasing games is deplorably lacking in impact as an experience these days when it comes to just digital files. I like Collectors Editions but after the largely empty box I got for Deadfire, the reality of the new era pretty much set in. I'll always reserve space for games but these days most of my boxed purchases are for older titles and for my C64 collection.

You got an empty box for Deadfire? In my collections edition review where I reviewed all the KS/Fig collector edition it scored quite highly, only below D:OS2 and WL2.

I'm too lazy to get it down from the shelf but if I recall correctly it had a very nice artbook, decent cloth map, steel book, cloth patch, cosmic pig pin badge and a manual. The inside of the box was fairly well done with foam layers for everything to fit in. The box cover is good and it looks good alongside PoE1 CE but there is a slight style variance between the two i.e. Deadfire looks higher quality. The statue of Eothas was a bit dissappointing though.

 

[Pessimeister]

The Deadfire mousepad was ok - I actually still use that. But it was mostly empty. I think the lack of physical cds for the first time in such an edition contributed heavily to that feeling. It made me aware of the changes coming in gaming. I haven't really felt inclined to invest in a Collectors Edition since but that's mostly just me.