It’s no secret I’m pretty excited for Pillars of Eternity, Obsidian’s spiritual successor to 1990s CRPG classics like Baldur’s Gate and Planescape Torment. In the past I’ve gone to Obsidian’s headquarters to check out the game and chat with project lead Josh Sawyer, and then I saw a second demo at E3.
This time I sat down with Josh Sawyer here in San Francisco to discuss character creation and…well, a lot of other stuff.
The Interview
Josh Sawyer: So you’ve already seen a couple of our demos and you saw our E3 demo, so we’ll be focusing on our character creation stuff.
You played the Infinity Engine games? We wanted to provide an experience that’s very deep and had a lot of customization to it, so…we found the time to animate female characters. Very excited.
PCWorld: But how many people did you have to hire in order to animate those female characters? [Laughs]
JS: Turns out…zero. [Laughs] So yes, of course, male and female characters just like basically every game we’ve ever worked on. We also have our six races, and then a sub—you have your humans, your dwarves, your elves, and then Aumaua and Orlan. Aumaua and Orlan are new for our setting. Aumaua are big aquatic guys. Orlan are little feral halflings, kind of. Cat-people?
And then the Godlike are weird as shit. They’re like the plane-touched in the Forgotten Realms, where they’re blessed by the gods, they have insanely weird appearances. People tend to respond either very positively or very negatively to them.
Death godlike? [In reference to seeing a potential godlike character on the creation screen]
JS: Yes, that was a death godlike. We also have the different ethnicities you can choose from. You can be a Meadow Human, which is your standard Euro dude. We also have Ocean Humans, who are from near the equatorial region. Savannah Humans are more Mesoamerican.
Eleven character classes. Kickstarter, during the campaign we started with I think five. Over the course of stretch goals that moved to a total of eleven. We have all the standard classes—fighters, wizards, rogues, all those guys. Chanters and ciphers are two new weirdo guys. Chanters are a replacement for bards. Ciphers are a bit like psionicists. When you pick your character class here obviously you’re getting a vibe for the different outfits and looks of them. All the classes play pretty differently. Paladins are good at defensive stuff and single-target buffs. Fighters are really good at defense. We’re going to go with a barbarian. Barbarians are really good at doing area of effect melee damage and really fast bursts of damage, and they can also do things like sprint across the battlefield.
Attributes, this is D&D like superficially in the sense that there are six attributes physical and mental. It took us a long time but we made sure that all the attributes are good for all classes. So if you want to make a super genius barbarian, you can, and it’s actually good for them because Intellect affects area of effect and duration. For a barbarian, if you want your Wild Sprint last longer, a high Intellect will let it last longer. If you want a bigger AOE on melee attacks, a high Intellect will give you a bigger AOE on your melee attacks.
So there’s not just a dump stat?
JS: Exactly. We wanted to avoid—well, not just avoid dump stats, but if you have an idea, like you want to make a super-genius barbarian, I want to make a stupid idiot wizard, I want to make a weakling charismatic fighter, you can do all of that and the system is built so there is a way where you can play with those stats.
The other thing, too, is that if you just dump points into the things you typically associate with those classes, like “I want to be a super-strong barbarian,” that’s great, you’re still a really good character and that’s fine. But it’s the kind of oddball things—my opinion is, if there’s only one or two builds you can really make with a character, why have attributes? Why not just say you’re a barbarian and you’re strong because you’re a barbarian. I think that limits the player in a lot of ways, and I’d rather just say “Nope, you can be a super idiot smartie, whatever you want to do, and it’s all valid in the game.
So here we go with cultures. Cultures actually change your starting gear depending on which you start with. So there’s this battle-axe and sword dude, this guy has leather armor, spear, and a shield. Each of the different cultures has a different set of gear you can use with them. And of course once you start a game you can buy new gear, change it around. This is just how you want to start off.
Are all these comparable, gear-wise?
JS: Yes, they are. For instance if you start with a character that has a pike or spear or something like that, shields give you a deflection bonus but your attack goes down, spears give you an accuracy bonus. The one guy starts dual-wielding a sword and a battleaxe. The battleaxe has a higher critical damage, and the sword does best of slash and pierce damage. Every armor is strong and weak versus different attack types. The sword attacks the weakest of slash or pierce resistance.
Each weapon has its own cool things, but they’re all designed to be equally valid. One guy starts with two hatchets, and they’re actually good because they’re designed to be really fast, and they give a deflection bonus so you actually get the parrying bonus as well.
Same with armor. Heavier armor protects against more damage, but you have longer delays between each attack. It’s all supposed to kind of work out.
You can also pick…this is more role-playing stuff in-game, so you can pick “I was a colonist” “I was a slave” “I was a clergyman.” You can pick these little backgrounds. They don’t have a huge gameplay effect, they’re mostly for roleplaying stuff. They help shape your character for the rest of the game.
Classic 2D portraits. As in the other Infinity Engine games you can pick from the portraits we made or you can just import one.
Are they the same resolution as the old Infinity Engine portraits?
JS: No, but they’re the same aspect ratio, I’m pretty sure. If they were actually the same size they’d be pretty small, but they’re the same proportions so if you uprezzed one you’d be fine.
You can also customize colors. You can customize facial hair. You can customize your hairstyles. In most cases your character is pretty small on-screen but it holds up pretty well.
How do you make it, because you want to make everything equally valid, how do you make it so all the characters don’t feel like the same character?
JS: Have you ever played 4th Edition D&D? Superficially you’d look at that and say all the classes are the same. They all get the same number of abilities, they all get the same number of per-encounter, but they all play completely differently. As the levels go on, those characters play way more differently than third-edition characters. On paper if you look at the choices you’re given, you all get one daily, one encounter, one utility, whatever. But mechanically when you actually play them, they play completely differently. So that’s really what we try to do.
For example, yes you can make a character with a high intellect versus high might. Pretty much for a barbarian you’re saying “I want to hit a big area of effect. I’m not going to deal a ton of damage with each hit, but I’m going to hit a big area.” You as the player need to try and cluster as many people together as you can. If you have a high might, you can more focus on tiny groups, which you have to because you sacrificed Intellect to get that high Might. You’re emphasizing a different style and focus for that character.
Another example is rogues. Rogues with a high dexterity will hit a lot, which is great. Rogues also inflict status effects that allow them to do sneak attacks. Status effects have durations. If you have a high Intellect, those durations go on longer. If you have a low Dexterity, you won’t be able to hit as often. So it’s all about trading off “What do I really want to emphasize with this character? Hitting a lot? Hitting for a lot of damage? Interrupting?” Perception actually causes characters to play hit-reaction and interrupt their action. It’s all about emphasizing specific things for a character.
Is it important when building your party, instead of just “I want two fighters, a wizard, et cetera” to now say, “Okay, I want these fighters because they’ll complement my skills…”
JS: Yes, it’s very helpful. One of the things we’ll show you when we get in…Barbarians are actually vulnerable to attacks from mobs sometimes. If you give them a weapon that has some reach, like a pike, they can complement that weakness by sitting in the back row. You still get your AOE damage, so you can have a fighter intercept the mob and then the barbarian can just pound the shit out of them.
Similarly, you have a Rogue. They get an advantage when characters are on the ground, you can have a fighter knock a guy down and then the Rogue just ganks the shit out of them. So it’s kind of about what you want to emphasize and what you want to do by playing off the strengths of the different classes.
[He pauses. Lead producer Brandon Adler clicks through the last few character creation screens.]
You can pick voice sets. It’s thrilling.
You can enter your name.
[Brandon says “I can enter your name” to Josh.]
If I were playing I could enter Brandon’s name.
Does character creation happen after the opening text scrawl?
JS: Yeah, it happens after the text scrawl. It gives you the context. The background of the character creation screen is actually where you’re standing in the opening scene.
Post-creation
After that, we go straight into the same demo I saw at E3, although we take a different path—we even solve a floor puzzle at one point. I pepper Sawyer with random questions.
On dialogue
How does dialogue work? How do I tell who in my party is speaking?
JS: Your main guy is always speaking unless a companion specifically has an interjection. And that’s because we want to emphasize the choices that you specifically made for how you built your character. You don’t have any control over how the companions are built, so it seems weird to play off that. “Yay, I got this character. Oh, she has a high Intellect! I didn’t pick it, but lucky me I guess.”
Also, you’re supposed to be the…It’s not like Icewind Dale. You are the central character of the story, so things respond to you and you’re the speaker for the party. And then every once in a while companions will jump in and say stuff.
Something we’ve added since the last time you saw this: Any dialogue options that your character doesn’t qualify for, you can optionally have it say “Hey buddy, if you had a higher Lore, there would be an option here.” It gives you insight into “Oh, cool, I could build my character different ways and get all these other responses.” If you’re super pro, you can turn it off. You can just hide all that stuff, hide all the feedback. Some of the players like the “purist” experience where they just read the lines, they don’t want to know there are secrets there.
We’re going to try and intimidate this player with might. We’re going to be all buff and tough and this guy’s like “Eh, fuck you.” One thing we found ourselves falling into in a lot of our recent games, especially Fallout: New Vegas, it’s that if we give a character a dialogue unlock from a high ability score or something, that’s the right response. That’s the thing you pick.
That’s kind of not fun because it makes you feel like “Oh, well this is the way I should do this.” So we unlock things based on your stats now, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to work out well. So in that case you have a high might, you can be like “I’m going to intimidate this guy,” and he’ll go “Nope, I’m a crazy fanatic” and try to murder you. The unlock doesn’t always mean you’re going to get the upper hand.
On inventory
JS: You can manage everyone’s inventory from the same screen. Normally in combat you can’t access your inventory but you can access your weapon sets.
Right now it’s unpaused while you’re in the menu, but I think we’re probably going to have it paused in the menu.
Inventory is just slots. This is actually more slots than characters will typically have. Characters will usually start off with eight. You also have the stash. The stash, you can look at and put things into when you’re not resting, but you can only get things out when you’re resting or at a store. The way we handle a lot of this stuff is…the idea is your characters have a limited number of slots to carry things, but we don’t want people to…it’s not fun to…
Make this person carry all the arrows
JS: …Rearrange weapons. Take a trip out of the dungeon and come back in. Whatever. When you’re at a tabletop playing D&D with someone you can say, “Hey DM, uh, we make two trips to carry out all the gold,” and he can go “Uh, cool, nothing happens.” Whereas in this game or the Infinity Engine games you’d have to walk in, pick everything up again. So that’s what the stash is for. The stash, you put it in a bag but you can’t take anything out until you rest.
On fighting
JS: While characters are moving, their recovery bars don’t move. Movement is free, you can move whenever you want to, but if you attack someone and then start moving away your attack is not recharging. It stops until you stop moving and then it respawns. If you try to kite someone, it’s probably not going to work out in your favor.
Dual-wielding gives you faster attacks.
How does health work?
JS: You saw the red fill, right? There’s this green bar over here. There’s two resources—one that’s short term and one that’s long term. The short-term is called Stamina right now but it will be called Endurance. That goes down, that’s your per-fight health. Your Health goes down about a quarter as fast as your Endurance goes down. That’s your long term.
So if you get into a fight and a guy’s like “Hey buddy” BOOM and hits you in the face and you drop over, you’re unconscious and you’re out of the fight. Someone might revive you, but if you don’t get up by the end of the fight you get up and you get all your Endurance back but you’ve lost a quarter of your Health. When you get down to zero Health, depending on the difficulty you’re on you either die immediately or you’re “maimed” and when your main character is maimed you drop, you get up, and when they get up they have very bad defenses, very bad accuracy, and they have one Health. If they get hit again at all they die. So that’s your “Okay, you got your guy in harm’s way and you were a bit careless, but now they’re really screwed up.”
The reason we use that system is because in the Infinity Engines, zero hit points and you’re dead. It was extremely unforgiving. No one could go down ever, and it was kind of annoying. In Neverwinter 2 it was the other end. Everyone could get knocked down except one guy, and there were no long-term consequences because you’d all get up and heal everything.
With the mixed Endurance/Health system, there are consequences for getting fucked up in a fight, but they’re not brutal.
Long-term injuries last until you rest. Resting is a tightly controlled resource in the game. If your character gets injured, which usually happens in a scripted interaction or a conversation, it can have long term consequences but it’s fun to play around with. Characters get concussions and other injuries like that with minor side effects.
On skills
JS: You can see, when I highlight abilties, they have “Uses 2/3 per rest,” “2 per Encounter.” Some of those are per-rest resources, so when those get used you don’t get them back until you rest. You want to massage and manage your characters. “Okay, I want to use per-encounters in the fight. Maaaaybe a per-rest depending on how long I want to go.” You also pay attention to the Health and how that’s creeping down. How far can I go before I need to rest? Okay, let me use my Camping Supplies and gain that stuff back.
So it gives fighters and other characters a system similar to wizards?
JS: Exactly.
On ten-foot poles
JS: Early on we talked about what are the traditional D&D items, like the ten-foot pole, ropes, what are the things you use a lot in adventuring but don’t get a lot of use in games? Those are the things we tend to use a lot in scripted encounters.
I think the torches are eventually going to be a consumable item.
On cloaks
JS: People were very concerned about us having cloaks. We’re just glad they’re dynamic, because we’ve had to hand-animate them in every other game.
On pets
JS: We have them.