Pillars of Eternity: Josh Sawyer talks mods, PC-first focus, Big Head mode, and more - weberneart1942

Pillars of Infinity is about a calendar month off from release, and so with the game mostly destroyed I got the risk to sit down for one last, drawn-out confab with Obsidian's Josh Sawyer beetle to talk expansion plans, sequel rumors, wherefore PCs are awful, double-quick/slow mode, Of import Caput Mood, Gothic castles, and why Mightiness affects the damage inflicted aside a pistol.

Every that and more, below.

Side note: While Sawyer talked, Obsidian's Nick Carver was playing through any nonmandatory sections of the mettlesome for us, so if you see any references to "that hero" or the equal, clean assume it's Sawyer beetle referencing whatever was on the screen at the time. Also, I have no idea what the official spelling is for some of these areas and characters. I guessed. Action me.

Setting the degree

Josh Sawyer beetle, Obsidian (JS): One of the areas we're showing right directly is Radric's Hold. Radric's Hold is encountered within the first couple of hours of the game. You give the sack take on information technology immediately. You can expect and come back. There's no level-scaling operating room anything so you can lie with in whatever order you want.

It was consequential for us to possess these grand-scope, very cool 2D environments. This is a Gothic architecture Castle. One of our designers was like "Can we please just have one Gothic Castle?" thusly we definite to make Radric's Oblige. Information technology is actually a dungeon. You can use some diplomacy as you carry out information technology. You hindquarters use stealth. You can wont your skills in different ways. First, though, we're going to try and just barge our way in, which is one way you force out do it.

It is a real-time with pause combat system, so at whatever time you tail pause the game. You also take a lot of auto-intermit options. A lot of players prefer to have things set upwards ahead of time and so if a character goes down, something happens, it'll intermission right away so they can impart new orders.

Fast Mode and Dumb Mode

JS: In a big battle like this where there are a ton of combatants you can besides pass away into a "Slow Mode." Slow Mode doesn't track down at one-half quicken, it runs at 2/3 hie. It's just enough to bring the speed down so things become a smaller bit easier to postdate, a bit easier to manage. You don't have to quite a micro and intermission so much.

Not only do you have a slow way for combat, but you accept a firm mode that's good for exploring quick—usually ray-traverse. Exploration is a big part of the game only re-traverse is also a big persona of the game that's not necessarily super-enjoyable. Degenerate mode helps you book it direct there.

The final word along classes

JS: There are 11 different classes. This is all part of the Kickstarter drive. They all play very differently.

We did design the game so you father't have to consume a nuclear party. You don't need to have a champion, a rogue, a wizard and a priest if you don't want to. You give the axe make doodad parties, you rump make a party that's all paladins or all rogues and wizards. Whatever you want. It is designed so the game bequeath be alive and completable No matter how you built your political party.

This party that we have redress here—all of these characters are companions except this one, which is the main. She's a rogue. On that point's a scrapper. That's Khana, a chanter or bard. That's Durance, the make fun who looks like an insane Grigori Efimovich Rasputin. He's a priest. That's Aloth, who is a wizard. And the past one is the Grieving Mother, who is a Cipher. In this case we do have a organelle party. The room we put down up our companions is to cover a wide set of classes. If you just sort of go with inertia you will end up with a nuclear party. Just withal, we didn't require to designing the game in a agency where you required that.

If you don't the likes of these guys, you don't have to take them. In fact, you can even pull in your own additional characters that are just Adventurers and add them to your party. You commode also recreate solo if you deprivation, although that's implausibly rugged.

You'll notice all character [Nick] is playing has some agile-use of goods and services abilities. We did try to make reliable that if you wanted to induce a character that's very active, even one that's traditionally within reason passive voice like a attack aircraft, you did have scores of active-wont abilities.

However IT throne be a good deal to manage six characters like that, so you can as wel build characters that are nigh full resistless. You get into't really have to supervise them a whole lot. You dismiss plant them in a locating, say "defend that" and they work pretty much tight like that.

FIghters are belik the about passive in terms of how you backside build them. You can build up their defensive abilities so they lock people down when they come through most, you get very much of defensive bonuses, they regenerate damage all over time, and they have a consistent progression of damage. Thusly if you want them to stand in a placement, not die, and do unchanging damage? They're great.

You tail also build them to be very active though where they're doing crowd control, they'Ra knocking guys outside, things like that.

There's nothing I would say "Don't play this if you're a novice" because when you start exterior you're only managing your own, only character. I think we progress in a way where it's pretty easy to manage. But I will say that rogues and monks tend to be, of the battle royal classes, more than many open. And especially rogues are much more than fragile, and can get screwed up very fast.

On stats

JS: We really put off very much of effort into our stat spread. We've tweaked and tweaked and retweaked this all over time. For instance, the Might score increases damage and healing for everything. You might say, "Dude, why should Might affect the damage of my pistol?" and I enunciat, "Tight the $#&^#& up." The power point is that it's good for any class that wants to concentrate on that.

Intellect increases the expanse of effect and duration of any ability you use. You don't demand to be a wizard or anything equal that.

It's not a perfect 1-to-1 where you can build whatsoever you want and there's no craft-off, simply if you want to build an idiot muscle-wizard, which is very important to me, you can. If you deficiency to build a brilliant fighter, that's also a identical viable character. If you have an idea for a cool character we don't want to say "No, that's unrealistic." We lack to aver "What's a way we pot support that and make information technology fun?"

We only own fivesome non-combat skills in the gamey. We did that because we wanted to make a point each skill got a band of use, regardless of who had the skill. Aloth is very focused in Traditional knowledge. Lore is great in conversations for your chief fictional character but it's also what's old for reading scrolls. Yes, you can make a attack aircraft that just reads scrolls daylong. It's not a modified skill. Nothing is a restricted skill. You do not need to have a rogue if you want to demilitarise traps operating theater be stealthy. They're better at IT! But it's not a requirement.

Let's allege you finish with sestet characters that have the Mechanics skill jacked up. Because you're &%^#%ing crazy. You jack them altogether high. Every part butt plant one ensnare at a time, and the Mechanics skill will increase the accuracy and the top executive of that trap. So if you want to make the trap-laying party? You can jack everyone's Mechanics and go out and send every that.

If you jack everyone's Lore accomplishment, they can all function scrolls. If you jack everyone's Survival skills, all potions will last longer and all food items will finally longer. We tried to make a point all skill has roughly usefulness if you have close to overlap or redundancy. It's frustrating to build a graphic symbol and and so someone joins the party that has the same skillset and you'Ra like "Well, thanks fellow. That's ineffectual."

Along amicable fire

JS: (To Carver) Show one of Aloth's AOEs. You can see there are two radii for that. The exclusive circuit is completely friend-or-foe. Everyone will be remov [by the tour]. That mete area? That's a bonus from his intellect, and that area is foe-only.

So you can throw a fireball and if something falls in that outer call up, if information technology's an ally they won't cost hurt. That's a way we allow those spells to scale without, "This gets bigger only my party gets hurt more easily."

On guards

JS: Guards will call for help. They won't run away but they will necessitate avail. And you do have to cost careful nearly where you choose to engage them. You can actually encounter one-on-one guards by themselves, but there are patrollers so you might have adds, and when you have those adds they might shout and attract guys from behind them. You kind of have to watch.

We proven to make sure every map out did have much patrollers on it because straight a few of them nates really interchange the dynamics of how fights run down.

Read connected to Sri Frederick Handley Page two for more entropy on expansions, tabletop Pillars of Eternity, Handsome Head Style, and more.

Along experience space-reflection symmetry

JS: We went hinder and Forth River on this a number of times and in that location were lots of people crying about IT, so we had to be careful about how we did it. Initially we only gave quest XP. You got experience from doing quests, you didn't begin it from killing monsters.

A lot of masses were really mad about that. But we also didn't want to make that position where "I did the stealth route. I got less XP than everyone other." Or "I did the stealth path and now I'm going to disco biscuit back and kill all the things I passed the commencement fourth dimension around."

So what we fare is: We have a bestiary, and it unlocks many as you kill more monsters. You get XP as you unlock it, but when you're through with an entry you put on't get any Sir Thomas More XP for it. So as you devour the game you do get along combat XP, only you stop getting XP for a given creature way before the dot where you've exterminated all of them in the world.

It does make you feel corresponding you experience rewards for it, but information technology's not exhortatory you to slaughter the entire population of the world. Hopefully that does founde a nice balance then if you choose to circumvent a chemical group of monsters that's okay because you'll still get that XP somewhere later in the stake.

There is not a complete pacifist route through the game. We do try to have lots of options for either talking your way through or sneaking your right smart through. But it's not like Side effect. Plan of action combat is a core depart of the game, suchlike we aforementioned from the source. Making it sol there's a too large emphasis on not fighting seemed contrary to the roots we're trying to emulate.

It crapper be a great reward for the type of character you're trying to figure though, thusly we do sample to suffer some of that. And a pretty large amount of it, actually.

On enchanting

JS: We can enchant any piece of armor. You can enchant uncomparable items you find. You buttocks enchant timed clothing. A lot of the great unwashe want to be able to continue upgrading their items throughout the game, so our enchantment system actually allows you to retain.

You can append attribute bonuses, proofing (which is a defense against a indisputable type of damage). All of this is designed so incomparable items stay unique, but if you deficiency to just extend their basic power, they can keep up. If you find your favorite sword, or "This armor has such a cool chronicle and appearance but it's terrible now," you can use the crafting system to keep upgrading it.

To each one mod has a certain price to that and you can only have so many a on some piece of music.

On difficulty

JS: Variant difficulty levels, what we do is actually change the composition of fights. Instead of just scaling stats, which is hospitable of boring, we order "Immediately when you come out here the creatures are moved around and there are antithetical creatures present." That's true of the whole game.

Connected adventuring

JS: This is some other scripted interaction where you can take wrestling maulers and ropes and a lot of past traditional adventuring items…

[Ten foot pole?]

JS: Everyone keeps asking! Early on there was a cardinal-foot pole. After a while we were like "Hey designers, where are you using all the adventuring items?" And we went through it and we were like "Nonentity's using the ten-base pole."

[Because nobody of all time uses the ten-foot pole! That's the integral joke!]

JS: Soh we shorten the ten-foot perch. Because it wasn't being used.

[Can players mod spinal column in the ten-foot pole?]

JS: I'm positive they will.

Happening mods

JS: We don't have a lot of [modernistic] tools. We've tried to cost very open with how our files are integrated and how our file formats crop. People have already been making mods in our backer forums and stuff like that, especially UI mods because holy ^$&adenylic acid;^&#% everyone has a different opinion on how the UI should facial expression. So people have done a great deal of really caller mod work already. As much as we can support mods, we want to, simply it is Unity so some aspects of it are black-boxed.

[Last clock I talked to you, you said probably no new maps because it's really hard. Is that still true?]

JS: It is very hard. Maybe they'll be able to find a elbow room to do it, only right now it's still a identical difficult process even for US. I shouldn't say it's thorny for us, but it's a very time-intense, multi-step process to get stuff in.

[How hard would it be for people to take the maps you've made, rip every the characters out, and put new stuff in?]

JS: Much easier. Mass inserting their own content will probably be a lot easier than someone creating something from scratch. Easy is comparative, but I think they could do that. Citizenry have already messed with our conversation files and stuff the likes of that. A lot of our conversations are just in XML format, so they'ray easy to open and [imitates typing].

On expansions and sequels

JS: They're going to be extensions of the main game. We are making an automated save for you, it's really known as the Point of No Return Preserve. So if you complete the whole game and you're like "Oh %#&^, the expansion came impossible," great. Load that lay aside, you can go straight into it, it's fine. It's something connected to the main game only its own separate storyline, and you take your normal characters into it. We'Re in the very early stages of planning IT.

We have to see exactly how it integrates in terms of location and how it shows up on the correspondenc, or whether it's its own break world map. But we have a ton of locations. Baldur's Gate was about 100-110. Baldur's Gate II was 200-and-something? Ours is 150. Pretty big. It's a long game, even if you play just the crit path. If you make for altogether the material it's a very nightlong gritty.

[Are you looking at save imports for a sequel too?]

JS: We'd much as that. People care the idea of taking their characters on a long, epic journey. Even going back to the standard RPGs, it was nice to bring your character in and retain with it.

Contrary to what somebody interpreted what our CEO said, we're non working on a subsequence the least bit yet. We're non even off really talk roughly it except to say "That'd be cool. Hope people like this game." But we do cerebrate about, if we were to make a sequel we do deficiency the player to be able to bring their character from this game, come across into the close game, and course reflect the choices they ready-made in the former game.

On pandering to the PC

JS: Because it is Personal computer-focused, we can read Mouse and Keyboard. Yes. You play the game this path. Someone asked about consoles last time, I said "$&$^&# no." You're not departure to do that. This is a very—it's not actually an RTS just it is RTS-like.

If you actually go back to Baldur's Gate, that was supported something called Battleground Infinity that was an RTS. Then they said "Eh, it's a D&D game" and it worked out jolly well. Being able to come through a PC-concentrated game means we can stick to a mouse and keyboard fructify-up and focus on that variety of combat that's more RTS-like and more true to a PC experience.

On Beamdog and Baldur's Gate

JS: That's nerveless! I thought the Enhanced Editions were really nice updates for the old games. IT was real cool they came to tablets. A one of the main designers on Icewind Dale, seeing the BG2 kits in there destroy all the balance kind of successful me a little sad. The BG2 kits are really regnant and Icewind Dale was kind of balanced round unitary thing.

But it was still really cool to see it with all the technical school upgrades. Trento Oster obviously has a foresighted background with the Baldur's Gate serial publication, indeed it's cool they'll gain Thomas More.

On tabletop Pillars of Timelessness

JS: We take talked about IT. The way I always look at that is…all from time to time I go into a play store and I see like, " Diablo 2: The Purpose-Playacting Game" and I'm like "Did people buy this? I guess someone did."

As the great unwashe WHO work in the video game space, making a game the likes of this, we seat bring something. These games weren't being made for a very age, so we could bring something back that was wanting.

Merely making Pillars of Timelessness into a tabletop game, it's like "Hey dude, D&A;D exists. Scout exists." I don't personally know what—we're ripping off tons of D&D and Pathfinder things to make this—what would we real bring up to the tabletop environment that would clear hoi polloi go "I've got to experience that game."

I'm cool with us doing lore books and novellas and whol that. A standalone tabletop game? I think the tabletop designers that are out there making their own systems or working within active companies are doing a great line of work. I wouldn't rule it come out, but would people really play this? You could play in the Pillars of Eternity world and just play D&D operating room play Pathfinder and it would probably constitute fine.

And in conclusion, on Big Head Mode (yes, IT's in the game)

JS: It's always been a aspiration of mine to work on a gamey with big head mode.

That's information technology! Pillars of Eternity releases Marching 26 for PC/Mackintosh/Linux. Be sure to check out our previous two deep-dives with Sawyer if you'Ra craving even more information. You can find those Here and here.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/431986/pillars-of-eternity-josh-sawyer-talks-mods-pc-first-focus-big-head-mode-and-more.html

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