Joshua Sawyer Formspring posts/2012

A collection of Formspring statements by Joshua Sawyer.
Posts
JESawyer 1 Jan 12
you're game sucks. nice code by the way.
ok
JESawyer 1 Jan 12
Whose idea was it to let the player have Yes Man punch Oliver off of Hoover Dam? I must say, that is supremely satisfying.
I'm not sure. It was probably Charlie Staples, Akil Hooper, or Jesse Farrell. They all worked on Hoover Dam.
JESawyer 1 Jan 12
why didn't you put your mod up on Nexus, man?
It's quite small and I want to make sure that I'm controlling its singular distribution point.
JESawyer 2 Jan 12
Is it normal for some of the brotherhood paladins to wear t-45d helmets? It looks kinda weird with the t-51b.
For some, yes. It's supposed to show that the Brotherhood doesn't always have matching parts for everyone.
JESawyer 2 Jan 12
Any idea when this mod will be available? (yes!, ive been trying to do the same thing to FONV using far too many mods, finding this has just made my day, and i wish the best for you)
It's available now, but I will probably be releasing one or two more updates due to various oversights (e.g. not adjusting the high-level perk level requirements or Logan's Loophole). 
http://diogenes-lamp.info/jsawyer_fnv_mod.zip
JESawyer 2 Jan 12
In Honest Hearts, what is the "School" and who is the "Principle" that the Sorrow's predecessors in Clark's journal talk about?
mysteries
JESawyer responded to LanceGonzalez 2 Jan 12
Things in your mod that don't seem to work as expected: Initial HP are a bit lower, but not quartered. Super and regular stimpacks weight is still 0. H2O/FOD/SLP first threshold is still set at 200, and i'm not sure if the rates are doubled.
I will check on these, but (especially) in the case of the Stim/Super Stim weight, if those are still 0, another mod (that affects Stims) may be overriding my changes.
JESawyer 2 Jan 12
Why in the world would House cement in that Vault? It makes no sense.
He doesn't want it to be able to return to a fully-functional vault because he doesn't want its former residents to attempt to retake it. I.e. he wants to motivate the Vault 21 dwellers to leave the area. If he had simply sealed off areas or electronically locked portions of it, enterprising smarties like ex-vaulters might attempt to work against him and eventually restore it. With the majority of the vault filled with cement, it can only function as a tourist attraction and small-scale residence.
JESawyer responded to Kastera1000 2 Jan 12
Did you ever consider implementing a weapon mods system that required varying levels of the Repair skill? Any average Joe can attach a scope or use extended mags, but it takes someone with knowledge in firearm mechanics to replace an action or spring.
No, because Repair was already a very valuable skill. I didn't want to restrict the best mods to characters with high Repair.
JESawyer 3 Jan 12
I'm also getting some weird happenstances: I swear HP and EXP gain were reduced, but now they seem to have returned to normal.
I didn't modify the base HP correctly, but I figured out the problem. For a future update, I probably won't quarter the normal values after all, but they will be significantly lower (about halved at 1st level tapering to about 2/3 at 20th). 
I'm also switching from reducing gained XP to doubling the XP that's required to level. There are too many sources of XP that I can't modify through a single value (e.g. quest XP), so it's easier to address it through the requirements. 
Between these two things, it should be rough stuff.
JESawyer 3 Jan 12
Does your mod affect sneak attacks, or sneaking in general?
No.
JESawyer 3 Jan 12
Fallout New Vegas is really an overwhelmingly huge game in terms of narrative content (the world map and dungeons are mixed in terms of size) to the point that it's got the longest strategy guide ever. Did it feel that big when you were making it?
No, honestly. I certainly didn't expect it to have such a huge strategy guide.
JESawyer 3 Jan 12
Why not make caps have weight? 210 caps weigh one pound, and would make people pick between having caps, and having bullets.
Because of the volume of caps required to make large purchases (or large sales), I think that would become excessively annoying.
JESawyer 3 Jan 12
Would it be possible for Obsidian's onyx engine to make something like an IE game? Would love to see a return of those type of RPGs with those glorious backgrounds.
Personally, I think the environment art in DS3 was spectacular in places. Especially when it comes to lighting and visual effects, the engine can do some great things. I don't see why Onyx couldn't support an IE-style (party-based with multi-select) game, though that's not what it's currently set up to do.
JESawyer 4 Jan 12
For a rebalance thing on your next update to your mod, can you reduce the Roughin' It Sleeproll down to about 3-4lbs. At 15 with your mod (and arguably in the release build too) it's way too heavy to bother to keep around. And a simple sleeping bag =/= 15
Bedrolls are pretty heavy, actually. 
http://www.cowboycamp.net/bedrolls.html
JESawyer 4 Jan 12
You're telling me Robert E. House, super genius, let a vault be built just down the street from his secret lair, then figured out how to get it back, could think of nothing better to do with a fully intact, Pre-War facility than to fill it with cement?
He turned it into a tourist attraction. It's arguable that there's nothing more Vegas than that.
JESawyer 4 Jan 12
How deep is the concrete filling? Just the entrance? I mean House has money, but lacks any actual resources beyond what he trades gambling money for, and concrete doesn't seem cheep/common in the wasteland given what post-war buildings are made of.
The concrete is in what were the lower areas of the vault. The upper areas are open because that's what the Vault 21 hotel is. 
Concrete is very common in this area and easy to make/mix, especially since there are two quarries of cement materials within walking distance: Quarry Junction and Gypsum Train Yard.
JESawyer 5 Jan 12
Does your beard keep you warm?
Yes. It's the only reason I have it.
JESawyer 5 Jan 12
Does that mean you will shave in the summer?
Yes.
JESawyer responded to Bloggers99 5 Jan 12
I've been going on and on about New Vegas since it's initial release. I only recently purchased the DLCs outside of Dead Money. Were they designed/written by different folks? I ask because each one is a masterpiece though rarely are they comparable.
Thanks. Chris Avellone was the project director and writer for Dead Money and Lonesome Road. He was also the project director for Old World Blues, though he and Travis Stout shared writing on that project. I was the project director for Honest Hearts and shared writing with Travis Stout and John Gonzalez.
JESawyer 5 Jan 12
Do you have any idea when you will find the time to do the one or two updates required for your mod? It sounds awesome, but I want to make sure there aren't any outstanding issues before I start a new game.
I will likely do another release this weekend. I fixed some more problems and made a few more adjustments, but I need to clean up some "dirty" forms that I touched and haven't reverted. I don't want to override things I don't need to.
JESawyer 5 Jan 12
Recently got the rest of the DLC for F:NV, and: Will having some of the DLC esms over the main esm make any major difference (Not using any mods)? Should I get FOMM and adjust the load order to be safe? Going to adjust when I get your mod later, but jw.
It should not make any difference if you are running without mods.
JESawyer 6 Jan 12
How does House get gypsum from the train yard? Does he buy it from the Deathclaws?
He doesn't need to at the point the game takes place. Quarry Junction is NCR's problem and the deathclaws are a recent arrival.
JESawyer 6 Jan 12
you're up late.
10???
JESawyer 6 Jan 12
What is the correct load order anyway? FalloutNV.esm first, then all DLC esms, then esp mods (bouncing breasts and the like) and your mod last ?
My mod doesn't have to load last (and in some cases, you may want to override my changes with other mods), but it does have to load after FalloutNV.esm and all of the DLC .esms.
JESawyer 6 Jan 12
When you guys were working on the Alien RPG did Ridley Scott come to your office?
No.
JESawyer 6 Jan 12
do i see some gray hairs in your pic? damn, the vidya industry is stressful, isn't it?
I'm 36 years old; grey hairs are pretty common at this age.
JESawyer responded to isequals 6 Jan 12
Is there a technical reason that I shouldn't add entries to jsawyer.esp in order to increase Auto-Inject Stimpak weight to the same level as standard Stimpaks? Will it crash my game? Thanks for the mod, by the way (and I won't distribute my changes).
There shouldn't be any problem.
JESawyer 7 Jan 12
What was the point in making generic versions of That Gun and This Machine for GRA? Both unique versions are already very easy to acquire and are superior while the generics are very expensive and not as good. Who would anyone bother with them?
A quest has to be done to get This Machine and That Gun is 40% more expensive than a regular 5.56mm Pistol. Additionally, a lot of players do not want to give unique weapons to companions because it's common for companions to have weapons damaged out of their hands (and they never retrieve them).
JESawyer 7 Jan 12
Wait, you mean some people actually pay money for That Gun, you can just sneak in his shop at night and steal it for free lol
you owe a karmic debt to cliff briscoe
JESawyer responded to Formspring 7 Jan 12
Do you like to sing karaoke?
It can be fun, but I don't like the attitudes of some people at open karaoke. I think there's a lot of petty cruelty toward people who aren't necessarily great singers. 
If you can't go to karaoke without ridiculing others for their singing, do everyone a favor and stay home. It's not a concert, dummies.
JESawyer 8 Jan 12
Is Mr. Fenstermaker working on the same project as you are right now?
No.
JESawyer 8 Jan 12
were people cruel to you when you sang karaoke?
No.
JESawyer 9 Jan 12
Will you be uploading an mp3 of you singing karaoke?
I already effectively did that by singing four songs in Fallout: New Vegas.
JESawyer 9 Jan 12
Were you creul to people when they sang karaoke?
I'm not cruel to people about their singing in any venue.
JESawyer 9 Jan 12
which songs did you sing?
As the Lonesome Drifter: Streets of New Reno, Home on the Wastes, and New Vegas Valley. As Bruce Isaac: Green Clouds and Dust Whirls.
JESawyer 9 Jan 12
Why did you remove the mod slots for weathered 10mm pistol?
It was never intended to be modded.
JESawyer 9 Jan 12
If you couldn't add weapons from other DLC's to Grunt which was introduced in Honest Hearts, why can Heavyweight, introduced in Dead Money, apply to weapons from other DLC's?
Because Heavyweight doesn't look at a list of weapons. Heavyweight looks at the weight of any weapon to make the determination if it qualifies for the reduction or not.
JESawyer responded to Kaphei 10 Jan 12
Have you released an updated version of your mod yet?
Yes. http://twofoldsilence.diogenes-lamp.info/2012/01/jsawyeresp-v2.html
JESawyer responded to PTG 10 Jan 12
Since you fundamentally made "(GRA)" weapons and the base weapons the same, will they stack if in the same container?
No, because they have different IDs as far as the engine is concerned. However, they will repair each other because they are both on their shared repair list.
JESawyer 11 Jan 12
Is your mod safe to use now? Will it be updated again, and if so, will I have to start a new character?
I will update it again, but you won't need to make a new character.
JESawyer 11 Jan 12
why has obsidian not done anything with the shadowrun ip?????//
That IP belongs to FASA and/or Microsoft, I believe.
JESawyer 11 Jan 12
??
??????
JESawyer 11 Jan 12
Hi, can anyone who can post there bring this to Josh's attention :smile: : 1. It seems his mod broke medium(haven't tested with heavy) armor movement penalty(If it's not intentional). 2. "Travel Light" perk is broken as well, no bonuses to movement spui
I reduced the Medium and Heavy armor movement penalties by half in the mod. I didn't do anything to Travel Light.
JESawyer responded to LoEaDiTo 11 Jan 12
What if I use your mod without GRA an CS???
It (probably) won't load.
JESawyer 11 Jan 12
"I reduced the Medium and Heavy armor movement penalties by half in the mod." Why would you do that? With the superior DR of medium/heavy, movement penalties are pretty much the only thing keeping the light/medium/heavy balance.
In the JSawyer mod, weight is a much more significant consideration. Light armors weigh virtually nothing compared to Medium and (especially) Heavy armors.
JESawyer 11 Jan 12
you look like that guy from home improvement
i don't think so tim!!!!
JESawyer responded to Guynemer 12 Jan 12
Love the mod; very challenging. Two questions: any plans to reduce the weight of energy weapons ammo? And is there an issue with applying weapon mods? Absolutely nothing happens when I hit X, even though I have multiple mods for my weapon.
Energy Weapon ammo was already halved in the JSawyer mod. I haven't heard/seen anything about not being able to apply mods.
JESawyer 12 Jan 12
Why put all that work into adding the Advanced Power Armor and it only shows up once in the game and only if you go out of your way to look for it?
If it were easy to get it wouldn't feel special.
JESawyer 12 Jan 12
If you could work on any Nintendo IP, which would you choose?
P 
I 
K 
M 
I 
N 
--,--'-@
JESawyer 12 Jan 12
Could you put the link to your mod in your Bio info or somewhere easy to find? Also, please don't forget to do something about the Merc armors!
I already modified the Merc outfits. Check the v2 notes: 
http://twofoldsilence.diogenes-lamp.info/2012/01/jsawyeresp-v2.html
JESawyer responded to Formspring 13 Jan 12
Do you have a good singing voice?
It is okay but I have limited range and flexibility. I also tend to sound nasal at times
JESawyer 13 Jan 12
If you could have the voice of a male singer, which one?
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. 
http://youtu.be/MHmzzu4FAnM
JESawyer 14 Jan 12
Who wrote Chris Haversam? One of those really memorable fallout-humor characters!!
I think it was Jesse Farrell.
JESawyer 14 Jan 12
Any chance of rebalancing Them's Good Eatin in your mod? The items given just seem too good.
I've already made the change for v3. The items are still pretty darn good (and they now restore FOD and are marked as food/Survival items), but their VALs have been reduced greatly as have their drop rates.
JESawyer 14 Jan 12
nice quilt where did you get it?
My girlfriend's grandmother made it.
JESawyer 14 Jan 12
JSawyer mod slows down levelling SO MUCH. It needed to be a bit slower but damn. Do you know if it's even possible to get level 30 without hitting up the DLC?
I'm not sure, but the XP required has been increased by about 1/3. The amount of XP to get to level 33 is close to the amount of XP required to get to level 50 in the normal game.
JESawyer 15 Jan 12
Do you have a bicycle hanging on the wall in your bedroom???
It's hanging on a bicycle rack. I have three bicycles and two more that I'm putting together. Some of them have to stay in my room.
JESawyer 15 Jan 12
Not sure how much you were involved in Dungeon Siege 3 but I just wanted to say that I enjoyed playing it. The character design and lighting effects were pretty fantastic imo
Thanks, but most of the character design and lighting credit goes to Justin Cherry and the rest of the art team. I didn't work on Dungeon Siege III at all.
JESawyer 16 Jan 12
Why do you need so many bikes? are you some kinda freak?
Road, time trial, commuter, hillclimber, cyclocross.
JESawyer 16 Jan 12
what's the diff. between road and commuter bikes?
Commuter bikes are often outfitted with thicker/tougher tires, fenders, lights, baskets/racks, and other stuff that is convenient for commuting. They may also have internally-geared hubs (IGH) or a single-speed freewheel connected to a single chainring. Road bikes need to be lighter, faster, and (typically) have a wider range of gears. 
I may take my commuter bike 10-20 miles on the roughest (but flattest) streets in Orange County. On my road bike, I may ride 40-100 miles on smooth roads with a few thousand feet of elevation change.
JESawyer responded to Formspring 17 Jan 12
How do you get through Mondays?
Read Garfield.
JESawyer responded to Ogremindes 17 Jan 12
Regarding your change to Logan's Loophole, are you aware that the book has the cut off age at 21? So you could have your cake and eat it too.
o 
i 
c
JESawyer 17 Jan 12
If you went to school in Appleton I have to ask: Did you used to shop at Chimera Hobby Shop?
Of course. Chimera and Jerry's were where I bought almost all of my RPG books when I was going to Lawrence. I think I may have occasionally bought some stuff at Power House Comics.
JESawyer responded to TellerGrim 17 Jan 12
In the Legion Ending, why does Caesar allow the Followers of the Apocalypse to leave the Mojave unmolested? Doesn't the Legion hate them for 'defaming' Caesar's origins?
Yes, but while Caesar's alive, he still calls the shots in the Legion.
JESawyer 19 Jan 12
Did you ever expected to hear your voice in a game trailer?
lol
JESawyer 19 Jan 12
Do you not think the Automatic Rifle's a bit op now? I'm like level 18 and slaughtering ghost people in about five bullets, even without .308 JSP. Is that the kind of thing I'd be doing with an LMG at this level???
The Automatic Rifle is in the same "tier" (5) as the Light Machine Gun. The advantage of the LMG is mostly in ammunition capacity, slightly lower spread, and slightly higher DPS. Against a small number of enemies (especially ones with high DT), the Automatic Rifle is the weapon to use.
JESawyer 19 Jan 12
Who wrote Corporal Betsy?
George Ziets.
JESawyer responded to ilyacharlie 19 Jan 12
I saw you answered a russian "question" (well, it's not a question, just a meaningless syllable). Were you somehow, somewhere learning Russian or did you just googled the word? 
I can slowly read Cyrillic writing but I don't actually know any Russian vocabulary or grammar.
JESawyer 19 Jan 12
Is that your singing in the New Vegas: Ultimate Edition trailer?
Yes, and Nathaniel Chapman is playing guitar.
JESawyer 19 Jan 12
Why is there an animation of the character blowing up the Vegas Strip in the new trailer? ITSA MISLEADIN
Put C4 all over the place and pull the trigger. That's all that picture is, AFAIK.
JESawyer 19 Jan 12
Who's the tallest at Obsidian?
It might be Trent Campbell (animator) or Zane Lyon (project director). I think they're both about 6'4". I'm only 6'2". 
UPDATE: After being measured for the first time in probably ten years, I am now only 6'1".
JESawyer 20 Jan 12
Do you watch the Colbert report?
Sometimes.
JESawyer 20 Jan 12
Is Beatrix Russell named after Beatrice Russell from The Wire?
I don't think so.
JESawyer 20 Jan 12
Why would Caesar not want to harm the Followers?
They pose no real threat to him (in his view), and he shows more power by sparing them than by destroying them. Also, he is, despite his opinions about their naïveté, a bit soft-hearted toward them.
JESawyer 22 Jan 12
Sorry, I'm sure this has been asked before, but: Why is the number of savegames limited?
At least one of the consoles has a TCR/TRC (technical requirement) that when a player opens the load game menu, it cannot take more than a certain amount of time to display the save games. 100 is a somewhat arbitrary number, but it does ensure that we do not take longer than the requirement demands.
JESawyer 22 Jan 12
Did you like The Sopranos
I didn't watch The Sopranos because I can't think of a less interesting subject than the American Mafia.
JESawyer 22 Jan 12
is veronica belmont a qt IRL // alt question: is she a vampire killa irl
I have never met her.
JESawyer 22 Jan 12
What's with your disdain towards the American Mafia in fictional form.
Maybe it's because I grew up in the 80s. I feel like I was bombarded with Mafia-related entertainment media growing up. By the time The Sopranos came out, all I could think was, "Who still finds this subject interesting?"
JESawyer 23 Jan 12
Is that why New Vegas's mafia-esque factions weren't too good along with the New Vegas area itself?
Excepting the Omertas, we specifically avoided Mafia-type factions because it had already been done in Fallout 2.
JESawyer 23 Jan 12
Bad news. I think your mod break the Meltdown perk. With your mod enabled, no explosion. Disabled it and BOOM! I don't know if it was caused by a conflict or something, since I don't see any change related to Meltdown. Can you please check that out?
I haven't seen anything like that, but I'll probably be releasing another update this weekend. I'll look into it. 
UPDATE: I must have forgotten that I made a change to Meltdown (and didn't document it). Meltdown now only triggers when using plasma weapons. I've updated the description for the next update.
JESawyer 24 Jan 12
Meltdown is plasma only... balance/gameplay reasons, or to fix red lasers/flamethrowers/gauss causing green explosions? Or both? The mod Meltdown Medley has unique Meltdown explosions for each weapon, but I'm guessing you felt Meltdown was overpowered.
It's mostly because a lot of people complained about certain weapons (especially flame weapons) triggering explosions. I think people also ran into a certain amount of "Meltdown Fatigue" from seeing it all the time. By restricting it to plasma weapons, I can ensure that people can use laser and flame weapons without triggering it.
JESawyer 27 Jan 12
Did you read/study any president/politician's speech to write Kimball's speech in New Vegas or did you just pretty much did your own thing with it? I'm curious because it's one of the most overlooked pieces of writing in the game imo.
I looked at a variety of speeches and utilized basic elements of structure I found in a number of them: repeated phrases, the inclusion of the audience in the actions of the speech, and lengthening of phrases to build toward a climactic moment. 
For President Kimball's voice actor, I asked that he be in the ballpark of Dirty Dozen-era Lee Marvin.
JESawyer 27 Jan 12
>make an entire faction about Elvis >don't include any Elvis songs
The cost of licensing Elvis songs -- even covers of Elvis songs -- is extraordinarily high.
JESawyer 27 Jan 12
Alright, What if your already level 40? the max level cap is 35 with your mod, but as a level 40 char, and me being uninterested in making a new one, what will it do?
The mod states that it is for use with new characters only. If you don't want to make a new character, don't use it.
JESawyer 27 Jan 12
Why does the L.A.E.R. form Old World Blues have only 75 hp?
I didn't tune the LAER's health, but I did adjust it (up) in my mod.
JESawyer 27 Jan 12
Where did the inspiration for Daniel and Joshua Graham's religious dialogue come from? A professing Christian myself, I was shocked and impressed by it's authenticity. D. F.
Thanks. I studied religious history in college (specifically, witch-hunting in Europe) and took some supplemental religious studies courses, one oriented around the New Testament. 
Joshua (especially) examines actions and events through a biblical lens. Putting things into a biblical context reinforces his rationalization of his actions and the actions of those around him (e.g. the Courier is a "good neighbor" like the Samaritan, Salt-Upon-Wounds is the ram in the "thicket", and Joshua is Abraham offering up a "sacrifice" to God).
JESawyer 27 Jan 12
What versions of 'Home on the Range', 'Red River Valley', and 'The Streets of Laredo' did you take most inspiration from when writing/performing versions for FNV?
The answer for all three is probably Marty Robbins, but I also like several of Johnny Cash's recordings of Streets of Laredo. I just love Marty Robbins' voice and emotion. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L14UKBjC5Is
JESawyer 29 Jan 12
Why didn't GRA add any new .45 auto ammo types?
.45 Auto already had enough ammo types and subtypes. Additionally, GRA could not access data in HH for the same reason none of the shipped DLCs reference other DLCs: load order conflicts. Since .45 Auto is introduced in HH, GRA could not contribute to that ammo list.
JESawyer responded to LanceFalcon 29 Jan 12
Are you okay with people asking multiple questions? I read that your mod reintroduced the Vault 21 Armored Suit. I saw that in the Lonesome Road trailer - was your mod in play there?
I think the person making the video just added it through the console (same as in the original F:NV trailer).
JESawyer 29 Jan 12
You have a super beautiful voice! <3
Thanks.
JESawyer 29 Jan 12
did you consider using a unique model for Marcus' face, or did you do that? not to nitpick but compared to his FO2 appearance Marcus looks a bit... odd.
He does have a unique face in F:NV.
JESawyer 29 Jan 12
is it easier to take risks with expansions/dlcs? i'm playing through nwn2 for the first time right now, and the quality of mask of the betrayer's campaign over the original is pretty drastic.
Yes, very much so. Because each one is a side story, it's a good place to try out things that the player might tire of after a few hours. For example, the majority of players might not be interested in playing through a 50+ hour campaign about religious conflict, but it was fine to try out in Honest Hearts.
JESawyer 29 Jan 12
how far into the development process was Ulysses cut as a companion? He seemed like he would have been pretty cool, and I feel like there was a dearth of pro-Legion companions.
He was cut very late in the development cycle.
JESawyer 29 Jan 12
Can any other information be provided about the Iron Lines tribe besides that they mapped railways, used parallel line body art, used handcarts, and reside primarily at Circle Junction?
Chris Avellone would likely be a better resource on the Iron Lines.
JESawyer 29 Jan 12
Hey, I was wondering, is this perk in New vegas a reference to the novel Misery? It's called Hobbler. The pip boy logo is one vault boy in crutches, and the other holding a sledgehammer.
Not directly, but the icon does suggest that.
JESawyer 29 Jan 12
Anything you might say about NWN2? Specifically things that were planned and didn't make it or thing that made it in kinda unplanned but you think worked out? Or something kinda revealing like that anyways, thanks.
I was only on NWN2 toward the end, so it's hard for me to make a comprehensive analysis of it.
JESawyer 29 Jan 12
For the Strip and Legion factions, the player was able to meet and get to know their leaders (Caesar, Lanius and MR. House, respectively) and understand their motivations. Why were we not allowed to do the same with President Aaron Kimball for NCR?
President Kimball is not a faction leader in the same way that Caesar and Mr. House are. Speaking to him wouldn't really give the player any dramatic insight into why NCR is the way it is.
JESawyer 30 Jan 12
I guess I didn't understand how late you came to nwn2, was your role solely production/management? did you make any 11th hour creative decisions? I ask since I know the production was kind of troubled and I wonder what belongs and what is adhoc or hurried
I didn't have a huge amount of creative input on the game as far as story or characters go. I worked a bit with George Ziets to develop the background of the King of Shadows as a tragic figure, but that was about it. I didn't develop the plot or any of the major characters outside of that. 
Most of my time on the project was during the last six months. Since the majority of core content had already been developed, I was mostly in production triage mode trying to wrap up (or sever) loose ends.
JESawyer 30 Jan 12
When do you think you'll try and release Version 3?
It's out now. 
http://twofoldsilence.diogenes-lamp.info/2012/01/jsawyeresp-v3.html
JESawyer 30 Jan 12
Who was responsible for the Orc Caves?
John Lee, I think.
JESawyer 30 Jan 12
Could you explain why you choose to remove All-American/Marks from Grunt? Makes it to powerful, not a "gruntish" weapon, or... ?
Not that Grunt-ish. Battle Rifle/This Machine are more appropriate.
JESawyer 31 Jan 12
Dude, 'Aliens" was way better than 'Alien'...
," said the man with bad opinions.
JESawyer responded to iguanius 3 Feb 12
Hi. Are you planing to do something with jury-riged perk? In my opinion that perk brakes the game balance after 14 level and carry weight has nothing to do with it...even weapon repair kits becomes meaningless :/. Still, your mod is so so so awsome !!
If I could, I'd make Jury Rigging repair a percentage of health equal to the percentage of VAL the repairing item has to the item being repaired. I think it's a good perk otherwise,
JESawyer responded to MojaveManiac 3 Feb 12
When working with Fallout:New Vegas, what was your proudest contribution to the project?
Cazadores.
JESawyer 4 Feb 12
Y'know, Wasteland Tequila technically isn't Tequila at all. There's a very strict definition as to what can and cannot be called Tequila.
youare tequila
JESawyer 5 Feb 12
I just encountered "Deranged Bright Followers", did your mod add that?
Yes.
JESawyer responded to Jspoel 5 Feb 12
Can you tell me if Fallout: New Vegas' Benny is based on or a reference to the American gangster Benjamin 'Bugsy' Siegel? His name, looks, checkered suit and location (Las Vegas) indicate that.
Yes.
JESawyer 5 Feb 12
What was up with removing all the dying NCR soldiers inbetween Camp FH and Nelson? I'm pretty sure it occurred after the first patch, I just recalled it now - I quite liked the sick, bleak touch it gave to the Legion's already brutal tactics. 2ofensiv 4u?
Memory problems.
JESawyer 5 Feb 12
Did you do anything other than Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows at Midway?
No, and very little of what I did was in the shipped game, which is why I asked to not be credited.
JESawyer 5 Feb 12
Why do you use an iPhone or iPad (as your replying via iOS shows)?
I use an iPad 2 and stylus to create reference notebook/sketches in Noteshelf that I can export as .pngs or .pdfs. It's a lot faster and more productive than sitting down with a Wacom tablet in my office. I use paper notebooks (Field Notes) for actual note-taking.
JESawyer 5 Feb 12
Why did you keep the health bonus per level the same but halved the endurance bonus together with base health for your mod? Doesn't that make your PC's level more important than their SPECIAL? (Well, their E at least )
In the long run, yes. That is by design. EN should not be the dominant factor in a character's health when he or she is 20th+ level. If it were, many characters would effectively be edged out of combat viability due to a choice made 40+ hours ago.
JESawyer 6 Feb 12
When Alexander at the 188 Trading Post says any Gun Runner Caravan with Energy Weapons was attacked so they stopped dealing with them, was this meant to imply the Brotherhood did it or the Van Graffs?
I believe the implication is that the BoS did it.
JESawyer 7 Feb 12
Isn't that just going to turn Endurance into a dump stat?
No. It still provides a decent chunk of health and it's also the limiter on how many implants you can acquire.
JESawyer 7 Feb 12
Is Ambassador Crocker named after the current US Ambassador to Afghanistan(2011-present) and former US Ambassador to Iraq(2007-2009)? There are a lot of similarities.
No.
JESawyer 7 Feb 12
do the GRA variations of generic weapons have a unique header in the GECK?
Not a unique "header", but they do have unique IDs.
JESawyer 7 Feb 12
Are any part of the U.S. special force command a reference point for the Rangers?
Not really.
JESawyer responded to MartinPurvis 8 Feb 12
Will you be using Skyrim's Creation Kit?
Maybe. I think the only things I'd like to mod would be arrow differentiation and some of the crafting recipes.
JESawyer 8 Feb 12
some one at my school got stabbed today
damn gina
JESawyer 8 Feb 12
Why would the BoS attack the Gun Runners for dealing energy weapons, but not the Van Graffs?
Van Graffs bring their EWs in from the north.
JESawyer 8 Feb 12
will the obsidian engine be used on the studios game more often? dungeon siege ran without issues and it was awesome. 
It's being used on South Park right now (different renderer, obviously) and will hopefully be used on future projects.
JESawyer 8 Feb 12
(In regards to your BoS attacks questions) So by your answers, do you mean the Van Graffs quintessentially smuggle their weapons in, or they're just brought in from the north foe another reason?
They're brought in from the north because the Van Graffs are based in NorCal. BoS patrols don't get far north enough to interfere with Van Graff shipments. Most GR shipments come from SoCal/Boneyard.
JESawyer 8 Feb 12
I'm considering majoring in History. Should I?
If you genuinely enjoy it and are going to a school with smaller class sizes, sure.
JESawyer 10 Feb 12
I think that the "patrol" rangers were out of place and pointless. Also their hats looked stupid especially when worn with their otherwise badass armor. So my question is: Why make a patrol/veteran ranger distinction? Pleae tell me it wasn't just balance.
Because there is an entire NCR intel infrastructure based around what the patrol rangers do. This is described in the quest Return to Sender.
JESawyer 10 Feb 12
What do you think of DoubleFine's success on Kickstarter? Do you think that you could replicate it at Obsidian with a budget isometric title?
I'm not sure. I know we've discussed it internally in the past.
JESawyer responded to Formspring 10 Feb 12
What is your favorite month of the year?
Intercalaris.
JESawyer 10 Feb 12
(Not the same fellow) So from what I recall of Return to Sender, Patrol Rangers keep an eye on the land and such, but what exactly do the Veterans DO? Are they akin to a 'Jack of All Trades' in the NCR operations and get called on for anything NCR needs?
Shoot dudes in the face.
JESawyer 10 Feb 12
Wow, so the Brotherhood really is a shadow of its former self, relegated to a small area. They were once so successful...
The individual chapters have a small reach.
JESawyer 12 Feb 12
You're telling me reformed tribals with spears can take down BoS chapters with Power Armor.
I have never suggested anything remotely like that.
JESawyer responded to dylirious 13 Feb 12
The editor of the magazine GameInformer once wrote that you are not a gamer if you aren't hunting down locally made foreign RPGs, and that if you've ever played an iOS game you aren't a gamer/are a "sheep". What's your opinion on that?
Close-minded and absurd.
JESawyer 13 Feb 12
Do you know who designed the architecture of the Sierra Madre casino in Dead Money? Mission Revival + Art Deco is something the real world desperately needs.
Joe Sanabria was the lead artist for Dead Money and I believe he came up with the style. James Garcia did the modeling and texturing, I think.
JESawyer 13 Feb 12
Should Hsu have sent a veteran Ranger after Motor-Runner instead of the patrol ranger he sent who totally failed to get the job done? It seems out of keeping with what patrol rangers are usually used for.
Yes. Veteran Rangers aren't in the Mojave until later in the game, which is how you wind up with guys like Bryce Anders and Dobson who are a bit out of their depth.
JESawyer 13 Feb 12
So, does New Vegas pretty much say that for the brotherhood to survive it needs to be more like the brotherhood to the east?
No.
JESawyer responded to Limmiegirl 13 Feb 12
Why doesn't the BoS attack the fiends for their EW?
They would have to navigate Super Mutants and/or Deathclaws to make the trip. For a group of Paladins, that wouldn't be impossible, but it would draw a lot of attention and take a fair deal of time.
JESawyer 13 Feb 12
It seems like patrol rangers can shoot dudes in the face, and veterans can gather/relay intel. As such, why not just have "NCR Rangers" that do all of those things? The ony relevant difference at that point is aesthetics and veteran armor is way cooler.
Because people have different training, jobs, and levels of experience. As is pretty obvious from Bryce Anders and Dobson, sending patrol rangers in to do veteran ranger work can result in less than terrific results. Even Milo is effectively just watching over Nelson.
JESawyer 13 Feb 12
The Legion centurions have power armor pieces so does this mean the Legion and the Brotherhood fought at some point?
It means that Centurions killed someone wearing power armor at some point.
JESawyer 13 Feb 12
If the Veteran Rangers are so great why doesn't the NCR just take back Cottonwood with them.
Veteran rangers aren't present in the Mojave until fairly late in the story. By that point in time, Cottonwood Cove is less of an issue than Hoover Dam and the areas around it.
JESawyer 15 Feb 12
Do you think you homogenized weapon choices too much when you decided to make energy weapons an alternative to guns rather than an upgrade ala F1/F2? More generally, do you think balancing by time (weak early, strong late) is a valid strategy in a 1P RPG?
No. As long as players are offered weapon skills without any point weighting per skill, it's needlessly punitive to make one a "silent" upgrade of another. If weapon skills were categorized in some other way (e.g. Pistols, Rifles, Launchers, etc.), energy weapons could be inherently more powerful than guns, but you'd still have to either a) balance Pistols to Rifles to Launchers or b) weight the advancement of more powerful skills proportionally. If it costs 2x as much to advance EWs, sure, make EWs 2x as powerful. 
Balancing by time/relative acquisition can work well and I think it did work pretty well in the original Fallout and NV. I don't really care about what people do on multiple playthroughs or by using walkthroughs on their first playthrough. If the game content is structured so that it is very likely the player will acquire weapons in a certain order, that will account for the vast majority of players.
JESawyer 15 Feb 12
¿Cómo se dice serpiente en Inglés?
"Snake" o "Serpent". Era mi nombre en mi clase de español.
JESawyer 15 Feb 12
Just making sure, but the Bozar in FNV is considered a LMG, correct? The sniper Bozar was in Fallout 2, right?
The Bozar in F:NV is a unique LMG. It's functionally very similar to the Bozar in F2, which was not a sniper weapon at all.
JESawyer 15 Feb 12
The Silenced .22 SMG is definitely based on the American 180 isn't it?
Yes.
JESawyer 15 Feb 12
But EWs are less powerful than Guns in NV, so shouldn't Guns cost more to advance?
When I saw people complaining that the Plasma Defender wasn't powerful enough, even after the third patch, I knew that there was a segment of players who would never be happy with EWs until they steamrolled over every Guns equivalent six ways from Sunday. The main strategic weaknesses of EWs that I fixed in the JSawyer mod were durability and ammo weight, neither of which really apply to tactical use of the weapons. 
During testing, there were modded Guns that I felt were very powerful. None of them felt as "cheater"-like in the right circumstances as EWs like the modded Laser Rifle, Plasma Defender, and Gatling Laser. Armor is the weakness of laser weapons and range is the weakness of plasma weapons. If you avoid those weaknesses, the weapons are incredibly powerful.
JESawyer 15 Feb 12
I'm sorry Mister Sawyer, but a projectile based combustion gun, by its very nature, will never be as effective as a weapon that fires superheated balls of plasma or highly focused laser beams -no matter how badly you'd like it to be. Ridiculosity abounds.
Human-generated lasers and plasma exist right now and are not used in firearms by armed forces around the world. There are pretty good reasons for this. Lasers and plasma are not magic. If I use a laser pointer to point at something, it doesn't burn a hole through the screen and the wall behind it, flying into outer space until it cuts through an unfortunate planet many light years away. Even coil/rail weaponry, which exists in more practical forms today, will still take quite a while before it is small enough to be portable and practical.
JESawyer 15 Feb 12
Disclaimer: I f'ing love Guns. But EWs should have some advantage in some area over Guns, yet they're rarer, more expensive, less adaptable, harder to find ammo for & almost always less powerful than their tier's best gun equivalents.
They're often more powerful than their tier's best gun equivalents. Few of them have 100% direct overlap, but it's hard for me to see the logic in comparing the Plasma Defender to the .44 Magnum (for example) and concluding that the former is not superior to the latter in most ways. The Laser RCW, Tesla Cannon, Multiplas Rifle, Tri-Beam Laser Rifle, Flamer -- all of these are really powerful weapons. The Laser Pistol is pretty stinky, but so are the 9mm Pistol, Silenced .22 Pistol, and Silenced .22 SMG. I modded all of those guys up in JSawyer because they simply did too little damage across the board. 
If you try to use a Laser Rifle in the same way as a Hunting Rifle, you're going to be disappointed with one of them, but the LR is a tier below the HR. The Gauss Rifle is also a tier below the AMR, but it still does more raw damage than the AMR, which typically is of greater importance for sniping due to how Sneak Attack Crits work. 
With GRA installed, Energy Weapons also become a lot more flexible from tier to tier because of the many new mods they get. You can use just the Laser Pistol and Plasma Pistol for a very long time.
JESawyer 15 Feb 12
Not complaining, but with all this whinging about energy weaps, I may as well ask... Why does the unique laser rifle consume twice as much energy as normal without doing twice as much damage?
Power consumption and power output do not always have 1:1 linear proportionality. Also, the AER14 is a prototype. Even with a Focus Optics mod, the standard Laser Rifle comes nowhere near the AER14's damage output.
JESawyer 15 Feb 12
So, continuing to complain about EW... I take it that the guy a few questions back was refering to the superiority of Fallout EW not real world EW. Also does it honestly seem justified to you, to place a worn hunting rifle above (tier) a f'in laser gun?
It seems totally fine, just as it seemed totally fine when I played Darklands and handguns and crossbows didn't seem like they were inherently superior to bows. 
When boatloads of Genoese mercenaries died at Crécy, I doubt they were shaking their fists at how unrealistic it was that the Welsh longbow was outperforming the more technologically complex crossbow of the era.
JESawyer 16 Feb 12
Making a historical comparison between the longbow and the crossbow is not exactly accurate when you consider the weapons involved. The crossbow took *a lot* of effort between shots compared to the long bow. EW's and guns are about even on that list.
As if technical complexity is not directly proportional to efficacy (it is not).
JESawyer 16 Feb 12
Complexity in weaponry has been the downfall of numerous battles and engagements. It takes time to master more complex weapon systems, the best weapon platforms are those that are the simplest. Perhaps you should *talk* to service members.
Perhaps you should *read* my posts.
JESawyer 16 Feb 12
Are That Gun and the 5.56 pistol considered as revolvers and affected by Cowboy? It looks like they use revolver cylinders.
Yes.
JESawyer 16 Feb 12
I want to agree with you, but comparing EW to modern guns seems more like comparing a modern 9mm to a Welsh longbow. Like, they just shoot different projectiles at different speeds and it's a big deal. I think you need some better reasoning...
Why would I compare a modern 9mm to a Welsh longbow when I could compare an early arquebus to a Welsh longbow? These weapons co-existed for a while because early firearms had a lot of drawbacks. For some weird reason people insist that Fallout's EW's need to exist at a District 9 level of power because they think that lasers and plasma are inherently incredibly powerful, ignoring that right now there is not any indication that laser weaponry would replace conventional firearms in our world in the foreseeable future. 
The amount of energy required to generate a lethally-powerful laser is "large". Not too long ago, we needed what were effectively rooms full of capacitors charging for days to fire our high-end lasers (e.g. the Shiva laser). 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva_laser 
Today, small lasers are all over the place. We still aren't carrying around Real Genius-style laser cannons, which are still a lot bigger than what we see people in Fallout using. 
To generate plasma, we use things like tokamak reactors to magnetically contain excited gas-into-plasma in a torus. We really have no way to make "balls" of it that could exist outside of those environments for any significant length of time. 
Will a day come when we use lasers instead of guns? Maybe, but it's probably not happening in the next 10 years. Plasma? Probably not because the idea is kind of goofy and nonsensical. Where they fall in the Fallout universe is up to the people making the games. As long as Guns and EWs sit more-or-less side-by-side as skills, I think they should be roughly equivalent in power. If a future game developer or modder wants to rearrange the weapon skills again (e.g. Precise Weapons vs. Automatic Weapons instead of Guns/EWs), there would be no real problem with making EWs effectively the high-end weapons in those skills. 
I think making EWs rare and EW ammo rare as a solution is also bad, because you'd run into situations like you had with Big Guns or Explosives: weapons you rarely used but required you to carry around dead weight throughout most of the game hoping you'd have an opportunity to use them. And if you tagged those skills early, it was enormous waste of points.
JESawyer 16 Feb 12
If fallout was a gritty piece of historical fiction or simulator you'd totally be right. Unfortunately fallout is a work of science fiction and your point accordingly seems unimaginative and pedantic. Crazy science fiction and OPed EWs go hand in hand.
And in science fiction and fantasy the authors still have the ability to peg the relative power of anything where they feel it is appropriate. The magic of Nehwon is not the magic of the Forgotten Realms. The lasers of Star Wars are not the lasers of Mars Attacks! 
If people make "logical" arguments, I make "logical" rebuttals. I've stated from the beginning of this that the foundation of balance for the weapons is the skill system. If future Fallout games organize weapon skills in a manner that does not segregate EWs from conventional weaponry, by all means, make the EWs more powerful than the conventional weapons.
JESawyer 16 Feb 12
The Fallout world very clearly isn't our world though. Radiation doesn't turn humans into zombies and make bugs gigantic. And in the 1950s retro-futuristic style of Fallout, plasma and lasers just ARE inherently superior. Get with the program Sawyer.
"Inherently superior" sets a pretty clear standard, so let's rename Guns and Energy Weapons to something else. Let's call them "Bad Guns" and "Good Guns". You find Bad Guns at the beginning of the game and they are bad. You only find Good Guns toward the end of the game and they are better than all of the Bad Guns. Does it make any sense to have these two skills available at the beginning of the game? Would any non-glutton for punishment, knowing the availability of these weapons from the get-go, do anything other than tag Bad Guns right away and then later buy Good Guns? 
This was fundamentally the problem with the Small Guns / Energy Weapons division in Fallout 1, except that first-time players typically had no idea (and no indication from the game) that you would find Small Guns early and EWs later -- and that EWs were generally just the better, late-game weapons. If you tagged EWs and walked out of Vault 13, it was going to be a long, long time before you found a weapon you could use. And if you insisted on finishing the game as a combat character with a Sniper Rifle instead of the Turbo Plasma Rifle, you were essentially handicapping yourself immensely. 
If you want EWs to be inherently superior to Guns, push for future Fallout games to re-organize the skills so that EWs aren't a stand-alone skill, but a subset of weapons that span several skills.
JESawyer 16 Feb 12
I just wanted to say that I find your arguments on EW compelling and out of context I would completely agree with you. It seems though, that your way of looking at this issue is generally inconsistent with the imaginative 'spirit' of the Fallout universe.
My job is fundamentally about making the game experience good for our audience. This audience includes Fallout veterans, RPG veterans who may be new to Fallout, people who are new to RPGs, and people who are new to gaming in general. Not everyone in this group will be happy, and trying to make them all happy certainly won't have good results, but many design decisions have to start with the assumption that the player only knows what the game's creators communicate to them. 
At a certain point in F:NV's development, I was trying to create Big Guns to span the early game, mid game, and late game. It was an enormous pain in the ass, because trying to think up early game Big Guns that felt balanced with, say, a 9mm Pistol, strained the imagination. In documents, there were weapons that filled those slots, but they seemed forced and odd -- especially since so many of the "canonical" Big Guns were generally high-end weapons. Players liked using the Big Guns, and in a manner similar to EWs, many people wanted those Big Guns to be powerful. The way to make Big Guns feel appropriately powerful and not have a gaping low end was to abolish the Big Guns skill and migrate the weapons to other skills. You still used your Miniguns and Gatling Lasers, but you didn't have to tag a skill and then wander the wasteland for 6 hours before you found a weapon that utilized it. 
It seemed to work pretty well for F:NV, though a remaining contention and expectation is that EWs should be more powerful than conventional firearms. If that expectation is widespread enough, maybe it makes sense to re-organize the skills again for future games. My first focus is always to ensure that when a player starts the game and decides what kind of character he or she wants to play, the options we give to the player are valid from the beginning of the game to the end. Each style of play should have its own rewards and challenges, but character types should not be intentionally neglected, they should not be secretly designed to be inherently superior to each other, and they shouldn't assume that the player has knowledge that they won't reasonably have. 
Really, I think you could organize weapon skills in a bunch of different ways. For me, the bottom line is that if a player focuses on a skill, they should get pretty consistent gameplay out of it throughout the game. This includes access to items that make use of it, places where it can and can't be used to provide appropriate challenges/triumphs, and a rough semblance of overall balance between it and other skills.
JESawyer 16 Feb 12
What about base stats, damage, DPS, etc.? Most of the 9mm Pistols base stats are higher. At base, the Laser Pistol is a piece compared to the 9mm Pistol even for EW oriented characters But Fallout 3 had similar problems with EWs too.
The Laser Pistol is more accurate and holds more ammunition, but it is not a great weapon overall -- neither are the 9mm or .22 Pistol, which is why I tuned them all up in JSawyer and gave mods to the GRA Laser Pistol. 
The Plasma Pistol is a face-melter, even before GRA mods.
JESawyer 16 Feb 12
i wish EWs actually existed so i could melt u with them
c00l
JESawyer 16 Feb 12
OK, so I get it, about the Energy Weapons. But, if you would have us believe that EW arent inherently superior to guns then why (in universe) were they developed in the first place? Also why would a group like the BoS have such a fetish for them?
We often develop technology not because it's great immediately, but because developing that technology helps us move toward its potential. We've had various forms of hybrid vehicles (gasoline combustion engine + ???) around for a long time. Most of them were pretty bad and impractical. We've had biofuels around for a while, but most of those are STILL bad and/or impractical. We saw tanks developed in WW1 that were absolute garbage. 
All of those things were kind of crummy for a while, but if we hadn't gone through the stage of "Yeah... this is... okay, I guess," we would never have reached the subsequent stages. Coil/rail gun technology used to be completely impractical. Now it's reached the stage where maybe/sorta we could mount an enormous one on a destroyer and blast through a bunker with a huge slug from miles away. We're probably not going to have Eraser- or Fallout-style Gauss rifles for a while, but we see the potential. 
In the Fallout universe, I think that the military appeal of weaponry that uses a small number of more-or-less universal ammunition types would be great. Today, we have NATO standards so that allies armies can share ammunition. But what if you could use the same ammunition type for powering a sniper rifle that you'd use for a devastating close-range weapon (e.g. a Microfusion Cell powering a Laser Rifle or a Plasma Rifle)? For a military force in the field, the flexibility of that would be immense. 
Anyway, I considered the EWs in F:NV to have reached the point where they were starting to replace conventional weapons, but had not yet completely eclipsed them -- sort of like the early days of firearms, when they were still being used concurrently with bows.
JESawyer 16 Feb 12
But in the beginning, the 9mm Pistol is a viable option over the the Laser Pistol. My EW characters always end up using guns in the beginning over EWs. I think that's the gap some people want filled. A solid EW at the beginning.
I really struggle with the vanilla 9mm and almost always switch over to the .357 Magnum Revolver ASAP. Really, the DAM of the 9mm Pistol, Laser Pistol, and .22 Pistol are all too low. I enjoy all three of those weapons much more with the JSawyer mod on top of them. 
You can get a Plasma Pistol relatively quickly (I think you can usually buy one at Chet's) and that is a viable weapon even without GRA or JSawyer.
JESawyer 16 Feb 12
I use the .357, but ammo sometimes becomes an issue. Same thing with the Plasma pistol, it's also expensive to maintain. That's what I wanted to see, a solid EW weapon in the beginning, one that matches some of the early guns.
With the JSawyer mod, I *for real* believe (through my own experiences) that the regular ol' Laser Pistol is a viable weapon. The 9mm also does more damage, but only 2 more than the LP's (18 vs. 16). Against anything with DT, the LP is immediately on equal damage footing -- and it still has the superior accuracy, RoF, and ammo capacity. If you mod it, you can use it for quite a long time.
JESawyer 17 Feb 12
Why was Big gun Small gun removed to have survival?
Big Guns wasn't removed to have Survival. Survival replaced F3's commented-out Throwing skill. Big Guns was removed for the reason I stated before: there was effectively no good, consistent progression of Big Guns from early game to late game.
JESawyer 17 Feb 12
In good gun/bad gun comparison where does unarmed fall?
It doesn't compare because it is a different play style. It could be argued (and some have) that Unarmed and Melee are redundant. Both are viable throughout F:NV from beginning to end and both have you do effectively the same thing, gameplay-wise: try to avoid getting shredded by gunfire as you close to targets and mash the attack button.
JESawyer 17 Feb 12
If the overall amount of skillpoints a given character earns were trimmed down, couldn't tagging and building up energy weapons be considered an investment for the late-game? This would seem like a good way to implement the implied progression in FO1, no?
If that's the intended progression, why even organize the skills that way? Why not organize the skills by some other criteria so a player doesn't have to treat a subset of the skills differently from everything else in the game?
JESawyer 18 Feb 12
Why did you include 'unique' weapons in FNV? Personally I think that they encourage a "gotta catch 'em all" attitude in player that disrupts an otherwise immersive experience. I would have preferred a more exstensive modding system instead of trinkets.
I don't think it encourages that. I never felt that way about finding unique weapons in any other RPG. That said, if people want to go find all of the unique weapons, that's fine.
JESawyer 18 Feb 12
This isn't gun related, but why is the shoulder pads on the T-51b power armor cumbersome and big?
Beats me. They've been huge since the intro of the original Fallout.
JESawyer 18 Feb 12
What about "weighted skills" where you have to spend more points to raise some skill compared to others? It was suggested on NMA, and it's only one of many ways you could differentiate between "core" skills and "late-game/less used" skills.
I'm not sure that really solves the problem of late game skills, but it does address relative skill imbalance. For a late game skill, you could use a skill system that branches at certain points. E.g. you could have Energy Weapons open up only after you are 10th level and have 50 in Guns and Science.
JESawyer 19 Feb 12
Is it the developers' fault if players make bad decisions?
It's the developer's fault if players make bad decisions for which they would have no reasonable expectation of predicting the outcome. A complaint with the original Icewind Dale is that the number of magical short bows is extremely low. Players don't have to invest specifically in short bows, but if they did, it's not reasonable to assume that players will intuit the shortage and plan accordingly. 
If the developers clearly tell the player that there aren't any magical short bows in the game, they're off the hook for the player's decisions, but there's still the question of what they're accomplishing by making that choice.
JESawyer 19 Feb 12
Were the snowglobes made before or after The War? Because the Sierra Madre Snowglobe shows The Cloud, but the Lonesome Road one shows the area as it appeared before The War.
They were all supposed to be Pre-War.
JESawyer 19 Feb 12
Got any nice 70's songs ? You seam to have a nice taiste in music ^^!
Arlo Guthrie - City of New Orleans 
http://youtu.be/TvMS_ykiLiQ 
Led Zeppelin - The Rain Song 
http://youtu.be/S4v-_p5dU34 
Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here 
http://youtu.be/nlVQcBxiNRY 
Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road 
http://youtu.be/EgkBx8csEws 
David Bowie - Oh! You Pretty Things 
http://youtu.be/ixLm9eSYldE
JESawyer 20 Feb 12
in GRA, why did you add so many add ons to the baseball bat when it's such a menial weapon compared to other melee weapons such as the ripper and katana?
http://youtu.be/zTxBc_-XxmI
JESawyer 20 Feb 12
So is the Kickstarter game going to be a Matlock game or Murder She Wrote?
http://youtu.be/RKikUl4slJ4
JESawyer 20 Feb 12
add a young david byrne to the list of white guys with short black hair you look like
ok
JESawyer 21 Feb 12
Some of us do appreciate how you tried to make skills useful from start to finish in the game instead of the eff'd up psychic-foresight-required skills of the earlier Fallouts. Was this just critical thinking or personal reaction to playing the originals?
The beginning was personal reaction. I didn't have a bad experience (I tagged Small Guns and later migrated to EWs), but I wondered at the design goals and started to think about what I thought the goals should be.
JESawyer 21 Feb 12
Is it me or was the NV Obsidian dev team fairly small. And exactly how much knowledge did you have of Gamebryo compared to BGS who used it for 3 games, and Rockstar who used it for Bully.
I wouldn't say it was small, but by comparison to something like the Assassin's Creed 2 team, I guess it was. A lot of people worked on it at various times, but I think our team size at peak was in the low 50s. When we started working on F:NV, no one on the team had worked with the engine before.
JESawyer 22 Feb 12
"When we started working on F:NV, no one on the team had worked with the engine before. " At what point in development was Oscuro hired?
Hmm, maybe halfway into development.
JESawyer 23 Feb 12
Is Driver Nephi supposed to be a Mormon?
He was a New Canaanite, yes.
JESawyer 23 Feb 12
Why did he become a fiend?
http://youtu.be/QLLLTntnqjk
JESawyer 23 Feb 12
Favorite type of cheese?
Hook's 10 Year Sharp Cheddar.
http://www.hookscheese.com/cheese descriptions.html 
Runner-up: Red Dragon.
http://www.cheesesupply.com/product_info.php/products_id/368
JESawyer 24 Feb 12
Is it necessary that a developer enjoy playing games if they're going to develop them?
I don't think it's strictly necessary, but I think developers who don't play games aren't ever going to appreciate or understand how their contributions actually affect the whole.
JESawyer 24 Feb 12
From a development point of view, would you prefer to make a direct sequel to a game with a continuation of storyline or a looser follow up?
On the one game where I worked on both the original and the sequel (Icewind Dale/Icewind Dale 2), the storyline was only loosely affiliated. On the other sequels/spin-offs (NWN2/F:NV), they've both been loose affiliations. I think I prefer that, though if I worked on a game with a strong central character, I'd prefer to continue a storyline if it made sense.
JESawyer 25 Feb 12
I just bought tickets for Mogwai's SF show in June last week. I got into them a couple years ago but I haven't seen them live yet, how pumped should I be?
You should be very pumped because they are amazing live.
JESawyer 25 Feb 12
Why Nero was considered the Ace of Diamonds, and not Mr. House? Or why Pacer was the Ace of Spades, and not The King?
King cards were assigned to the heads of factions.
JESawyer 26 Feb 12
Why did New Vegas remove the speech percent check. That was an example of a good BGS decision. An actual dice roll. And you removed it. Your very anti RPG.
Randomized resolution of stand-alone tasks is pointless in a game with effectively unlimited save/reload.
JESawyer 26 Feb 12
Hey, I've been reading about your mod, and really want to try it, I've always felt NV needed the ability for more realism (Über Hardcore Mode?), but I haven't seen a link to it anywhere, where could I go to fetch the aforementioned mod?
http://diogenes-lamp.info/jsawyer_fnv_mod.zip
JESawyer 26 Feb 12
Any weapons you feel are underpowered, balance-wise in New Vegas? For example, Paciencia is inferior to the GRA AMR in almost every category except ammo availability, and yet it costs loads more, defeating the purpose of it needing cheap ammo.
All of GRA's unique weapons have a price-point that is disproportionate to their increase in power over the base version. This is by design, as the unique weapons are money sinks and can only be purchased in stores.
JESawyer 26 Feb 12
So not integrating GRA uniques into the game world was a conscious design decision, not something caused by technical or temporal limitations?
Correct, though not integrating non-unique GRA weapons (e.g. the 5.56mm Pistol, Battle Rifle) was for memory/bug concerns. The non-unique GRA weapons are also much less expensive.
JESawyer 26 Feb 12
you should gain some weight you look kind of cancery
My body fat percentage is in the 16-17% range, which is the upper end of average.
JESawyer 26 Feb 12
Are you a vegetarian?
I do not eat meat, but I do eat eggs and dairy products.
JESawyer 26 Feb 12
Fallout 3 seemed to take a survival horror route. What'd you think of it? Perhaps was the que in influence from S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Series? FO 1/2 other than ominous intros ala Pearlman weren't.
I disagree. I don't think Fallout 3 feels like survival horror. There are a few places that give that vibe (Dunwich Building), but overall, it doesn't have the same feeling as STALKER.
JESawyer 26 Feb 12
"but overall, [Fallout 3] doesn't have the same feeling as STALKER. " Aren't the voice clips in F3 just as repetetive as "don't just stand there" or "get out here STALKER!"?
speel da beens.
JESawyer 26 Feb 12
Don't you think that adding GRA unique weapons to the vendors' lists was a way too easy to let the player take possession of them? Wouldn't have been better if they were left in the hands of new (and powerful) unique enemies or hidden somewhere else?
No.
JESawyer 26 Feb 12
I feel like you gave such an abrupt answer to the last guys question because he had a genuinely good idea that you didn't think of.
I gave an abrupt answer because I already explained the design purpose of making the GRA uniques expensive and putting them in stores. Placing the uniques on bosses or in the world defeats that design purpose.
JESawyer 26 Feb 12
How the hell would the NCR know of sequoias? Wouldn't all of them be burned/knocked down during the great war?
It's unlikely that many inbound nuclear weapons would strike in the eastern Sierra Nevadas, much less places like national parks such as Sequoia, King's Canyon, and Yosemite.
JESawyer 26 Feb 12
Are you married?
No.
JESawyer 26 Feb 12
why did you get rid of the beard 
I grew it because it was cold. It is no longer cold.
JESawyer 27 Feb 12
"I grew it because it was cold. It is no longer cold." -- California is never cold. Chilly, yes -- but not cold.
California is a large state that includes places like Big Bear Lake, Mammoth, and Yosemite. I just returned from Wisconsin, where it was not cold for Wisconsin, but still freezing. I also often ride my bike to and from work. ~45°F is not particularly cold, but with wind chill, it's unpleasant. Riding temperatures are now in the 50s, so it's fine.
JESawyer 27 Feb 12
"It's unlikely that many inbound nuclear weapons would strike in the eastern Sierra Nevadas" But according to the Fallout 1/2 maps California/West Coast seem to be a burned out desert marked with huge impact craters.
Yes, near population centers, and much of SoCal is a desert.
JESawyer 27 Feb 12
But according to the Fallout one map there are some huge craters in the eastern Sierra Nevadas.Its just the whole 'lowering of the total damage' idea that's been happening since FO2. Perhaps someday the FO U wont be caused by nukes but gov't shut down
I wouldn't lean too heavily on the Fallout world map considering that the Necropolis is supposed to be Bakersfield and it's exactly where Barstow would be. There's not any good reason for anyone to target the eastern Sierra Nevadas with nuclear weapons. Even at the height of Cold War danger, projections of targets included far more intense, repeated strikes at sites of relevance rather than randomly chucking nuclear missiles at national parks.
JESawyer 27 Feb 12
But you are comparing the real world to the Fallout world.Where "The earth's faults shift violently, thrusting mountain ranges through the soil.Whole lands are submerged under floods of water" So is the nuke scenario being scaled back to real world spec?
We never really see examples of any of that happening. If it were actually that severe, we likely wouldn't even be able to go to places like the Boneyard. 
There's a pretty huge spectrum of change possible between "a realistic nuclear war" and "thrusting mountain ranges through the soil". 
Let me put this into perspective: if we're to follow the logical implications of nuclear warheads "thrusting mountain ranges", such as the 400+ mile long Sierra Nevadas chain, through the soil, annihilating forests of 2000+ year-old trees the size of small office buildings, there should be no plant life anywhere and the atmosphere should be devoid of all oxygen. 
If the crafty reds decided to devote their nuclear arsenal to bombarding national parks and cracking chains of mountains -- wow, I don't know where anything should be set in the Fallout universe because the results of the war would make the film 2012 look like a mild tropical storm.
JESawyer 28 Feb 12
I figured that all sides had rather huge nukes in the Tsar Bomba+ yield range,and the concept of air burst was unheard of.So you just got a bunch of nukes impacting the ground making huge holes"as seen in the series"The shocks thus cause land change.
Okay, then we have to erase the entire Boneyard and every pre-war urban settlement in the Fallout franchise from existence. If Tsar Bomba-level weapons (the yield of which would annihilate an entire metropolis) are inexplicably being dropped on unpopulated mountainsides, cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco would be completely razed, far beyond what what we see in Fallout and Fallout 2. 
It seems like an convoluted leap to look at the Fallout world map and a comment in a holodisk and conclude that, contrary to the level of destruction we actually see in-game at places like the Boneyard, Necropolis, and San Francisco, dramatically more powerful nuclear weaponry was deployed in the Sierra Nevadas to crack fault lines and mercilessly destroy sequoias.
JESawyer 28 Feb 12
Also wouldn't Yosemite by your logic be like Zion? Assuming landslides didn't block all the roads (keep people form it), and/or the Merced River didn't get dammed up.
Assuming you mean "not targeted by nuclear weapons", it's possible. NCR's recognition (and President Kimball's mention) of sequoias and the relatively pristine nature of Zion suggest that, while the world was globally affected by fallout, at least some remote places were not directly targeted/completely destroyed. 
The other thing to keep in mind/perspective is the gargantuan size of the Sierra Nevada range. It runs from Sequoia in the south to Lassen in the north. Deforesting that entire region of undulating mountains would require such systemic and massive bombing that again, it draws into question how major urban centers survive in even the burned out, skeletal forms seen in Fallout.
JESawyer responded to Limmiegirl 28 Feb 12
What is the point of the Junk Rounds perk? It's more expensive to make them than to sell the ingredients and buy new rounds. Scrap metal is also rarer and more cumbersome it is to carry around than of primers and powder.
In its unmodded form, I don't think it's a good perk. I tried to address this in my JSawyer mod by creating separate junk round ammo forms.
JESawyer 28 Feb 12
I imagine the early dev sessions for FNV filled with enthusiastic/imaginitive guys who are throwing around interesting ideas. Then you walk in and dryly give a 4 hour presentation on the plausible effects of nuclear war and weapon proliferation in FO.
I'm not going to apologize for thinking through the logical implications of what I see as half-formed ideas. I also don't think the Fallout universe would be better off or more interesting if every portion of it were uniformly blasted. 
This is essentially what is being pitched to me, "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if all of the forests in Fallout's California were completely wiped off of the mountainside?" No, that doesn't sound cool or imaginative to me. It sounds like a featureless mountainside that would never be a compelling part of the game world.
JESawyer 29 Feb 12
Have you played Dear Esther yet?
I got the impression it is not a thing that is actually played.
JESawyer responded to MikeGolf 29 Feb 12
If the Chinese in FO U used the same model as the USSR during the real cold war, then part of their strategic nuclear plan was to heavily nuke the Rockies and central US IOT sever our lines of communication between coasts and deny us our interior lines.
Okay, but the Rockies still aren't the Sierra Nevadas. There are also a lot more "things" in the Rockies (e.g. Denver) that are valid targets on their own.
JESawyer 29 Feb 12
In the original Fallout (which many take as infallible canon) the opening narration, holodisks, general aesthetic, and game map all support the view that the Great War Irreversibly changed the environment on a global scale reducing SoCo to a wasteland.
Clearly it's not irreversible. In the original Fallout, people live, highly-organized, in the ruins of cities that were bombarded by nuclear weapons. Grass and cacti grow in open desert, corn grows in fields. The "general aesthetic" of the world of the original Fallout looks like a SoCal desert with blasted cityscapes +80 years.
JESawyer 29 Feb 12
(Same guy) It isnt that the FO universe should be uniformly blasted, the problem is - earlier games already established that the American southwest was (more or less) like that. It feels like you are engaged in an erroneous attempt to make FO 'plausible'.
No, it didn't. City centers look blasted because cities would have been blasted. The rest of the environments looked like deserts because SoCal is mostly desert (so is Central California if you remove the irrigation). Fallout 2 re-used the same basic tiles, but I wouldn't use that as evidence that NorCal and Oregon are now all desert.
JESawyer 29 Feb 12
I agree with your stance on this current arguement. For example, Honest Hearts was great *because* it was untouched. Everything else is blasted inside out and turned into a fired hollowed husk. Zion Nat'l Park was something nice to look at and explore.
I think it's also why Point Lookout was an enjoyable contrast to the Capital Wasteland.
JESawyer 1 Mar 12
Why do feral ghouls look so different to normal ghouls? Feral ones are much thinner and bonier, their skin isn't sloughing off and they have a much more distorted facial structure. Are they biologically different as well as mentally?
I don't know. That's a question for Bethesda.
JESawyer 1 Mar 12
Warren Spector recently urged people to support video game "preservation". Does Obsidian make any effort to preserve documentation, source code ect for historical record?
Not specifically for historical purposes, but rapidly expanding digital storage capability makes such efforts almost trivially easy. We always keep everything around, as far as I know.
JESawyer 1 Mar 12
Were there any creatures from FO/FO2 that you wanted to put in NV? Any you would want to see in a future FO?
Floaters.
JESawyer 2 Mar 12
With regards to Icewind Dale 2, is there anything you wish you could have added in or removed from the game?
With additional time, I would restructure areas like the Ice Temple, Dragon's Eye, Fell Wood, Black Raven Monastery, and Dragon's Eye. I and the designers who made those areas were not satisfied with how they wound up in the game. I would also like to displace some of the central areas on the critical path and break them off into optional areas. I would thin out the density of creatures in many areas and allow for a little more space to explore. 
Mechanically, I'm pretty happy with what we implemented. I do think that the fight / rest cycle became degenerate and not fun. I believe there are solutions to that, but most of them run counter to the spirit of 3E D&D.
JESawyer 3 Mar 12
Ever meet Alexander Brandon in person?
Yeah, I worked with him at Midway and Obsidian.
JESawyer 3 Mar 12
What do you think about what has been announced so far about Assassin's Creed 3?
I've only seen the screenshots. I thought AC2 was a really fantastic game. The character design for AC3 seems strange to me. I understand the need to keep continuity, but the cloak/hood seems out of place in the new setting.
JESawyer 3 Mar 12
Official materials vary on if the word between "of" and "Betrayer" in Neverwinter Night 2's 1st expansion pack. The gold/platinum boxes use "The", while standalone uses "the" and the old Bioware forums used "MoTB". Is it supposed to be capitalized or not?
I don't know the official stance, but I think I always write it Mask of the Betrayer/MotB.
JESawyer responded to Formspring 3 Mar 12
Are you a fan of cats?
:3
JESawyer 3 Mar 12
O Fortuna velut Luna statu variabilis semper crescis aut decrescis; vita detestabilis nunc obdurat et tunc curat ludo mentis aciem egestatem, potestatem dissolvit ut glaciem
You say Carmina. 
I say Carmana. 
You say Burina. 
I say Burana. 
Carmina, Carmana. 
Burina, Burana. 
Let's Carl the whole thing Orff.
JESawyer 4 Mar 12
Caecilius est in horto. Caecilius in horto sedet. servus est in atrio. servius in atrio laborat. Metella est in atrio. Metella in atrio sedet. Quintus est in tablino. Quintus in tablino scribit. Cerberus est in via.
u wheelockin' bro??
JESawyer 4 Mar 12
Why would a hood be out of place in Colonial America circa 1776? Especially for a dude who was raised by Native Americans and is clearly rocking the 'grizzled woodsman' look? Preserving continuity is always more important than being arbitrarily pedantic.
I have never seen any depiction of a person in Colonial America wearing a hood. While this doesn't mean that absolutely no one wore hoods, it means that I, and likely most people, do not associate hoods with that time and place. 
The AC franchise excels at using a historically-accurate base as a springboard to other zany things. When we're talking about the appearance of the main character of the game, I don't think it's arbitrarily pedantic -- especially in a series that does things like model the layout of cities and most of their major landmarks based on historical maps.
JESawyer 4 Mar 12
What breed are your cats? (Sorry, I don't know cats very well -- but I do like them)
Domestic Shorthair. The white cat, Suki, was adopted from a shelter. The spotted cat, Sesame, was the kitten of a stray cat.
JESawyer 4 Mar 12
this has been gnawing at me for a while now but i must know was victor ever intended to become a companion?
Never.
JESawyer 5 Mar 12
So at work currently. Are you working hard, or hardly working?
It's not like I'm digging ditches or anything, just updating design documents before I go to GDC.
JESawyer 5 Mar 12
Have you been to Pompeii or Herculaneum?
No.
JESawyer 5 Mar 12
Was Mean Sonofabitch ever gonna be a companion, or at least given more of a role than he ended up with?
No.
JESawyer 5 Mar 12
What is the point of the AMR suppressor? When fired, it still makes enough noise for nearby enemies to detect the player.
Its noise is reduced from "Loud" to "Normal", meaning that the noise radius is significantly smaller. You still can't shoot it from a room away and expect to avoid detection.
JESawyer 5 Mar 12
Was it intentional for 'Big Iron' to play far more often then other songs in NV?
No.
JESawyer 5 Mar 12
What kind of chair are you sitting in now?
A Herman Miller Aeron.
JESawyer 5 Mar 12
whats a herman miller aeron?
http://www.hermanmiller.com/products/seating/work-chairs/aeron-chairs.html
JESawyer 5 Mar 12
Is the chair any good?
yeah it owns.
JESawyer 5 Mar 12
Why arent there any Themes in F:NV?
There are, they just aren't explicitly stated.
JESawyer 6 Mar 12
Were there any non Ulysses NPC's originally meant to be companions?
No.
JESawyer 6 Mar 12
Ever said "Alea iacta est" in a table top RPG?
I may have said "The die is cast," but not in Latin.
JESawyer 6 Mar 12
Genoese crossbowmen or Welsh longbowmen?
History already answered that question.
JESawyer 6 Mar 12
"There are, they just aren't explicitly stated. " So then, what are they?
If you cannot discern the themes on your own, then we have failed.
JESawyer 6 Mar 12
I saw this asked elsewhere but you haven't really answered it and I'm curious. Why is "And the light shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehended it not" written in Greek? Is there a thought-out reason or for aesthetic effect?
John stands apart from the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) in both language/terminology and message. Greek is the appropriate language for John, just as John is the appropriate gospel for Joshua Graham. Forced into English or (worse) Latin, the opening verses of John lose ambiguity and versatility.
JESawyer 6 Mar 12
Will you be playing Mass Effect 3?
Maybe. I didn't get very far in ME2.
JESawyer responded to Tycho7 6 Mar 12
Can you speak Greek at all? And if so are you fluent in the language?
I can't speak Greek, no. My main contact with Greek has come through studying the New Testament.
JESawyer 11 Mar 12
Be honest: have you ever read any New Vegas fanfiction?
No.
JESawyer 11 Mar 12
Will your GDC talk be available for us poor people that can't afford to fly to the States for GDC? Also, have you had the chance to see Tim Cain's post-mortem? Or did you just force him to recite it again at Obsidian's offices?
I will be posting the slides as a .pdf on my blog. For the video, I believe you have to pay for access to the GDC "Vault".
JESawyer 11 Mar 12
What happened to Rome? They use to be cool.
http://youtu.be/FH0rw4k7NNY
JESawyer 12 Mar 12
Different person here. Why's your GDC talk have to be paid for vs Tim Cain's?
I have no idea. It's all kind of mystifying to me.
JESawyer 12 Mar 12
Will you be getting any money out of your GDC talk??
Not as far as I know.
JESawyer 13 Mar 12
I was looking through the slides for your GDC talk and couldn't help but notice the Vault Boy that looks like the guy from Six String Samurai. Did you have one of the artists at Obsidian draw that up for you, or did you find it elsewhere?
Brian Menze created it for the New Vegas achievement called "New Vegas Samurai".
JESawyer 13 Mar 12
Thanks for the .pdf, I found it very informative. RE: "Fallout: New Vegas Character Prototypes...?" why are Alice and Doomsday Tattoo lady crossed out?
We didn't really establish what our prototype characters were. There were certain characters we could have included -- or at least considered -- like Alice and the Doomsday tattoo lady, but we didn't. 
By comparison, Alpha Protocol had much more explicitly defined prototypes.
JESawyer 13 Mar 12
do you know where i can pirate gdc talks
have you tried the internet
JESawyer 13 Mar 12
Do you prefer the bleakness of the Capital Wasteland or dreariness of the Mojave Wasteland?
I prefer the contrast between them.
JESawyer 13 Mar 12
So the Wasteland 2 Kickstarter is up. Are we going to be able to blast Josh Sawyer into bits of red paste next October?
SOSH JAWYER
JESawyer 14 Mar 12
On your blog you said you advocate combining EW and guns as one skill (and unarmed and melee as another). Wouldn't it be better to take them and simply flesh them out more via new, more distinguishing perks rather than killing off two skill types?
If they could be distinguished through the weapons themselves, I think that would be much better. If weapons are effectively indistinguishable without taking perks, only specialists will note any difference between them.
JESawyer 14 Mar 12
When you think about adding skills trees or think of revisions to fix the type of early game through late game usefulness, do you ever wonder if your messing too much with a very unique system that's been around for so long?
No.
JESawyer 15 Mar 12
Hey Josh, I was curious, now that the Wasteland 2 kickstarter is rapidly approaching 1 Mill, what were the general budgets for Fallout 1 and 2? And somewhat irrelevant, what was the budget going to be for the Van Buren project you led? Many thanks.
Tim Cain said that the cost of Fallout was in the ballpark of $3 million. I don't know about F2 and I wasn't involved in budgeting Van Buren.
JESawyer 15 Mar 12
If you had to (and I hope you won't have to) to move to another country for a new job, would you do that? Or would you prefer searching for something in the States even if the position was less attractive in other ways?
If I had to, yes, but I don't know if the romantic vision of living as an ex-pat is all it's cracked up to be.
JESawyer 15 Mar 12
I originally asked the question that you posted about John 1:5, about six months ago.I'm sure you're aware pf two main ways the back part of the verse is translated, the darkness has not overcome it, or understood it. Which way does Graham understand it?
That is the question.
JESawyer 15 Mar 12
It's expat, abbreviated from expatriate.
I know, but I apologize for the error.
JESawyer responded to Formspring 16 Mar 12
Hold the cheese or extra cheese?
Always extra cheese.
JESawyer 16 Mar 12
"I prefer the contrast between them." Whoa there J.S., where did you get your liberal arts degree?
appleton, wisconsin!!!
JESawyer 16 Mar 12
wasn't able to find yours bdc talk, but anyway.. As far as i can tell from pdf you advocated placing more emphasis on interactive nature of crpg games (pg. 14), while at the same time pointing a need for pre-defining coherent character prototypes (pg. 2
Broadly, yes. I think choice needs to not only be meaningful, but you need to adequately communicate the range of choice to players. If you give the player the impression that he or she can play the game as the Outlaw Josey Wales, that should be consistently viable and reinforced in the story. This doesn't mean that path is always ideal or that it doesn't come with some amount of sacrifice, but it's viable and feels good to follow.
JESawyer 16 Mar 12
But aren't these two points somewhat contradictory? Aren't the whole point of choosing a "role" by someone, is in ability to express oneself trough the game, and by limiting spectrum of responses via behavior lines that ability is cut as well..
There is always a finite spectrum of responses, so no. Developers can either *not* think about the range they want to support and allow designers to throw responses in ad hoc (which results in a really inconsistent spectrum of responses), or they can think about what's "in" and what's "out" and focus on supporting the former rather than the latter. 
I think AP did a good job of defining their three prototype characters (Jason Bourne, James Bond, Jack Bauer) and following up on it in conversations and actions that Michael Thorton can take. Michael Thorton is never going to be Maxwell Smart, even though that character is technically in the realm of secret agent/spy characters.
JESawyer 17 Mar 12
But isn't the point of class-less systems like fonv's SPECIAL to not fit characters into specific archetypes? I mean, I could play as Maxwell Smart in fallout if I tried hard enough couldn't I?
Not through dialogue if the options don't support it.
JESawyer 17 Mar 12
wouldn't it be better to allow player to do small things his way rather than a bigger things in a pre-designed way? Doing this will allow for establishing sort of emotional connection with the game world, to assign values to consequences of ones actions..
Please read the quote from Richard Thaler on slide 18 of my GDC talk: 
http://diogenes-lamp.info/GDC12_Do_Say_The_Right_Thing.pdf 
“Choice architects must choose something. You have to meddle. For example, you can't design a neutral building. There is no such thing. A building must have doors, elevators, restrooms. All of these details influence choices people make.” 
"Allowing" comes through design. Designers don't dictate what choices the player makes from moment to moment, but we do define the boundaries of choices players *can* make. To pretend otherwise means we abdicate responsibility over the consistency of those boundaries. I think that is plain ol' bad. 
Later in the slides, I talk about "Indirect Reaction Systems". I made this term up, but it encompasses things like reputation and influence mechanics. These are "small things" that have an impact, but they are abstracted into a larger system instead of hand-scripted large-scale reactions. Even so, designers and writers have to account for this ahead of time.
JESawyer 18 Mar 12
Do you think the market for a PC RPG with gameplay and budget similar to Icewind Dale is smaller, larger or the same, compared to 10 years ago? I'm not talking about a clone, but a game with similar high-level design goals.
I wouldn't restrict it to the PC, and I think it might be larger if you take PC, Mac, iOS, and Android platforms into account.
JESawyer responded to Formspring 18 Mar 12
Are you sarcastic often?
I try to avoid using sarcasm. I feel it's the weakest form of criticism and the least likely to produce a positive change in its target.
JESawyer 18 Mar 12
You really think that people prefer to play a tactical RPG's on their 10" tablets instead of their PCs? Something with similar depth and challenge level as Icewind Dale?
I played tactical RPGs at 320x200 on a 14" monitor. What's the problem?
JESawyer 18 Mar 12
Tim Schafer had Ron Gilbert when he first got his hands dirty in game design. Did you also have a mentor before you were given your first big role dealing with the job of head design of an RPG?
Actually, I didn't. On Icewind Dale, we had no leads (in any discipline). The other area designers, many of whom were also junior (just off of Planescape: Torment), helped me learn how to use the Infinity Engine editors, but there wasn't much in the way of mentoring at that time. 
Technically, The Black Hound was the first game I was lead designer on, though that was put on hold when Icewind Dale II entered development. IWD2 was the first game for which I received lead designer credit.
JESawyer responded to dfuglestad 18 Mar 12
On the "Genoese Crossbowmen verses English Longbowmen". Did history really answer that question? At the Battle of Crecy (the only real competition) the weather was the deciding factor, not pitched battle. Isn't this question ultimately unanswerable?
This was repeated at Poitiers. For the sort of combat typical during the Hundred Years War, the crossbow (often in the hands of mercenaries) was outclassed by English archers using longbows. The primary advantage of the crossbow is raw power, which wasn't typically the decisive factor in battles of the time.
JESawyer 18 Mar 12
Would you consider the gaming industry to be a "young man/woman's industry?" Most of the people I've seen working in the industry seem to be 20-40ish years old. I can't recall seeing any older game designers at all.
Pretty much.
JESawyer 19 Mar 12
Crossbows have a big advantage in the time it takes to train(and maintain) profiency with them. Don't you think that is also something to consider when comparing these two weapons (or any weapons for that matter)?
You might as well discard the military swords of the era based on that criterion. The fact of the matter is that Edward III's decree required even civilian Englishmen to be proficient in the use of the longbow. What longbows were like in the hands of the untrained is irrelevant because from Edward III on, the people using them in the field were all trained.
JESawyer 20 Mar 12
With the team you guys have at Obsidian you guys could probably use Kickstarter to fund any game you wanted, especially considering the name recognition factor of the old Black Isle staff. Darklands 2? Something isometric? Just puttiing that out there...
I think that would be great and I would love to work on such a game.
JESawyer 20 Mar 12
How much do your cats weigh?
Sesame is 11 lbs. and Suki is 14 lbs. Suki is overweight. We have been reducing their food, but it hasn't been having an impact.
JESawyer 20 Mar 12
The BGEE dood has expressed interest in making BG3. Your thoughts on that? Does anything change if he does or doesn't pull any ideas from The Black Hound?
I would be very surprised if anyone referenced content from TBH in BG3. TBH really didn't have anything to do with the BG series.
JESawyer 22 Mar 12
Why are the NCR troopers divided 50% - 50% into males and females? Wouldnt there be more males like in real life ?
Regular NCR troopers are largely conscripted without bias to sex, so no. Rangers are volunteers, but most of them are volunteers from among the troopers.
JESawyer responded to irenebaumann 23 Mar 12
everyone who chose iphone is gonna be killed!!! I hate it))) [9]
cool
JESawyer 23 Mar 12
How much do you weigh?
I think about 186 lbs. or so right now.
JESawyer 24 Mar 12
The 9mm pistol is based on a Browning design right? (1911 or Hi-P?)
The Hi-Power, yes.
JESawyer responded to MikeGolf 24 Mar 12
Why is it in most RPG's now I can't use my companions skill set whenever I want to make,talk,fix or buy something.I think the last game that came close to getting it right was FO2.It would make companions a lot more meaningful in my opinion.
Because it makes the player's skills a lot *less* meaningful. Everyone contributes to combat, but if you can just keep a companion around to make difficult skill checks for you, there's really no point to the player focusing on anything but combat skills. 
Ideally, companions should give the player abilities that the player can't get on his or her own. That's why Boone grants his Spotter perk and why Raul grants Regular Maintenance. They don't replace the player's skills, but grant benefits that are orthogonal to what skills grant. Arcade's Better Healing is a relatively weak benefit because it simply boosts healing that the player can otherwise advance through Medicine and Survival.
JESawyer 24 Mar 12
Is the Q-35 Matter Modulator from F:NV named after the Illudium Q-36 Space Modulator?
I believe so. That item was named by Akil Hooper, who designed REPCONN HQ.
JESawyer 24 Mar 12
Cool. Then the .45 is 1911. Since Fallout 1 then 3 strayed from copying real world weapons too much I was surprised by these and other designs like the Garand. Were the Brownings used because their iconic, even to non-gun people?
Yes, and because their designs are arguably "timeless". Unfortunately, many people were confused by the similarity of the Hi-Power and M1911 designs, assuming that the 9mm Pistol was based on the M1911.
JESawyer 24 Mar 12
ever thought about taking a cross country bike ride?
A friend of mine did it and she seemed to really enjoy it. I don't think I have the same aspirations, honestly. Even centuries get kind of boring to me eventually. I'd rather travel cross-country on my motorcycle. I've visited most of the states west of the Mississippi that way.
JESawyer 24 Mar 12
How about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail or something?
I'd like to hike the John Muir Trail, definitely.
JESawyer responded to xHawK 25 Mar 12
In Fallout New Vegas, is the item, Tiny, Tiny Babies: All You Need to Know About Pediatric Medicine a reference to Buffy the Vampire Slayer?
I don't think so, but Travis Stout made that item for a Bitter Springs quest.
JESawyer 25 Mar 12
i'd like to hike YOU
that doesn't even make any sense
JESawyer 25 Mar 12
Dog and God in retrospect are a fascinating set of characters. Who wrote them? Also why wasn't the opportunity taken to use them to reflect on the aftermath of the Master's plans and the twisted things it's brought?
Chris Avellone wrote them.
JESawyer 27 Mar 12
Does Obsidian ever outsource work or do you guys do everything in-house?
We do almost everything in-house, but occasionally outsource art.
JESawyer 27 Mar 12
hey josh fart
f
JESawyer 27 Mar 12
Hypothetical question. How would you react to a FO 1 and 2 port to iPad/other OS tablets and modern smartphones. Think of all those toilet seat hours! Side note: Bethesda's Pete Hines wants a Icewind Dale port Do ittttttt
Sounds fine by me. People are already running IE games under GemRB on smartphones and tablets.
JESawyer 28 Mar 12
Who came up with the Sneering Imperialist perk and dialogue for Honest Hearts? Hilarious stuff.
I came up with the perk, Brian Menze created the Vault Boy, and Travis Stout wrote the Sneering Imperialist lines.
JESawyer 29 Mar 12
I always have been wondering, why did the Courier start at Primm then go to Goodsprings instead of heading towards Vegas?
Goodsprings is a stopping/rest point between Primm and Vegas, but the Courier actually started back in NCR.
JESawyer 29 Mar 12
The area between Goodsprings and Vegas is super dangerous, though. No courier would pick that route, right? Or is the idea that the Courier didn't know about that when setting out?
The Courier was unaware of the danger, in part because the NCRCF breakout and Deathclaw explosion at Quarry Junction were relatively recent.
JESawyer 29 Mar 12
Where did the Courier actually get the chip? I'm a bit confused about Chronology. Victor hired Mojave Express in Primm, but Nash doesn't recognize The Courier and the chip was presumably in Sunnyvale.
I believe the Courier's travels started either somewhere around the Hub or the Boneyard. I do not believe how the chip got there is explicitly defined in the story.
JESawyer 29 Mar 12
So the Courier started in NCR, traveled to Primm, then headed toward Goodsprings to head up the back way into Vegas?
He or she either intentionally headed toward Goodsprings or wound up near Goodsprings (moving off of I-15) due to the presence of Benny and the Great Khans.
JESawyer 29 Mar 12
Hi Josh I have been learning to use 3D programs like Autodesk 3ds max for a while, but I was wondering, is just knowing one 3D program too limited or should I expand my knowledge and use others?. Also would you recommend any programs?
Learning 3DS Max and Maya should cover most bases. ZBrush is not necessarily but it's helpful to understand how it works.
JESawyer 29 Mar 12
Do you have to have the gun runner's arsenal dlc in order to get the "curios and relics" achievement? Or can you get it using in-game unique weapons?
Yes. Curios and Relics is part of GRA.
JESawyer 30 Mar 12
Who wrote the dialogue for Caesar ? Its simply amazing , one of the best moments in my game was talking with him.
John Gonzalez, who was also the creative lead for F:NV and wrote the story.
JESawyer 30 Mar 12
Would you be involved in Wasteland 2 if the InXile-Obsidian collaboration happens, or is it too early for you to say?
Oh, I have no idea, really.
JESawyer 4 Apr 12
Favorite arcade game, and pinball machine?
My favorite arcade games are Strider and Gain Ground. My favorite pinball machine is Bill Paxton Pinball. http://benheck.com/03-16-2010/bill-paxton-pinball
JESawyer 5 Apr 12
How much money, have you lost to Strider?
A lot, but it was also the first game I was able to master in the arcade. I was eventually able to beat it on one quarter.
JESawyer 5 Apr 12
Beating Strider on one quarter. = mastery? 
Since arcade games are designed to eat quarters at a regular rate, I'd say yes.
JESawyer 9 Apr 12
What made you decide to remove the marksman carbine from Grunt for your mod? It's thematically appropriate, so was it a balance issue? On the marksman carbine, what's the connection with Vault 34 and the 82nd?
I don't actually think it's that thematically appropriate. It's the only long-range weapon in the list. I don't really think of snipers when I think of "Grunt", so I removed them and put the Battle Rifles (including This Machine) in their place.
JESawyer 9 Apr 12
You recently said that you believe mechanical clarity is the best choice for 'Indirect Reaction Systems'. I was wondering what your reasons were for this. Is it technical limitations? Time constraints? That it provides clear and immediate consequences?
IRSs provide a middle step between a hand-scripted outcome and no reactivity at all. If you try to hand-script reactivity to everything the player does, you're really going to limit the volume of choices and reactions available to the player. On the other hand, choices that are effectively "throw away" are a waste of the player's (and the designer's, IMO) time. 
If you allow the player to express different attitudes toward groups and have those choices feed into an IRS (like Faction/Community Reputation), you can abstract and aggregate any number of smaller choices into a larger system. So if you're a sassy jackass to one guy, that's a black mark that goes toward the factions and communities of which he is a part. Interactions with other people can add positive and negative values to their factions and communities. Their individual responses may be throw away lines (e.g. "You're a jerk. Bye."), but they contribute to the larger tracking/reaction system, which helps keep them relevant.
JESawyer 9 Apr 12
How did Vault 34 become irradiated? There's pre-war trucks dumping nuclear waste outside, but the Boomers were unaffected by it. Was it just a matter of a time before the waste made its' way through the soil and into the Vault?
Fighting from a civil war in Vault 34 damaged the reactor's cooling system and infrastructure, killing or ghoulfying almost everyone inside. This is described in various places around Vault 34.
JESawyer 11 Apr 12
Thank you, Josh. Just wanted to say that.
yw / np
JESawyer responded to LeeHirsch 12 Apr 12
What was the last film you saw that inspired you or moved you?
Bully opens this Friday. See this important film. 
http://youtu.be/wzD0U841LRM
JESawyer 12 Apr 12
Who designed the sewer system in F:NV?
Jorge "Oscuro" Salgado.
JESawyer 12 Apr 12
Who came up with Lanius and was he inspired by anything in particular? Lanius is an amazing character by the way.
I think Lanius was developed by John Gonzalez, but Chris Avellone wrote the dialogue.
JESawyer 12 Apr 12
Are you jealous of MCA getting to work on Wasteland2?
No. I think Wasteland is very cool, and I'm glad that Brian and Chris (and everyone else) can realize their dreams of pursuing a sequel, but Bard's Tale was really "my" game of that era. Fallout was (and still is) my post-apocalyptic icon. 
When I got into the industry, there were two properties I wanted to work on: Dungeons & Dragons and Fallout. Now that I've realized both of those dreams (granted, the former much more than the latter), I'm less drawn by specific intellectual properties or settings. I'm mostly interested in gameplay and how the subject matter of any given game are handled.
JESawyer 12 Apr 12
Would you work on another Fallout?
Of course!
JESawyer 12 Apr 12
If one of the most confusing things in FNV for players was the inclusion of lots of different types of ammo why did you make a DLC that added even more ammo types?Also why didnt you make the changes suggested in your Fallout weapon skills blogin your mod?
One of the reasons we never "drop" ammo subtypes in the world (with very rare exceptions) is to make the entire subsystem optional. If a player never buys an ammo subtype or never crafts an ammo subtype, he or she may never see ammo subtypes outside of a store. There are a still a lot of base ammo types, but that's much more manageable over time. 
GRA is an optional DLC. In the same way that Old World Blues is for players who like a specific type of humor, GRA is for players who want tons o' guns*. DLCs allow us to be more specific with the type of content we create. 
Making the weapon changes I suggested would be a pretty significant undertaking, possibly taking as long as everything else I did in the JSawyer mod. I didn't really have the time to tackle it.
* I believe "Tons o' Guns" was a working title for GRA early in development.
JESawyer 13 Apr 12
Why do Legionary forces in New Vegas have "X's" on their shoulder pads? Also, was there any reason why the Legion didn't have any armor that was as iconic as V. Range Armor? NCR gets its best armor showcased all over the place, while the Legion didn't.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legio_X_Gemina 
Centurion Armor is the Legion equivalent of NCR Ranger Combat Armor.
JESawyer 14 Apr 12
I love the story of the Survivalist! who wrote it? i would always get excited reading his entrys
John Gonzalez wrote the Survivalist's entries.
JESawyer 15 Apr 12
What is the first game that you can remember completing? And for old time's sake, what spec computer did you play it on?
Adventure on the Atari 2600.
JESawyer 15 Apr 12
Is ED-E's name an oblique reference to WALL-E?
No.
JESawyer 15 Apr 12
When designing A Light Shining In Darkness, what model was is based off? The closest thing I can see is Colts New Agent series and looking at getting another 1911. I'd really like to recreate this weapon. Any info would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
The Colt New Agent is the closest equivalent, yes. One detail we did not reproduce in-game is the reversed recoil plug (found on many, if not all, Officer-length M1911s).
JESawyer 15 Apr 12
Whoever made the Legendary Bloatfly is a sick bastard T_T
I think that was Jeff Husges... or Charlie Staples.
JESawyer 16 Apr 12
What inspired your hatred of the word "epic?" Did you have to do a horrible project on Beowulf in Middle School or something?
As an adjective, it's become practically worthless. This is especially true in the context of fantasy, RPGs, and fantasy RPGs. When someone says, "this game is epic," I have no idea what he or she means.
JESawyer 17 Apr 12
"Epic" meaning awesome or grand in modern games/RPGs ala New Vegas Deus Ex: HR or Skyrim. Or even Wasteland 2
The fact that many people would not blink at the term being applied to all four of these games (one of which hasn't even entered development) means that it is effectively worn-out currency.
JESawyer 17 Apr 12
Why were there no former Children of the Cathedral members shown in New Vegas? I'm sure after the disbanding of them and destruction of Richard Grey there's former members out there just like the Enclave.
Most importantly, they didn't really leap to mind as a group that needed to be represented in the Mojave Wasteland in F:NV. 
That said, I question if there would be any of them around anyway (insert comment about the running joke of the immortal Khans here). 
First, there are a few important differences between the CotC, the Remnants, and the Master's Army. The Master's Army (specifically, the Super Mutants of Unity) lived on because they were Super Mutants: powerful and extremely long-lived. The Remnants lived on because the Enclave was a paramilitary organization with access to advanced technology. Without the Master's Army or the Master, the CotC are just a bunch of crazy humans. Even Morpheus wasn't really that tough compared to the Nightkin around him. 
Second, while F:NV takes place ~40 years after the destruction of the oil rig, it takes place ~120 years after the destruction of the Cathedral. If it seemed really important/cool to have heirs of the cult floating around, I'm sure they could be fit in. They just didn't seem that important to carry on in F:NV.
JESawyer 17 Apr 12
Don't like schwinn bikes?
I like a lot of Schwinns, especially Paramounts, but Schwinn has certainly churned out a lot of crap bikes in the past. My local craigslist always has a number of old junky Schwinn frames floating around for inordinately high prices.
JESawyer 17 Apr 12
Go Huffy or go home. Or Mongoose if you are alpha.
My first bike was a Huffy, but I always wanted a Mongoose. 
Q_Q
JESawyer 18 Apr 12
Would you say that F:NV's gun/ammo system is fairly accurate in terms of real-life ballistics? I'm talking about each gun's damage in relation to each other, not how powerful they'd literally be. (Ex: .44 Magnum Trail Carbine > .223 Rifle, etc...)
Wellllllll ballistics is extremely complicated, but I did try to keep things relatively realistic. A few of these comparisons get "weird" in certain circumstances. 
For example, a .308 Winchester rifle will generally have a bit more energy when it hits a target at close range than a .44 Magnum rifle (assuming full-length rifle barrels). However, the velocity of the .308 Win. round will probably be much higher. At close ranges, even a hollow point .308 Win. could be traveling at such a high velocity that it may over-penetrate and pass through the target. 
While this may sound impressive, a great deal of the bullet's energy is wasted and doesn't cause damage to the target. By comparison, the relatively "slow" .44 Magnum may transfer most of its energy, even at close range -- because the heavier .44 Magnum bullets are designed for that use. 
Conversely, a .44 Magnum does not have terrific long-range ballistics due to its (generally) higher weight and blunt/round shape. In addition to having significant drop at 100 or 200 yards, the .44 Magnum round loses a great deal of velocity, and with it, power. The .308 Win. has a relatively flat trajectory and its velocity trails off at much higher ranges. 
If you take a look at hunting forums, you may notice experienced hunters discussion bullet selection at great length -- even when everyone is shooting the same caliber from almost identical rifles! Like I wrote, ballistics is extremely complex, but I tried to keep things within the realm of what people generally understand to be the relative power rankings of cartridges/bullets.
JESawyer 19 Apr 12
When it says you need all the DLC for your mod, does that include Couriers Stash?
Yes.
JESawyer 19 Apr 12
Are you a rapper?
i'm a sapper.
JESawyer 19 Apr 12
I love your mod. Is there any chance you'll do a final pass or is V3 it? The only thing I've found thus far is Chet losing the stash stuff before I can... liberate enough caps to buy what I want.
Yeah, I started to address that, but haven't gotten around to finalizing V4. There won't be a ton of changes, mostly just addressing the Courier's Stash items.
JESawyer 19 Apr 12
why did the tribals in zion need those stupid scout lunchboxes and not regular vault boy lunchboxes?
maybe if you knew anything about lunchbox design you wouldn't ask that question!!!
JESawyer 19 Apr 12
You're a big fan of Bard's Tale, right? Well, I just saw this on the description of Bard's Tale for IOS: " a full-scale massive 3D epic role-playing game on iOS!" The word "epic" has just attacked your youthful memories. You gonna take that?
http://youtu.be/NCJqU3nQGPU
JESawyer 20 Apr 12
Why did you make Courier's Stash mandatory for your mod? That dlc was a lazy blatant cash-grab and not something I'll spend money on. I'd like to try your mod, but not if means supporting bad dlc practices. Sorry.
The mod was made to support Ultimate Edition, and the CS items needed to be addressed, IMO.
JESawyer 21 Apr 12
New Vegas and MotB were masterpieces and Alpha Protocol was a great game but DS3 was blunt and uninspired. You should have made more DLCs for it, the one released was quite good.
I didn't work on DS3, but okay.
JESawyer 21 Apr 12
In New Vegas, most of the Top-tier unarmed weapons have a Small energy cell on their model. Does this mean that somewhere during production these weapon whould drain SEC as you used them(and the Ballistic Fist shells)? How come this mechanic was removed?
It was never implemented, but that's how I wanted them to work.
JESawyer 21 Apr 12
I remember hearing something about the Van Buren project having an all female sisters of Athena faction or something like that to counter the Legion. What happened to them?
Chris Avellone designed a faction called the Daughters of Hecate. You can read about them here: 
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Daughters_of_Hecate
JESawyer 22 Apr 12
George Ziets>You
c00l
JESawyer 22 Apr 12
If someone made a mod inspired by (and created from scratch) your balance mod that addressed many of the same changes you did but changes a few things, should they send you a copy to avert plagiarism accusations?
I don't care about any of that.
JESawyer 23 Apr 12
The Followers of the Apocalypse: Libertarians, socialists, communists, or greens?
They vary significantly, but range from anarcho-syndicatists to socialists to communists. Their general tendency to be inclusive and non-hierarchical means they don't have a single outlook or "platform".
JESawyer 23 Apr 12
Ever take your bike off any sweet jumps?
http://youtu.be/gZxpf7XX8O4
JESawyer 24 Apr 12
What do you feel in your opinion, is the true canonical ending to New Vegas?
I would never define such a thing unless we were required to do so in a future title.
JESawyer 24 Apr 12
Why are energy weapons so weak in F:NV? Just compare hunting rifle to plasma rifle.
The plasma rifle is lower tier than the hunting rifle. Even so, it has a higher DPS and a much higher DPS when reloading is accounted for. The equivalent Guns rifle for that tier is the cowboy repeater.
JESawyer 24 Apr 12
Why the super healthy lifestyle (cycling, no drinking, vegetarian)? Did you have to push yourself to get healthy or have you just always been like that?
I was moderately active when growing up. In college, I became much more sedentary. I was a sabre fencer, which is great exercise, but I was an infrequent participant at best and my diet was terrible. I entered college weighing 190 lbs. and left weighing about 265 lbs. I lost the weight gradually after moving to California, but I eventually decided it was important to be physically healthy and active. Due to osteoarthritis in my right knee, I can't fence anymore, but cycling is fine. Cycling also has mechanical equipment involved, and I often gravitate toward hobbies that involve machinery.
JESawyer 24 Apr 12
Why couple EW ammo rarity with a consumption of multiple units of ammo per-shot with a lot of the unique and high-tier EWs? 100 .50 bullets gives you 100 shots with the AMR but 100 MFCs only gives you 20 shots with the Gauss Rifle.
100 .50 MG rounds cost twice as much as 100 MFCs and weigh 2.5x as much. With the Gauss Rifle you're also doing 25% more damage per shot. While MFCs are relatively rare, .50 MG is typically only found "in the wild" on NPCs using AMRs. Finally, the Gauss Rifle is a lower tier weapon than the AMR (4 vs. 5), so lower overall efficiency is one of the drawbacks of the Gauss Rifle. 
For players with Science, the flexibility of converting EW ammo types to each other with no loss (in contrast to breaking down and reloading Guns ammo, which is always "lossy") is a huge boon. With Vigilant Recycler, it's even better. 
Guns users have to manage over a dozen base ammo types. EW users only have to manage four.
JESawyer 24 Apr 12
Hey if you wouldn't mind could you post a tier list of the weapons? It would be helpful. 
Tier is an arbitrary measure of relative power, but it can always be inferred by the skill requirement of the weapon. 
0 = 1st Tier (9mm Pistol, Laser Pistol, Dynamite) 
25 = 2nd Tier (Cowboy Repeater, Laser Rifle, Grenade Rifle) 
50 = 3rd Tier (Hunting Rifle, Plasma Defender, Incendiary Grenade) 
75 = 4th Tier (Sniper Rifle, Gauss Rifle, Grenade Launcher) 
100 = 5th Tier (Anti-Materiel Rifle, Gatling Laser, Fat Man)
JESawyer 24 Apr 12
So what are the tier 5 energy weapons? Would the tier 5 EW sniper rifle be the YCS/186?
The Tier 5 EWs are the Gatling Laser, Tesla Cannon, Heavy Incinerator, and Plasma Caster. 
Uniques don't strictly fall into the "tier" system, but the YCS/186 is the closest things EWs have a Tier 5 sniper weapon.
JESawyer 24 Apr 12
and if its a lower tier, why is it so darn rare? I can only think of a few that you can actually find and not buy
Rarity isn't intended to be an aspect of relative power in F:NV. Silenced .22 pistols are also rare, but not particularly powerful unless you have a certain build to take advantage of them.
JESawyer 24 Apr 12
the plasma rifle is a lower tier than the hunting rifle? dont they both take 50?
The plasma rifle has a 25 skill requirement. The hunting rifle has a 50 skill requirement.
JESawyer 24 Apr 12
Does your fencing past ever contributed to game design (other than having a little voice in your head tell you absolutely everything wrong with how swordfighting is currently implemented)?
I think using "reality" as a starting point can be helpful as long as you don't treat it like a straitjacket. With fencing, it's also important to remember that modern sport fencing isn't like traditional rapier (or sabre) dueling, and that dueling isn't like open field Medieval warfare -- and emulating Medieval warfare isn't necessarily all that fantastic or thrilling. A lot of fights ended with a misericorde shoved through an exhausted, prone combatant's armpit into his heart.
JESawyer 24 Apr 12
Why were you so inspired by Melancholia? I mean, was it the visuals or the philosophy behind the story that got you interested?
I think it's a great example of a director wanting to explore a specific topic and using an event as the background/context of that exploration. I think Kirsten Dunst did a terrific job portraying someone with severe depression. It's something that isn't explored much in film and not to the extent it is handled in Melancholia. 
I think the characters were interesting across the board and my feelings toward them vacillated from scene to scene -- or even within a scene. I did appreciate the visuals, the heavy symbolism, and the sole use of the prelude to Tristan und Isolde for scoring as well. Dürer's Melencolia I is one of my favorite engravings and I love Bruegel's Hunters in Snow. 
Overall I just think it was terrifically executed on all levels, especially considering the personal motivation von Trier had in exploring the topic. I feel the scale of the events in the film helped push normally heavily internalized, private emotions into a realm where viewers could (hopefully) understand what everyone was going through.
JESawyer 25 Apr 12
How would you describe Mr. House's Ideology? I know that he's rather authoritarian when it comes to political freedoms, but what about on economic issues? He was my favorite character in the game, and whoever wrote him did an outstanding job.
He's also authoritarian on economic issues within certain boundaries. In the same way that a fascist government would exert authority on the various production/capital resources involved in a market, Mr. House exerts his authority on The Strip's operation. Ultimately, he wants The Strip to be (extremely) profitable and to retain independence from NCR/CL. However, he does not want the families to be independent from his authority, so he does what he can to keep them under his thumb. He doesn't want to micromanage what they do, but he also knows that allowing them to do whatever they want could eventually lead to the downfall of his authority or fighting between the families (which would also undermine his authority). 
Really, the main area in which Mr. House is "liberal" is in personal consumption and behavior. As long as it makes him money and doesn't create instability or feuding on The Strip, he allows it. 
John Gonzalez designed and wrote Mr. House.
JESawyer responded to MikeGolf 26 Apr 12
What's with all the underlying left wing ideology and/or bias in the FO series? I'm expecting you to say it's all in my head but I would still like to hear what you have to say about it.
"Left wing ideology" could mean a lot of things. Please give some specific examples
JESawyer responded to woodlandmammal 26 Apr 12
Maybe 'left-wing ideology' refers to things like Fallout's portrayal of a military-industrial complex (Vault-Tec, the Enclave, Repconn, etc.) that endangers ordinary people while enriching a privileged elite. Is that a key part of Fallout's message/theme?
I would say that is a common element of the Fallout universe, but I think it's odd to designate MIC concerns/criticisms as being "left-wing". The term "military-industrial complex" originated with Dwight Eisenhower, who warned against it in his farewell speech. Before that, he warned against it in his "cross of iron" speech. 
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9743.htm 
Then again, I think most "left" and "right" labels are pretty silly. Plenty of "leftists" have employed violence and military/paramilitary force and plenty of "rightists" frown on ballooning non-competitive military contract collusion between government and private enterprise.
JESawyer responded to MikeGolf 27 Apr 12
Okay lets call them "progessive" views,F2: intro of the Enclave as the bad guys,F3: Andale,FNV:2/4 human compainions are homosexuals,you yourself said you went 50/50 when portraying female to male ratio in NCR troops, and gimme a break only got 255 spaces
What does the Enclave have to do with left-wing/progressive viewpoints? I doubt there are many right-wingers/conservatives who would look at the Enclave's views and behavior and say, "Yeah these dudes are great." The Enclave doesn't map to a contemporary political group. 
I also don't see the connection with Andale unless "not being a cannibal" is considered a progressive stance. 
Two F:NV human companions are, in fact, homosexual. Also all F:NV human companions are white. With four people, you're not going to get a distribution of attributes that perfectly maps to contemporary population demographics. Finally, what's the progressive viewpoint, that homosexuals exist? 
NCR troopers are roughly 50/50 male/female overall because the majority of them are conscripts. That's not progressive, just probability.
JESawyer 27 Apr 12
Have you read Larry McMurtry's "Lonesome Dove" novels, and if so, have they influenced you?
I have not. I don't read much fiction.
JESawyer 27 Apr 12
Your knowledge of firearms and related subjects is quite impressive. What was it that drove you to become informed to level that you are? Was it because of your job, or did the passion for firearms come first?
Thanks. Most of what I know about firearms was learned during the development of Fallout: New Vegas. Before F:NV, I just had slightly-above-average pop culture/gamer knowledge about firearms and had never owned anything more powerful than a pellet gun.
JESawyer 27 Apr 12
Perhaps by Left Wing Ideology he means its depiction of imperialism which seems to come from a liberal/anti-imperialist perspective?
Imperialism is not unique to the "right", nor is anti-imperialism/isolationism unique to the "left". I also have to question in what way we could positively portray imperialism. It is, by definition, subjugation of another state's authority through a variety of coercive means. The process itself is often violent. Even in cases where it is not marked by violence (e.g. the Anschluß), the dominated state loses the ability to determine its own policies. 
The main positive of imperialism is that it benefits the dominating state. Those benefits are most visible far from the fringes of the empire. At the point where it occurs, it's hard to avoid showing anything but one group being coerced by another.
JESawyer responded to MikeGolf 27 Apr 12
What military in the history of the world has ever employed a 50/50 ratio of female to male troops?That certainaly isn't a probability.In a post acoplyptic society working on procreation, pregnancy alone would prevent this not mention several other factor
33% of all IDF forces are female and 51% of all IDF officers are female. Like NCR's troopers, Israel's laws of conscription do not discriminate by sex. However, unlike NCR, Israel's mandatory service is only two years for women, three years for men, which means male conscripts stay in service longer. Israel also still bars women from certain positions, which means only men may occupy them as a career path. NCR troopers have no such restrictions. 
In contrast, most Rangers are male. Rangers are also volunteer-only. No one is conscripted into their ranks. 
NCR is the most advanced state of large size in the American southwest. Unlike Caesar's Legion, procreation and infant/child mortality were never problems for NCR. This is also why (despite the broadly misogynistic talk of ordinary legionaries), Caesar essentially forces all women into slavery, breeding, or both. 
Each of these governments populates its military forces according the principles of the state. NCR is egalitarian in conscription (barring corruption/evasion, though that isn't biased along lines of sex) and leaves elite positions open only to volunteers. Caesar is concerned only with efficiency; all individuals are bent toward the will of the state. The result is all-male slave army that is continually being replenished by forced breeding.
JESawyer responded to MikeGolf 27 Apr 12
Come on, the intro video to F2, the evil American troops executing the Canadian partisan.Thats like something I would see in a Green Day music video.Not to mention how it is implied America pursuing it's national self interest leads to nuclear holocaust.
That's not the intro video to F2; that's the intro video to F1. Also, what does that have to do with being "progressive"? You should go back and watch the F1 intro again. China, the United States, and the EU are all called out as scrambling for resources. It is bizarre that you only remember the United States being mentioned. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geLiEiAiQJA#t=2m30s
JESawyer responded to MikeGolf 27 Apr 12
I certainly am not foolish enough to think that homosexual's don't exist.Veronica and Arcades stories are two of my favs.But your comparing a 70/100 ratio to 10-15/100 ratio.Why is there sexuality so relevant and front 'n center.It seems unnecessary to me
It is actually less relevant and less "front 'n center" than Boone or Cass. A lot of people have played with Arcade and Veronica and never identified their sexuality. That is virtually impossible with Boone (you immediately learn about his dead wife) and kinda hard with Cass, too.
JESawyer responded to MikeGolf 27 Apr 12
Alright, lets just totaly disregard Andale's cannibalistic theme, just look at the dialouge of the residents.This one is a no brainer.It's a clear attempt to discredit the nuclear family and demonstrate that anyone who believes in this is a farce.
I have no idea what the subtextual intent of F3's writers were in making Andale. Nothing the characters said stuck out to me as discrediting anything other than being crazy cannibals, which was the overt subject matter. I guess you could take away that being part of a nuclear family doesn't make it okay to be a cannibal. I hope this doesn't place me to the left of Noam Chomsky.
JESawyer responded to LeoJSaravak 27 Apr 12
Perhaps by "Left Winged Ideology" he means "a realistic portrayal." I thought that imperialism and homosexuality were portrayed in a not-watered-down, realistic, non-bias way. Also, who thought of/created Arcade Gannon?
NCR's imperialism is pretty kid glove stuff compared to Caesar's Legion. That said, though they are extremely self-interested, NCR genuinely *does* protect New Vegas and has sacrificed a lot to do so. Then again, it was the Desert Rangers, not the residents of the Mojave Wasteland (and certainly not Mr. House) who asked them to do so. 
I created Arcade Gannon for Chris Avellone's Fallout tabletop game back at Black Isle. I brought him back and changed some elements of his background for New Vegas. His overall personality is largely the same.
JESawyer 27 Apr 12
Avellone said that some content dreamed up for VB might end up in Wasteland 2. Does that include content that you came up with or that was invented under your leadership? How do you feel about that?
I doubt it. Even though I was the lead designer on Van Buren after Avellone left Black Isle, I didn't generate a lot of area concepts. If something I designed wound up in Wasteland 2, I certainly wouldn't mind, but I would be surprised.
JESawyer 27 Apr 12
Anti-Imperialism is not an innately "leftist" perspective but opposition to imperialism is often constructed as "leftist" in the neoliberal world. As for how to positively depict imperialism, it's easy. White Man's Burden and all. It's not honest, but..
I'm really not interested in entertaining contemporary shallow categorizations of political ideas. A lot of people really love to misuse and intentionally misappropriate political terms. It's unproductive.
JESawyer 27 Apr 12
Seems a bit implausible to be in the post-apocalyptic American midwest, and not come across a single Christian priest or place of worship. I guess it was a politically correct decision you had to make for marketing reasons, as to not annoy atheists?
The Midwest? Are you talking about the setting for Fallout: Tactics or New Vegas? 
In New Vegas, there are a couple of scattered churches, but the setting is post-apocalyptic Sin City. Honest Hearts was the DLC where we dealt with "real world" religion in the wasteland. 
Some people were annoyed by the fact that there was a DLC about religion. Okay. Peace.
JESawyer 27 Apr 12
What was the purpose of the hexecretes in Big MT?
You would have to ask Chris Avellone about that. Sorry.
JESawyer 27 Apr 12
How come it seams like Daniel in Honest hearts only get bad endings? I really wanted to make the best ending for the good people but... i felt like nothing would have made him happy...
Once Joshua Graham sets on a path, he is more focused on pursuing that path than continuing to question it -- he is externally honest, but internally dishonest. Daniel always questions himself, especially since he doesn't *really* want to abandon Zion. Given the available options, he thinks leaving Zion is the best choice, but he still regrets the loss. He is also willing to obfuscate the truth from others (e.g. Waking Cloud) to make it happen.
JESawyer 27 Apr 12
How beautiful is Zion Vally in reality? I really like it in F:NV ^!
It is the most beautiful place I have ever been. 
I have seen a few people say that Honest Hearts motivated them to go to Zion Valley. I count that among the greatest accomplishments of my career. It's really extraordinary.
JESawyer responded to MikeGolf 27 Apr 12
The portrayal of females as Ranger is very silly.No female has yet to pass US Army Ranger school(it is open to them)much less any type of SpecOP selection.Sorry but GI Jane was just a movie.
1) U.S. Army Ranger School is open to a subset of female soldiers and only has been for a few years. 2) The NCR Rangers are not US Army Rangers. 3) Black swan theory.
JESawyer responded to dfuglestad 27 Apr 12
What would be the (approximate) ideology of an independent New Vegas? Would it be anarchism, liberal democracy, something else, or whatever the player courier wanted it to be?
It wouldn't have a consistent ideology. Neither the Kings nor the Followers of the Apocalypse are organized enough to actually drive the creation of a stable government. In the independent endings, the only thing that keeps the region from turning violently anarchic is the upgraded Securitron army. The FotA themselves really struggle with the very situation they helped create. 
They never had enough forward momentum or centralized authority to take control of the situation, so when the situation is left to them, it's difficult for them to get things done.
JESawyer responded to MikeGolf 27 Apr 12
Yeah but you are portraying elite female combat troops in large numbers which both are, hopefully I willl be able find some way to deal with the shock of seeing it.I like FO so much though so I guess the next installment will condition me to seeing them.
I would have hoped you got over it when you were introduced to Elise in Fallout 2.
JESawyer 28 Apr 12
You've said that the Rangers are volunteer, but does the NCR army conscript people?
Yes. The majority of troopers on active duty are conscripted. Someone has asked why more troopers don't talk about being conscripted (I think only one of the Misfits does). Generally speaking, volunteers are more enthusiastic than people who are forced into something.
JESawyer 28 Apr 12
How old is Arcade Gannon?
At the time of F:NV, he's about 35.
JESawyer 29 Apr 12
But wasn't it a cop out not to address religion in a larger way in New Vegas? I mean it seems so unlikely some type of organized religion wouldn't of arisen in the NCR and the Legion has a cult of Mars right?
There are a ton of topics to explore in any setting. Religion is as complex as politics, and often intertwined. I don't think it needed to be part of the core F:NV story.
JESawyer responded to dfuglestad 29 Apr 12
Was für fragen mögen Sie lieber? Fragen über ihre Spielen oder personliche Fragen, oder Waffen, oder was? Danke für ihre Zeit.
Ich mag alle Fragen. Ich habe kein Problem mit persönlichen Fragen, aber werde ich nicht alle Fragen antworten.
JESawyer 29 Apr 12
Can we be platonic friends? I am a heterosexual male in my early 30's with a degree in East Asian history and a minor in poli-sci from the University of Michigan. I like role playing games, exercising and long walks on the beach. I also enjoy cheese..
--,--'-@
JESawyer 29 Apr 12
How do you feel about "Short Round" from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom?
Temple of Doom has a lot of problems with *~ stereotypes ~* but I have to admit it's still my favorite Indiana Jones movie and I love Short Round.
JESawyer 30 Apr 12
Hey, I just want you to know that I love F:NV Honest Heart DLC but I was wondering why were Joshua and Daniel Mormons specifically and not catholic or any other sub sect of christianity?
Mormons have a long history with Nevada and Utah as well as the native tribes in that region. They also have an extremely strong sense of community. 
I also don't want to fully characterize Joshua and Daniel as Mormons, though they are closer to Mormons than anything else. In the absence of the LDS and the larger support structure created by the LDS across many communities, the New Canaanites are isolated in their beliefs and practices.
JESawyer 30 Apr 12
Do you like Classic Rock?
http://youtu.be/FAvQSkK8Z8U 
http://youtu.be/IXdNnw99-Ic 
http://youtu.be/Lkb1R_yif9I 
http://youtu.be/uhSYbRiYwTY
JESawyer responded to dfuglestad 30 Apr 12
Are there plans for another Fallout Bible, either by you or Mr. Avellone? The answers on this formspring alone could constitute one, it seems.
I don't have any plans for such a thing, but maybe Chris does. He was essentially the sole editor for the previous version(s).
JESawyer 30 Apr 12
Hey, just a heads up in case you wanna pass the information along to that person: Avellone has said a couple of times on twitter and in interviews that he won't be doing anymore Fallout Bibles, he feels like its Bethesda's place now.
o
i
c
JESawyer 1 May 12
Do you see Oliver as more incompetent on a tactical level or a strategic one?
Strategic.
JESawyer 1 May 12
Does Chris Avellone do anything other than write? I mean, he's the best dude in the industry when it comes to video game writing, but I was under the impression that writing doesn't really exist as a career in game development..
He is one of Obsidian's owners so he's involved in a lot of owner work, including game pitches. He was also the project director for three of New Vegas' DLCs: Dead Money, Old World Blues, and Lonesome Road.
JESawyer 1 May 12
With Alpha Protocol's Hand to Hand system, and with the benefit of alot of hindsight now, what do you think worked right with it, and what do you think didn't live up to expectations? If you were to mod the game, would you change anything with H2H?
If people were expecting it to be like the Bourne movies, it didn't live up to expectations. Still, I wouldn't change that much about it. It was intended to be a relatively shallow system overall, mostly useful for situations where the player wound up way too close to enemies for gunplay. People who put points in it were able to use it as a primary mode of combat, but it was never intended to be deep.
JESawyer 1 May 12
If NV was given more development time what kind of content do you think we might have seen as a result? I always felt that the Khans at Red Rock Canyon, Bitter Springs, and a few other locations didn't feel complete.
I think the Legion camps east of the Colorado would be the first thing, then supporting post-Hoover play, then more work on dungeons/secondary locations. I don't think I'd want to add any more faction content, honestly.
JESawyer 1 May 12
"Strategy." Can you elaborate on this? His strategy is pretty much to amass troops at the Dam, which doesn't seem all that bad compared to his tactical mishaps.
Strategy includes most decisions made prior to the point of contact, so it also includes composition and placement of units, issued equipment, and standing orders. Hanlon goes into a bit of detail about why Oliver's strategy for the dam battle is not so bright (Rangers holding the road).
JESawyer 1 May 12
I have to say I'm surprised about the post-ending play thing. Was this something that you wanted to do from the get-go or after some post-release complaints? Also, what would you have had to do to make that happen (in general terms)?
We always wanted to support post-Hoover play. A few milestones prior to being content complete, it was obvious that we weren't going to be able to support it to the extent that it deserved (robust reactivity to the choices the player made). Because we didn't have time to do it correctly, I made the decision to cut it.
JESawyer 2 May 12
Because humans are capable of both good and evil, the true purpose of art should be to inspire us to do good. Consequently, romanticism is superior to realism as an art form. I suspect you don't agree with this, but would like your opinion.
I would rather spend my time creating works than writing about artistic validity. What I make and how it affects you are stronger arguments than anything I could say in the abstract.
JESawyer 2 May 12
I know this is a stupid question, but I want to ask it regardless. I've been playing New Vegas with the Capital Wasteland mod. How would you balance the old Fallout 3 weapons with your New Vegas weapons?
It's not a stupid question, since it's a question I had to deal with a lot on the DLCs. Here's what I would say about balancing any new weapons with existing weapons: first you find a conceptual place for them, then you stat, test, and iterate to hit that concept. 
A weapon's balance is interpreted relative to weapons that are a) like it in function (e.g. a 9mm SMG is like a 10mm SMG) b) like it in cost/availability (e.g. you find 10mm SMGs around the same time that you find .44 Magnum Revolvers). 
When considering the "conceptual place" for the weapon, you should really be answering these questions: 
* Why will this weapon be fun to use? The first and most important question. 
* What weapons should this weapon be similar to in role/function? This can help you establish statistics that make sense relative to other weapons that are similar. 
* What weapons should this weapon be comparable to in overall power? When you answer this, you know what the player is likely choosing between for available weapons at any given point in their development. 
* In what situations will I want to use this weapon instead of another weapon of similar power? If there is not a circumstance in which a weapon shines, players likely won't use it. 
* In what situations will I want to use other weapons of similar power INSTEAD of this weapon? If a weapon dominates every situation, they will have no motive to use anything else. 
* If there are less powerful weapons that are similar to this weapon, in what way will they still be valuable once I get this weapon? In some cases, this may be as simple as mod availability. E.g. Trail Carbines can take scopes; Brush Guns cannot. 
* If there are more powerful weapons that are similar to this weapon, in what way will THIS weapon still be valuable when I find the more powerful version? Same idea. 
Let's take two weapons that pose challenges: the Combat Shotgun and the Assault Rifle. There are a lot of shotguns and automatic Guns in F:NV, especially with all of the DLCs installed -- but I still think there's room for these two. 
Combat Shotgun: 
* Why will this weapon be fun to use? High rate of fire shotgun with high DPS, available earlier than the Riot Shotgun. It will also make use of 20 Ga. shells (16 per drum, 4 higher than the Riot), which stop being used in F:NV after the Lever-Action Shotgun. 
* What weapons should this weapon be similar to in role/function? Most similar to the Riot Shotgun, distinguished by lower DAM, higher accuracy, and a higher RoF. 
* What weapons should this weapon be comparable to in overall power? Tier 4 Guns (Hunting Shotgun, Trail Carbine, Sniper Rifle, 12.7mm Pistol) 
* In what situations will I want to use this weapon instead of another weapon of similar power? Close range (closer than the Hunting Shotgun), when volume of fire is more important than raw damage (Trail Carbine, Sniper Rifle), and when reload speed is important (Trail Carbine). 
* In what situations will I want to use other weapons of similar power INSTEAD of this weapon? When accuracy or high DAM are important. Slugs can mitigate the DAM and accuracy concerns somewhat, but even the lower-DAM 12.7mm pistol will still have higher accuracy. 
* If there are less powerful weapons that are similar to this weapon, in what way will they still be valuable once I get this weapon? The Lever-Action Shotgun still has a higher DAM and accuracy, though the Combat Shotgun destroys it in DPS, RoF, capacity, and reload speed. 
* If there are more powerful weapons that are similar to this weapon, in what way will THIS weapon still be valuable when I find the more powerful version? The Combat Shotgun has lower spread, higher magazine capacity, and higher durability than the Riot Shotgun. The Riot Shotgun kills the Combat Shotgun in DAM and DPS. 
Assault Rifle: 
* Why will this weapon be fun to use? Solid DAM automatic weapon with reasonable accuracy, high RoF, and plenty of ammo availability. 
* What weapons should this weapon be similar to in role/function? Most similar to the Assault Carbine. 
* What weapons should this weapon be comparable to in overall power? Tier 4 Guns (Hunting Shotgun, Assault Carbine, Trail Carbine, Sniper Rifle, 12.7mm Pistol) 
* In what situations will I want to use this weapon instead of another weapon of similar power? Close range, when raw DAM is a concern but accuracy is less of a concern. 
* In what situations will I want to use other weapons of similar power INSTEAD of this weapon? Long range, or when armor is more of a concern than total health (cf. Assault Carbine). 
* If there are less powerful weapons that are similar to this weapon, in what way will they still be valuable once I get this weapon? The 10mm SMG edges the Assault Rifle out in weight and ammo capacity. 
* If there are more powerful weapons that are similar to this weapon, in what way will THIS weapon still be valuable when I find the more powerful version? The Automatic Rifle destroys the Assault Rifle in raw DAM and DPS, but weighs much more and uses rarer, heavier ammo. The Assault Rifle also has a Recoil Compensator mod that brings its accuracy down below even the Assault Carbine. 
These are just two approaches to tuning weapons. You could make completely different choices than I did. The point of the exercise is to find a place for the weapons so that their use becomes a choice that the player has to think about.
JESawyer 2 May 12
There's someone out there who serious believes that "White Man's Burden" is a positive depiction of imperialism, and not the justification, similar to the 19th creation of "race" social pact? I mean seriously? Wasn't expecting to read this bologna here.
Check out Newt Gingrich's 1971 dissertation on the Belgian Congo. It's a hoot.
JESawyer 2 May 12
Jomini: "Strategy is the art of making war upon the map, and comprehends the whole theater of operations. Grand Tactics is the art of posting troops upon the battlefield according to the accidents of the ground, of bringing them into action..."
Sounds about right.
JESawyer 3 May 12
What does the Legion Assault perk actually do?
It enables a special power attack that is triggered by holding down the attack button while moving forward.
JESawyer 3 May 12
There has been a lot of discussion about the Independent ending of New Vegas lately, so can you clarify a few things? Does the ending allow for the Courier to establish his/her own idea for a nation in the Mojave after Hoover Dam? If not, then why not?
It's intentionally vague because it's the independent ending. Even if the Courier walks off into the sunset, the implication is that Yes Man can more-or-less keep things running.
JESawyer 4 May 12
Would you say you slightly mismanaged the Indy ending? For example until you clarified a few months ago most people thought Yes Man was going to betray the Courier or something of the sort.
Not really. According to most achievement stats I've seen, the independent ending is the most selected ending and I haven't seen many questions about it. The phrasing of Yes Man's parting lines is a little odd, but otherwise I think most people understand it's supposed to be an "open" ending.
JESawyer 4 May 12
Was there any possibility that there were to be Caesar's Legion companions? I feel that they seem so under-favored by NV players since they didn't seem as complete as the NCR.
Ulysses was originally intended to be a Legion-oriented companion in the core game.
JESawyer responded to anthonyheur 4 May 12
In the Independent ending, Yes Man talks about finding some code in Mr Houses database that will let him be more assertive. Is this just an artifact of a time when you were considering allowing post-ending gameplay?
No. John Gonzalez wrote those lines to assuage potential player fears that other people would manipulate Yes Man if/when the Courier wasn't around. Yes Man is programmed to do anything anyone tells him to do. This is convenient for the Courier but a liability if Yes Man is intended to help coordinate things in New Vegas after the Second Battle of Hoover Dam.
JESawyer 4 May 12
So is it possible for the Courier to establish his/her own nation in the Mojave? I could see a confederacy run as a representative democracy working quite well. Is this possible or is it against what the Independent ending implies?
Broadly speaking, sure, but what's narrated in the independent ending doesn't naturally form a strong representative republic -- e.g. the Followers of the Apocalypse kind of dawdle and don't take charge and if the Securitrons haven't been upgraded, there's a lot of chaos.
JESawyer responded to beefcorporation 4 May 12
Are there any non-humanoid companions that didn't make it in the game due to time constraints? The ratio between humanoid and non-humanoid companions seemed pretty unbalanced to me.
No.
JESawyer 4 May 12
Which is the least selected ending according to your statistics? Also I really like playing as the legion, but it just feels like there is less legion content compared to vegas/indie and the ncr. There are less sidequests, locations, characters .etc. Why?
Legion is by far the least frequently selected ending. I think this is due to the rampant misogyny presented by rank-and-file legionaries, the lack of a Legion-oriented companion, and the small number of Legion-oriented locations.
JESawyer 4 May 12
I really like that you have cut the post-end gameplay. Pretty sure that it would have felt shallow and "empty."
That was my feeling, essentially: we should either do it well or not do it. When I realized we wouldn't be able to do it well, I cut it.
JESawyer 4 May 12
Why there are no special endings for Strip families?
I think we decided against having Strip family endings because the volume of endings was already quite high. If I were able to add one more group to the ending slides, it would be the three Strip families.
JESawyer 4 May 12
I heard that the Satchel Charge was originally a weaker explosive with a long fuse. Why was this changed?
Because it sucked to use and wasn't a threat to the player. By Lonesome Road, a lot of players had maxed out Explosives, which meant that the delay between setting off a Satchel Charge and having it explode was hilariously long. I doubled or tripled the damage and cut the timer down to one of the shortest (possibly the shortest) of any mine-type weapon. I think it works better that way. It's certainly a greater threat to the player.
JESawyer 5 May 12
I noticed that compared to Fallout 3, Raiders had less of a visual impact on your game world. The one place I remember seeing mutilated corpses strung up on hooks was around Vault 3, unlike the Capital Wastes where they were everywhere. Concious decision?
Yes. The Fiends use the bodies as warnings immediately around Vault 3 and Violet butchers human corpses to feed her dogs. Other raiders typically don't want dead bodies sitting around where they're eating/sleeping.
JESawyer responded to MikeGolf 5 May 12
Can you please help me close a plot line in FNV.Were the hardliner Paladins that the Courier and Veronica have to deal with at the end of "I could make you care" operating with the Elder's knowledge or not.Or are we talking Henry II knights and all that?
Mysteries, though it's unlikely that Elder McNamara would be complicit in such a thing. It's easier to see Hardin silently approving that behavior.
JESawyer 5 May 12
Ever been to Good Springs? Has the Pioneer Saloon ever thanked you for being in the game, or did you need permission to have the its likeness?
Yes, before New Vegas was announced I took a motorcycle road trip around the Mojave Desert near Las Vegas. I didn't talk to anyone about what I was doing and don't know what the people of Goodsprings think about it. My motorcycle is the one near the middle with the shiny tank: 
http://diogenes-lamp.info/images/utah_trip/utah_trip017.jpg
JESawyer 5 May 12
Any more snaps or anything from your Mojave trip?
If you replace the number in the URL there are a bunch of photos.
JESawyer 6 May 12
What the hell is that thing in picture utah_trip007? I thought it was a close-up of a spatula.
It is a bash guard for the bottom of my motorcycle. It protects the oil cooler and filter.
JESawyer 6 May 12
I want you to give us your best full-toothed smile for the next profile pic, ok?
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm nah
JESawyer responded to Formspring 6 May 12
Would it be awesome if animals could talk?
wowOWOowoowWOowooOWOowoOWowowowowoOWWWWWWOWOWOW
JESawyer 6 May 12
Why is the profile picture becoming more yellow? Same thing is happening to George Ziets.
I was a jaundice baby.
JESawyer 6 May 12
If you put on a ton of weight and shaved your head, you could be Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now.
c00l
JESawyer responded to rkade8583 6 May 12
Do you have time to play video games? If so, what video games have you been enjoying as of late and why?
I've been setting aside more time for games lately. Most recently I've been playing the Starcraft II Wings of Liberty campaign, Legend of Grimrock, and Bastion. I'm playing the SC2:WoL campaign to see how they incorporate lore, narrative, and choice and consequence into the game. I'm playing LoG because I enjoyed all of the Eye of the Beholder games when I was a teenager. I'm playing Bastion because I like the art and animation and am interesting in their combat mechanics. The third-person narration is also interesting. 
A while back I was also playing Journey and FEZ because of their distinctive art styles, simple gameplay, and great use of audio. Oh, I also played in the Diablo III open beta weekend. I wanted to see how they handled dialogue and lore. I also wanted to see how the monk worked, mechanically.
JESawyer 6 May 12
Was the conclusion of Navarro told by the Remnants a carry over from the Lost Patrol in Van Buren? Was Navarro getting captured and the survivors scattered the original end of the Enclave?
The Lost Patrol in Van Buren was kind of a joke encounter, but it did inspire the question of what would happen to survivors of Navarro after the oil rig destruction.
JESawyer 7 May 12
How do you reconcile your dislike of savescumming with traps, particularly landmines, in F:NV? I haven't played Lonesome Road but apparently you added a fancier, more annoying type of landmine in that DLC. Why would you do that?
Reloading doesn't get rid of the trap. You still have to deal with it. From what I remember of Satchel Charges, most of them are placed in plain sight.
JESawyer responded to Agrona77 7 May 12
Passing on a question from the Bethesda Fallout NV forums: Could someone ask him whether or not the design documents for the cut Legion locations will ever be released? (asked by Gabriel77Dan). I'll pass along your answer. Thanks!
Unfortunately, those areas were never designed. The region containing them was cut before they were fleshed out. They were simply designated as Legion areas that would show more facets of Legion life.
JESawyer 7 May 12
Were you always intending to make the four main "factions" morally grey? It seems for the most part that the Legion seemed to get shafted, both in content and moral ambiguity.
The intention for the NCR and Legion was that most people would initially perceive the NCR as "good guys" and the Legion as "bad guys". Over time and exposure to more aspects of NCR and Legion culture, the dark side of NCR would show (this happened) and the positive aspects of the Legion would show (this did not happen, in large part because the Legion areas east of the Colorado were cut).
JESawyer 7 May 12
also, if not for the deadline for releasing the game, how much longer would it have taken for the game to have post hoover dam, a more fleshed out legion, and more fleshed out secondary locations and ulysses?
For all of that stuff plus more stability/content testing, I'd guess 5-8 months.
JESawyer 9 May 12
NCR has way too many 'good' ending slides, while the other endings have some negative ending slides as a consequence to their ideology. In a lot of ways the social reform the Courier is capable of seems implausible. Is it likely to stick under NCR?
NCR has several negative and neutral ending slides and only some of them can be avoided through Courier manipulation.
JESawyer 9 May 12
How did your team reach the decision that Salt Upon Wounds would destroy the town of New Canaan? If you could please satisfy my curiosity, how did the natives manage to capture and salt a prosperous and wealthy town such as New Canaan?
I believe Joshua Graham or Daniel explains that much of New Canaan's fighting force was absent when the White Legs attacked the community. Also, Ulysses helped the White Legs prepare for the attack.
JESawyer 9 May 12
NCR is unrealistically "Good" though. The worst you see is stuff like increased taxation in outlying communities. It doesn't really jive with the way they're presented in the game, where they seem much more exploitative.
That's not an accurate statement. They also push the Great Khans to a reservation (unless you help the Great Khans get out of the Mojave), needlessly destroy the Kings (this occurs in game if you follow Moore's orders), expel the Followers of the Apocalypse (unless you broker an alliance), and destroy the Brotherhood of Steel (unless you broker an alliance). If you convince Arcade to fight on behalf of NCR, they attempt to capture or kill him, forcing him to flee the Mojave. Most importantly, New Vegas has no representation in the NCR. It's an annexed territory being occupied by a military force.
JESawyer 9 May 12
There is a notable lack of children in New Vegas compared to Fallout 3. Was this your decision? Did you want to avoid the issue of invincible kids as much as possible, or was your reasoning different?
Yes. Children, when used, were supposed to be out of the way, polite, deferential, and as inoffensive as possible. We did not always adhere to those standards, and I'm still sorry for it.
JESawyer responded to LeoJSaravak 10 May 12
What children are you still sorry for? The only annoying child was the Mick & Ralph's crier, and he wasn't even that annoying. Well, at least not compared to the city of blatently obnoxious invincible brats that we had to deal with in FO3.
Him. You have to walk past him a lot.
JESawyer responded to J05HDA 10 May 12
do you only play a game to analyze an aspect of it, or does the topic that you try to analyze come only after giving the game a shot?
Sometimes I play a game to analyze something specific. Sometimes I play a game because it sounds interesting and I find things to analyze. It depends on the game.
JESawyer 10 May 12
Does the political situation in Wisconsin annoy you at all? I live in Ohio, which is in a similar situation, and where ignorant, close-minded viewpoints are not only common, but dominate most political discussions. Would you ever move back to WI?
http://twofoldsilence.diogenes-lamp.info/2012/05/on-wisconsin.html
JESawyer responded to Formspring 10 May 12
Pirates vs. Ninjas: who wins?
five golden manbabies
JESawyer 10 May 12
Tell me about your tats bro.
bro theyre siiiiiiick
JESawyer 11 May 12
Were you ever worried that introducing the issue of homosexuality in New Vegas (through dialogue and perks) might turn away some potential customers.
No.
JESawyer 11 May 12
Where there any plans to develop more than 4 DLC? If so, was time or money the main reason why these were not released?
No.
JESawyer 11 May 12
Is Jorge Salgado still working at Obsidian?
Yep.
JESawyer 11 May 12
Why is there a tunnel from Benny's room to Vault 21?
It's his way of getting on and off of the Strip without needing to actually walk down the Strip and out of the gates (which would be noted by Mr. House).
JESawyer 11 May 12
Really? Surely you don't believe everyone is okay with homosexuality being forced on them. Obviously FNV does not target the church-social conservatives but the majority of latinos and blacks believe homosexuality is a sin.
Speaking personally, I care as much about people disliking the presence of homosexuality in F:NV as I care about people disliking the presence of Christianity in Honest Hearts: not at all.
JESawyer 11 May 12
How does a tunnel to Vault 21 help Benny not be seen by Mr. House when the Vault 21 isn't near the exit, does he climb the wall?
The tunnel runs under the outer wall of the Strip.
JESawyer 11 May 12
that obsidian sticker on your cycle is rad! where can i get one?!!
Which one, the oval?
JESawyer 11 May 12
Where did you generally sleep one your motorcycle trip? Did you camp any?
Most nights, I slept in a tent. I spent a few nights in a hotel.
JESawyer responded to GabeZanetti 12 May 12
Was Carlyle's "Great Man Theory", voluntarily or involuntarily, one of your influences while fleshing out New Vegas' narrative? If it was: Do you personally believe it? Do you think it's sound?
Most video games are about "Great Men" (and women) in part because people find it more interesting to trace actions to specific characters with individual motivations as opposed to the social undulations of millions of people. In Carlyle's time, the body of historical work was largely focused on "great men" and political or economic history. That changed in the late 20th century when social history started to dominate western academia. 
History is what we choose to write down and how we choose to correlate and interpret it. The Courier may be identified as the "Great Man" or "Great Woman" of the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, but whether or not he or she is remembered, and whether or not the storytellers get the story right, is a different matter.* 
Historically, I don't think the "Great Man Theory" is sound. Individuals do bold things that attract attention and draw like-minded people (and opposition). But individuals act within a vast sea of social interaction. Simplified greatly, they are products of their environment. Taken to some philosophical extremes, someone like Foucault might argue that even the most powerful people in a society are still constantly in a state of conflict with all social expressions of power around them.** 
* Umberto Eco wrote a novel that plays heavily with our understanding of history and how people author it. It is called Baudolino and is about the titular character's narration of his life. In the story, the man to whom Baudolino is speaking starts to become suspicious of individual elements Baudolino brings up, until the whole story is a big question. 
** Jorge "Oscuro" Salgado probably has some more nuanced and academically-backed opinions on Great Man Theory and power relationships. His MA thesis was about Foucault's evolving theories of power as it relates to the individual.
JESawyer 12 May 12
The prostitutes controlled by the Omertas are slaves, right?
It is unlikely that the powers of the Strip would recognize them as actual property. However, many of them are slaves in the socioeconomic sense (like many prostitutes, unfortunately).
JESawyer 12 May 12
Was Benny's tunnel intentionally left accessible under rare circumstances?
It is unlikely that Mr. House wanted to leave some of the vault's tunnels clear of concrete, but that is what happened. The Chairmen's discovery of the tunnel's proximity to The Tops was accidental.
JESawyer 12 May 12
So by the time of New Vegas were NCR supply lines completely cut?
No, but they were weakened significantly. The one area where supply from SoCal continued, I-15, operated slowly. Caravans did continue to flow in from NorCal, but that was a much longer road to travel.
JESawyer 12 May 12
Did Benny dig that tunnel or was it always there?
The tunnel was always part of Vault 21. The Chairmen essentially just blew a hole in the wall between the vault and The Tops and another hole out of the vault/The Strip.
JESawyer 12 May 12
Even in ancient Rome's slave-based economy the majority of people weren't slaves. Is that the case with the Legion and is that what you wanted to show with additional Legion locations?
The additional Legion locations would have had more traveling non-Legion residents of Legion territories. The Fort and Cottonwood Cove made sense as heavy military outposts where the vast majority of the population consisted of soldiers and slaves. The other locations would have had more "civilians". It's not accurate to think of them as citizens of the Legion (the Legion is purely military), but as non-tribal people who live in areas under Legion control. 
While Caesar intentionally enslaves NCR and Mojave residents in the war zone, most of the enslavement that happens in the east happens to tribals. As Raul indicates, there are non-tribal communities that came under Legion control a long time ago. The additional locations would have shown what life is like for those people. 
The general tone would have been what you would expect from life under a stable military dictatorship facing no internal resistance: the majority of people enjoy safe and productive lives (more than they had prior to the Legion's arrival) but have no freedoms, rights, or say in what happens in their communities. Water and power flow consistently, food is adequate, travel is safe, and occasionally someone steps afoul of a legionary and gets his or her head cut off. If the Legion tells someone to do something, they only ask once -- even if that means an entire community has to pick up and move fifty miles away. Corruption within the Legion is rare and Caesar deals with it harshly (even by Legion standards). 
In short, residents of Legion territories aren't really citizens and they aren't slaves, but they're also not free. People who keep their mouths shut, go about their business, and nod at the rare requests the Legion makes of them -- they can live very well. Many of them don't care at all that they don't have a say in what happens around them (mostly because they felt they never had a say in it before the Legion came, anyway).
JESawyer 13 May 12
The last two paragraphs of your last answer (legion society description) is pretty much exactly what it was like in Czechland from 1948-1989...it sucked. No wonder I killed Ceasar and went with Yes man. Just wanted to let you know.
c00l
JESawyer 13 May 12
Why does Melissa (Great Khan) have a New Zealand accent?
That is the same question I asked when I heard her VO.
JESawyer 13 May 12
Isn't a "nuke everybody" end to LR unnecessary given the inherently self-destructive natures of both factions? Neither NCR nor Caesar have the infrastructure or agricultural knowhow to sustain large populations in the natural scarcity of the SW.
That is a question for Chris Avellone; I didn't have much to do with Lonesome Road.
JESawyer 13 May 12
I replaced the boring music in the credits with my own
http://youtu.be/yIGCKTMlFDQ
JESawyer responded to Formspring 14 May 12
What comforts you?
http://youtu.be/8dDjva1ecYo
JESawyer 14 May 12
Considering all the criticism Fallout: New Vegas received for having a barren landscape with "not much to do" would you have revaluated the priority of side content like dungeon locations and such?
I always thought dungeons were important. We didn't have time to make enough of them at a high enough level of detail. Our secondary location world builders (Denise McMurry and Sydney Wolfram) had 1/2 day per interior location and 1 day per exterior location. That means everything, going from a blob of barely-sculpted, mono-textured landscape to something content complete.
JESawyer 14 May 12
Was it a concious decision to have Zion be so... quiet? I know there is music here and there but I always really liked that it's so silent once you fend off the White Legs in the beginning.
I don't remember asking the audio folks to do so, but I did record a number of audio clips when I was hiking in Zion. Some places in Zion (in real life) are actually loud with animal and insect activity. At night, it's usually quiet except for wind noise.
JESawyer 14 May 12
If you all knew early on the Legion wouldn't be able to be properly covered in New Vegas, why didn't you all just make a DLC set in Legion lands?
We didn't know early on, we knew relatively late (probably about the last 1/3 of development). You'd have to ask Chris Avellone about the second part of your question.
JESawyer 14 May 12
Ughh... there is a Tom Barrett advertisment on your formspring. Coincidence much?
more like google ads much
JESawyer responded to scathoob 14 May 12
Are there certain elements of Fallout canon that you decided to establish while making Fallout: New Vegas that you haven't revealed to players for one reason or another?
No. That is against my principles as a designer and writer.
JESawyer responded to Formspring 14 May 12
Do you like looking in the mirror?
http://youtu.be/PivWY9wn5ps
JESawyer 15 May 12
Have you checked other overhaul gameplay mods besides yours? To see how players address balance issues, or what they perceive as such, and preferred playstyles? (Research in other terms.) Going from how you act here, it kind of sounds like you never did.
Yes, I have. What makes you think I didn't?
JESawyer 15 May 12
Mostly the fact that you didn't know much about what mods yours would be incompatible with plus I remember (but I might have imagined O_o') you once commented that you didn't have time to try mods, worked mostly on yours. No attack intended.
I don't use other balance mods with my mods, but I have looked at other balance mods. I just don't look at them for very long or play with them much.
JESawyer 15 May 12
Is there any country with a more complicated history than Germany?
I don't know; there are a lot of countries.
JESawyer 15 May 12
Do people ever recognize you and stop you for an autograph or picture? How do you react?
Never.
JESawyer 15 May 12
Don't people consider Russian history to be more complicated then German history?
Beats me. I don't think ranking relative complexity of national histories is that important, personally.
JESawyer 16 May 12
This is an entirely random question but how does Feargus Urquhart pronounce his name? Is it "Fear-gus," "Fer-gus," or "Fer-ah-gus?" Is Urquhart pronounced "Irk-hart?"
fur-guhs urk-hart
JESawyer 17 May 12
Have you ever intentionally implemented an offensive stereotypical character in a game for the sake of provocation?
No.
JESawyer 17 May 12
For the record Mistah Sawyer, Nephi is pronounced NEE-fi not Neh-fee or NIH-fi
c00l
JESawyer 17 May 12
Why wasnt the avenger minigun in Vegas?
It is. 
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/CZ57_Avenger
JESawyer 17 May 12
Small curiosity of mine: why do you thank Rob Pardo in your Choice Architecture slides?
He was my GDC adviser for the talk and hosted a presentation at Blizzard before I gave the talk.
JESawyer responded to Formspring 17 May 12
Who is one of your favorite authors?
Umberto Eco. 
“Yes, I know, it’s not the truth, but in a great history little truths can be altered so that the greater truth emerges.”
JESawyer 17 May 12
If someone told you that Eco is pretentious and ruins stories with excessive references and needless and overwrought pseudo-intellectual content, how would you reply? I need a way to defend Eco's writing that is more articulate than what I usually muster.
At least once, sometimes twice per book, he does fall down a hole of excessive (which to me also implies needless) references. I don't have any interest in defending that aspect of his work because I think it drags down the pace of the work and serves as a roadblock for readers. I love everything else about his novels. 
I think leveling accusations of pretension and pseudo-intellectualism at Umberto Eco is funny, but also appropriate in a weird way. His area of academic work is in semiotics and every novel of his that I have read incorporates both aspects of semiotics and (often extreme) intertextuality. Before diving into semiotics, he trained as a medievalist. Prior to writing novels, he wrote quite a bit on "real" academic topics (e.g. A Theory of Semiotics, his journal, Versus: Quaderni di studi semiotici, etc.). 
One of the central conflicts found in The Name of the Rose involves validation of the works of pre-Christian writers. This isn't something Eco made up. This was a Big Deal for medieval theologians (and for early Christian writers like Justin Martyr). Thomas Aquinas referenced "pagan" thinkers extensively in works like Summa Theologiæ and effectively justified it with the reasoning that all human knowledge points to truth, and God is the highest truth. Not everyone was convinced by Thomas' arguments (just as not everyone was convinced by Justin Martyr). So this is a "real" intellectual thing surrounded by fictional intellectual conflicts that more-or-less conform to our understanding of intellectual life in the novel's setting. 
Returning to the beginning of my answer, I think this may be one of the greater failings of Eco: setting readers adrift in a sea of unintelligible landmarks with no points of navigation. Here is a quote from The Name of the Rose: 
"The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb." 
This speaks heavily to semiotics and intertextuality. The problem is that not all eyes see signs in the same way and not all minds have the required knowledge to correlate signs in an intelligible way. Reading Salvatore's polyglot dialogue in the same novel is fun and interesting because in his mishmash of words we can see fragments of German, French, Italian, Latin, etc. that have analogues in English and other Romance/Germanic languages. Deciphering the logical links of Belbo's interaction with Abulafia in Foucault's Pendulum is, I would wager, typically less fun for readers because so many of the references fall outside of what even an attentive, well-educated person could reasonably understand and correlate. 
Put simply, some of Eco's writing becomes so intertextual, so referential to marginal sources, that it becomes hyper-intellectual*. But to a reader who loses his or her way in the maze, a work that is hyper-intellectual may as well be pseudo-intellectual because it becomes a landscape of unintelligible signs, producing "no concepts; therefore it is dumb." Often these roadblocks appear at the beginning of his works and once again near the middle. I think it is a strange choice to ask more of your readers at certain points than is required of them for the majority of the work. If it is a willful design, I have not yet divined his goals for engineering things so. 
* I'm not using this term in an established sense, but I think you get my drift.
JESawyer 17 May 12
Why no fire axe love for the new axe perk?
Get ready for v5. Expect it in September.
JESawyer 18 May 12
“I know it’s not the truth, but in a great history little truths can be altered so that the greater truth emerges.” A great truth doesn't need to be built on lies. Sounds like an excuse to fake reality to support what you want the greater truth to be.
It's a common sentiment. 
http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/lotus1.html
JESawyer 19 May 12
I just want to clear something up, because your answer on May 12th has caused some confusion. Are you saying that the Legion has towns as great as New Vegas or that the citizens are as civilized or "sophistocated" as those in the mojave or Vegas?
"Great" is a vague term, so I don't know what you mean. The Legion also doesn't have citizens in any true sense.
JESawyer responded to darkseidLIVES 21 May 12
Dinner Bell or Riot Shotgun?
Outdoors, Dinner Bell with choke. Indoors, Riot Shotgun.
JESawyer 21 May 12
I think by "great" cities he meant large cities with "good" infrastructure. Does Caesar hold a large number of tribal villages, or does he hold some impressive old world cities as well?
He holds a number of sizable old world cities as well.
JESawyer 21 May 12
You can't put a choke on Dinner Bell, scrublord. Gof dam.
soz q_q
JESawyer 22 May 12
Do you have trouble admitting that you're wrong?
Not really. There's no point in clinging to an idea if it doesn't work out. However, I don't change my mind about something unless I'm really convinced I'm mistaken. If a bunch of people (endusers or developers) say, "I don't like this thing," I won't change it unless I actually get to the bottom of what they don't like and why they don't like it. If it's something purely aesthetic, I still may not change it if I feel that it's not going to turn off the majority of the audience.
JESawyer 22 May 12
Whats the one thing a game designer must have in your opinion?
Critical thinking.
JESawyer responded to StylesV13 22 May 12
The Fallout: Nuka Break team have announced that if they raise $120,000. Tim Cain and Chris Avellone will "creatively come on board" for the next season. Have you been contacted by the Nuka Break team to join as well? or have you contacted them?
They have not contacted me, no.
JESawyer responded to LeoJSaravak 23 May 12
Would you join the Nuka Break team if they asked you?
Sure, although I don't know what I could contribute. They seem to know what they're doing.
JESawyer 23 May 12
What's the least useful thing for a game designer to have in your opinion?
Certainty.
JESawyer 23 May 12
Hi Sawyer. Have you ever tried your hand at sawing, if only to see if you have a natural affinity for it? Or tricked someone into painting a fence for you, perhaps?
My family name is actually Sayer and goes back to Vienna sometime in the 16th century (via Baden-Württemberg and Hungary [now Serbia]). In Apatin, the Sayers were Donauschwaben migrants who had come to Hungary in the mid-18th century. Josef Sayer came to the U.S. from Apatin in 1909. The whole family anglicized their names in the 1930s.
JESawyer 23 May 12
How do you convince a game developer they should hire a history major?
By being a web developer and being hired for that and then saying, "Yo dawgs I know a lot about D&D" while riding a wheelie through the office.
JESawyer 24 May 12
Hey Josh, was the New Vegas Strip intended to have existed longer? Because Crocker is the third Ambassador, yet is on his seventh year there. Plus a box says 'the families were squabbling tribes only decades ago' yet the Strip only exisiting seven years?
No, but Crocker should have been an ambassador for a shorter amount of time. My understanding was always that the NCR ambassadors had a high turnover rate. I would not have expected Crocker to have been around for that long.
JESawyer 24 May 12
How much effort would it have taken to overhaul the existing F3 UI for NV?
Overhaul in what way? We did little tweaks here and there, but we didn't have enough UI resources (art or programming) to make massive changes.
JESawyer 25 May 12
What's wrong with processed cheese?
It's bland and generally sucks.
JESawyer 26 May 12
What do you think about how some people say that balance doesn't matter in a non-competitive single player game?
They're wrong.
JESawyer 26 May 12
Why do you think there are no unions in the games industry? I keep hearing "outsourcing" as the explanation, but I'm hardly convinced. Do publishers really think top talent is that expendable?
Most game companies do not have terrible working conditions. When employees at bad companies realize they have other options, sometimes they go to places that are not terrible. 
I've seen some people suggest that game artists should unionize. I think this would end poorly for the simple reason that art asset development is already a global market that domestic (American) developers and publishers have no problem utilizing. Even art houses like Massive Black have Asian branches full of talented artists. We're not talking about physical goods; we're talking about data that can be transferred around the world in minutes. Even so, I don't think artists WILL unionize because there are enough good American companies out there that the crappy ones will simply lose talent to them. 
Not all publishers are bad and not all developers have insane working environments. When a badly-run company implodes and a bunch of talented developers lose their jobs, I'm not really that sad. Being suddenly unemployed sucks. Looking for a new job sucks. But they just lost a job at a terrible company. Fly away, little birds. Work for developers that aren't terrible. Work with publishers that don't have their heads up their collective asses. Form new companies. You have platforms and avenues that many of us couldn't have imagined five years ago. 
Do publishers really think top talent is that expendable? Not all publishers and not all of the people at those publishers, but clearly some, yes.
JESawyer responded to 2house2fly 26 May 12
I don't know much about nuclear war, but House saying something like 70 weapons were aimed at Vegas in FNV seemed high to me. Would it really take 70 nuclear explosions to destroy a city to the enemy's satisfaction? How did you come up with that number?
I didn't; John Gonzalez did. I don't know how he arrived at that number.
JESawyer 27 May 12
Was it hard to hire Mathew Perry to voice act. Or was his love for fallout make him jump right in? Also, will he present in any future games?
I don't know what was involved in negotiation, but his love of Fallout certainly helped.
JESawyer 27 May 12
Is the "Bladed Gauntlet" from New Vegas supposed to be a Hand drum with shrapnel strapped to it? Because that's ridiculous.
No.
JESawyer 27 May 12
Do you consider yourself a spiritual man?
No.
JESawyer 29 May 12
"We re-read the Fallout: New Vegas pitch document recently, and comparing it to the final result, the story itself ended up changing quite a bit over the development cycle." From a recent MCA interview. Can you comment on these changes?
I wasn't part of the original Fallout: New Vegas pitch, but from what I remember, the story was pretty vague. It started with you being shot in the head and dropped in a shallow grave, but I don't remember a fully-developed plot. I could be wrong, though.
JESawyer 29 May 12
In the past you've said that the NCR would be a quick burn for the Mojave. Why is that never depicted in the endings? It kinda feels like a "Because I said so" moment rather than something we actually saw happen. Rule of Show Don't Tell should apply there
I don't remember saying that, actually. Can you be more specific?
JESawyer 29 May 12
It was in response to a comment about the NCR ending seeming to be the "golden ending." Of course I could be confusing you and Avellone. (The question gets asked so often)
When I have been asked about that, I believe I've almost always pointed to the various NCR endings. Many of them can wind up very good, but usually only if the Courier intercedes and performs some miracles.
JESawyer 29 May 12
I've noticed lately that there's been less talk from marketing people about making their games more accessible and streamlined and also less trash-talking about genres having "moved on" and so. What's up with that?
I don't generally hang out with marketing people, so I'm not sure.
JESawyer responded to bigthizzle 29 May 12
I can relate to the forecaster bc I have migraines everyday as well. I've had them everyday for the past 11 years. How did you guys come up with him and does his "medicine" actually help him?
He was inspired by the experiments performed in the Cathedral in Fallout 1. The Master's minions were performing experiments with psykers. The psychic nullifiers they wore were part of the experiments. He's honest when he says the nullifier makes him feel better, but we don't explain how or why. 
I also wanted the first child the player was (likely) to meet to be friendly and helpful.
JESawyer 29 May 12
Got some Wikipedia answers for you: -Would you want your wikipedia article picture updated? The picture looks like you 10 years ago. -Was the article written by someone directly close to you? -Do you ever look at your wiki article?
* Yes. Man, that is an old picture. 
* I know at least one person who directly contributed to it, but I think it's been a variety of people over time. 
* Yes, every once in a while, mostly with the faint hope that someone will update the picture.
JESawyer 29 May 12
You could always change your Wikipedia picture yourself.
Internet bushido prohibits it, sorry.
JESawyer 29 May 12
So what did you do on Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance?
It was pretty minimal, if I remember correctly. I worked on some UI design ideas and some skill/ability/spell designs. I didn't do any implementation.
JESawyer 30 May 12
Do you think that "modern gamers are easily frustrated" is used as an excuse to strip away genuinely interesting design elements because they are hard to balance/expensive?
Maybe. I don't know. It seems like a pretty goofy excuse to me. Frustration is a fundamental element of "real" games, with gamers pushing past the frustration to achieve a sense of triumph. As designers, our goal should always be to find the right balance point for our audience. If the argument is that the gaming audience is much larger and, therefore, less h4rdc0r3 because the pool has been diluted, okay, but it's still our job to find the right balance points and feature set for the audience and its different segments. 
One of the reasons I really wanted to include Hardcore Mode in F:NV was because I recognized that there was a significant chunk of the audience that would likely want something a bit tougher than sliding HP and DAM values around. I don't think Hardcore Mode is "really" hard, but compared to the default mode, it does require more attention and a bit more care in combat. 
I know there's a subset of that group that wants things even more brutal and survivalist-oriented, for whom even the JSawyer mod doesn't go far enough. I don't think we should try to make everyone happy, but I do think that as developers we should recognize and try to appeal to the major "chunks" of our audience. With 5 million+ players, I don't think it's realistic to think one play still will fit all. And I don't think that saying, "Well, it's hard," absolves us of responsibility. We get paid pretty good money to figure out how people will play games. We should probably put some effort into actually understanding the audience and designing things that will work for them.
JESawyer 30 May 12
Your last reply was interesting, because I'm seeing a rise of indie developers/designers/gaming advocates that actually argue that challenge is not needed in video games at all. Your 2 cents on this?
I got into games because I enjoy challenge and I enjoy presenting challenges to other people. I can appreciate interactive experiences with minimal/no challenge, but that's not why I make games.
JESawyer 30 May 12
Planning on watching Prometheus in theaters?
Yeah, I'm going to see it up in Hollywood at the Arclight with some of my old Black Isle BROS.
JESawyer 30 May 12
Are Deathclaws supposed to be able to use doors and ladders(!?) or is that just something left unchanged from Fallout 3's assets?
clever girl
JESawyer 31 May 12
When New Vegas was being developed, did it cross anyones mind to make ladders climbable?
No.
JESawyer 1 Jun 12
It is mentioned in the The Fallout: New Vegas game guide that the Ultra-Luxe Casino is run by the Sawneys. Is it a former name of the White Glove Society or a mistake?
That was their original name (during development), yes.
JESawyer 1 Jun 12
Rather than referring to the female role under Caesar as "breeding," you should say "motherhood." You're not going to sell anyone but misogynists on the Legion's not-morally-blackness if you don't use more tactful language. Yes, I charge by the hour.
Caesar wouldn't use that term, nor would he refer to the male's role as "fatherhood". Caesar doesn't want to create family structures and he doesn't want to revere mothers with honorifics and Mutterkreuzen. He wants to create more legionaries and laborers. As I've written before, slave legionaries aren't honored in the Legion. Really, no one in the Legion is honored other than Caesar.
JESawyer 2 Jun 12
I think the point is that when you've defended the Legion's moral complexity by saying it's just the grunts who are misogynists, then turn and say Caesar wants women for breeding, you're not convincing anyone who doesn't see "breeding" humans as positive.
I've gone over this before ad nauseum. Everyone is treated terribly in the Legion. Men who are able to fight are slave soldiers who serve until they die. Men who aren't able to fight are slave laborers who work until they die. Women who are able to give birth are forced into breeding until they are unable to give birth. Then they're slave laborers until they die. 
Caesar doesn't do this because he hates women or views them as inferior to men; he does it because all he is concerned with is the end goal: more legionaries. The legionaries are also a means to an end: conquering NCR. Conquering NCR is also a means to an end: reforming it and producing a new quasi-Roman empire. 
If it doesn't convince you, that's fine, but I've already made this argument and don't see the point in continuing it.
JESawyer 2 Jun 12
Why were the soldiers near Fornlorn Hope in the minefield between it, Nelson and the Abandoned BoS bunker removed? I figured it was short-term for Dead Money but they never came back and we lost alot of atmosphere with that.
Memory, I believe. Unfortunately, a lot of characters were removed in patches due to memory issues introduced with DLCs.
JESawyer 2 Jun 12
Why was there no AP variety of 12.7mm ammo in NV?
Ammo types intentionally do not have all of the same subtypes because then ammo subtypes become a consideration for weapon selection. This is also why weapons of the same type at different tiers (e.g. the Trail Carbine and Brush Gun) don't have the same mods.
JESawyer 2 Jun 12
Forgive me if this has already been asked, but who came up with coin shot ammo for the shotguns? It always gives me a warm fuzzy feeling.
I did, but I just stole it from an old Kris Kristofferson film, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. 
It's at about 2:45 in this trailer: 
http://youtu.be/_CcadC-S8-E
JESawyer 2 Jun 12
Why did you use .45-70 Govt and 12.7mm as top tier cowboy/pistol ammo and not .50 AE (direct progression from magnums) and 14mm (existing Fallout ammo) respectively? Was it to avoid confusion between AE and BMG?
Yes, I didn't want people to be confused by having .50 AE (or whatever) and .50 MG. 12.7mm is effectively somewhere around .50AE/.50 Beowulf in terms of ballistics. 
.50AE has a rebated rim and would be inappropriate for use in a revolver (without moon clips) or lever-action rifle. .45-70 Gov't is a traditional lever-action round. When it debuted, it was a black powder cartridge, but in modern loadings, it's extremely powerful. There are a few rare revolvers that use it (BFR, Bison Bull). Coincidentally, one of them (the Bison Bull) was built in my home town, Fort Atkinson, WI.
JESawyer 2 Jun 12
How much leeway does a developer like Obsidian get as far as release dates? Does a publisher just dictate the date at the start of a project, or do developers have some say in determining the length of the development cycle?
It varies from project to project. Developers do have a say in the cycle, but it comes down to what's in the contract. In one case we learned the release date of a project by seeing it when a public trailer came out five months prior to the date listed in the trailer. That was nice.
JESawyer 4 Jun 12
Would it not have made more sense (with regard to in-universe coherence) to create a 'Happy Trails" merchant (or something similar) for post-Honest Hearts item acquisition? It seems more than a little ridiculous to buy war clubs from the Gun Runners, no?
Sure, but with every DLC we were removing characters from the Mojave Wasteland to save memory. Adding in new merchants would have made the problem worse.
JESawyer 4 Jun 12
Gelatinous cube. Great DnD monster, or greatest?
Sorry but the rust monster is the greatest D&D monster.
JESawyer 4 Jun 12
why didn't you use 14mm instead of the 12,7mm?
Making it 12.7mm helped gun people intuit that it was effectively .50 AE.
JESawyer 4 Jun 12
Well...12.7mm could refer to any .50 round. 12.7x99mm is .50BMG and 12.7x33mm is .50AE.
No serious firearms enthusiast would see the cartridge eject from the 12.7mm Pistol and think, "Hmm, could be .50 BMG."
JESawyer 4 Jun 12
So Caesar survives his brain tumor, beats the NCR in their home territory while managing a huge empire, and then goes "just kidding guys! I actually want to build a completely different society." Still a terrible choice reserved for evil gimmick runs.
Caesar says exactly what he's doing and why he's doing it if you talk to him. 
Caesar's Legion should be a choice reserved for any player using a character that fits. If you don't want to make a CL-oriented character, don't make one. If you don't want to make a character who sells Bumble into slavery in F3, don't make one.
JESawyer 5 Jun 12
Tying into the Caesar's Legion discussion already in progress: Do you think a new leader could guide the Legion towards a more humane neo-Roman republic type of system? Or would 'hardliners' like Lanius and Vulpes stage a coup to prevent reform?
Caesar already believes that the NCR government IS a neo-Roman Republic. He wants to take control of it because he believes that, like Julius Caesar, he can cause a change for (in his opinion) the better.
JESawyer responded to panzersharkcat 5 Jun 12
Was there a reason optiones and aquilifers were not included?
There were already a lot of Legion types running around, so we stopped with the vexillarius.
JESawyer 7 Jun 12
Whose idea was it to allow the player to Mass Purify Water with Survival? Isn't it kinda a spit in the face to the plot of Fallout 3 in hindsight?
Me, and no.
JESawyer responded to ryanair80 7 Jun 12
XCOM: Enemy Unknown.... Yes or No?
why is this even a question
JESawyer 7 Jun 12
Why is the Archimedes laser classified as Unarmed damage?
The damage isn't done by Euclid's C-Finder, so it doesn't really matter how the "pointer" is classified, though it does increment Unarmed-related kills for challenges, which weren't implemented when the C-Finder was created.
JESawyer responded to PTG 7 Jun 12
When an ammo type (.223, for example) has a description saying it's condition multiplier is less than one (Gun CND x 0.80), that means it is degrading the gun LESS than a normal round, right?
Correct.
JESawyer 7 Jun 12
Where does the NCR get the wood for it's service rifles?
It doesn't. Those are Pre-War rifles.
JESawyer 7 Jun 12
Why didn't you include more Legion citizens to give us more background information about life in Legion lands to make up for the lack of Legion locations?
Time.
JESawyer 7 Jun 12
Who chose Big Iron as a song for NV? It's.. surprisingly catchy.
I did.
JESawyer 7 Jun 12
Isn't it less believable that the NCR is using 200+ year old guns as-is after you've made a point on Formspring of explaining that the Sierra Nevadas are still forested in 2281? What happens when a wood part on a SR breaks, they just throw it all away?
They would probably repair it or replace the furniture on one weapon with furniture from another (likely one with mechanical problems).
JESawyer 7 Jun 12
Wait so if Service Rifles are pre-war why don't we see any Chinese Assault Rifles?
I didn't think they were important to include gameplay-wise and I didn't think there would be a significant Chinese ground force presence in the Mojave.
JESawyer 7 Jun 12
Do you tip?
Yes.
JESawyer 7 Jun 12
Are you working on South Park: tSoT?
No.
JESawyer 7 Jun 12
200 years old rifles? I know nothing of guns, but is this like, something that happens, or just stretching reality for the sake of the setting?
Is this honestly the first time you've considered that many of the firearms in Fallout were made Pre-War? Come on. 
EDIT: Re-reading my response, it sounds rude. Apologies. I'm not sure if this is a genuine or disingenuous question, partially because the majority of questions are anonymous. 
The majority of firearms in use in the Fallout setting are likely Pre-War in manufacture. Things that would make conventional firearms stop working: rust (seizing), dry rot (anything wood or rubber), alkaline corrosion/buildup (anything with batteries). 
A lot of firearms (and other things, but especially firearms) put in long-term storage are coated in a substance called cosmoline that can prevent rust (and other processes) for a long time. It's unlikely that all of the weapons in Fallout were coated for storage, so it's just a hand-wave of the setting.
JESawyer 7 Jun 12
FO3 establishes that the R91 Assault Rifle was the standard issue armament for the National Guard. Why then is it not included in FNV? I understand the lack of Chinese ARs, but it seems like the R91 would have been a better fit than the assault carbine.
The Assault Carbine is not standard issue. They are intended to be paratrooper weapons, which is why Boomers have so many of them.
JESawyer 7 Jun 12
If the servuce rifles are pre-war then what weapons are the gun runners manufacturing for the NCR?
All sorts of weapons. Service Rifles being Pre-War doesn't preclude Gun Runners from building new ones as long as they can find new raw materials or refurbish old materials for new use. Gun Runners also would likely be replacing parts more often than entire weapons.
JESawyer 8 Jun 12
Are you working on something? Or just chillin' it out all day?
This week I've been doing some E3-related stuff, but otherwise working on system design that I'm not going to talk about.
JESawyer 8 Jun 12
You know, after 200 years, especially in a desert environment, you'd think that a lot of things would completely fall apart. Nevermind useable.
cool
JESawyer 8 Jun 12
Have you given to any video game kickstarters? If so, which?
Yeah, to Wasteland 2 and Carmageddon: Reincarnation.
JESawyer 8 Jun 12
Did you come up with the idea of Dr. Presper? He's my favorite character from the Van Buren project, and I always figured he was sort of reincarnated as that douchebag who starts the Vault 22 quest in New Vegas.
No, that was Chris Avellone.
JESawyer 10 Jun 12
Why did you choose "Arcade" as Arcade Gannon's first name? It's somehow fitting... but when I think about it as a name it just seems strange.
He's named for Arcadia, which was legendary for being a pure, untouched land.
JESawyer 10 Jun 12
Why is your site called "diogenes' lamp"? And why is your blog called "Twofold Silence"?
The site is named after the story of Diogenes of Sinope wandering the streets of Athens during the day with a lamp claiming he was looking for an honest man. 
The blog is named for words from the final line of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's poem Silent Noon. 
Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass, -- 
The finger-points look through like rosy blooms: 
Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms 
'Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass. 
All round our nest, far as the eye can pass, 
Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge 
Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge. 
'Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass. 
Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly 
Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky: -- 
So this wing'd hour is dropt to us from above. 
Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower, 
This close-companioned inarticulate hour 
When twofold silence was the song of love. 
Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote a song of the same title with the poem as its lyrics. It was the song I used for my audition for the Lawrence Conservatory and continues to be one of my favorite songs to sing. 
http://youtu.be/b0P5thALf1U
JESawyer 10 Jun 12
Why was the bayonette cut from the service rifle? Was it because you couldn't implement a melee secondary attack mode?
Yes.
JESawyer 10 Jun 12
Is Joshua Graham named after you?
No.
JESawyer 10 Jun 12
Is Arcade Gannon's personality based on your personality? At least a little bit? I could see you being interested in socioeconomic theories and speaking in Latin when it sounds cool.
He shares more in common with me than some of the other characters I've written, but no.
JESawyer responded to kevinLemonCa 10 Jun 12
Arcade is a awesome character did you do all the writing for him? Also did you have any other plans for him that you were not able to achieve?
Thanks. Yes, I wrote Arcade and he was one of my characters in Chris Avellone's tabletop Fallout game. I did not have any other plans for Arcade that I remember.
JESawyer 10 Jun 12
How can I get an embedded flame-thrower working on a new robot model, based on the protectron skeleton? I've asked all the modders I know, and everyone has failed in their attempts.
I don't know what specific problem you're having, but one thing that modders (and developers) often overlook is that "monsters" have a formlist that governs what weapons they can use. If a weapon is not on the formlist, they will never use that weapon.
JESawyer 10 Jun 12
And why "Gannon?" Because Ganondorf is awesome?
It's just a name that worked well.
JESawyer 10 Jun 12
I really like "The White Wash" quest. It was really well done and left with a moral dilemma that still screws over someone (The NCR, who's approaching a food shortage or Westside, who're trying to be self-sufficient). Can you give props to who wrote it?
Thanks. Jeff Husges and I created The White Wash. I like how the dilemma played out, but the mechanics/flow of the quest were not that great (my fault, not Jeff's).
JESawyer 10 Jun 12
In seriousness though, why is it that high tech things like Power Armor works just fine but no one can restore a combustion engine?
People are using combustion engines for power all over the Mojave Wasteland (e.g. the Boomers are using ethanol-powered generators at Nellis).
JESawyer 10 Jun 12
How come so many people are fluent in contemporary English two-hundred years after almost being destroyed and most sources of standard education wiped out?
Because people keep talking to each other.
JESawyer 10 Jun 12
Is a game without any combat system possible?
Yes, there are plenty of them.
JESawyer 10 Jun 12
How do you pronounce "For Auld Lang Syne," exactly?
http://youtu.be/acxnmaVTlZA
JESawyer responded to Formspring 10 Jun 12
What language would you like to learn?
All of them.
JESawyer 10 Jun 12
Seeing that 10mm is less powerful than .45 Auto, would it be fair to say that it's actually .40 S&W, in the same way 12.7mm is .50AE/Beowulf?
No. .45 Auto has the mythic power of .45 ACP, not the actual power. Realistically, it should slot in just below 10mm Auto, but that would have made it a terrible/redundant round, especially in a weapon based on the M1911.
JESawyer 10 Jun 12
What is Cass' real first name?
Rose of Sharon.
JESawyer responded to Youhala 10 Jun 12
This is a question about Van Buren, the cancelled Fallout 3. Victor Presper spreads the New Plague to nearby towns and uses them as the remaining human race? Doesn't the New Plague kill you; after all, that's how FEV started.
New Plague/Limit 115 kills many and almost always leaves survivors sterile.
JESawyer 11 Jun 12
Do you even want to learn pretentious fake languages like Esperanto?
Sure. More seriously, though, I would like to be more proficient in German. I was able to travel alone in rural Bavaria without needing English (much), but I'm only conversational and have large gaps in vocabulary. I've studied a bunch of other European languages (and Arabic) but can't converse in any of them. I can recognize bits and pieces but can't write or talk back at length without looking up a lot of words/grammar.
JESawyer responded to Youhala 11 Jun 12
In response to the Van Buren question, allow me to clarify: those New Plague carriers are supposed to be the new human race after Presper blows up everyone else?
My memory is unclear on that, but I don't think so. I think Presper wanted to start over with a select number of people who were vaccinated against New Plague -- but I could be wrong.
JESawyer 11 Jun 12
What was the most painful failed/cancelled project you've worked on?
Probably The Black Hound because the cancellation came out of nowhere due to our loss of the D&D license. We had been working on it for over two years, including a hiatus while we made IWD2. Van Buren should have been worse since I came to Black Isle with dreams of working on F3, but I saw the end coming.
JESawyer 12 Jun 12
Hey Josh, who wrote Raul? Because he's my second favourite companion right after Arcade, and if you know, where did the writer get the inspiration for the character of Raul come from?
Travis Stout wrote Raul. I'm not sure where Travis found specific inspiration, but I asked Travis to write Raul because Travis is good at writing funny, sarcastic characters (he also wrote several/many characters in Old World Blues, IIRC).
JESawyer responded to Youhala 12 Jun 12
In Fallout: New Vegas, a giant fire gecko, Gojira, exists in the game files, but does not actually appear in the game. He is extremely powerful, to the point where you wouldn't expect it to be used in the game at any point. Was Gojira made just for fun?
Yes. One of our animators made him for fun and would have him terrorize Camp McCarran.
JESawyer 12 Jun 12
Did you know the songs you sang for New Vegas are on Last.fm?
c00l
JESawyer 12 Jun 12
Why does the All-American have an 82nd patch on it?
The 82nd Airborne Division's nickname is "All-American".
JESawyer 12 Jun 12
What do you think about the "gamers don't have patience anymore"-excuse for dumbing down games? Marketing speak for targeting casual gamers? I don't think it requires any more "patience" to play a complex game provided one enjoys that sort of activity.
Man, I get questions like this all the time and I don't know what to tell you. Do they think that older games all died or their tastes suddenly changed and were replaced by the tastes of some other, strangely homogeneous and impatient, group of gamers? I don't know. I also don't like to spend my time speculating about it.
JESawyer 12 Jun 12
Any thoughts on Wasteland 2's vision doc?
Looks good, looks like Wasteland.
JESawyer 12 Jun 12
Why do developers claim that the cost of games has gone up in the past decade? I see small developers cranking out games that look and play far better than anything from the 90's. Wasteland 2 seems to be bigger and better than Fallout while costing less.
Let's table the answer to this question until Wasteland 2 actually comes out.
JESawyer 12 Jun 12
I've noticed that there seems to be a resurgence of hardcore PC titles lately, and not just from indies and Kickstarter. What do you think is behind this phenomena?
Digital distribution.
JESawyer 12 Jun 12
So you don't think that better development tools and digital distribution lower production costs significantly compared to the 90's?
Assuming you were making games of the same size and style, yes. 
If you've seen Tim Cain's Fallout postmortem from GDC 2012, you also know that Fallout sort of wandered around for a while before it became what it was. That, combined with needing to render out sprites for hours on end on an SGI, didn't exactly make mid-90s/late-90s development speedy.
JESawyer 12 Jun 12
I just read 'Blood of the Prophets', and my mind wandered to Honest Hearts. Was Joshua Graham's dynamic with the Sorrows and Dead Horses at all consciously modeled on Brigham Young's rhetoric about using the 'Lamanites' as the "Battle-axe of the Lord"?
Yes, but less about Brigham Young specifically and more about how Mormons in Utah interacted with tribes there (like the Paiutes), generally. It was inspired by events like the Utah War/Mountain Meadows Massacre. 
Even though this doesn't appear in the game, Joshua Graham's character class in the GECK is "Destroying Angel", which was a nickname for some of the militant/vigilante Mormons/Danites that operated in Utah in the 19th century.
JESawyer responded to LeoJSaravak 12 Jun 12
Some aspects of Joshua Graham's mindset and attitude are parallel to that of the NCR (as a whole) during the game. Was that intentional or...?
Not intentional, no, but I'd be interested to hear what you think is parallel about them (please comment to my answer).
JESawyer responded to Denis517 13 Jun 12
I'm very into reading fantasy fiction books. Do you like to read a specific type of genre?
Yes, history.
JESawyer 13 Jun 12
Are you secretly Treyster or Gabriel on the Bethesda Fallout forums? They seem akin to your talking style/view points.
I'm not secretly anyone. Online, I usually J.E. Sawyer or JESawyer as my username, but occasionally rope kid, Orpheus, or baby goat.
JESawyer 13 Jun 12
Please make a historical RPG, even if it has to be a low budget kickstarter project. (Was just reading the Darklands interview on RPG Codex).
^_________________________________^
JESawyer 14 Jun 12
Do you study history/languages in your spare time, or did you study them through college and expand from there? without sounding weird, I admire your level of intellect and wish to build such a library of knowledge.
I studied them in high school and college and continued from there. I took high school courses in French and Spanish and college courses in Arabic, German, and Latin. I wasn't particularly good in any of them, but I enjoyed taking them. On my own, I'll buy almost any book on Indo-European languages I can find (Welsh, Italian, Icelandic, Occitan, Danish, Dutch, Italian, Hungarian [okay, that's Uralic], Greek, Macedonian, Armenian, Turkish [Altaic]) just to look through. It annoys my girlfriend because I mostly just leaf through them, but I enjoy seeing all of the differences and similarities. 
If I see things written in an Indo-European language, I try to decipher what I can without allowing the browser to translate the page. If someone asks me a question in an Indo-European language and I have the reference at my disposal, I try to construct an answer back in that language. That's why I like it when people ask me questions in German, French, Spanish, etc. It's not that I'm proficient in any of them, but it gives me a legitimate opportunity to piece together a thought in one of those languages. 
With history, I just buy books on interesting or curious subjects. I try not to "stack up" on a particular period or subject (other than witch-hunting in early modern Europe, I guess). I don't have a great depth of knowledge in anything, but I really want to know a little bit about everything.
JESawyer responded to AdamWalker86 14 Jun 12
Do you really think that the idea of the Enclave being remnants of somekind of "Shadow Government" makes any sense? It's never attested too in any game and the actions supposedly attributed too it aren't really anything that the US wouldn't do anyway?
Any references we may have made to Pre-War individuals who eventually formed the post-war Enclave being in a "shadow" government are not intended in the UK-sense, but in the sense of an extra-political conspiratorial collaboration/collusion between a subset of government and private industry. 
Certainly sections of the U.S. government engage in similar actions currently; the idea of the Enclave is simply that the efforts were more widespread, conspiratorial, and unified, essentially a PNAC-style think tank gone extremist and haywire.
JESawyer 14 Jun 12
I fail to understand how one can 'enjoy' history beyond a dry academic interest. Yes, things happened at some time or other. How are such events of any aesthetic or intellectual value with respect to your development as an individual? Just curious.
Understanding history helps individuals realize the scope and range of human behavior that has led us to this point. As individuals, we are part of this cascade forward. We can either be ignorant of how we (and everyone around us) arrived here or we can piece it together. 
People often base beliefs, arguments, and political statements on positions of ignorance. It leads to an enormous amount of fallacious assumptions and foolish decisions. For example, take the Red Scare in the United States. How many people participated in the Red Scare without realizing the high number of parallels it held with early modern witch-hunting -- not in a figurative sense, but in real, functional ways? 
How many people express anger and frustration over first generation immigrants to the United States sticking to ethnically-similar neighborhoods and never learning English -- even though historically *many* immigrants in previous decades and centuries did the exact same thing? 
How do we live in a world where these people think it's reasonable to call Japan's terrible earthquake damage "payback" for Pearl Harbor as though we didn't firebomb half of the country and top it off with two atomic bombs? 
http://cdn-www.i-am-bored.com/media/pearlharborjapan.jpg 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOCYcgOnWUM 
We didn't just form here out of the ether. Coming to grips with how we all got where we are helps us understand a lot about ourselves and the people around us -- as well as "the way things work" (or don't).
JESawyer 14 Jun 12
Hoogstwaarschijnlijk word je nu doodgegooid met zulke vragen, maar dit betekent dus ook dat je Nederlands kan lezen? Ik zag recent iemand melden dat de Yes-Man einde absoluut betekent dat de speler geen 'ruler of New Vegas' kan worden achteraf. Klopt dit?
Ik kan een beetje Nederlands lezen. De woorden zijn als Duits. 
Het "Yes-Man" einde is opzettelijk vaag. De speler kan het in vele manieren interpreteren.
JESawyer 14 Jun 12
I'm not saying you *should* have, so don't take this the wrong way, but could have some of your mod's tweak been introduced in the title in a patch or something, maybe as an additional difficulty level/uber hardcore mod?
With more patches, the general adjustments/fixes could have. Introducing an additional difficulty mode would have required more programming work, which was in desperately short supply throughout the project.
JESawyer 14 Jun 12
If you could base an RPG in any point in history, which would you choose?
Personally, I really like the early modern Holy Roman Empire. I think the 16th, 17th, and even 18th centuries in the HRE could be really fantastic.
JESawyer 14 Jun 12
But it seems like the importance you place on history is steeped in presuppositions regarding the pragmatic value of empiricism and induction. Instead of studying (and continuing) humanity's messy process of trial and error should we not seek a better way
I did not advocate continuing any sort of process. I stated that there is value in understanding how we arrived at our present state. There are a lot of conclusions one can reach and things one can choose to do (if anything) based on that understanding. If you think there is greater value in remaining ignorant of that information, I'd like to hear your reasons.
JESawyer 14 Jun 12
Who came up with the Four Eyes perk? It would have been nice to have had a bit of a screen blur w/out glasses.
I did. We had a surprisingly large amount of difficulty getting various full-screen effects to work properly (e.g. Friend of the Night).
JESawyer responded to MikeGolf 15 Jun 12
Don't you think comparing the "Red Scare" to early modern witch-hunting is a little unfair, there weren't any real witches casting spells (in a magical sense) but there were real communist spies in America, the Rosenburgs, Alger Hiss, etc.
No, because the presence or absence of any individual communists or witches isn't actually relevant (also it depends on how individuals defined a witch -- something that varied dramatically between social classes, geographical regions, and periods of time). 
What's relevant is the elite-promoted (McCarthy and the HUAC) world view that communists pervaded society and were involved in widespread conspiratorial activities. Promotion of this world view created disproportional hysteria among the populace and resulted in a campaign of persecution against individuals who held political beliefs ranging from vaguely liberal to peacefully communist (or, in some cases, simply being homosexual or atheist, which many conflated with being communist). 
This is very similar to the elite-promoted (Catholic and Protestant leaders, intellectual writers) world view that witches pervaded society and were involved in widespread conspiratorial activities. It also created widespread hysteria among the populace and resulted in a campaign of persecution against individuals who held religious beliefs ranging from vaguely out of orthodox to heretical but not Satanist (or, in some cases, simply being homosexual, barren, or otherwise odd, which many conflated with being a witch). 
In the vast majority of cases during both phenomena, the people who were accused had done little, if anything, that merited rational suspicion, much less persecution. Certainly only a tiny amount were actually guilty, in any sense, of doing what they were accused of doing. The HUAC even used inductive reasoning and political threats/pressure to draw in "other" communists in the same way that inquisitors used the concept of a coven and the threat of torture to draw in "other" witches. 
Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible as a direct allegory of The Red Scare, using the Salem Witch Trials as the focus. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_crucible
JESawyer 15 Jun 12
Did you have any hand in designing Ulysses? I ask because your first post about the importance of history makes it sound like you're the origin of his "Ignorance is a choice" quote.
No, not at all.
JESawyer 15 Jun 12
When reading history, do you tend to prefer 'pop' history (IE Sarah Vowell), Academic History, or Primary Sources?
Academic secondary and primary sources, but occasionally some pop history (e.g. Stephen O'Shea's The Perfect Heresy).
JESawyer responded to dfuglestad 15 Jun 12
So, I´m super curious because right now Im enrolled in a course in German cultural history while doing an internship in Berlin; what about the 16th through 18th century HRE would you especially want to integrate into an RPG? Deutsche Dualismus, etc?
There's so much religious, political, and intellectual conflict and change in the HRE during those periods. Right off the bat there's the Reformation, the Diet of Worms, and subsequently the Diet of Augsburg and the Confessio Augustana that came out of it. The Peasant's War also resulted from this (among other things). By the late 15th century, Gutenberg's movable type printing press had spread all over the HRE, effectively sounding the death knell of illuminated manuscripts and the monastic communities that produced them. Witch-hunting accelerated tremendously during these centuries, thanks in no small part to the publication and popularity of the Malleus Maleficarum. Even Martin Luther was caught up in the witch craze for a while. This was also the height of the Habsburg Monarchy, which I think is really cool. 
I don't actually know that much about the Deutsche Dualismus, maybe because it happened toward the tail end of the period I studied.
JESawyer responded to MikeGolf 16 Jun 12
I completly acknowledge what you are saying about the immoral practices of the HUAC and McCarthyism(minus your whole elitist conspiracy),but again aren't you failing to note the "Red Scare" was rooted in looking for real communist doing treasonous things.
I did not write that it was an "elitist conspiracy"; I wrote that it was an "elite-promoted" world view: McCarthy (a senator), Hoover (head of the FBI), Truman (the president), and Eisenhower (another president). It doesn't really get much more elite than that. It's a small group of people in positions of enormous power shaping national policy and dramatically influencing public opinion. 
"I have here in my hand a list of 205 . . . a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department. . ." 
McCarthyism was not a populist movement. It was a movement started within the highest ranks of the U.S. government and promoted to the public to gain momentum. 
I'm not "failing to note" what McCarthy, Truman's Loyalty Order, and the HUAC were ostensibly attempting to accomplish. Witch-hunts were ostensibly attempting to capture unwitting heretics, then willful heretics, then Satanists. That there were actual communist spies and that there were heretics (but probably not Satanists) isn't particularly relevant, since both groups (communist-hunters and witch-hunters) in the final tally were batting around .001. 
If you have to burn a village of several hundred people to take out one heretic and you have to ruin the lives/careers of several hundred citizens to find one genuine communist spy, your methods are pretty terrible.
JESawyer responded to AdamWalker86 17 Jun 12
Are the Remnants lying about disliking the Enclave for Arcade's protection? If the attempt was to humanise them don't you think that having them stay and fight for the Enclave just so the friends could stay together makes them thouroughly amoral instead?
The only person who expresses thorough dislike for the Enclave is Cannibal Johnson. Orion Moreno actively supported them and the other three were just "there" -- they were born into the Enclave and either didn't think much about what they were part of or they didn't care enough about the negatives to do anything about it. There are probably a few hundred million human beings like that around us right now.
JESawyer 18 Jun 12
Are you worried about the fact that people still identify you as "the guy that said Skyrim could never be fixed on PS3" in some circles?
I have to imagine that's the circle of people who re-imagine history (I never said that). So no, not really.
JESawyer responded to Fakult 19 Jun 12
Was ranger Ghost intended to be an albino? (It's kind of hard to tell in-game)
Yes.
JESawyer 19 Jun 12
When developing New Vegas, was the option to let the player create a ghoul courier ever considered? Do you think that this would make for more gameplay depth (different dialogue, perks, .etc) or just end up being overly similar to existing archetypes?
Not during New Vegas, no. We knew the project was going to be relatively short from the beginning, so it wasn't considered. I think Fallout: Tactics showed that there's some good potential for allowing different race options in the Fallout universe, but it takes time.
JESawyer 19 Jun 12
Were you involved in any development aspect of Lonesome Road?
I just did some weapon tuning.
JESawyer responded to Fakult 20 Jun 12
Having just heard that you were the one who performed The Lonesome Drifter's songs I wonder if you ever considered being the character's full voice actor, to prevent the sort of disconnect between hearing him speak and then sing?
No. I'm not a voice actor, but more importantly, the Lonesome Drifter's VO was recorded before we realized we had to record his songs internally.
JESawyer 20 Jun 12
why you can't have more than one companion in FNV/F3, unlike the older games?
Game balance and console memory. Balance-wise, adding one humanoid companion makes the game much easier. Adding multiple humanoid companions makes it trivially easy. Memory-wise, companions are some of the most expensive characters that can be loaded.
JESawyer 20 Jun 12
How could you record a VO for a guy who sings and forget to record the songs?
We didn't forget to record them; we hadn't finalized what songs he would sing and what we would actually use for those songs. Talent Pool took a while to wrap up from conception to fruition and one day I said to Travis Stout (Talent Pool's designer), "Hey, what songs does the Lonesome Drifter perform once he shows up at the Aces Theatre?" 
*5 minutes of staring at each other* 
"Whoops I guess we have to figure that out."
JESawyer 20 Jun 12
A popular opinion of Skyrim fans is that balance is unneccesary in a single player RPG (which you've stated you disagree with). Another current discussion is if RPGs should let the player re-spec their character's perks entirely. Thoughts?
I think RPGs should allow players to re-spec their characters, but I also think there should be a non-trivial cost to do so.
JESawyer 20 Jun 12
If memory wasn't an issue, do you think a game like New Vegas could be balanced so multiple companions wouldn't trivialize the challenge?
I think the numerical impact of companions (e.g. damage) would have to be drastically reduced. I don't necessarily think that's a bad idea. In Dungeon Siege III, companion AI characters did 25% damage and I don't remember a ton of complaints about it. Ultimately, it's free damage and free tanking, so the player benefits even if the values are heavily reduced.
JESawyer 20 Jun 12
Is it common in the industry to have 'auteur games' where the project lead has a lot of creative control, or are games much more of a team effort? Have you ever worked on a project where one person had a strong vision and everyone brought that to life?
Games are always a team effort, but creative control can vary from project to project. I probably had the most freedom on F:NV, though that project was already constrained by the setting, the engine, and the time frame we had. I'd say Avellone had the same level of control on the DLCs where he was project director.
JESawyer 21 Jun 12
Where do you draw your musical prowess from? Are you a natural-born musician, or did you learn it throughout your life?
I don't really believe in natural-born talent. There are physical aspects of voice, but a great deal of singing skill comes from technique; that only comes through training and/or practice (usually both). My father is a guitarist and singer and I've been singing as long as I can remember. One of the first songs I learned was The City of New Orleans. 
http://youtu.be/AJ0JgqoF2W4 
I didn't learn to read music until I was in high school. When I started at the Lawrence Conservatory, I still had very poor music theory knowledge and poor vocal technique. My technique improved somewhat during my time there, but I stopped taking voice lessons sometime during my junior year, after I had transferred from the conservatory to the college.
JESawyer 21 Jun 12
How would you handle character consistency if respecs are available? Isn't it odd to be physically weak scientist one day and a dumb brute the next, especially if those two types can open up different paths through the game?
It's comparably odd to a character behaving inconsistently in how he or she deals with individuals/factions, but ultimately those choices are left up to the player. If the player cares about playing a role, he or she isn't going to radically change his or her character. If the player doesn't care, the logic/rationale doesn't matter. In the "worst case" (player doesn't care), the main issue is balance/content access.
JESawyer 22 Jun 12
Why do you consider Demon's/Dark Souls RPGs? They don't particularly fit the definition you've used before.
Yeahhhhhhhhh they're definitely on the edge, but there is some choice and consequence in them. I don't particularly like how the C&C is handled (e.g. Lautrec), but it's there. I do think they are very significant in the genre from a fan/developer perspective because (IMO) their melee combat mechanics and creature behaviors are some of the best I've seen outside of dedicated action games.
JESawyer 22 Jun 12
Why did you decide to buff skills with armors so much in JESawyer.esp? Most of your changes seem to go back to the same sensibilities as FO1/2 (though trying to be more balanced and taking into account the FP pov) and this struck me as weird.
I'm not sure what you mean. A lot of the light armors are effectively pointless for the player to wear. They have bad DT and low CND. They save some weight, but I think most players would rather have better armor. Adding skill/other bonuses to the light armors outfits makes wearing/not wearing them an actual choice instead of a no-brainer.
JESawyer 22 Jun 12
I think the issue that a lot of people have is more to do with the nature of the buffs. A lot of people think that Skill Bonuses are too much like enchantments in a fantasy game and not something the armor could realistically give the player.
I know what the issue is; I just don't think that it matters. If the bonuses are typically applied to items that are otherwise worthless, it's not detracting from the higher end items. Given the option to have the outfits or not have the outfits, I think most players would prefer to have the outfits. But if there's really no reason to wear them, the player's practical options get much more limited. I'd rather give the player more options and sacrifice some realism to do so.
JESawyer 23 Jun 12
I agree about the outfits but then why didn't you address that in the initial answer if you knew that that was everyone's issue? Just saying that RPGs benefit abstraction and mechanical balance over hyperrealism would help.
I honestly thought it was self-evident, unless someone thinks I believe that wearing an outfit in real-life actually makes you more skilled at tasks. I've answered a little over 2,700 questions on Formspring. In almost all cases where gameplay and realism are in conflict, I favor abstraction and mechanical balance over realism. 
Additionally, when anonymous people ask me questions, I have no idea if a follow-up question is being asked by the initial poster or not. For all I know, three separate people have asked me three separate questions on this topic. 
Finally, I wasn't quite sure what the initial person wanted to know, whether he or she wanted to know my basic goal or something more fundamental.
JESawyer responded to Krbin 23 Jun 12
Why the weight limit in Honest Hearts? Is it to prevent the player from pwning the unarmored tribals with heavy weapons and power armor?
It was mostly for flavor, honestly. When I went hiking in Zion I realized how important it was to pack light. I thought it would be interesting to tell the player he or she could only bring a fraction of his or her maximum carry weight. Even though you can get a bunch of new gear once you get into Zion, the process forces you to consider what you would keep if you could only take your favorite things for the trip. Mechanically, I also liked that it created a bunch of room for the player to grab new items in Zion.
JESawyer 24 Jun 12
Is there a version of Rome somewhere in the legion-held land (not in the game but in the canon)
No. That's specifically why Caesar says he wants to conquer NCR.
JESawyer 25 Jun 12
Did you consider other religions for Joshua Graham to follow (e.g. Christianity), or were you set with Mormonism? Was it a canon-related choice, preference, random decision, etc.?
I always intended him to be some type of post-apocalyptic Mormon, mostly due to the historical presence and influence of Mormons in Utah. In Van Buren, I thought it could be a subtle background thing that players could pick up on, not a major part of his personality. It wasn't until New Vegas/Honest Hearts that I thought he should be "returned to the fold" with the New Canaanites.
JESawyer responded to LeoJSaravak 25 Jun 12
Is Suki named after the character from Avatar: The Last Airbender? 
No. Suki is about 13 years old, so she predates the show.
JESawyer 25 Jun 12
Does it disappoint you to see people that think the factions in NV are so black and white? you've replied to a lot of questions regarding this opinion but I don't think you've mentioned how you feel about it.
No. Different individuals prioritize different elements of each faction, so I think that's actually a good thing. I do get tired of seeing people tell other folks that alternate opinions are "indefensible" or "impossible".
JESawyer 25 Jun 12
Is Logans Loophole a reference to Wolverine?
It's a reference to Logan's Run.
JESawyer 25 Jun 12
Have you ever read Das Kapital?
I read portions of it in college.
JESawyer 26 Jun 12
Why no hint of political movements in the NCR? For example the only political really defined is Kimball and that's only as an expansionist. Surely there must be an organized opposition.
Fallout: New Vegas isn't NCR: The Game. If it were set in NCR itself, getting into the various political sub-factions would make more sense, I think.
JESawyer 26 Jun 12
Are we supposed to believe the NCR has got working trains and machinery (Sloan) but no vehicles?
Where is that stated?
JESawyer responded to Fakult 26 Jun 12
Speaking of which, I'm guessing you've play Fallout three. Which of it's DLC packs did you like best?
I liked Point Lookout the most due to its mini-open world design.
JESawyer 27 Jun 12
Did the weapon's name "Embrace of the Mantis King!" derive from any sort of inspiration? Perhaps a 50's sci-fi giant insect movie?
Not from anything specific, but yeah I was going for a 50s sci-fi thing. Maybe it's because OWB was wrapping up/coming out at the time.
JESawyer 27 Jun 12
Why was the health scaling in old world blues so out of control?
Health scaling is difficult in the DLCs in general because they have to support a really huge range of levels and equipment. Characters could walk into Old World Blues or Lonesome Road at 3rd level or at 50th, so it makes balance difficult. 
We really did try to avoid making bullet sponge enemies. I don't think anyone here enjoys fighting them. Sometimes the level scaling and gear availability results in high HP enemies that take the player a long time to chip through, unfortunately.
JESawyer 27 Jun 12
Who did that gun inspection animation for Joshua Graham? That looked awesome and was pretty impressive, a lot of games don't have hand animations that good.
Seth McCaughey. I brought in my (unloaded, in case it needs to be said) Colt and went through the process with him, then he went buck wild. Seth did a lot of the weapon reload animations in F:NV and the DLCs. He also came up with the idea of the SMMG in Lonesome Road and was the creator of the hidden Gojira.
JESawyer responded to deuxhero 27 Jun 12
How did you do that with an "unloaded" colt? A gun is ALWAYS loaded, especially when it isn't.
No, a firearm is not always loaded. Firearm operators must handle a firearm as though it is loaded each and every time they handle one until they have positively verified the absence of ammunition from the chamber as well as the magazine/clip/cylinder. 
If firearm owners treated their firearms as if they were "for real" loaded at all times, they would never maintain them. Joshua Graham performs the same basic check most handgun owners do before performing maintenance: release the magazine, lock the slide back, visually check the chamber. Even though I am almost always the only person to handle my firearms, I check them every time I take them out -- from storage, from a case after transport -- any time, every time.
JESawyer 27 Jun 12
Are you a Theist? It's just that a big part of Honest Hearts seems to be about something pretty close to Mormonism, or is it just commentary on religion?
No. I believe there is no god/are no gods.
JESawyer 28 Jun 12
Do you think Australians are dumb, drunk & racist?
http://youtu.be/zs_rXxi0zhM
JESawyer responded to LeoJSaravak 28 Jun 12
For a non-theist, you have a pretty pessimistic view of humanity. I've heard a lot of 'atheists' who almost glorify/worship humanity and believe that our purpose is to create a utopia. Out of curiosity, what do you believe is our purpose as human beings?
I believe we are not designed, but an extraordinary occurrence. I don't think we have any purpose. We've been around for a very short time and may be around a bit longer. It's really up to us to decide what we want to do for the next billion years until the growing Sun burns all life off the face of the planet.
JESawyer 28 Jun 12
did you keep the Fo3 animations unchanged because you thought they are fine or because of time/budged reasons?
We changed a lot of F3 animations. Ones we didn't change were either because we thought were fine or we didn't have time to address them.
JESawyer 28 Jun 12
If you play the Elder Scrolls, what's your favorite race?
Breton. I'm not sure why, but that's always what I wind up playing.
JESawyer responded to LeoJSaravak 29 Jun 12
You have an interesting (and depressing) philosophy then, as I've never read anything quite like that before. Were you ever religious? Sorry for the personal questions, but I'm wondering if JG's contorting of his religion was something you used to do.
I have never been religious in the sense of being a theist, no. I have beliefs, including skepticism of assertions (e.g. "there is a higher power") that, for all practical purposes, are effectively beliefs. I cannot definitively prove the non-existence of many things, but I live my life as though these things do not exist. Here's someone much smarter than me saying it better: 
http://youtu.be/E1RqTP5Unr4
JESawyer 29 Jun 12
Who was the main writer of Dead Money? Were you part of its development? I woulda thought you were one of the main writers since its release was paired with Honest Hearts.
Chris Avellone did pretty much all (IIRC) of the writing in Dead Money.
JESawyer 30 Jun 12
What does Doc Mitchell mean when he says " I know what it's like to have something taken from you?" I thought you would reference this in a DLC but it never reappeared.
He's talking about Vault 21, which Mr. House won from the residents in a game of blackjack.
JESawyer 30 Jun 12
(Different guy) Do you know with absolute certainty that the world you perceive is real? You live your life as though the external world exists, even though you (seemingly) cannot be entirely sure. How do you justify favoring one uncertainty over another?
I don't know anything with absolute certainty. When I go to bed, I don't know with certainty that the sun will rise in the morning or that gravity will still operate in the same way. I'm pretty confident these things will happen and I have no reasonable indication that they won't. I've considered the likelihood of various ideas and continue life under the assumption that what seems most likely given my experience and understanding is true. As my experience and understanding change, I re-evaluate. That's all there is to it for me.
JESawyer 30 Jun 12
Ever play Dungeons and Dragons Shadow Over Mystara?
Yep. I've played Shadow over Mystara and Tower of Doom. I loved both games.
JESawyer 30 Jun 12
Got any more good songs like the "City Of New Orleans"?
http://youtu.be/hX1o1yLIvak
JESawyer 30 Jun 12
What kind of gear do you wear for motorcycle riding?
During summer commutes I wear a Cordura or leather motorcycle jacket (both Triumph brand) with ballistic armor inserts, Lee Parks deerskin gloves, Redwing boots, and an Arai Quantum II helmet. During the winter or when touring/adventure riding I wear Olympia AST touring gear with a Schuberth S1 helmet. I have a pair of cold weather gloves somewhere, but it's rare that I need to use them since I have grip warmers on my touring motorcycle. 
All of the gear has performed very well. With the exception of the Arai Quantum II, which I've been using for over seven years (it has visor latching problems), I should be able to continue using all of it for a long time.
JESawyer 30 Jun 12
One's life seems to be shaped by one's decisions. One's decisions seem to be shaped by one's beliefs. If one's beliefs are based on assumptions derived from a potentially misleading experience how can one rationally justify their choices? Need certainty.
I don't.
JESawyer responded to beefcorporation 30 Jun 12
Tell us about the cut intro scene. Why'd you guys pull the plug on that? It felt way more immersive than the one we have right now since it was in-game, on first-person view.
Simply put, we couldn't get it to work reliably. Chalk it up to unfamiliarity with the engine or something, but the scene would break 1/4 times if we were lucky. We tried to replicate the types of animated first-person scenes we saw in F3, but it just didn't work out.
JESawyer responded to dfuglestad 30 Jun 12
Could you clarify about the Legion in Utah? Jed mentions that Utah is chaotic wit warlords and tribes and "not like Arizona under Ceasar". However both Dead Sea "plucked from the shores of the great salt lake" and Vulpes are from Utah. How is this so? ty.
If Dead Sea were a tribal plucked from the shores of the Great Salt Lake and raised by the Legion, what would that make his parents? I'm not sure about Vulpes' origin. The Legion does not have a strong presence in Utah, though they do have contact with the tribes.
JESawyer 30 Jun 12
What kind of fool would bet their house on blackjack?
A vault full of compulsive gamblers who settle all disputes with games of chance.
JESawyer 30 Jun 12
Wait, you don't have a origin story for Vulpes?
I didn't create the character, nor did I write his dialogue. Ultimately, Vulpes doesn't fully explain his history in the game so as far as I'm concerned, whatever was in John G's head or in a document somewhere doesn't really matter.
JESawyer responded to Formspring 1 Jul 12
Do you follow any sports teams?
I am a fair weather fan of the Green Bay Packers, Boston Celtics, FC Bayern München, and the German and Argentine national soccer teams. I don't watch sports regularly, though.
JESawyer 1 Jul 12
But aren't you forgetting that Caesar explains Vulpes history?
He doesn't explain it in detail.
JESawyer responded to SonofHod 1 Jul 12
Were weapon skill requirements your idea?
Yeah. I liked the idea of soft requirements more than hard requirements.
JESawyer 1 Jul 12
So, did you think Prometheus was, thematically, a worthy successor to Alien?
Thematically, yes. It just had a terrible script.
JESawyer 2 Jul 12
What is the meaning behind Cass' House ending? Her heart skipped? Does that mean she liked what she saw or hated it? And it almost sounds like she killed herself, what with the "her last words" part.
You've have to ask Avellone.
JESawyer 2 Jul 12
Will you ever tell us what JG said to Salt Upon Wounds at the end?
No.
JESawyer 3 Jul 12
Was Big MT made because you weren't able to use Area 51? I think I saw someone say before you couldn't use Area 51 because Bethesda wanted to use it.
No. We never intended to use Area 51.
JESawyer 4 Jul 12
Verkaaft's mei Gwand 'I foahr in himmel
ok
JESawyer 4 Jul 12
Are you interested in using the Resource Wars as a focal point for a game?
Sure.
JESawyer 4 Jul 12
Would Caesars Legion ever have Triarii? Or is it based on Marian Reforms era military?
Veterans are the equivalent of triarii, Primes as principes, Recruits as hastati. Wealth and class are not parts of Caesar's Legion's structure, but experience and access to equipment are.
JESawyer 4 Jul 12
Any reason why you wont tell us what JG said to Salt Upon Wounds?
Years ago, Ridley Scott changed Blade Runner. He decided to change an ambiguous aspect of the central character to something not ambiguous at all. The movie that Blade Runner fans fell in love with because of that central uncertainty lost something because the author simply changed his mind years after the fact. 
I think that authors of content should leave the interpretive aspects of their narrative work alone once it goes out into the world for consumption. I think we should discuss it, argue about it, but we shouldn't try to re-frame it. It shouldn't really matter whether what's there is intentional or accidental. It's what's in the game and what the player experiences that matter. 
Even describing, in broad strokes, what we had intended for Legion content was pretty distasteful, IMO. We had our shot to tell some stories. If I feel the need to scoot additional information at the audience outside of the content they paid money for, I'm just heaping failure upon failure -- made worse by asserting the importance of my opinions as the project director after the fact. My authority ended when the game went out the door. For better or worse, what's there is there.
JESawyer 5 Jul 12
Why bother answering any questions about narrative/lore/etc. then?
Clarification and debate are good as long as they are dealing with published material. Adding in absent/external narrative information is problematic, IMO. It causes problems for future authors in the setting (e.g. Bethesda) and can dramatically alter interpretations of the work. In the Blade Runner example I gave, Ridley Scott effectively altered the entire perception of Deckard's character by inserting a few seconds of the character's dream. I don't think that's fair to the audience.
JESawyer 5 Jul 12
How important is Testacles the Debug Centurion to the overall story of New Vegas?
Crucial.
JESawyer 5 Jul 12
Why do you put ballistic armor in your motorcycle jacket?
Ballistic armor is common in motorcycle jackets. It helps protect against impacts. The leather is there to protect against abrasion.
JESawyer 6 Jul 12
I don't think your argument makes sense though. You say that asserting the importance of your opinion after the fact is distasteful because it's out of your hands, but you attribute power and primacy to Scott's recuts of Blade Runner.
I certainly don't give any power to Scott's recuts; Scott does, as do many audience members. Because a subset of the audience gives power to authorial intent even when the author thinks it's irrelevant, there is no such thing as an authorial statement that cannot be given power. The greatest power I have as an author who rejects the importance authorial intent is to *remain silent* on interpretive matters or information that falls outside the boundaries of the work itself. 
Often people will ask me to make a statement about what I consider to be the "true" ending to F:NV. When I decline, many follow up with an assurance that they won't take it as a canonical ending, but that misses the point. Once I've made a public statement about something, it is available for any individual to reject or give power to.
JESawyer 6 Jul 12
You say that you're okay with people seeing your opinion of how the game is but you're not okay with people seeing your opinion when you're saying which ending you feel is most "right" or "true" or whatever. Why so inconsistent?
I don't know what the first half of your sentence means.
JESawyer 6 Jul 12
Was the achievement "rocket's red glare" named for the passage in the things they carried? It would make sense, given the violent and humorously bleak nature of Fallout
I don't know; I didn't name the LR achievements and I'm not sure who did.
JESawyer 6 Jul 12
You said that you don't mind telling people your interpretation of the game because it's just an opinion or an argument, but your opinions and arguments about some things are apparently off limits.
No, I *do* mind telling people my interpretation/intent. Clarification is not the same as interpretation. F:NV is a large game, and there are often (as evidenced by many of the questions I receive) many players who miss things or who haven't played all of the games in the series. 
As an example, people have often yelled at me about Caesar's attitude toward women. People often conflate the attitudes and behavior of legionaries with what Caesar says and does. Sometimes this is because the player shot Caesar in the face immediately or didn't talk to Caesar about women. I have no problem talking about the things individual legionaries or Caesar say/do in the game to distinguish their behavior. It's still up to the player to decide how to interpret these things. 
I have also had people tell me that they think Joshua Graham is Catholic. I have no problem stating that Joshua Graham recites from the KJV bible (which, generally speaking, Catholics are not very fond of), that he also quotes the Book of Mormon, and that he refers to soteriological concepts that are found in Mormonism. These are all things that players can see and verify for themselves in the shipped game.
JESawyer 6 Jul 12
I think you're making the mistake of assuming that you, as the author, are special. There are people who still love Blade Runner and reckon Deckard wasn't a replicant and discard the cuts. There are people who ignore FO3. We're not so delicate.
No, I am not. I only recognize that I am the author (broadly speaking) and that others who read my comments may recognize that. Different people give different levels of authority to statements based on who makes them. It doesn't matter how one individual person asking a question will receive my answer. The problem is how anyone *may* receive my answer.
JESawyer 6 Jul 12
What's the difference between clarifying your interpretation of the content on here/through your mod and the Scott/Blade Runner example?
I don't interpret content on here or in my mod. If you don't see the difference between the sort of fixes I made in my mod, or the sort of questions I answer here, and Ridley Scott inserting the footage he did into Blade Runner, I don't think further questions on this topic will be beneficial to either of us.
JESawyer 7 Jul 12
I don't think it is reasonable for you to take responsibility for the possible ways in which other people may or may not interpret your comments. You might as well cease all communication with other people, as they may misinterpret your statements. Silly.
Great. See ya.
JESawyer 7 Jul 12
What is the difference though? I mean really. The author recutting the content, at most, provides another perspective. It might be a perspective we disagree with entirely. It probably will be. But the different perspective might provide some insight.
It's the difference between fixing a busted conditional on a minor character's side dialogue branch and inserting new content absent from the release that turns the main character of a film from a human into a robot. See also: George "Greedo Shot First" Lucas.
JESawyer 7 Jul 12
sorry this keeps being brought up, but even with the recent final cut, the film is still ambiguous. it's never directly stated in the film that deckard is a replicant.the dream sequence is about as telling as the removed stock footage ending(which sucked
You're in luck! Ridley Scott directly said that Deckard is a replicant in an interview. So if you thought your interpretation was in any way valid, he's solved that for you. 
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/movies/30kapl.html?_r=2&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin 
This is exactly why I think making comments of that sort is terrible and insulting to the audience.
JESawyer responded to scathoob 7 Jul 12
Now there is no need for me to see Blade Runner. You guys thoroughly discussed its premise and secrets at length. :/
Actually there is a need to see Blade Runner because pretty much any version of it owns and you're a huge nooblord if you put off seeing it any longer. Peace.
JESawyer 7 Jul 12
Why did you include rape in New Vegas considering its triggering effect? The first game did just fine without it, yours could have as well.
what
JESawyer 8 Jul 12
Elaborating: Rape in fiction can be a trauma trigger. Your game has Cook Cook raping left and right. I want to understand why you thought this was necessary and important, considering Fallout didn't have this, not even when Tandi was kidnapped.
Anything that has been traumatic for an individual can be a trauma trigger when portrayed in a fictional environment. Fallout's recurring theme is "War never changes." Rape is an element of war (often a conscious and intentional tool of war) and is often an element of post-apocalyptic fiction used to show the depravity of humanity in the absence of law (e.g. The Road Warrior features rape directly, albeit viewed through a telescope). F:NV features two major powers engaged in an extremely brutal conflict with myriad small groups (like the Fiends) taking advantage of the chaos. They engage in a full spectrum of cruelty against each other including crucifixion, limb mutilation, torture, booby trapping wounded soldiers (and corpses), mass irradiation, enslavement, and yes, rape.
JESawyer 8 Jul 12
Isn't 'Vulpes' plural? Shouldn't it be Vulpe Inculta?
No. Nominative singular and plural is "vulpes". "Vulpe" is the singular ablative. Some of the Romance languages that borrowed the word dropped the "s" for their singular form (cf. Italian "volpe", Romanian "vulpe").
JESawyer 8 Jul 12
But I already read 'Electric Sheep'. What more does the movie adaption have to offer me.
Sick Spinners flying around 2019 Los Angeles, Rutger Hauer being cool as hell, and peak Sean Young.
JESawyer 8 Jul 12
Why did you donate to Tropes Vs Women? If you've watched Anita's videos, you'd notice she often does very little research into what she is arguing against or misses the point completely. That's not someone you should trust with your money.
Wow there seems to be an awful lot of surrogate concern over how other people donate small amounts of money to people on the internet these days. I don't share your concerns.
JESawyer responded to seasparrow 8 Jul 12
Vault 34: Challengingly good player-positive puzzle and layout, or poorly designed, player-punishing, unintuitive and confusing-in-a-bad-way map?
Vault 34 owns.
JESawyer 8 Jul 12
Were you ever in Scouts?
I was in Cub Scouts and then in Boy Scouts for a while (Troop 137 in Fort Atkinson, WI).
JESawyer 8 Jul 12
you donated to anita? -_________-
Yep.
JESawyer responded to LeoJSaravak 9 Jul 12
Were you one of the people who donated out of true belief in her ability to create meaningful videos, or were you one of the people who donated because you were trying to salvage some respect for the collective male gamer community after the RAGE on utube
As I wrote in another response, I had already seen some of her other videos and thought they were good. The reaction to her Kickstarter is what made me aware of that specific project. In my development career, I have struggled (and continue to struggle) against a number of developers, publishers, and gamers to create female characters who are not Male Gazey as hell. It's a topic that has been important to me since I started in the industry 13 years ago.
JESawyer 9 Jul 12
Why does This Machine have such terrible spread? Even in today's time the M1 Garand is worth its salt as an accurate battle rifle.
Because it destroys the universe even with that spread. It doesn't need to be more accurate than it is.
JESawyer responded to ohmygodjcabomb 9 Jul 12
Did you liked Deus Ex:Human Revolution ? Do you think it holds up to original ?
Yes. I thought it was excellent. The only aspects I didn't like were the dialogue "battles", the balance of some of the Praxis upgrades, and how the branching ending was handled. Otherwise, I thought it was a fantastic game.
JESawyer responded to Fakult 9 Jul 12
Why didn't you like Deus Ex's dialogue battles if you don't mind me asking? I thought they were one of the better aspects of the game.
They are puzzles with a fixed number of answers producing a beneficial outcome. As such, they are in conflict with giving the player role-playing agency. E.g., no one goes into the conversation with Zeke Sanders with any rational motivation to do anything other than save Josie. I.e., players have no sense that the game would, in any way, reward them for an outcome in which Josie dies. It puts the player's game goals in potential conflict with the player's role-playing goals. 
I prefer the Alpha Protocol-style dialogue structures in which the majority of paths through dialogue result in a series of benefits and drawbacks that mostly forecast themselves. This frees the player to role-play the sort of character he or she wants to play knowing that the game will consistently support (via appropriate benefits and drawbacks) those choices. 
N.B.: I did not work on any aspect of AP's dialogue or story.
JESawyer 9 Jul 12
If the girls at Gomorrah aren't 'real' slaves (IE chattel) and just kept in place with drug addiction and the threat of violence, how come Dazzle talks about being 'bought' by the Omertas from her parents?
The Omertas buying Dazzle isn't in conflict with her not being their legal property. Human trafficking goes on constantly today and it's all (obviously) illegal.
JESawyer responded to Fakult 9 Jul 12
So you didn't enjoy the outcomes or motivations of the dialogue battles. Did you at least enjoy their execution? I thought being forced to sort of "read" the conversation and the person you were talking to was an interesting angle to take.
I thought they were well-written and presented; I just didn't like the game aspect of them. I don't like forcing narrative on players or bribing them to "read' it (e.g. Mass Effect giving XP bonuses for clicking on Codex entries). If players enjoy the story, they'll read it on their own. However, I do think that all game choices should require player consideration to get their own optimal outcome. 
For me, the combination of these goals points toward dialogues with shorter start-to-finish player length, no recursive branching, and more significant player choices from node to node.
JESawyer 9 Jul 12
Isn't this kind of an apples and oranges thing? The DX:HR dialog system is basically an enhancement of the standard RPG binary-outcome persuasion skill. It's a tool for solving defined problems. AP's dialogs are a mechanic for navigating the game's story.
Yes, they are two different things, but that doesn't mean they can't be compared. I prefer the latter to the former. Speech-as-skill-unlock (F:NV) and dialogue puzzles (DX:HR) are two ways of achieving the same thing: an optimal/"correct" answer that gives the player the best game results. In an RPG, I believe such systems wind up conflicting with the player's role-playing desires. This was actually the main subject of my GDC talk this year. 
http://diogenes-lamp.info/GDC12_Do_Say_The_Right_Thing.pdf
JESawyer 9 Jul 12
How do you feel about the recent article in the Salt Lake Tribune about private houses potentially being built on private land within in Zion National Park?
Terrible. It took continuous efforts by conservationists like John Muir, determined presidents like the Roosevelts, and wealthy individuals like J.D. Rockefeller, Jr. to preserve the national parks we have. We shouldn't be carving them up for private interests.
JESawyer 10 Jul 12
Did you guys ever think about a New Game+ option similar to Dark Souls (PS have you played Dark Souls)
We have often talked about options like that, but never had time to implement them. I have played Demon's Souls and Dark Souls, but neither to completion.
JESawyer 11 Jul 12
I've got myself a hand-cannon and yet I can't get through a rickety door cus it's "locked." Shouldn't different features have more interactivity with each other?
If you have a hammer and a screwdriver, but you can hammer in screws as well as nails, there's no reason to have the screwdriver. 
Apply this to Guns and Lockpicking and I hope it's clear why we didn't allow players to just smash down/blow up/shoot apart every locked object they came across.
JESawyer 11 Jul 12
You know the House ending is pretty vague. Was that intentional?
It doesn't seem vague at all to me.
JESawyer 11 Jul 12
Doesn't the House ending tidy things up a little to much?
@_@
JESawyer 11 Jul 12
Were the Souls games too hard? Is there such a thing as too hard?
No, but they take a long time to play. I just didn't have the time to devote to them.
JESawyer 11 Jul 12
In a previous post, you talk about "creat[ing) female characters who are not Male Gazey as hell" and how that's important to you. Would you mind elaborating on that and your concerns regarding that subject? Thank you! DF
Jacques Lacan developed theories around the concept of "gaze", that the act of looking is driven by our desires. Many years later, Laura Mulvey proposed that much of cinema was driven by the "male gaze". Put briefly, she opined that a great deal of what what wound up in the final imagery of the film (character design, posing, camera position, shot transitions) was driven by heterosexual male desires. This is not too surprising upon examination since "western" society, in which cinema developed rapidly, was dominated by men. 
Though many societies continue to be dominated by men, they are (in my opinion) not dominated by men as much. However you want to quantify it, the power of women relative to men in "western liberal" societies has increased since, say, 1975, when Laura Mulvey's essay was published (more or less -- in some ways American women had more power in the 80s than now). Despite this, a lot (but certainly not all) of our popular media continues to be designed almost unconsciously for the male gaze. This is probably most obvious in comic books, but video games are also clearly oriented in similar ways. 
Women make up an increasing percentage of gamers. They also, traditionally, have had a significant presence among RPG gamers. Because of this, I think it's important to consider not just how much the average male gamer likes a character design, but to consider if that design will be *disliked* by the average female gamer. A design should be appealing, but some designs go so far in a particular direction that another portion of the audience is alienated. 
A big part of design -- game design or otherwise -- is consideration of how the audience will react to what we show them. Often designers, and artists, design things off of a traditional basis. There's nothing inherently wrong with this unless the traditional basis no longer serves the role it once did. 
On F:NV, Veronica and Cass were designed to look like they fit in with the rest of the wasteland. Were there immediately PC mods to make them look like pornstars? Sure. No surprises there, but I don't think that the game would have sold more copies if they looked like that in the shipped game. Given the number of women who played F:NV, I'd guess that a fair number of them would be pretty put off by those designs. I want women AND men to play the games I make, so I don't want to push some of them into the "will not buy" category because of character designs. 
If you want to make a game that intentionally appeals to a specific market, you can make choices to exclude the people you don't care about. Dr. Pepper Ten is marketed this way. Fine. But often what I see are not thoughtful choices, but thoughtless parroting of old ideas. In my experience, when asked, most developers will say that they're not trying to put off female gamers, but they are seemingly unaware of (or in denial about) how their choices do just that. Essays, presentations, video blogs, etc. that break down these processes for analysis help us consider why we make the choices we make. Even when we disagree, it puts our minds into a self-critical mode, which is where I always prefer to be.
JESawyer 12 Jul 12
What do you think of the rising costs of AAA game development? Do you think it could eventually risk causing a total crash of AAA game development?
It already is. People are already talking about "AAAA" development and I think it's getting pretty absurd.
JESawyer 12 Jul 12
Why separate the songs between multiple radio stations?
Some people go berserk over listening to country music, so I separated the songs across stations.
JESawyer 12 Jul 12
It seems that the industry is making quick strides to appeal to not only a larger female audience, but also a somewhat left-of-centre political mindset or worldview (IMHO); do you think that really indepth, confronting intellectual games, far more cerebra
I think the game industry overall has generally been "left"-leaning. There are many potential reasons for this, but an obvious correlation is that most developers are in urban areas and urban areas tend to vote Democrat. That said, many games promote or implicitly validate "right"-leaning worldviews, especially military-oriented titles.
JESawyer responded to Roeex 13 Jul 12
Why did you guys decide to dump the BoS armor design from Fallout 3?
We didn't. Both the T-45d and T-51b armors are in F:NV. We didn't include F3's Enclave armors because the Enclave played a small, specific role in F:NV.
JESawyer 13 Jul 12
Do you think that Tropes Vs. Women deciding an opinion before playing any games is poor form, regardless of the lack of claim to scientific study?
No.
JESawyer 13 Jul 12
Out of all the potential Marty Robbins songs, why Big Iron?
...
JESawyer responded to Denis517 13 Jul 12
Has bethesda or obsidian ever considered hiring the men and women working on mods for fallout 3, skyrim, and new vegas? A lot of the mod makers seem very experienced with the engines. Some even up to the point where they are better than other developers.
Yes. We hired Jorge "Oscuro" Salgado in large part due to his work on Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul (OOO). He's also a great guy who is very smart, which helps.
JESawyer responded to SerMcWorst 13 Jul 12
Worst and best reactions to your pitch at a publisher's meeting?
The best reaction is always one that ends with signing the project. I basically ignore any positive reaction that occurs during or immediately after a publisher's meeting because 100% of the time it has no bearing on actually moving forward. A bad reaction can end the process very quickly, but a positive reaction is virtually meaningless outside of saying, "Well, we're not stopping this second." 
This applies to most business dealings in general, but if you ever have to interact with a publisher, it's worthwhile to remember this: nothing anyone says means anything until a contract is signed. Even that only goes so far. 
The worst reaction I've had is someone paying attention to their phone and then falling asleep during the presentation. Other people from the same company were quite positive on it overall, but yeah.
JESawyer responded to LeoJSaravak 13 Jul 12
Does Oscuro still work at Obsidian?
Yep.
JESawyer 13 Jul 12
just a follow up to the lockpicking/guns question someone posted, isn't giving players multiple options to solve solve problems what rpgs are all about?
Yes, except that giving a player multiple skills to open a locked door when one of the skills is for opening locks and the other skill is for killing enemies *and opening locks* actually reduces the number of sensible player builds. Why put points into Lockpick if you can shoot something open? Any solution that involves randomly destroying loot is pointless if a) loot isn't involved (e.g. a door) b) you can reload. It's an awful lot of mental contortion to fulfill the desire to just spend points on weapon skills and not on utility skills. 
The "realism" argument is similarly baffling. Unless players interested in this change genuinely desire realism across the board (reduce carry weight and health by 80%, make radiation damage virtually impossible to remove, etc.) I perceive it as a disingenuous argument. The genuine argument almost always comes down to, "I want to open locks but I don't want to spend points on Lockpick." 
That's fine, but design exists to create a conflict, to present a series of trade-offs to the player. A lot of players wish there were no carry limit. If there were no carry limit, weight values would have no meaning, so any aspect of decision-making related to it would become irrelevant. 
If you spend points in Lockpick, congrats: you get to open locks. You chose to not spend points on something else, meaning you sacrificed something for that ability. If you didn't spend points in Lockpick, that's too bad. You don't get to open things with skill requirements that fall outside of chems' and magazines' bonus-granting abilities.
JESawyer responded to SonofHod 13 Jul 12
The "realism must be across the board" counter argument is equally disingenuous, as all things you mentioned are unrealistic to make gameplay easier and flow better. And shooting out a lock wouldn't replace lockpick for the same reason it doesn't IRL,
No, it's not a "disingenuous" counter. If a person makes an argument for a feature because it's realistic, it begs the question of why they don't want other things to be realistic. If the person wants a feature because it makes the gameplay easier and flow better (subjective), he or she shouldn't use realism as an argument because it confuses the issue. And that's what I said: if someone wants to be able to blow locks off with weapons because you don't want to put points into Lockpick or play the lockpicking minigame, just say so. I still think it's a bad idea, but at least the people involved would be arguing on the same topic. 
I'm not sure where you're going with the second statement. My first thought is, "Because it doesn't actually work unless you're using shotgun slugs or breeching rounds," but I don't think that's what you were going to say. 
http://www.theboxotruth.com/docs/bot5.htm 
Please use the comments section of this answer to elaborate if you'd like.
JESawyer 14 Jul 12
Is there any reason that the gauss rifle became an energy weapon in fallout 3 and nv? i really miss blasting people in half.
I can't speak for the Bethesda folks who made F3, but for F:NV the Gauss Rifle was an Energy Weapon because Guns users have the Anti-Materiel Rifle. Both weapons fill a similar role: high DAM, low rate of fire sniping.
JESawyer 16 Jul 12
When you went to pitch games, did you sit around in a conference room or were there times in you pitched in a more casual setting like a restaurant?
Pitches almost always take place in the most corporate publishery conference rooms you can imagine.
JESawyer 16 Jul 12
Will you be working on Wasteland 2 and how do you think your experience with the fallout series will affect that?
I am not working on Wasteland 2. I donated to the Kickstarter but that's about it.
JESawyer 17 Jul 12
You've stated before the Legion holds no citizens but rather "non citizen inhabitants of Legion controlled lands." Isn't the fact they are under an organization that holds a monopoly of legitimate force, make them de facto citizenship?
Not implicitly. I don't know why you'd assume that.
JESawyer 17 Jul 12
Were you in favor of or opposed to the needs (eat/drink/sleep) in hardcore mode? Would you've done something differently about them?
I wanted to have the "needs" there because I played S.T.A.L.K.E.R. CoP and liked them in that game. The main thing I would do now would be to re-tune the rates as well as the availability of food and drink (which is what I did in the JSawyer mod).
JESawyer responded to seasparrow 18 Jul 12
Where there ever any plans to make a Vegas monorail that the player could ride? I think the game engine could do it, given the existence of the F3 DLC "Broken Steel" Presidential Metro cars, which were working trains that the player could travel in.
No. I'm pretty sure that all F3/F:NV examples of being a passenger in a moving platform/car are all instances where the entire world moves around the player. E.g., I think the elevator in the Washington Monument stays in a fixed position while the monument itself and the mall around it move up and down. I know that's what's happening in Lonesome Road. The angled platform is actually holding still while the level moves around it.
JESawyer 18 Jul 12
In Fallout 1 and 2 you could choose a perk and distribute your skillpoints whenever you wanted, but in Fallout 3 you were forced to do this at leveling up. why didn't you change this in NV?
It wasn't a priority.
JESawyer 18 Jul 12
Do you think that balancing out all of the weapon types is beneficial to RPGs? Is there any difference between guns and energy weapons when both types get all tiers/types of weapons? Would it not be interesting not to have a tier x gun or a tier y en weap
Guns and EWs aren't always matched weapon for weapon, tier for tier, but yes there is a lot of overlap. One of the things I suggested on my blog was to merge Guns and EWs*, reduce the overall number of weapons, and make most of the EWs higher-end. This would allow EWs to feel more powerful (a common request), remove redundant weapons that exist only to bridge skill gaps, and would keep similar gameplay weapons grouped together by skill. 
* I also suggested merging Unarmed and Melee, so the three weapon skills would be Guns, Melee, and Explosives. 
http://twofoldsilence.diogenes-lamp.info/2012/02/fallout-weapon-skills.html
JESawyer 18 Jul 12
Is what Graham said to Salt-Upon Wounds something we can find out for ourselves eventually(translate), or is it a nonsense phrase that will forever remain a mystery?
It's not nonsense.
JESawyer 18 Jul 12
Is Roger Westin III on the Boulder City memorial (FNV) the grandson of Roger Westin from Fallout 2? -Ant2242
HMM.
JESawyer 18 Jul 12
Who wrote Caesar? He has to be the most complex, polarizing, intriguing, and intelligent "antagonist" I've ever had the pleasure of encountering. He truly challenges society to be better and improve, which in ways makes him a hero while being a villain.
John Gonzalez.
JESawyer 19 Jul 12
Do you like romances in games?
I like things that are executed well. Most romances are executed clumsily, so no. The only romance I've ever liked in a game was Ben and Mo's in Full Throttle.
JESawyer 19 Jul 12
Why are so many of the perks passive bonuses rather than active?
Please elaborate on how you define a perk as passive or active.
JESawyer responded to Limmiegirl 19 Jul 12
What prevented you from implementing the EW-Guns merge? Technical constrains (time, etc), or resistance from fans, Bethesda or the rest of the team?
I didn't consider further merging of skills until after the game had been released. The idea is based on individual pieces of feedback from players as well as my own observations about how things worked out.
JESawyer 19 Jul 12
Mass Effect 3, as you may (or may not!) know finally released their new endings a little while ago. How do you think they compare to the originals, and do you think it was "correct" of BioWare to change them after seeing how disappointed the fans were?
Much broader than the ME3 ending, but really talking about how artists/authors/directors/creators interact with critics: 
http://twofoldsilence.diogenes-lamp.info/2012/07/art-and-appreciation_19.html
JESawyer 20 Jul 12
why wasn't Walker defeated in the recall if the effort was put in to get another election in place. if you didn't like the other candidate choices the entire thing was pointless. crazy wisconsinites
Inexplicably, many people assumed Russ Feingold was going to run. Once it was clear he would not, there wasn't a tremendous amount of cooperation among the Democrats in finding and supporting a viable candidate. In my opinion, many Democrat supporters were often exceedingly hostile and petty. I do not think the behavior of these worst elements endeared moderates/undecided voters to their cause.
JESawyer 20 Jul 12
Don't you think that rather than merging the skills though, they could simply be expanded upon via perks and MADE more unique? I ask this as someone who absolutely HATES the constant merging going on in Elder Scrolls and doesn't wanna see more.
I don't think perks would change the underlying gameplay of the weapons, but I think they could be made more distinctive through the development of new projectile properties for EW types. Maybe laser weapons bounce off of hard material surfaces. Maybe plasma weapons burn or pass through some material types. Maybe coil/rail/gauss projectiles pass through multiple targets. Changes of that sort would make the shooting gameplay for those weapons intrinsically different from standard guns. 
That said, I don't it's sensible to be inherently opposed to skill merging. Reductio ad absurdum applied to skill merging or skill explosion eventually produces skill sets that are undesirable by almost everyone. The number of skills present in the game should, in my opinion, reflect the number of distinct gameplay types that can receive consistent utility throughout the game. Obviously it's the designers' responsibility to support that gameplay, but they also have to balance their tasks to the amount of time available to them.
JESawyer 20 Jul 12
That's my entire point. Why should assumptions take place in a mass decision like this? Not only did Walker remain, but it further hurt the cause of those against him and makes Wisconsin somewhat of a swing state. This was clearly badly co-ordinated.
I agree with most of what you wrote except the part about Wisconsin as a swing state. A significant number of the people who voted to keep Walker in office also said that they planned to vote for Obama. Many people voted to keep Walker in because they opposed the recall itself. There's always the possibility that Wisconsin could go to a Republican candidate, but I think it's unlikely. 
I think the attitude and environment were different in 2003 when Grey Davis was recalled. California is a direct democracy state so people here are used to going to the polls pretty regularly. Also, I don't think I knew a single person who supported Davis. Walker clearly benefited heavily from anti-union sentiment. In contrast, a vote for Davis wasn't really a vote against a disliked group. I think most voters saw him as a guy who wasn't helping people out.
JESawyer 20 Jul 12
i have come to ask the question of questions, that horrible thought that makes you toss and turn in the night. why is 10 of spades not also 10 of spades in the collectible card deck? i mean it just seems so obvious
(spoilers) 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_6560AW1zQ#t=13s
JESawyer 21 Jul 12
Why wasn't there an AK-47 in fallout new vegas?
There was no real need. There wasn't a large caliber automatic weapon in the core game, but the Automatic Rifle filled that role in Dead Money. 
I conceive of weapons largely through usage/application, then back out to what the weapon actually will be, if that makes sense. I thought there should be a high RoF, accurate, scoped rifle that did modest DAM and good DPS. The result was the Marksman Carbine. When I thought of a weapon that would make a good high caliber, not-so-accurate automatic rifle, I decided on the Automatic Rifle (essentially a modified BAR). 
Once a role is filled, I generally avoid making weapons that fill the same role at the same tier. While there could just as easily have been an AK-47 as an Automatic Rifle (setting aside what caliber it would be), it doesn't make much sense to have both. They're obviously very different from each other in details, but from a broad usage/role perspective, they're both automatic, high caliber rifles.
JESawyer 21 Jul 12
'Ignoring' the horrific tragedy in Aurora (perhaps that's worded in poor taste) , what were your thoughts on TDKR?
I'm probably not going to see The Dark Knight Rises. I don't like Christopher Nolan's scripts.
JESawyer 23 Jul 12
Why were the design documents for Van Buren released, other than to get the folks at No Mutants Allowed riled up?
I don't know who released them.
JESawyer 23 Jul 12
Do you think modern game designers are too worried about "balance," something that arguably makes games more boring? Honestly, I think the imbalances of old games made them crazy fun. Who really cares if a game without direct competition is balanced?
No. I'd guess the people who care are the players who make choices that, due to design's carelessness, lead to frustrating, dead-end gameplay experiences.
JESawyer 23 Jul 12
could you elaborate on why you don't like nolans scripts a bit more? I mean i undersand if its due to clunky overexpository dialogue, and tkdr does admittedly have some plot holes but i personally believe they dont detract from the film that much
I responded in the comments section of the original question, but with the Batman films, it's essentially due to the blunt exposition and lack of subtext. In The Dark Knight, almost every major character explicitly describes his or her role in the film (e.g. "I am an agent of chaos."). If you didn't catch what was happening at the end, Commissioner Gordon explains it to his child. The only real reason to include this sort of exposition is if you think your audience is as clueless as Gordon's kid. 
The characterization is fine, it's just shallow. You pretty much get everything you ever need to get out of any given character from what they say, which I find uninteresting as a viewer. Characters like the Joker also don't interest me very much. They fall into the category of "just plain ol' zany". The performances were very good, but I didn't enjoy the writing at all. 
I enjoyed The Prestige a great deal despite the heavy exposition, in part because I felt the characters were easier to relate to. I liked Batman Begins well enough, but by the end of The Dark Knight, I was over the series.
JESawyer 24 Jul 12
Does your experience with Nolan's films help you understand the frustration classic RPG players have with Obsidian's output?
No, but tell me all about it.
JESawyer responded to Lancehead 24 Jul 12
Can you explain the reasoning behind weight allowance? What are the primary considerations when determining that number (or equation, rather)? Also, when is it preferable to choose a limited inventory space system (e.g. Deus Ex) over weight allowance?
I think weight allowance is something that needs to be analyzed along with other system goals. The primary reasoning is that if things have weight and you have a carry limit, the weight of things you choose to carry is a strategic consideration. The problem is that the relationship between weight and value (usually tactical) is not directly proportional. Especially when it comes to weapons, you can get into a weird cost-benefit analysis that often doesn't make sense. 
E.g. the Minigun in F:NV is a pretty good weapon. It's also very heavy. Is it better than the Anti-Materiel Rifle or Brush Gun? In certain circumstances, yes, but it's not "objectively" better. Three weapons with different tactical applications at roughly the same level of power, but one weighs much more than the others. 
An even more extreme case is the Fat Man. In the original release of F:NV, the Fat Man did pretty modest damage, but it still weighed a ton. The patched version increased the damage a lot and GRA introduced "low-end" ammo for it, but ultimately its use wasn't particularly tactical. For 99% of all fights, players kept the Fat Man jammed in their back pockets, only pulling it out when they effectively didn't want to fight. 
DX:HR illustrates this conflict even more clearly. The Rocket Launcher and even the Sniper Rifle are huge weapons. Carrying them around is a large strategic liability, and their usage/applicability in any given scenario is often either pointless or overkill. 
This can also cause consideration conflicts in armor. In F:NV, heavy armor protected better than light armor, but it slowed the player down and weighed more. The consideration was not simply DT/movement, but DT/movement/weight, which motivated more people to use light or medium armor. In the original Fallout, protection generally increased with weight (excepting Metal Armor, sort of), so there was a strategic trade-off, but that effectively ended with Power Armor. PA and HPA granted +3 ST, so the increased weight of the armor was offset by the player's adjusted max carry. Practically speaking, this meant there was no good reason to use Combat Armor or Brotherhood Combat Armor once you gained PA or HPA. 
What does all of this mean? It means I think we (myself included) often take weight allowance and item weights (or slots, or whatever abstraction) for granted instead of considering how they influence players' strategic decisions.
JESawyer 24 Jul 12
Was the non-Van Graff black combat armor that you find at the destroyed caravan intentional? Because I was relieved you can get cool-looking black combat armor without being affiliated with those Van Graff jerks...
No idea. I think Rob Lee or Jesse Farrell set those encounters up.
JESawyer 25 Jul 12
Got any favorite philosophers? Least favorite?
Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Umberto Eco (though I honestly haven't read much of his non-fiction), and Friedrich Nietzsche. 
I've never been a huge fan Marx's predictive philosophy, probably because so much of the work of the men I just listed involves separation from definitive narratives. We have so much difficulty being certain that we can have faith in what we know (or I do, at least) that looking forward with predictive confidence seems beyond reason.
JESawyer 25 Jul 12
First Recon must be some pretty awesome dudes if they can snipe without scopes.
First Recon are more akin to a squad of sharpshooter skirmishers than snipers.
JESawyer 25 Jul 12
Could you expand on Marx's "Predictive philosophy"? From what I've read of Marx, he doesn't seem to be into predictions.
Briefly, that capitalism will eventually give rise to socialism, which will in turn give rise to classless communism. These are expressed in terms of inevitability. More than Marx himself, many 20th and 21st century Marxists have entrenched this into their own orthodox interpretations of dialectical materialism. I have read several self-professed Marxist conversations in which the participants debate about how to interpret events in contemporary society that point toward charted socialist or communist endpoints. It comes across as more prophecy than philosophy or historiography.
JESawyer 26 Jul 12
Why do you read Nietzsche?
Perspectivism is a key element of many subsequent philosophers' work, including Derrida and Foucault.
JESawyer 26 Jul 12
Nietzsche inspired Adolf Hitler. Disgusting.
Cool. You should probably read some books.
JESawyer responded to Gersal 26 Jul 12
u r smarat
http://youtu.be/nR8AsFBC0LI
JESawyer responded to Mirokunite 26 Jul 12
How about Immanuel Kant?
I never read that much Kant.
JESawyer 26 Jul 12
besides the predictive philosophy what do you think about the basic idea Marx had?
Analyzing history as class struggle is valid and useful. I think the theoretical aspects break down for me when private ownership is removed. Capitalism mechanically entrenches power, but it is certainly not the only method by which power can be given or taken by individuals. The true power of a leader is his or her ability to motivate others to devote their volition to the will of the leader. In any society where power ostensibly resides with the populace, demagogues can wield tremendous authority even in a completely unofficial capacity. Giving someone a theoretically equal share in the means of production is no guarantee that they won't willfully surrender it in the future.
JESawyer 27 Jul 12
Favorite episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000?
Mighty Jack or Pod People. 
http://youtu.be/TF2KMcI5nYg
JESawyer responded to ohmygodjcabomb 27 Jul 12
Did you worked on Kotor 2 ?
No.
JESawyer 27 Jul 12
What made you decide to put DR back on the armors in your mod? Was there a general formula or principle you used, similar to the tiers used for the weapons?
Heavy and medium armors were not used as much because they were penalized both by carry weight and movement speed. Medium armors got roughly 1% DR for every two points of DT they had. Heavy armors got roughly 1% DR for each point of DT they had. There was a fair amount of variation in that, but I believe those were my general guidelines.
JESawyer 27 Jul 12
Do you have a favorite NPC in the Icewind Dale series? I still love Firtha Kerdos and her "happy" cat.
Maralie Fiddlebender.
JESawyer 28 Jul 12
What's superior, crossbows or bows? From a historical perspective, I mean. A friend is claiming crossbows and I thought I remembered you once referencing a battle where the side using bows won.
The crossbow was the ranged weapon of choice in the middle ages until the Hundred Years War. At the battles of Crécy, Poitiers, and Agincourt, English and Welsh archers using Welsh longbows consistently defeated French armies bolstered by foreign mercenary crossbow troops. Crossbows could have a higher draw weight and required less training, but that was ultimately irrelevant due to the extreme speed with which longbows could be fired and the extensive national training of troops in England and Wales.
JESawyer 28 Jul 12
Who came up with the design for the NCR vet. ranger? The whole gas-mask-and-trenchcoat thing is a little played out, but it's the first time I've seen it applied to "the good guy".
Wes Burt (for Massive Black) developed the design. I shared your concerns, so there were a few things I requested to keep it from turning into Jin-Roh Part 53. First, I asked that he wear jeans and boots. I also requested that he should typically have a revolver or lever-action rifle with a bandoleer for bullets. Last, I asked for his jacket to be dark brown, not completely black. I wanted to pull some of the color elements toward warmer "cowboy" tones instead of strict neutrals. 
Wes is a really fantastic artist and I think he did a great job. 
http://wesley-burt.blogspot.com/
JESawyer 28 Jul 12
Nietzsche huh? Are you a supporter of Ayn Rand?
No.
JESawyer 28 Jul 12
Fencing question, why is modern fencing so heavily focused on offense? I understand its transition to sport made the priority rules necessary, but it saddens me that the original swordplay has been virtually abandoned.
I don't think they are that heavily focused on offense as a whole. If you want to watch sport fencing without right-of-way, you can watch épée. Personally, I can't stand the pacing of épée. The Olympic women's individual foil semi-finals and finals today were pretty terrific and had great pacing. Sabre has always, and will continue to be, the most aggressive of the three weapons. Even removing the flèche didn't slow it down that much. 
From what I've seen of the historical fencing clubs that have been reviving "classic" 19th century fencing or earlier dueling styles (e.g. La Verdadera Destreza), the pacing really isn't dramatically different.
JESawyer 30 Jul 12
What do you think about all these dudes who keep asking if you support Pol Pot or whatever just because they have a caricature image of Nietzche?
It's amazing, because they are asking me questions on devices that could, in less than a minute, give them all the information they could ever want on connections between Nietzsche and Adolf Hitler/Ayn Rand/Jeffrey Dahmer/Kurt Cobain, etc.
JESawyer 30 Jul 12
Why are you shirtless in your picture?
I'm wearing a tube top.
JESawyer 30 Jul 12
On the other hand the connections between Nietzsche and Ayn Rand aren't superficial. Many of Nietzsche's ideas were subpar or borderline ridiculous, which is why they were integrated by these individuals.
Great. I already stated that my interest in Nietzsche has to do with his work that was foundational to Derrida and Foucault. If you want to complain about how Rand and Hitler interpreted his work, you may as well indict Kant for any/all western philosophers who used his work as a starting point (i.e. most of them). I don't care how every/any person interpreted or used his work; I care about specific portions of his work and how they relate to specific later thinkers who built on that work.
JESawyer 30 Jul 12
You should use this opportunity to advise me to actually read Nietzsche, and not just what other people have to say about him.
That should go without saying.
JESawyer 30 Jul 12
hi what do you think of music
i enjoy it thx
JESawyer 31 Jul 12
Last year you said that oldschool games should target the tablet market cause there's a larger tolerance for low production values vs. PC gamers who may prefer their "AAA" console ports. What are your thoughts now that they're making a comeback on PC?
I think there's a large amount of interface overlap between PC and touch screen. Even if you want to make a straight-up PC/Mac game for mouse and keyboard, I think considering a tablet port later is a good idea. 
Steam, the App Store, and Google Marketplace all present minimal barriers to entry. The same can't be said of consoles. The install base of tablets is enormous (I think the iPad is now at over 70 million units shipped). 
In the early days (read: two years ago) of App Store games, almost everything targeted casual gamers with a price tag of $0.99 or $1.99. Apps are growing in sophistication and value. Prices have grown commensurately. I think there is room for a core gamer market on tablets and I think a lot of "old school" games would work well with a touch interface.* 
* Ideally, using a stylus, which are cheap as hell and make iPad use much cleaner and more precise.
JESawyer 31 Jul 12
What are your favorite tablet games (assuming you own one)?
My favorites are Battleheart, Sword of Fargoal, and Tiny Tower.
JESawyer 31 Jul 12
Why do some people who sincerely enjoy Wagner get intense Nazi-guilt? Do you think it's related to people who attach Nietzsche to Rand and Hitler?
I think it's a similar impulse. Even Lars von Trier was hemming and hawing about using the prelude to Tristan und Isolde in Melancholia after the fact. Hitler liked Wagner. Ludwig II, who opposed Wagner's anti-Semitic stances, also liked (loved) Wagner. I think you can enjoy a person's work, in part or whole, and still dislike certain aspects of them as an individual. 
http://youtu.be/J-qoaioG2UA
JESawyer 2 Aug 12
Are you really not going to see TDKR because the villain is a 'champion' of the 99%, and you consider yourself part of it despite having a high paying job, and living relatively well?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question
JESawyer responded to doughnum 2 Aug 12
Could you please express what it is that you like about Tiny Tower?
The art style. Most of the potential gameplay in it is really about maximizing efficiency, which I don't do. I just like seeing the new levels of bitizens. I play it when I have 30 seconds or a few minutes to spare.
JESawyer 2 Aug 12
Is there any part of Ayn Rand or Adolf Hitlers work or ideologies you enjoy/agree with following that principle?
Hitler's watercolors aren't half bad. 3 or 4 of the points in the NSDAP 25 points manifesto, removed from the context of the others, are pretty reasonable ideas (though not unique to the Nazis). Ayn Rand? I can't think of any work of hers that I like.
JESawyer responded to Formspring 3 Aug 12
Do you have any siblings?
I have a half-sister, Jessica, from my father's first marriage. She is six years older than me. I have a half-brother, Marc, from my mother's first marriage. He is eight years older than me.
JESawyer 3 Aug 12
Read that you wouldn't involve in-game romance in FNV unless it was done believably. Which romances in video game history actually have been? Aside from Viconia in BG2 and (maybe) Visas Marr in KOTOR2 I can't come up with any.
My favorite is Ben and Mo from Full Throttle, which probably doesn't cut it for a lot of people because it never becomes physical.
JESawyer responded to StylesV13 4 Aug 12
Was John Gill from Star Trek episode "Patterns of Force" an inspiration for Edward Swallow aka Caesar? I ask this because both characters have alot in common.
Not that I know of.
JESawyer responded to J05HDA 5 Aug 12
does your mod change dale barton's caravan deck? he's damn near impossible to beat now.
Yes. I think I mostly removed cards from his deck, but I believe that did make him a stronger opponent.
JESawyer 5 Aug 12
Do you think Wasteland 2 should have a more realistic look to it, than what was shown in the released screenshots?
Personally, I don't think it needs to look more realistic. I like the direction they're taking it.
JESawyer 5 Aug 12
How tall is your Tiny Tower?
83 floors.
JESawyer 6 Aug 12
My Tiny Tower is taller than your Tiny Tower.
c00l
JESawyer 6 Aug 12
how much was your budget for songs on that last game you did. $100? there's literally like.. 5 normal songs. you guys could have really learned a thing or two from what grand theft auto does with their radio songs. they had way more than you did.
Literally.
JESawyer 6 Aug 12
u should have just pirated the songs u want
hmm
JESawyer 6 Aug 12
What's your fav Coen bro movie?
http://youtu.be/hkJIcFMN_pc
JESawyer 6 Aug 12
Do you have a favourite poem?
It changes from time to time, but right now it's I Remember by Anne Sexton. 
Anne Sexton - I Remember
By the first of August
the invisible beetles began
to snore and the grass was
as tough as hemp and was
no color--no more than
the sand was a color and
we had worn our bare feet
bare since the twentieth
of June and there were times
we forgot to wind up your
alarm clock and some nights
we took our gin warm and neat
from old jelly glasses while
the sun blew out of sight
like a red picture hat and
one day I tied my hair back
with a ribbon and you said
that I looked almost like
a puritan lady and what
I remember best is that
the door to your room was
the door to mine.
JESawyer 6 Aug 12
Have you been watching much of the Olympics?
I've only watched fencing so far.
JESawyer 7 Aug 12
How do feel about "No Country For Old Men"?
I thought it was fantastic, probably my second favorite Coen brothers. film. I saw it in a packed theatre and at the credits, I heard a lot of people gasp and grumble because they didn't like the ending. I don't experience a lot of schadenfreude in my life, but right then, yeah, I was feeling it.
JESawyer responded to SerMcWorst 7 Aug 12
Design docs: better to keep them short and prototype/test things on the field, or should one first carefully lay out the design on paper?
A few days ago, I was going through old documentation from The Black Hound. We sure did like to write long design docs back then (and through Van Buren). I think we've found a much better balance now. I ask our designers to keep most docs in the 5-7 or 10-12 page range (depending on what the doc is). That;s long enough to have relevant details, but short enough that most of the focus is on the goals. 
We tend to have strike teams on projects now that are oriented around specific aspects of the game (combat, areas, etc.). The strike teams meet pretty frequently and are interdisciplinary, so there's much more natural evolution of thought in that environment than there would be through "waterfall" development.
JESawyer 7 Aug 12
Have you ever thought of introducing the 7.62x51 mm NATO in FNV leaving the .308 Winchester as a "toned down civilian version" like you did with the 5.56-.223 Remington duo?
I considered it, but .308 was already established as the rifle round and I thought it might be confusing to make it a sub-type of 7.62mm. There are also a lot of nominal 7.62mm rounds, so I thought .308 was clearer/more obvious. When gun people see ".308", I think most of them assume "Winchester".
JESawyer 7 Aug 12
Do you think tablet games do *have* to be simple to be successful?
Not anymore. I think the install base of tablets is large enough that there can be "core" games on the platform(s).
JESawyer 8 Aug 12
You don't like the condescending exposition in Nolan's films, but didn't you do the same thing in New Vegas with the quest objectives always spelling out exactly what to do instead of just summarizing the information given to the player?
They aren't similar at all, so no.
JESawyer responded to Scarface11235 8 Aug 12
Is there a reason as to why the GRA weapons are substantially more expensive in comparison to their vanilla game equivalents? I feel it acts to alienate players in the vanilla-equivalent's tier of weapons, as only high level players can purchase them.
Non-unique GRA weapons have the same base value as their standard counterparts. Unique GRA weapons are more powerful than the base weapons, so they are more expensive. If an individual GRA weapon for sale is at a high condition, its price will be higher than a low condition version, but otherwise there is no difference in price.
JESawyer 8 Aug 12
What's your opinion on Nicolas Winding Refn's movies?
I've only seen Bronson, Valhalla Rising, and Drive, but I thought they were all excellent. Drive was one of my favorite films of 2011.
JESawyer 8 Aug 12
Why was the option for forging an alliance between House and the Brotherhood cut from the final game?
I'm not sure. You'd have to ask John Gonzalez.
JESawyer responded to SerMcWorst 8 Aug 12
Uhm.. I admit I kind of feel dumb for asking, but your mod's changelog lists some changes to the stats of some armors that aren't actually featured in New Vegas.. should I assume they are added to the leveled lists?
Yes, leveled lists or directly to certain vendors.
JESawyer 9 Aug 12
What's your opinion on power creep in DLCs? I get that someone who's played most of the game already is going to want better gear than what he's got, but I think it diminishes the experience for players on a new run by creating a "best" equipment set.
It's bad. I prefer to try to find space for new items to occupy at or near the top relative to core game items. When players find items in DLCs, they should feel useful in the DLC as well as back in the core game. What I try to avoid is a situation where the DLC item becomes the no-brainer item to use in all circumstances.
JESawyer 9 Aug 12
Seriously, though, please don't have quest objectives in your next games spell out EXACTLY what the player needs to do next. I'm so sick of things like that in modern games.
Are you asking me to have NPCs not tell the PC what to do, or are you asking me to not have the game remind you of what the NPC asked the PC to do? Both seem pointless unless the quest is intentionally a puzzle or a searching task.
JESawyer 11 Aug 12
Think you'll make partner at Obsidian some day?
Becoming a partner at an established company has never been a goal of mine.
JESawyer 11 Aug 12
How much do you weigh and how much bodyfat (%) do you have? I ask because on the one hand you seem to have a real healthy lifestyle, but on the other hand you seem super skinny.
I weigh ~182 lbs. and am at about 17% body fat. I would like to get down to about 13% body fat but that's going to take more dedication than I currently put in.
JESawyer 11 Aug 12
Paul Ryan: Vice presidential candidate, Republican, Wisconsonite, Ayn Rand fan. Thoughts?
I don't think this is going to help Romney.
JESawyer 11 Aug 12
Hey, since your mod lowers the level cap, does it mean that there are some perks (like the ones from Lonesome Road) are unobtainable?
I lowered the level requirements on high end perks for the mod. The level 50 perks have a level 34 requirement.
JESawyer 11 Aug 12
When are you Kickstarting The Black Hound?
http://youtu.be/CNFgAbl20vQ
JESawyer responded to Formspring 11 Aug 12
What movie can you watch over and over again?
http://youtu.be/0PKtGnyGuKM
JESawyer 12 Aug 12
Are you German?
I'm American. Most of my ancestors were German (Bavarian, Prussian, Austrian via Swabia and Hungary). They came to the United States in the mid-19th and early 20th centuries. One small branch of my mother's family was English. They (the Godfreys) came to Hampton (in present-day New Hampshire) in the early 17th century
JESawyer 12 Aug 12
I would have to agree that more powerful weapons should be worth more, but most of the unique GRA stuff is just astronomically more caps for slightly improved stats. Paciencia seems like a fair stat trade-off for lower capacity, but costs a fortune, etc.
Buying unique weapons is completely optional. The increased price is intentionally not commensurate to the increase in power.
JESawyer 12 Aug 12
why can't you break down special types of ammo? Was it a design choice or just a quirk in the crafting system?
I didn't want to flood the interface with recipes.
JESawyer 12 Aug 12
I'm going to be running a Fallout PnP game in a few weeks, set in Louisiana. I have a few things planned out (a voodoo-influenced tribe that worships ghouls, for one), but I was wondering if you had an idea or two for something I could throw in.
I am not very familiar with Louisiana. I always feel better about creating in an environment that I understand. I would read as much as I could about the area and its history, watch documentaries, and, if possible, visit it in person.
JESawyer 12 Aug 12
How would ghouls be treated by the Legion? P. cool? Really cool? Big C friends w/any ghouls??
Raul is the only ghoul available who has spent time in Legion-controlled areas and he does not mention much, if anything, about how the Legion treats ghouls.
JESawyer 12 Aug 12
have you tried fallout new vegas on all consoles
For playthroughs, I tested it on the Xbox 360 and PS3. For weapon testing, I mostly used the PC build for rapid iteration.
JESawyer 12 Aug 12
Was there ever a gun in the development of FO:NV that you wanted, but proved to be too anachronistic for the series?
I had considered a howdah pistol as a single-shot .50 MG handgun. I chose not to use it, not because it was anachronistic, but because it was terrible in any circumstances other than a close-range sneak attack.
JESawyer responded to insularis 12 Aug 12
Who was it that decided to put the Deathclaw Promontory in FO:NV?
Jorge Salgado.
JESawyer responded to Denis517 13 Aug 12
Will the J.E. Sawyer mod ever put in unused creatures (like the legion creature, or irradiated radroach?) in the game?
Probably not.
JESawyer 13 Aug 12
Why wasn't the Scout Handbook from classic Fallout games included in NV/changed to Wasteland Survival guide?
There are very few links between F3 and F:NV. Including the WSG shows the wider impact and influence of the Lone Wanderer from F3 on the world.
JESawyer 13 Aug 12
Why were Nellis and the Nevada Test Site so inaccurate compared to their real life counterparts?
Having Nellis AFB be accurate wasn't a high priority, especially since the real thing is gargantuan.
JESawyer 13 Aug 12
Where are all the other pipboy wielding Vault Dweller/Chosen One wannabe adventurers?
Ricky is one of them.
JESawyer 13 Aug 12
Why can't you craft some stuff from F3 in NV?
I tried to avoid having crafting recipes that focused on a) non-consumables and b) items that seemed like a strange fit in the Mojave. Non-consumable items, once crafted, don't really need to be crafted again. They're sort of dead-end recipes if you have access to any decent repair. Items like the Railway Rifle seem out of place in a region with high access to conventional weaponry.
JESawyer 13 Aug 12
Why include the alternate currencies in NV? It might have been interesting if you had to deal with different types of economies in different parts of the Mojave, but as it stands they all have a constant exchange rate and everyone accepts everything.
Their presence and relative values inform the player about the respective societies they come from. 
I've noticed what I believe is a strange tendency to question the presence of a feature if it isn't implemented to its maximum potential. We can always do more with a feature, but if there's value to a minimal implementation, doing a minimal implementation is preferable to no implementation.
JESawyer 13 Aug 12
Why do you keep throwing chains, and popping tubes when you ride a bike?
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Built_to_Destroy
JESawyer responded to dfuglestad 13 Aug 12
In regards to currency, what were you and the other writers trying to communicate through the relative exchange rates of Legion coin and NCR dollar relative to caps?
What you think is more important than what I tried to communicate.
JESawyer 13 Aug 12
Shotguns are generally useless thanks to the damage threshold system even with Shotgun Surgeon.
I completely disagree. I have seen numerous people do shotgun-only or shotgun-dominant runs with no problems at all.
JESawyer 14 Aug 12
Ballpark estimate for how much psycho/slasher was consumed in those shotgun-centric runs?
No idea, but I would suspect very little. Shotguns are among the most versatile guns in the game. For anything with no or light armor, you can use standard 20/12 ga. or magnum buckshot. For everything else, there's slugs. That's just considering what's in the vanilla, shipped game. If you have Dead Money and GRA, you get access to And Stay Back as well as a boatload of additional ammo subtypes.
JESawyer 14 Aug 12
Don't you think the disconnect between real life and in game can be immersion breaking? I.E the moment I shoot a Legionary in the face with a hunting rifle and he trogs on.
If that were true, your immersion would be broken long before such a circumstance occurred. Simply opening your Pip-Boy and noticing your default carrying capacity is in excess of 100 lbs. would shatter the illusion almost immediately.
JESawyer 14 Aug 12
There are varying degrees of disbelief. 100 lb weight, easily ignored - it's a game. Insane face bullet sponges, hard to forget and creepy tbh.
It's interesting that the thing that makes the game easier is easily ignored and the thing that makes the game more difficult is hard to forget.
JESawyer 14 Aug 12
Why do Raul and Arcade complain when I crouch? I was told that it increased the accuracy of my firearms!
They are complainers.
JESawyer responded to FloexandSnork 14 Aug 12
Heard anything new from Brain on Wasteland 2?
I don't have access to any information that isn't available to the public.
JESawyer 14 Aug 12
The weight limit is invisible though. The face shots are not.
Giant ants are also visible. Do those break your immersion?
JESawyer responded to suejak 14 Aug 12
I'm going to assume you would agree that just because certain unrealistic things are easy to accept doesn't mean that EVERY unrealistic thing is easy to accept. Weight limits are mere numbers. Giants ants are part of a fantasy world. Face shots feel wrong
I have no idea what the original poster finds easy to accept (other than shooting someone in the head and having them survive). The original poster framed his or her objection in the context of immersion being broken. If the issue is immersion, either the poster has arbitrarily strong boundaries for what does or does not break the illusion (in which case, how am I supposed to know where those lines are drawn?) or the poster is disingenuously framing a desire to one-shot enemies as a problem with immersion. 
If it's the latter, it's enough to simply say, "If I shoot a healthy human enemy in the head with a gun, I want the enemy to die immediately." That's far more helpful to me than doing an end run around the issue by talking about personal boundaries of immersion.
JESawyer responded to Formspring 15 Aug 12
If you could choose to be any age, how old would you be?
http://youtu.be/hJS3R1Z2HeI
JESawyer 15 Aug 12
Woah, I didn't know Bane would be the final boss of Lonesome Road.
wheh thr mojavah is asha... yahve mah purmshn tadah.
JESawyer 15 Aug 12
Were the wall paintings in HH based on The Enigma of the Amigara Fault by Junji Ito?
No. They're just based on old cave/canyon paintings. 
http://www.jessicaldesign.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/cave-paintings_13_v2.jpg
http://photos.igougo.com/images/p274513-Tanzania-Cave_Paintings.jpg
http://matadornetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/informationtech-cavepainting.jpg
JESawyer 15 Aug 12
Can I use your new Vegas mod without the DLC?
No. It won't load.
JESawyer responded to SerMcWorst 16 Aug 12
Have you taken a look/playtested D&D Next? If yes, what are your impressions of the new ruleset?
I think they're trying to do too much for too many.
JESawyer 16 Aug 12
if you were given a chance to expand the legion through a dlc, would you do it?
Yes.
JESawyer 16 Aug 12
if you were given a chance to expand the legion through a dlc, would you do it?
Yes.
JESawyer 22 Aug 12
You seem to be really adept at tuning and tweaking mechanics for a really solid, mostly-balanced RPG. Would you say you are good with numbers? We're you a good math student?
Thanks. No, I was never particularly good at math. Adjusting numbers is an integral part of tuning gameplay mechanics, but it's a means to an end. You start with numbers and goals, adjust based on feel, and then make additional adjustments based on observed use by players.
JESawyer responded to Lobsterfists 22 Aug 12
Where can I download your NV Mod and what does it change in the game?
http://diogenes-lamp.info/jsawyer_fnv_mod.zip 
It's a tiny download and the changes are logged in an included .txt file.
JESawyer 22 Aug 12
Did you write the Icewind Dale 2 storyline over the course of a weekend?
It wasn't over the course of a weekend, but it was over two days in the middle of the week. I had to write the story and define the major characters and all of the locations over a Tuesday and Wednesday, IIRC.
JESawyer 22 Aug 12
Zion was unaffected by the nukes from the great war right? But why are there so many cars left on the roads and also tourist & park ranger bodies (Well, I mean whats left of them )? Oh and why are there mutated animals if there was no radiation?
You should read Randall Clark's logs for a first-hand account of what happened in Zion following the war. If you haven't found his logs, you should go back to Zion and explore the caves.
JESawyer 22 Aug 12
Hey Ropekid, not to bring up a dumb systems argument but did you enjoy 4e?
I'm still playing it, and yes. I've played more 2nd Ed. than anything else, but at this point I've played a fair amount of 4E (still less than 3E/3.5 and 1st Ed. but more than Basic/Expert). I think the way that WotC split the core races/classes between PHB1/2 was a practical and transparently cynical way to promote more sales of both handbooks, but I like the rule system overall. 
My current campaign is in Paragon tier and the combats are getting slow. I timed out how long each player takes to act in real time, and it averages over 2 minutes, which is not good. The biggest chunks of time seem to be a) picking what to do (often paying attention can help alleviate this, but the long turns per player make it difficult to stay focused) b) calculating attack rolls and c) calculating damage. Those may seem like "no duh" things, but I was kind of floored when I actually paid attention to how much time people spent doing them. 
Skill challenges are terrible. I don't think I need to really argue the position as I think almost the entire universe agrees with me on this point. 
I disagree with George's statements about role-playing potential in 4E vs. other editions. I also don't think the classes feel that similar -- outside of each class possessing the same number of abilities/powers/etc. Even at low levels, my warden and my bard felt very different from each other and very different from the other PCs. 
Our current campaign is Scales of War, and I have been disappointed by the role-playing potential in the modules themselves. There really isn't a lot of room for adjusting the course of the story or making moral/ethical choices, so I have been bummed out about that. Our DM has still found ways to insert role-playing opportunities into the campaign based on our backstories and choices we make with his (added) content.
JESawyer 23 Aug 12
When you play Table Top RPG's are you more prone to being a GM or PC?
I haven't had a lot of time to do the necessary GM/DM prep in recent years, so these days I only play.
JESawyer 23 Aug 12
Is cycling exactly like Premium Rush?
If Premium Rush were like reality, five minutes in, the main character would do a *~ sIcK bRaKeLeSs sKiD ~* against a red light, get smashed by a car, and die. Roll credits. 
It's weird that it's taken so long for the film to come out now that "fixie" culture has become popularly loathed.
JESawyer 24 Aug 12
I'm not in the cyclist loop (more like wheel), why are fixed-gear bikes loathed?
Fixed-gear bikes aren't necessarily loathed, but "fixie" subcultures are disliked because a minority of their participants are huge shitheads and promote dangerous/irritating riding behavior. 
Take something like this, in which the participants (the ones who aren't hit by cars, presumably) walk away thinking they are cool dudes/hardasses but 90% of the people they swerve around think, "Fuck bicyclists." 
http://youtu.be/RGlZrK9WYpo
JESawyer 26 Aug 12
What's your take on the Lance Armstrong situation?
Regardless of how you feel about the USADA's pursuit of LA, if you read up on everything surrounding the TdF's elite riders over the past decade+ and the various people testifying against him, it seems clear that he was blood doping. Then again, so were a lot of elite pro cyclists. 
I honestly have not seen any neutral party avid road cyclists/competitive cyclists defending LA. Almost all of the defense I've seen has come from LA and people who like him/what he represents. That's cool and LIVESTRONG, but tons of elite cyclists have been convicted of (and admitted to) doping in the past decade and most of them were teammates or competitors of LA's. 
Either Lance Armstrong is so phenomenal that he naturally beat a field of extraordinary dopers seven times AND Tyler Hamilton and George Hincapie gave perjured testimony that he was doping with them (because suddenly they inexplicably hate his guts) AND the lead peloton times in the TdF have *coincidentally* gone up as anti-doping efforts have ramped up... 
... or maybe, yeah, the dude was doping. 
Keep in mind that LA also expressed steadfast support to his teammate Floyd Landis (including, according to Greg LeMond, attacking LeMond's business with Trek) when Landis was accused of doping. Not only was Landis later found guilty of doping, but he also (like Hamilton and Hincapie, LA's domestique in all his TdF victories) admitted it. 
http://nyvelocity.com/content/interviews/2009/michael-ashenden
JESawyer 26 Aug 12
Have you ever competed in bike races?
No. I just do challenge rides like centuries. At the end of September I'm doing a gran fondo, which is timed, but not really a race.
JESawyer 28 Aug 12
About aircraft carriers, you do know these things are essentially floating bases that can give power, water, medical treatment, and shelter to disaster areas. Right? See: Operation Unified Assistance
It's supremely disingenuous to frame them as humanitarian vehicles when they were designed to transport fleets of military aircraft. They are powered (most of them, anyway) by nuclear reactors and the ability to desalinate water is a useful side-effect of the power plant's operation. Also the United States possesses more active aircraft carriers (11) than the entire rest of the world. The two nations with whom we could arguably* engage in significant air combat (Russia and China) possess one aircraft carrier between them. 
There are nuclear-powered icebreakers and other civilian naval vessels that could provide similar benefits in disaster situations. Defending the size of a huge aircraft carrier fleet because it can be occasionally useful in humanitarian circumstances is like defending the size of a flamethrower arsenal because sometimes you need to light cigarettes. 
* These nations' inability to project air and ground forces worldwide means the only likely scenario in which we would get into some mythic future dogfights with them would be if we invaded Russia, China, or their immediate neighbors with a fleet of aircraft carriers.
JESawyer 28 Aug 12
I've heard a number of people call House a tyrant but I'm not really seeing it myself, how exactly does House's control of Vegas function and what about it makes him a tyrant?
He is a tyrant in the classic sense of the word because he took control of New Vegas without any popular support or mandate of its residents. He rules autocratically without any form of legislative body, effectively through personal will and the projection of force.
JESawyer 28 Aug 12
Did you know you are a very funny man? What is your position on marijuana? Do you think it would have use as a medicine in post apocalyptic society?
Marijuana already has analgesic and other uses, so yes. In a post-apocalyptic society, would you be more likely to try to synthesize ibuprofen or grow a hardy plant? 
I believe marijuana should be decriminalized along with other drugs. Domestic growers should be allowed to grow cannabis plants on a personal or farm-level scale with modest regulations that would be expected of any crop with pharmaceutical value.
JESawyer responded to scathoob 31 Aug 12
Why are real-life drugs not in the Fallout games? Is it because of the criminalization, extinction of the plants, or have they simply fallen out of favor next to Jet or Pyscho?
I don't know. That is a question for Tim Cain or Chris Taylor.
JESawyer 7 Sep 12
Turn-based gaming...what do you think of it? Between the impending release of the sizeably-budgeted new XCOM, the revival and flowering of board games, and successful Kickstarts of TB games, do you see a bright future for TB systems in RPGs?
I think there are now more viable markets for TB games and more realistic ways of funding them now. Personally, I've always enjoyed TB games most on handhelds/mobile devices, where they have consistently had solid footing.
JESawyer 7 Sep 12
Any thoughts on the Republican & Democratic national conventions, now that they're over?
The RNC and DNC are cheer-leading rallies and I don't pay attention to anything anyone says at them.
JESawyer 7 Sep 12
Did people stop asking you questions, or is it just a busy time on the ol' J.E. Sawyer ranch and you don't have time to entertain random inquiries?
I'm on vacation.
JESawyer 7 Sep 12
If there are no citizens under the Legion, what's Dale Barton? And who does he trade with in Arizona and New Mexico? He's obviously not a tribal or an adherent to the Legion's religion or philosophy.
He's a guy who lives in an area controlled by Caesar's Legion. That doesn't make him a citizen.
JESawyer 7 Sep 12
Hi, Josh! Tocinoman from Nukapedia, the Fallout Wiki, here. I had a question concerning the Silenced .22 SMG. Is it based on any weapon(s) in particular?
It's based on the American-180.
JESawyer 7 Sep 12
What are your thoughts on cooldowns as a mechanic in RPGs? Would you consider them a lazy and/or inelegant way of providing balance?
I don't think they are lazy or inelegant. Mechanics either achieve their goals or they don't. If they do and the players enjoy them, they are good. if they don't and/or the players don't enjoy them, they are bad. Sometimes elegant solutions are dysfunctional and sometimes complex mechanics (under the hood) are really solid. It really depends on the specific use.
JESawyer 8 Sep 12
So Legion territory is full of able-bodied non-slave, non-fighting males who are just allowed to do whatever they want, pursue their own interests, etc.?
I've already covered this before on Formspring, but the short answer is: no.
JESawyer 8 Sep 12
Have you heard about the somewhat murky/unspecified issues surrounding the PS3 port of Dawnguard?
Yes.
JESawyer 10 Sep 12
as a dude who's games have lots of dialogue, what do you think about dark soul's story? i thought it was really good. video games are like the perfect medium for sparse exposition/visual storytelling imo
I think Dark Souls has amazing atmosphere and its story is consistently dark and mysterious. It feels like a dour, bleak fantasy world. Not many games pull that off well. I don't like their choice and consequence mechanics, since the choices don't really seem to present much agony to the player. Often the choice is uninformed and the consequences cannot possibly be predicted (e.g. Lautrec). This may be realistic, but it's not enjoyable for most people.
JESawyer 10 Sep 12
Are you ever going to update JSawyer mod and release v5? Or is it "finished"?
Yeah, I'm still updating it. A new version will be out this month.
JESawyer 10 Sep 12
Sooooo... Are you working on the mysterious Project X?
^_________________________________^
JESawyer 11 Sep 12
What's the big idea with these 4 day timers? Now you're just getting me really hot and flustered.
http://youtu.be/CmCMIJsYvZM
JESawyer 11 Sep 12
Steam stats say that to date 14.3% of PC players have completed the Independent ending, 8.7% the NCR, 6.3% Mr. House, and 3.6% Legion. Does that distribution surprise you at all?
No. That's more or less how I figured I'd would break down
JESawyer 11 Sep 12
So it doesn't bother you that only about 33% of PC players finished the game?
Only if finishing the game directly correlates to enjoyment of the game.
JESawyer 11 Sep 12
What's your favorite video game soundtrack?
I've always really liked the Mechwarrior 2 soundtrack. http://youtu.be/rJ0LAs9KiXc 
Also Fallout. http://youtu.be/Ot3T5ac_Dq4 
And Icewind Dale. http://youtu.be/f3f9MOr_7wg 
I've been listening to the Kuldahar theme a bunch recently.
JESawyer 11 Sep 12
I've noticed yo have posted some clips from "2010: The Year We Made Contact" before. Is it a good film (I love 2001 but don't want to be disappointed by a sequel)
I think it's a great film but it has a different feeling from 2001. The scenes I've posted and the aerocapture sequence near Jupiter are terrific.
JESawyer 11 Sep 12
Does the percentage of players who choose and ending speak towards its 'quality' as in reinforcement via design & writing? Would it be preferable if endings were split 8.25% each or is that unimportant?
I don't think that's necessarily important. For Honest Hearts, I knew that the large majority of people would side with Joshua rather than Daniel, but I thought it was important for Daniel's option to be in the game as it was.
JESawyer 12 Sep 12
So why exactly do so many developers always waste time on these silly countdowns and teaser sites? Gamers don't really care about that and never remember them, they just want to see the game, no BS attached.
Because they aren't about the effect on individual gamers, but on the number of gamers who become aware of the launch.
JESawyer 13 Sep 12
SMG clips
ok
???
JESawyer 13 Sep 12
Why always take so long to update your site's countdown? lol in true Obsidian fashion, it's bugged 
We update the site manually.
JESawyer 14 Sep 12
Yo Sawyer. Why aren't there any ending slides for Elijah in Dead Money? Kind of removes a bit of the smug satisfaction over getting Safe Deposit Box, y'know?
http://youtu.be/uGJU4VoT2zw
JESawyer 14 Sep 12
Is a PC release of a game important?
I think it depends on the type of game. Some games don't work as well on the PC as the console and vice-versa. E.g. fighting games and 3rd person action games usually feel best with a controller. RTSs (excepting Pikmin) and many RPGs work best with a mouse and keyboard.
JESawyer 14 Sep 12
home on the wastes is really good it should've been on the mojave radio
thx
JESawyer 14 Sep 12
sick tats bro
thx
JESawyer responded to suejak 14 Sep 12
Oh man I like that scene from the Kickstarter where Tim Cain says "a lot of passionate people" and you crush some dude's skull.
Someone at OEI had to die to make that scene but we feel it was worth it.
JESawyer 14 Sep 12
How is the Speedy Bicycle Club going? How fast are you?
im the fastest, man
JESawyer 14 Sep 12
How do you feel about being considered a "legendary" developer?
At most I am probably a Rare developer. Possibly Magic. Maybe combined with Tim and Avellone I am a Set developer???
JESawyer 14 Sep 12
So which part of the set are you? Greaves?
the butt lmao
JESawyer 14 Sep 12
How do you feel that the kickstarter project will probably be funded in just one day (if the current rate of donations continues)? Did you expect it to be such a success so soon?
I really had no idea what to expect but the response has been amazing so far.
JESawyer 14 Sep 12
What's this skull-crushing business?!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vgo62uQ5JOI#t=2m15s
JESawyer responded to Mirokunite 14 Sep 12
What do your tattoos say? Looks like something from a illuminated book.
My left arm has the last three lines of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's poem Silent Noon: 
Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,
This close-companioned inarticulate hour
When twofold silence was the song of love. 
The right arm has a quote from Sallust's Bellum Catilinae where he describes Cato the Younger's address to the senate: 
Qui mihi atque animo meo nullius umquam delicti gratiam fecissem, haud facile alterius lubidini male facta condonabam.
(As I had never, in my own conscience, excused myself for any wrongdoing, I found it hard to pardon the sins other men's passions led them to commit.) 
The O on the left arm contains a man and woman holding an iris between them. The Q on the right arm contains the face of Cato the Younger. Both of the illustrations were drawn by Brian Menze.
JESawyer 14 Sep 12
How cool is it to (probably) reach half your goal by the end of the day?
p. cool!!!
JESawyer 14 Sep 12
your gaems suck!!!
q__q
JESawyer 14 Sep 12
Brian Menze is such a jewel. I hope he does a lot of work on Eternity.
Yeah he owns.
JESawyer 14 Sep 12
You ever do that thing people do where they go to the field in Maine where Christina's World was painted and crawl through the fields like the real Christina did? Because that is kind of weird.
that's pretty weird man
JESawyer responded to Melnorme 14 Sep 12
Can you give us any tidbits on who might be making the music for Project Eternity?
Well, I can tell you that our own Justin Bell composed the music for the trailer!
JESawyer 15 Sep 12
"No one would get through character creation nowadays." - Obsidian a year ago. Have you changed your position or doesn't Project Eternity have character creation?
That was Feargus' opinion, not mine. 
http://www.formspring.me/JESawyer/q/228765166899073418
JESawyer 15 Sep 12
Have you changed your position on "gamers expect full voice acting"?
I think the expectations of the audience are predicated on a) what the camera view is and b) how much money they actually spent on the product. Making a relatively low price point axonometric game is honestly something I didn't believe I would get a chance to do again. I don't think the average person paying $20/$25 for a game with an axonometric camera that makes their character take up 1/10th of the screen height will be expecting full voice acting.
JESawyer 15 Sep 12
haha the game map is like the zyborne clock map
imagine four kickstarters at the edge of a cliff
JESawyer 15 Sep 12
hey please try t o make the game npot racist
ok
JESawyer responded to undecaf 15 Sep 12
Wouldn't you think detailing (at least some of) the stretchgoals would increase the pace of pledging? Anyway, congrats on a succesful KS campaign (I think it is sage to say so now), and getting my money too (I don't hand 'em over to just anyone )
Adam Brennecke is working on that now!
JESawyer 15 Sep 12
Hey Josh, your .:R32 thread from the Obsidian boards 8 years ago inspired me to save up and get a Golf R. Not having the old .:R32 roar makes me sad. But driving it is more than enough of a consolation prize.
The only thing I'd miss about my R32 in the new Golf R is the VR6 sound. I think the new Golf R is really cool but I'm glad my car (and motorcycle) are paid off. Congrats!
JESawyer 15 Sep 12
On Penny Arcade a discussion came up regarding the boob armor in the concept art which is a bit disappointing for some. Can you explain why you include it, or is this still subject to change?
Which armor/concept? The elf caster is something Menze did a while back, prior to this project.
JESawyer 15 Sep 12
are you guys going to use dnd rules or make up an entirely new system? would using dnd rules require licensing fees?
We're making a new system in-house.
JESawyer 15 Sep 12
What's the name of the song you sang?
"The Impossible Dream" from Man of La Mancha.
JESawyer responded to johnwbh 15 Sep 12
I like the thank you video, you have a good voice. Whats your singing experience?
Thanks. I've been singing at home and in school since I was very young. I went to the Lawrence Conservatory of Music for a short while but eventually transferred to the college (I was a bad student and musician).
JESawyer 15 Sep 12
If there's one concern I have about the project it's your reliance on feminazidom and overabundance of political correctness in anything and everything, as that could easily ruin the game...
Please elaborate. Those words don't mean anything to me.
JESawyer 15 Sep 12
I just watched project eternity's announcement video and I have a crucial question for you: why are your hands paler than the rest of the arm (the line of demarcation is clearly visible just above the wrists)? Excessive use of gloves?
The only reason I'm tanned at all is due to cycling. I wear gloves when cycling, so there's a pronounced tan line.
JESawyer 16 Sep 12
Player house? C'mon Josh you can't just throw that out there without elaborating. Now everyone thinks you're making this an "immersive" LARP-fest with gimmicky stuff that have no gameplay consequences.
What is a LARP-fest?
JESawyer 16 Sep 12
I'm sorry but the latest Kickstarter update made me cancel my $280 pledge. It sounds like you're planning a 3-4 player party and spending huge amounts on LARP features with no gameplay relevance. Might repledge if you can offer a good explanation.
What is a LARP feature?
JESawyer 16 Sep 12
What's up with these stretch goals? It sounds like the game will have a really small party size with forced companions and the player house sounds like a gimmick.
What do you mean that the house is a "gimmick"?
JESawyer 16 Sep 12
Ask yourself whether you've forgotten the Iron Law of Kickstarter: Kickstarter campaigns are funded ONLY by hardcore fans, so pander to them as much as you possibly can, NOT to the masses. The masses aren't going to preorder your game 2 years in advance.
Even among hardcore fans, there is a great deal of diverging opinion.
JESawyer 16 Sep 12
It'd be great if you would actually address some of these questions and concerns being expressed here about Project Eternity instead of dodging them and being a smartass.
I'm sorry. It's very difficult for me to follow every thread on each conversation that people start. I often don't understand what the actual issue is until they explain it. I'm trying to pay attention to discussions on every major forum that has threads on it.
JESawyer 16 Sep 12
I think people are worried that the player house is just going to be a cosmetic thing to store your crap/trophies and not something integrated into quests and plot lines.
In my mind, a player "house" is something like The Sink. A player stronghold would be something like Crossroad Keep, with much more in-depth strategic gameplay.
JESawyer 16 Sep 12
A player house might be good, esp if PE takes place over a long timespan, for providing centrality to the plot and PCs' doings. I think The Sink's saving grace was the AI personalities; otherwise, it was just a service hub and didn't add much to the game.
Yes. The Sink was our way (though I can't personally take credit for any of it) of addressing an understandable lack of enthusiasm for F:NV's standard housing. It had some nice functionality and good characters/story elements in it (IMO).
JESawyer 16 Sep 12
What do you think about all these questions and demands? Do you ever think, "I made a huge mistake."?
It is very difficult to keep up with them all. I feel like I make mistakes all the time. Hopefully I am making fewer mistakes as time goes by.
JESawyer 16 Sep 12
Will Project Eternity be the first game from Obsidian Entertainment that is actually worth playing?
I think it depends on what you didn't like about our previous games. It's important to us to use this opportunity well.
JESawyer 16 Sep 12
What do you think about mentality of ignoring every aspect of something but focusing on just this one that may or may not have any negative meaning?
Well, it's their money. Some people have issues that are extremely important to them. If we're going in a direction that a backer finds unacceptable, I can't fault them for acting on it.
JESawyer 16 Sep 12
please try to make the game racist and sexist, kthnx
I think it's important to distinguish between a game/story being inherently racist or sexist and the characters in it being racist or sexist. Settings with a diverse populace will almost always have some elements of prejudice in them. Characters with grounded prejudices (including religious) can be very compelling and interesting to deal with. I think their presence can make a setting feel more believable.
JESawyer 16 Sep 12
Can you please say if Tim Cain and MCA are very involved with this game? The KS video implies they are, but Brother None has said they aren't that involved and PE is mainly your project?
I have been spending more time on it, proportionally, but yes they are (and will be) very much involved in making the game. There's no way I could do this all on my own.
JESawyer 16 Sep 12
You're forums goin' up and down. Tell it to calm down. Overexcitment isn't good for one's health!
We're working on sorting it out. It's good that we're receiving this much interest, but the forums haven't had to support this continuous traffic before (that I can remember, anyway).
JESawyer 16 Sep 12
Sawyer, can you please think about making an optional perma-death/iron man mode for PE?
Personally, I think Iron Man/ultra-difficult modes along those lines are great additions. I know Tim does, too.
JESawyer 16 Sep 12
Any chance that you guys might decide to upgrade the "player's house" into a full fledged "stronghold" as a stretch goal? (As in something more involved with the the storyline than just a place for players to "chillax" and dump their items, like in BG2)
We have discussed that as a possibility. I think full strongholds can really add a lot of great gameplay, but man, they require a bunch of work.
JESawyer 16 Sep 12
Did NCRCF have concrete towers during development at one point? I ask because I noticed from a distance, roughly by the PG camp by Hidden Valley the towers are a concrete skin, yet up close, they're makeshift steel.
I don't *think* so, but I could be wrong. One thing that could be giving that impression is that I believe that level-of-detail (LoD) models in that engine don't support a specular map (makes things shiny).
JESawyer responded to TheDoctor2142 17 Sep 12
Do you think you, or Mr. Avellone, will make a Fallout Bible for Fallout: 3 and Fallout: New Vegas?
I can't speak for Chris, but I won't. Sorry.
JESawyer 17 Sep 12
You seem to be a big believer in the tablet market for CRPG's. Do you think that the Kickstarter would have been as big a success if you had announced it as an iOS/Android game?
For this project, I don't think so. Our KS pitch is driven heavily on platform-specific (PC) nostalgia.
JESawyer 17 Sep 12
Could you please make all of the systems in PE completely transparent and explained (but not dumbed-down)? It's the reason I was able to get into Fallout and Arcanum, but not the IE games.
That's always a goal of mine in general, so I will do my best.
JESawyer 17 Sep 12
You guys are kinda sucking at updates and managing your campaign. Are you planning on getting more involved? Where's the Monday morning update?
We don't just make updates independently. We have to coordinate with each other before putting information out. I wrote up things to talk about yesterday, sent them to the team last night, and we talked about it this morning. I'm writing an update after lunch and will be posting it later in the day.
JESawyer 18 Sep 12
is project eternity being developed strictly for pcs?
Right now only for PCs but we're getting very close to hitting our $1.6 million stretch goal which will include MacOS support. At $2.2 million we will be adding Linux support.
JESawyer responded to SerMcWorst 18 Sep 12
Is there any chance we'll get an update on the technology used for Project Eternity relatively soon? The statements that have been put out so far paint a confusing picture, tbh.
In the near future, yes. What's confusing about it?
JESawyer 18 Sep 12
my cat just died today. if I make another pledge, maybe you could put in a gorgeous kitty named Ronnie somewhere.
 That is a sad tale.
JESawyer 19 Sep 12
why were the digital versions of nwn2 removed from everywhere
Hmm. Not sure.
JESawyer 20 Sep 12
In the new update it says guns are useful against wizard's barriers, but what about against metal armor users? Early firearms are what helped make traditional armor like plate become obsolete.
Yes, they are also effective against metal (and non-metal) armor. They're particularly effective against the arcane veil because the arcane veil is reactive, not a constant physical barrier.
JESawyer 21 Sep 12
You seem to like Germany. Have you ever been to Oktoberfest in Munich?
I was in Munich in August of last year, but that was too early for Oktoberfest. Before I went to Munich, I was in Kempten, southwest of Munich. I stayed there because I wanted to see the village where my grandmother was born (Untrasried). By coincidence, Kempten was having their Allgäuer Festwoche at the same time. I was surprised at how similar it looked to the Gemütlichkeit Days festival that happens near my hometown. I always figured that Gemütlichkeit Days was anachronistic. I'm glad I saw a Fest in a small town; I suspect that seeing Oktoberfest in Munich would be very tourist-oriented.
JESawyer 21 Sep 12
Don't go. There's nothing authentic about the Oktoberfest. It's a pure tourist trap. They'll rob you blind. (Source: I'm german)
kewl
JESawyer 23 Sep 12
DOESN'T HAVING SEPARATE SYSTEMS FOR COMBAT AND NON-COMBAT SKILLS KIND OF DETRACT FROM THE SPECIALIZATION AND THEREFORE UNIQUENESS OF CHARACTERS BY ALLOWING FOR BROADER COMPETENCY?
Yes. I consider that an acceptable trade-off to prevent dead-ending certain players/parties in circumstances where their particular brand of non-combat specialist isn't accounted for. You're also configuring a party of characters, not a single character, so the number of combinations is much larger even with combat and non-combat skills being segregated.
JESawyer responded to Melnorme 24 Sep 12
From reading your opinions on SomethingAwful and the Obsidian forums, it seems you favor a minimalist approach towards worldcrafting. No "useless" weapons, no mundane conversations, etc. Don't you think this will have a harmful effect on verisimilitude?
I don't think it will harm verisimilitude, no, because none of the source games came anywhere near being simulators of reality. 
I think it's my job to design things, not be a content creator for the sake of making the biggest list of "stuff" possible.
JESawyer 24 Sep 12
Will it be possible to simply give each member of your party a different combat and passive skill type until you have them all within your team? That seems like it would detract from replay value or any uniqueness of each character party.
No. I want to tune the advancement structure to prevent characters from dominating all available choices.
JESawyer responded to Melnorme 24 Sep 12
I see that you're complaining about how people received the idea that combat and non-combat skills should be "segregated". The problem is that Tim Cain was the one to introduce it, and he made people think about Fallout. And that wouldn't work there.
Fallout games are pretty dissimilar to the IE games in a bunch of ways.
JESawyer 25 Sep 12
Why is the art style/direction so conservative. This is your chance to make your own IP, something unique and beautiful, yet its the same Medieval Europe with Elves and Dwarves that everyone is sick of.
I don't think everyone is sick of conservative weapon and armor design. While Planescape: Torment had wild 'n wacky designs for everything, the other IE games all illustrated characters, weapons, and armor with fairly normal proportions and understated stylization (exception: Sarevok and/or Jon Irenicus). 
Also, the pendulum swings both ways on this topic. I worked on a fantasy setting that had a pretty unusual art style (well, the whole setting was unusual). The people who liked it really loved it, but a lot of people really didn't like it (even if they appreciated the aesthetics of it). Part of the reason was because the unusual choices of characters, equipment, and landscape made it difficult for a person to look at a scene and think, "This is a fantasy setting." 
Personally, I like that ambiguity, but not everyone does.
JESawyer 25 Sep 12
Torment is arguably the best Infinity Engine game and part of the reason for it is the original setting and it's unique take on fantasy. A game like BG2 would be a welcome sight but I expect more from Obsidian, I'd much rather have PS:T and MotB than BG2.
Okay. Half of MotB takes place in Faerûn and it is a high-level campaign. I do not believe the entry into a fantasy setting that runs a spectrum between "traditional" and "what the heck" needs to immediately start out with the equivalent of plane-hopping and knocking down the pillars of metaphysical understanding. It's cool that PS:T could be wacky and that MotB could bridge the gap between traditional and unconventional, but again, MotB was a high-level Faerûn++ campaign that took place after the NWN OC.
JESawyer 25 Sep 12
you look handsome
o thx
JESawyer 26 Sep 12
I really hope you don't go too conservative on the artstyle. If anything, Kickstarter should allow for innovation and games like the The Witcher 2 and Dark Souls have proven that you can have a plausible but very unique artstyle in a medieval setting.
We are going to ramp into the more unusual stuff. Of the concepts we have been working on, Edair is the most ordinary among them. That isn't to say that the next concept we release is going to be of an intersex two-headed jackal oneiromancer phasing into ectoplasm, but we're moving toward the more unusual stuff.
JESawyer 26 Sep 12
Is that Bowie with a halo on the t-shirt you're wearing on the latest video?
JESawyer 27 Sep 12
Why do the energy weapons in the Fallout series tend to fire like conventional automatic weapons rather than ever using a continuous beam? I'm thinking specifically of guns like the gatling laser, that fires a series of beams rather than one unbroken one.
I think continuous beam weapons are cool. We actually tried implementing a continuous beam weapon in F:NV and it was a colossal mess. We put a fair amount of time into it, but it was causing tremendous problems, so we pulled it out.
JESawyer responded to Mirokunite 27 Sep 12
So what do you think about the busted Canadian cheese smugglers?
There's a lot of good brick (such as it is) made in the U.S. I can't blame them, except for bringing over presumably New England brick instead of Wisconsin brick. 
Of Wisconsin brick, I think Widmers makes some of the best. Widmers is also a Swiss-American cheesemaking family, like the Jossis (who invented brick), if you care about that sort of thing.
JESawyer 27 Sep 12
How much are the Project Eternity character designs shown so far likely to change? I think they look pretty good for the more normal/grounded characters, but I'm hoping Cadegund's boob armor gets replaced with a normal breastplate.
Let me know what you think of the revised version in Chris Avellone's update: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/posts
JESawyer 28 Sep 12
Was the design revised because of the fan backslash or did you have the other version ready before? Also, did you want to *test the waters* with the boob plate design?
We had discussed various versions of the breastplate before the PA article went up. Reactions to the one on the PA site caused us to go with a more traditional breastplate for the final design.
JESawyer 28 Sep 12
In the kickstarter video, you're wearing some crystal plastic eyeglasses. What brand/model are they? I want a pair. They look great on you.
Thanks. They are Salt Yates glasses in "Crystal" color. 
http://www.saltoptics.com/detail.php?id=162&pageindex=40&categoryid=1&orderby=4
JESawyer responded to MVozda 29 Sep 12
Are you still planning updates for your New Vegas Mod? I Imagine your quite busy and all, but a lot of people are still looking forward to it, thanks! If it wasn't for that Mod I wouldn't be playing New Vegas still, lol, I love it!!!!
Thanks. I just uploaded a new version today. http://twofoldsilence.diogenes-lamp.info/2012/09/jsawyeresp-v5.html
JESawyer 29 Sep 12
What does "has backpack" refer to in the ReadMe of your mod?
There are two flags on outfits that will cause them to change how rifle-type weapons are stowed on the character: Power Armor (which also is hard-coded to require the Power Armor Training perk) and Has Backpack. If either of those flags are checked, the weapon will be stowed barrel (or equivalent) up instead of stock (or equivalent) up. When the character draws and stows the weapons, it's done "underarm" instead of over the shoulder. 
This is done to prevent inevitable clipping (mesh interpenetration) during over-shoulder draw/holster animations as the large pauldrons and other bits of power armor get mushed together. But the other effect it has is that it tells the weapons to snap to a node in the mesh that pushes it away from the body far enough to mitigate most of the weapon's interpenetration of the armor. It's especially important on power armor, but also on ranger armors and a few other outfits. 
When I removed the Power Armor Training requirement from suits of power armor, I did not initially check the "Has Backpack" flag, so they all reverted to the default animations and positioning.
JESawyer 29 Sep 12
I'm getting into biking and I was wondering, what's the furthest you've ever rode on one outing?
A little over 100 miles (a century). I've done five centuries to date.
JESawyer responded to Melnorme 30 Sep 12
I suspect that PE will end up NOT using the Vancian magic system. But I do feel that the role of the spellbook as a custom-made "toolkit" that needs to be prepared ahead of time is integral to the IE spirit. Can this be achieved in a non-Vancian system?
I think it can, but I also think we need to be cognizant that advance preparation does not always equal strategic gameplay. If the player is making choices "blind" (for lack of a better term) and those choices have a huge effect on efficacy, that's not really a strategic blunder as much as a bad guess. I think some of the spell prep requirements in BG2 fell into that category, where the player's only approach was to enter combat, see how he or she failed, and reload the game with a different set of spells memorized. 
In difficult battles, reloading is not uncommon, but I think it usually feels better when the player's error is a tactical one rather than a "strategic" one -- strategic being in quotes because there's no way for the player to know what's coming outside of metagaming.
JESawyer 30 Sep 12
What's you take on cooldowns? Are they a good combat mechanic in your view?
I think they're fine, but it's just one mechanic. As with any timing-based mechanic, I think it needs to be used in conjunction with other tactical considerations to force the player to think more about what to do.
JESawyer 30 Sep 12
Who came up with the Abilene Kid in New Vegas? It's surprisingly useful for some situations.
I did, though it was really just a throwback to the Red Ryder LE. 
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Red_Ryder_LE_BB_gun 
The Abilene Kid isn't particularly accurate, but if you have a critical hit-oriented build, it can be really powerful from a hidden state.
JESawyer 30 Sep 12
Mr. House and Marcus say that once Caesar dies, the Legion will fall apart. will this still happen even if the Legion wins at Hoover Dam or will they find a way to survive without Caesar?
It is... a mystery.
JESawyer 30 Sep 12
Who came up with the experiment for Vault 11? It's quite brilliant.
Eric Fenstermaker and I, but the final design and implementation was all Eric.
JESawyer responded to Melnorme 1 Oct 12
This post - I'm interested in your opinion on it. Do you agree that the standard autoattack should be the backbone of combat? You could remove a lot of the venom in the cooldown debate if you confirmed that the combat would not be about "button pushing".
http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60372-vancian-magic-system/… 
I think that every character should be able to have a reliable, repeatable default action and some characters may largely rely on using a default action modified by modal properties (e.g. 3E's Power Attack). 
I think that the pacing of different characters actually *should* be asynchronous because that will likely cause different tactical considerations for what those characters do in combat. I also think it would be good if players could opt to make individual characters more or less high-maintenance. The default spellcaster in Project Eternity may not require new inputs every six seconds, but if a player wants to build one that does, I don't think allowing the player to push the character in that direction is a bad thing.
JESawyer 1 Oct 12
What goes on in terms of development for a game 6 months before release?
It depends on the game. On IWD2, that would be over half of development, so we were still generating a ton of core content, of which very little was cut (to its detriment, I would argue). On NWN2, we were mostly cutting content and features while wrapping up the remaining critical areas. On F:NV, only a few areas were still under core development at that point in time (e.g. Hoover Dam and a few other major areas) and we went into cleanup/bug-fixing mode toward the middle of this period.
JESawyer 1 Oct 12
What's your actual job title on PE? I've seen both you and Adam Brennecke referred to as project director and project lead.
We're co-project directors, though Adam's responsibilities are more similar to those of an executive producer.
JESawyer 1 Oct 12
Are there any good alternatives to rubber tires for a bike?
Hmm. Not that I know of.
JESawyer responded to KneeGrowPlz 1 Oct 12
Hey, I just sent you guys 65 bucks! What do I win
a video gam
JESawyer responded to 21Spires 2 Oct 12
Would you be able to offer any clarification on the type of monster level scaling planned for PE? I read Feargus Urquhart’s recent comments and was very disappointed that it may be included at all. Otherwise, looking forward to PE! Thanks so much.
I wasn't planning on using level scaling much, if at all.
JESawyer 3 Oct 12
Do you still support Tropes vs. Women now that Anita has pretty much run off with the money to the point Kickstarter changed its ToU over it?
Yes. I think everything I've ever backed through Kickstarter has arrived later (in some cases much later) than it was listed to arrive. All I'm expecting is a digital download of the series when it's done. I'm in no immediate rush. 
Also, how did you look at how Kickstarter changed their Terms of Use and conclude that it was Tropes vs. Women that triggered it? Tropes vs. Women generated far more money than Anita requested, but it's small fry compared to many other projects. Every article I've read has suggested it was projects like Ouya and Oculus that caused the revisions. The latter raised 15x as much as as TvW and the former raised over 50x as much.
JESawyer 3 Oct 12
Do you think level scaling is a good idea?
Not usually. Sometimes a certain amount of scaling is good for the critical path when there's a lot of side content. Players can weave in and out of the critical path a lot, so it's very hard to predict when they're going to tackle any given point on the path. For side content, I usually don't think it should be scaled at all.
JESawyer 3 Oct 12
People are afraid that your game will be pushing an agenda. Don't you think it is better to leave that stuff grey and let the player decide?
People seem to be afraid of a lot of things that don't appear to have any rational foundation in the things I've previously done or said.
JESawyer responded to SerMcWorst 3 Oct 12
Free Radical's founder thinks that the fact that Kickstarter projects couldn't get funding another way is "a red flag" and that he expects a lot of disappointment to come from KS. How would you reply to that?
How is this any different from the publisher-funded model? "This was funded by a publisher" has no bearing on the quality of the product nor on its viability in the marketplace. I'm sure there will be some disappointments out of KS funded projects, but even big publishers float big, expensive stinkers every year.
JESawyer 3 Oct 12
What are your thoughts on burning of library of alexandria and its effects on modern civilization?
Q__Q
JESawyer 3 Oct 12
Do the "Core" classes include the two unnamed classes that were unlocked at 1.4 and 1.8 million?
The classes that were covered at $1.1M (our original funding target) were the fighter, priest, rogue, wizard, and ranger. The stretch goals unlocked the monk and druid.
JESawyer 4 Oct 12
How do you feel about the ESRB? You seemed to have some hangups about the rating system in your most recently publish interview.
I don't have many problems with the ESRB. That comment was about how some publishers view the M rating.
JESawyer 4 Oct 12
Is the "watcher symbol" on Cadegund's breastplate meant to be similar to the NWN2 Eye Logo?
No. It's a bomb.
JESawyer 4 Oct 12
o lawd is that a brandon bird sam waterston t-shirt you've got in the update video?
^_________________________^
JESawyer responded to 0Thanatos 4 Oct 12
Almost all games stick to the more old(boring) established skill/leveling systems. There's dozens of games were I think of way more innovative and complex systems like non linear skills or dropping leveling. Would you ever want to do something like that?
Sure. If more than six people wanted to Kickstart a successor to Darklands or The Magic Candle, I'd do that.
JESawyer 4 Oct 12
Could you perhaps clarify the "over time" part of "Over time, you can build your own custom parties to play through the game" from the last PE update? You don't build a party at the start, but unlock party slots as you progress through the story? Or?
You build your main character at the start of the game. You can use the Adventurer's Hall over time to build/add more characters to the party. Because the game will be paced for a certain party size (at least near the beginning), starting the game with six party members would probably make a lot of early content trivial.
JESawyer 4 Oct 12
Dual classed Kensai/Mage = munchkin?
In BG2? Yes, clearly.
JESawyer 4 Oct 12
Exactly how ticked are you w/ that tiny dent in your bike's rim?
It was actually a pretty big dent, going about 1/2 way in toward the center of the rim. It was accompanied by a flat and a sidewall blowout. I pulled it back "straight" (more or less) with a vice grips, but the wheel is way out of true. I should be able to ride home on it, but I don't know if the rim can be fully fixed.
JESawyer 5 Oct 12
I've seen quite a few people complain that the original pitch for PE focused too much on name-dropping CRPGs Obsidian has been involved with and not enough on describing the actual project. Do you think that this is a fair criticism?
I think it's a fair criticism from the perspective of an individual backer. If a potential backer doesn't like the ambiguity or doesn't like the specifics of what we *do* reveal -- well it's their money, after all. 
From the perspective of running a Kickstarter campaign, I don't think what we're doing is inherently bad. When we looked at a lot of Kickstarter campaigns, we noticed that some of the most successful were very "high-level" in what they described. The pitches focus on broad goals, feelings, and often a lot of nostalgia. 
Specifics in the pitch (the video, especially) often seem to drag interest *down*. Also, as developers, we want to be frank and straightforward with the type of game we're making, but we're extremely early in our development process. Anything we may say about an individual mechanic or detail of the game is more likely to change the more narrowly focused it is. To be practical, if the game were already fully designed, we wouldn't need to run a Kickstarter campaign. 
Finally, with a lot of our "weirder" ideas, it can take a while to bring those to fruition. Speaking from recent, painful experience, when you start developing something that is genuinely unusual, everyone involved in the process of creating it invariably has a different picture of that thing in his or her head. In some cases, individuals may be unable to visualize it at all. 
The first few attempts at creating that thing often fall flat on their face or at least involve a lot of iteration. And sometimes... well, sometimes it was just a bad idea and it takes time to realize that you need to go in a different direction. We would rather spend that awkward iteration time to get the weird things right than rush out the first rough sketch we can muster.
JESawyer 5 Oct 12
Have you read "The Prince of Nothing" books by R Scott Bakker? The importance of souls in PE gave me that vibe.
I have not. It sounds cool, though. Thanks.
JESawyer 5 Oct 12
On Gamasutra, you said: "Some players will chime in and say they adore everything about the old Infinity Engine games -- except those core design tenets that identified them." Care to provide more details? What core design tenets do they not like?
Real-time with pause combat, isometric view, D&D mechanics like classes and levels, fantasy settings and races. I think the only major one I haven't seen criticized is that you can have a party.
JESawyer 5 Oct 12
So much of Joshua Graham is left unexplained. Do you think there will ever be a prequel type thing revealing more about him? Kind of like the prequel comic to New Vegas. Or are you done with that character for good?
Ultimately, it's up to Bethesda if they want to do more with Joshua Graham. I'd love to keep writing the character. Honest Hearts was a pretty brief encounter.
JESawyer 5 Oct 12
Hey, don't doubt the potential of a Darklands style kickstarter, especially if it had a name like Obsidian behind it. You didn't think you'd make a million bucks in 24 either. You can do anything if you believe in yourself and trust in your friends!!!!!!
It's hard to find other developers who are as enthusiastic about making a historical RPG as I am. Often the proposition of making one game or another depends as much on internal interest as external interest. 
But yeah, if I were just given free reign to pitch whatever I wanted, an extremely detailed, down-to-earth historical RPG would be at the top of my list.
JESawyer 5 Oct 12
which stretch goal is going to be really good QA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n82E5yTtY_w#t=20s
JESawyer 5 Oct 12
Most stuff shown so far for PE looks like it could come from Forgotten Realms, albeit with the potential for interesting twists and nuances. Will PE have some truly weird and unique concepts, and can you show some of those before the Kickstarter ends?
It will. I'd like to show some of them before the Kickstarter ends, but only if they are ready to show.
JESawyer 5 Oct 12
Do you share MCA's opinion that a reputation system or similiar mechanics are better than a simple morality/karma meter?
Yes.
JESawyer 5 Oct 12
Do you lurk at RPGCodex? xD
Sometimes. ^___________________________^
JESawyer 5 Oct 12
Any chance we will be able to chose weaknesses for our character in character creation? Would such a system be too hard to balance (in Daggerfall you could become pretty powerful, chosing weaknesses that wouldn't hinder you anyway)?
I think systems like that *can* be hard to balance, but I don't think they're impossible to balance, especially if strengths and weaknesses are sort of rolled together like Fallout's trait system. I like them, but it's too early to say if we'll do something like that for PE.
JESawyer 5 Oct 12
What was it like working with John Romero. Is he as kuh-raaaaaay-zy as everyone says?
John is a little crazy, but I'm a little serious, so maybe we're just at opposite ends of the spectrum. I think our aesthetics are WAY different, but John is always really focused on making something that's fun. It might seem odd to call that out, but a lot of people really *don't* focus on fun. He's also one of the nicest people I've ever worked with. I'm really glad that Loot Drop is going strong.
JESawyer responded to luesdefabulam 5 Oct 12
For PE, do you intend to have item descriptions and maybe even art that go with it similar to IE games or Fallout 1&2? If yes, do you think about expanding that further, different or "extended" item descriptions based on character stats or identification?
Yes, we are definitely going to have item descriptions including unique histories for unique items. I'm not sure about art or extended descriptions right now.
JESawyer 6 Oct 12
There have been some concerns regarding Cain's proposed Wizard magic system. Mainly that it means we can use every spell repeadetly in longer combat encounters. Can you calm our fears?
I think it depends on what you consider "longer". Practically speaking, even a mid-level mage would have to be in an encounter for a long time to both exhaust entire levels of spells and then continue the battle long enough to see those levels unlock again. 
Let's assume a 10th level PE wizard has the same number of "castings" per level to cast as a 10th level wizard in D&D 3E. I don't know how we would want to roll over levels of spells from per-rest resources to timed lockout resources, but for now let's say that the wizard's 5th and 4th level spells are per-rest resources (just like normal D&D) and that 3rd, 2nd, and 1st level spells are on timed lockouts. For simplicity, let's also assume that it takes about the same amount of time to cast these spells in a full round as it would in an IE game. Though we will not use the same timing as the IE games, it's likely that wizard spells will be among the more time-consuming actions to perform. 
Using D&D spells for this example, the wizard could cast fireball three times or fireball once, then haste, then slow, or two hastes and a fireball -- in any combination, the wizard has exhausted all three of his or her 3rd level spell slots. All level 3 spells are now locked out for 30(ish) seconds. The wizard would have to cast another five spells before the level 3 spells were available for use again. Either the wizard is going to use up a lot of 2nd and 1st level castings (possibly locking out one of those two levels in the process) or is going to be eating into his or her per-rest resources. 
There are a number of tools we can use to balance how this works: 1) the number of castings before a level is locked out 2) the time that an individual level is locked out before it can be used again 3) when a wizard's spell levels roll over from being per-rest to timed lockout (e.g. in this example, maybe 3rd level spells should still be per-rest, but 2nd and 1st are timed lockout) and 4) the power of the individual spells. 
Our goal is to allow casters to contribute to combat in a way that is more substantive than hucking sling stones without always needing to chew into a per-rest resource. Additionally, we want the caster's higher level spells to be reasonably powerful but also a strategic resource for the player to manage.
JESawyer responded to DAMacMahon 7 Oct 12
Does PE need to make a significant profit at the end to spur sequels and generally smaller projects at Obsidian or is kickstarter a long-term model?
I'm not sure. That's a question for Feargus. 
As far as small projects go, personally, I think that the future of console development looks moderately insane for independent studios. When OEI was at its largest (I think maybe in the realm of 140 people), I started not knowing who people were, which was not a great feeling. On our larger teams, I also stopped being able to talk to people about their work every day. I was able to do that on F:NV usually, but often not with great depth. 
I like the feeling and flexibility of smaller teams and I like that everyone tends to be much more aware of what's going on. I hope that OEI can have projects of various (peak) sizes going on in the future.
JESawyer 7 Oct 12
How do you plan to deal with HP regeneration between combat encounters and is there "permanent death" like in the IE games? Also is there some sort of mana or other magic resource required for casting spells?
I haven't thought through a lot of the details, but I was considering something similar to Darklands, where characters have both Endurance and Health. Most damage taken in combat would Endurance, which is relatively easy to restore (through abilities and magic) and regenerates rapidly on its own, both in and out of combat. Damage to Health would be more serious and much harder to restore (probably only through consumables and/or rest). Having your Endurance lowered to 0 would knock the character out. Having your Health knocked to 0 would kill the character outright (though there may be some optional, lesser version of this effect for non-Expert players). 
We've talked about characters having a mana-like soul resource for using abilities, but I don't know that it's necessary.
JESawyer responded to undecaf 7 Oct 12
How have you planned (if at all yet) to deal with lockpicking and other (possible) similiar "one click" tasks in PE? Will it be hard thresholds (like in NV, but without the minigame) or skill versus lock chance or something different?
Probably soft thresholds with a scaling resource cost (e.g. lockpicks) for marginal shortfalls.
JESawyer responded to johnwbh 8 Oct 12
Have you ever written prose fiction? How did it compare to game writing?
I have. I'm not any good at it. At work, most of the writing I do is either plain exposition or dialogue. I'm pretty slow at writing dialogue compared to other OEI writers. When it comes to writing third person fiction I'm even slower and it's terrible.
JESawyer responded to anek5 8 Oct 12
Are there any aspects of the user interface of PE that will be *fundamentally* different/improved compared to the Infinity Engine games? Or will it use pretty much the same UI concept?
This is something Tim and I have been talking about lately since the UIs in the IE games and Temple of Elemental Evil were fairly different. ToEE's interface was very flexible and scaled to virtually any resolution, both of which are great attributes. The IE games' UIs did a good job of setting a mood/tone because they felt like they were "constructed" of material instead of being utilitarian UIs. 
Things I want to make sure our UI accomplishes: 
* Is flexible across all of our classes/party compositions and handles new additions easily.
* Retains a high level of consistency from character to character.
* Is fast to use/reinforces muscle memory (this can be tricky when flexibility is also a goal).
* Visually complements the aesthetics of the setting.
* Scales well across all of our supported resolutions.
JESawyer responded to Raedsswaghat 8 Oct 12
Will the Seax ever go out of style?
Seax sells.
JESawyer responded to Raedsswaghat 9 Oct 12
When writing a given dialogue, does one writer handle both sides of a conversation, or do writing responsibilities for individual characters go to different people to provide different perspectives/maintain a coherent voice for the character?
Normally, a character is only written by a single author to maintain consistency. In cases where the character is interjecting into another writer's dialogue (or is presumed to be likely to do so) the writer will leave a tag in the "stub" dialogue for the character's writer so he or she can come back to write the actual prose.
JESawyer responded to teac5 9 Oct 12
Besteht die Möglichkeit, dass ihr bei Project Eternity ab einem bestimmten Pledge ein Obsidian Shirt dazulegt?
In die letzte Aktualisierung eingeführt wir zwei neue Zugaben mit Hemden. Du kannst eine (oder beide) Zugabe mit jedem Pledge kaufen. Ich hoffe, dass ich deine Frage beantwortet.
JESawyer responded to MikeGolf 9 Oct 12
Just realized you released a v5.1 of jsawyer mod. The HUD displays properly now, thanks a bunch to you and xporc!
You're welcome! Glad you like it.
JESawyer responded to deuxhero 11 Oct 12
Why the long face?
Just born that way, I guess.
JESawyer responded to buzznfrogg 12 Oct 12
How does one actually pronounce the name Cadegund? I'm german, so I have it probably totally wrong in my head. (Especially as it reminds me of the old germanic names Kunigunde and Hildegund.)
Properly, KAH-day-goond, though we usually say KEH-deh-goond when talking about her at work.
JESawyer responded to Raedsswaghat 16 Oct 12
What is that castle at the end of the stretch goal road? If we'd hit $5m would we be storming Castle Dracula, whip in hand?
http://youtu.be/8mlQ46H6QII
JESawyer responded to NotGodot 17 Oct 12
Why did you look so bummed out at the party? Is it because you don't drink, because you were just tired, because the stream was being incredibly creepy, or some combination?
I don't like parties.
JESawyer responded to scitface 18 Oct 12
would you not consider nwn2 + expansions to be infinity engine like in spirit? everyone is saying real computer rpgs havent been made in forever but i would consider that one and it wasnt made THAT long ago.
Hmm sort of, but the camera was very different and the party control never really quite felt the same, IMO.
JESawyer responded to berserkcottage 18 Oct 12
When I first played FO:NV and came to Nipton, I successfully killed Vulpes and his entourage with a bunch of hand grenades. After I did that I got a slew of failed quest messages that seemed to tell me I was missing out. Could you have avoided that?
Avoided what? I guess we could have not told you that you were missing out, but I don't think that benefits the player in any way. Either you're made aware of it or you aren't. Not knowing what you just locked yourself out of isn't going to inform your decision making. If we tell you, you realize that blowing away people you come across can lock you out of content.
JESawyer responded to Director1019244 19 Oct 12
For P:E are you thinking that armour will make a person harder to hit, or harder to damage? Or a combination of the two?
Probably harder to damage, but I haven't discussed it in detail with Tim.
JESawyer responded to Kindoffer 22 Oct 12
I'm desperately searching for a link to download the latest version of your personal New Vegas mod, since I'm only getting a 'server not found' here: http://www.diogenes-lamp.info/jsawyer_fnv_mod.zip. Any chance you can help me out? Much love. <3
http://diogenes-lamp.info 
I'm having hosting problems today; I'll try to have them sorted out ASAP.
JESawyer responded to dudicusrex 22 Oct 12
In New Vegas you tailored the game toward a number of player character 'voices'/archetypes, i.e. The Man With No Name, Mad Max, etc. Have you started thinking what voices to use for PE, and could you give us some idea what some might be like?
We have not started discussing that aspect of characterization yet. Right now, we're focused on higher-level lore and story elements.
JESawyer responded to KneeGrowPlz 24 Oct 12
What happened to your arm?
I crashed in the third lap of a cyclocross race Saturday night. I came down from a flyover and instead of riding on the outside of a banked turn, I tried to cut across the inside to save time. The rear wheel slid out and I fell on my right shoulder and wrist. I was able to finish the race, but on Sunday and Monday, my wrist and shoulder were feeling pretty un-good. They're feeling much better now.
JESawyer responded to Gabriel77dan 29 Oct 12
In Fallout 2 Stacy says cats were eaten. In FBOS it was said Mr Pussy was the last of it's kind. In New Vegas House comments on that cats are extinct. Are cats extinct in Fallout or was the House dialogue worded incorrectly?
I have no idea. I always thought the "no cats" thing was weird since domesticated dogs on their own are marginally less capable in the wild than cats. Also, dogs generally trust humans and have been cohabitating with us much longer than cats. Feral cats (born feral) in the wilderness generally stay away from human beings.
JESawyer responded to Butwhocoulditbe 30 Oct 12
so why the fuck couldn't we ride motorcycles in new vegas ?
Because it was completely outside of the scope of the project.
JESawyer responded to Tagaziel 2 Nov 12
Any particular reason for cutting the Gomorrah 3rd Floor?
Gomorrah, even as it shipped, was large and difficult to navigate. Several quests had to snake through that labyrinth and having additional levels actually detracted from the experience.
JESawyer responded to Tagaziel 5 Nov 12
Is Colonel Moretti (REPCONN plasma rifle project) a reference to Colonel Moretti from Frank Miller/Dave Gibbons' Give Me Liberty?
No.
JESawyer responded to neuropath 9 Nov 12
In the Fallout series, would you say there is anything the Followers of the Apocalypse did that you disagree with? As much as I can tell, they're about as blameless and noble as it gets, but maybe I missed something.
At least in Fallout: New Vegas, I think it's easier to find fault in what they don't do than in what they do. They tend so much toward anti-authoritarianism that they have weak internal hierarchies and a lack of clear or unified direction. 
In The White Wash, Anderson's activities may or may not have been noted by other Followers, but even if they were, he doesn't have a "boss" and the Followers don't have any commonly accepted methods for dealing with rogue agents. 
Similarly, when Edward Sallow became Caesar, he essentially just sent Bill Calhoun away and there wasn't anything he or the other Followers were prepared to do about it. 
In the F:NV endings where the Followers wind up with a lot of responsibility, their tendency to over-commit and their lack of efficient organization result in a lot of problems. Even though they heavily distrust NCR, they are only able to provide adequate services in Freeside in an ending where NCR maintains control of the Mojave.
JESawyer responded to AdamWalker86 9 Nov 12
Considering the how conflict over resources is a major theme of Fallouts universe; dont you think the Sierra Madre Vending Machines were a mistake? Packaged food and full guns from metal chips? What else can they make? Trek style replicators seem too far.
I didn't develop any content for Dead Money other than the weapons. That's a better question for Chris Avellone.
JESawyer responded to Formspring 12 Nov 12
Which sport do you wish you were great at?
Bicycling, fencing, running, soccer.
JESawyer responded to Toonboy01 12 Nov 12
In the Lonesome Road add-on, there's a Wild Wasteland encounter where the password for a terminal is "Guest." Is this a reference to the show Archer?
I didn't work much on Lonesome Road (just did some weapon and armor tuning), so I don't know. Sorry.
JESawyer responded to bunchograpes 12 Nov 12
Many years ago (2004ish) I seem to remember you being very pessimistic about the future of PC gaming and about the future of "hardcore" CRPGs. As you're now leading the development of a hardcore PC RPG, what turned your opinion around?
Getting $4 million USD from fans to make a traditional RPG without having to go to a publisher helped.
JESawyer responded to ZirkMcT 12 Nov 12
The Enclave flag is essentially the US flag with an E in the middle instead of the big star, correct?
The symbol is the circle of stars with the E at the center, but I don't know if I ever saw a full Enclave flag in F3. It's similar to the "Betsy Ross" flag. My design for the Fallout tabletop game used a simple E. Bethesda's version stylized the middle tine on the E by breaking it into several thin horizontal lines.
JESawyer responded to ZirkMcT 12 Nov 12
The Enclave flag is essentially the US flag with an E in the middle instead of the big star, correct?
The symbol is the circle of stars with the E at the center, but I don't know if I ever saw a full Enclave flag in F3. It's similar to the "Betsy Ross" flag. My design for the Fallout tabletop game used a simple E. Bethesda's version stylized the middle tine on the E by breaking it into several thin horizontal lines.
JESawyer responded to damiaen 15 Nov 12
What was your role in "Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader"'s development? What did you think about that game/project in retrospect?
My involvement was minimal. I proposed some ideas for conflicts, factions, and a few other things. I don't think much (if any) of what I proposed was used other than minor Cathar involvement. I think the end result was a confused game because it didn't ever seem to fully embrace being in a historical setting. 
I'd love to work on a historical RPG some day, but I'm not confident I'll ever have that opportunity unless I make it myself.
JESawyer responded to TheDoctor2142 21 Nov 12
Do you think there will be any more Fallout comics like Fallout: All Roads that we got in the Collector's Edition of F:NV? I think it'd be an interesting and great way to expand the universe without making another game. Maybe a good way for Pre War events
I'm not sure if there will be any more, but I agree that it's a great way to expand the universe. I was on a panel with James Waugh from Blizzard a few months ago and he made a good point about "transmedia" products like books or graphic novels that take place outside of the main medium for an IP. If they're required reading to understand the core of the world, it's frustrating for the audience. They should be supplemental and stand on their own.
JESawyer responded to Denis517 24 Nov 12
Is the bright brotherhood a reference to the covenant from Halo? Just confirming speculation.
Not as far as I know. I think Jason Bright's name came first in the design process; we named the cult after him.
JESawyer responded to ZeaLitY 24 Nov 12
Have you been pleased with the feedback for Joshua Graham? I've replayed Honest Hearts 2-3 times just to soak up his relentless charisma and have been happy to find a modest collection of fan art going for him.
As much as can be expected. A lot of players really wanted to see the Hanged Man/Burned Man incarnation from the Van Buren design documents, so I think most of those people were unhappy with how he turned out. 
I had wanted to develop a religious conflict in an RPG for a while, one that wasn't presented as pro-religion vs. anti-religion. I didn't want to use a proxy/fictitious religion and I didn't want to use religion as the set-up for a series of jokes. My first idea for Honest Hearts was a direct conflict between Joshua and Daniel where Joshua was more like his pre-fall self, but I didn't think the characterization would be particularly interesting and I didn't think players would struggle much with the decision of whom to support. It didn't take long for me to change the main conflict to one about Joshua and Daniel vs. an external threat, with the player's choice revolving around which leader to support. I think we often present players with a choice between two bad solutions and we ask them to decide which one is least bad. With Honest Hearts, I wanted the player to decide which solution would produce the most good. 
I wanted the player's first encounter with Joshua to be very reductive. In way, I wanted the player to be initially disappointed. They hear legends of this fearsome, terrible, demonic figure and when they first see him, he's doing the equivalent of putting his pants on one leg at a time: sitting at a table maintaining a stack of guns. Even internally, some people complained about his appearance. They wanted him to be huge and monstrous or they wanted his first encounter with the player to involve him brutally gunning down White Legs. I believed that for his character to feel right in the context of the story, he needed to be a man first and the monster later. But that expressed desire on the team made me ask for the graffiti players see on the way to see Joshua: an entire cliff face dominated by the image of Joshua with tiny White Leg corpses falling down below him. In the image, he's like Goya's Saturn, dwarfing and destroying everyone around him. 
Presenting the conflict with Daniel posed some challenges because Daniel is not a living legend, i.e. he is even more of a normal man than Joshua is trying to be. Additionally, Mormonism is not a pacifistic religion (and its soteriology does not depend on pacifism), so the conflict could not reasonably by framed around violence vs. non-violence even in the post-apocalyptic version followed by the New Canaanites. Daniel's concern was about larger issues than fighting or not-fighting; he was concerned that Joshua's lapsed nature would cause a whirlwind of warfare that would pull everyone far away New Canaanite traditions to the point where religion was virtually abandoned in favor of a war cult surrounding Joshua. 
I had expected that most people would support Joshua, in part because of Joshua as a character but also because of the nature of gameplay in Fallout (i.e., violence is almost always a solution). I did not expect that the Survivalist's logs (written by John Gonzalez) would push so many more people toward supporting Joshua. I think it's an interesting example of players finding their own connections between the two stories and making an emotional connection that pushes them in a particular direction.
JESawyer responded to jbstevens96 25 Nov 12
Playing Darklands for the first time. Any beginners' tips?
*~ Darklands Starting Tips 'n Trickz ~* 
Darklands Fan Site - http://www.darklands.net/ 
I won't focus on metagamey stuff like making 80 year-old alchemists for their sweet potion stashes and then ditching them at the Gasthaus in the first 5 minutes. I'll just focus on a "good" party and normal game flow. 
Party Composition 
Your party should probably consist of people between 30 and 40 years old (maybe 35-45 if you want to push certain skills). This produces a good range of skills without suffering excessive END and STR degradation. You will likely want two folks who are heavier fighters, then someone with a high Virtue(!!!)/Heal(!!!)/Religion ("cleric") and someone else with a high Alchemy/Speak Latin/Speak Common. If you want to make a thiefy- or rangery-type character, you can stack up one of your front-line dudes on Woodwise, Streetwise, Artifice, and related skills, but it isn't vital. 
Virtue and Heal are skills that are relatively hard to raise and very important. Heal, specifically, only increases benefit in coarsely granular chunks. If your dudes only regain 1 STR a day, your Heal sucks and the game will be very hard. Get your Heal high enough to heal 2 STR a day, if not 3 (though that may only be possible with a 45 year-old character). 
Stats 
STR and END are important for EVERYONE. They are obviously most important for front line fighters, but practically speaking, everyone winds up in melee, so don't skimp on the STR/END for a gimmick mystic of affective piety build. STR and END should also be fairly close to each other. With armor on, END will typically get chewed up much more quickly than STR, but if max STR is significantly lower than END, guys will die instead of being knocked out (this is bad). 
Equipment 
Use gear that your characters are best at using! Check your weapon skills and equip accordingly. Early on, javelins can be a good thing for (especially) alchemist characters to use. It will raise your Throwing skill, which will become important on that distant day when you have more than two potion bottles rattling around in your pouches. Darklands has a learn-by-doing system that slows naturally with skill gain, so even characters who are horribly incompetent quickly become "okay" with a weapon if they stick with it. Early on, everyone/things' armor is terrible, so you can practically use whatever weapon you're skilled with that does good damage. You will eventually want characters who are good with hammers or polearms to deal with heavily armored enemies (e.g. Raubritters, Templars, Gargoyles). Dress everyone in the heaviest armor you can afford. Forget traditional class roles. Alchemists in Nürnberg plate ASAP. 
Doin' Thangs 
What do you do in Darklands? Well, it's an open world, but extraordinarily punishing to the unwary. Here's the basics: First you get the thieves, then you get the Rep, then you get the missions. Stay in your opening town for a while. Every night, go to the "Gabled roofs of the crafts district". Keep going in and out of this area until you encounter thieves. Beat the hell out of them over and over and over again. As long as you don't do dumb things like try to break into businesses or skulk around the cathedrals, you shouldn't encounter the city watch (breaking curfew is bad). During the day, go back to the inn. Have your characters Regain Strength (this is why the Heal skill is very important) and have anyone who is not injured Earn Money. Every once in a while, sleep in the wooded area inside the city for a night or two to avoid having your rep drop by staying at the inn excessively long. 
Sweet Medici Cash 
When you have slaughtered enough thieves, your local Reputation will start creeping into the teens. This is good. Since you are unloading a shitload of gear from this endless army of thieves, you will be visiting merchants all the time. Whenever you go to the Markt, visit every merchant, even if you don't need to. Fuggers, Medici -- everyone. Eventually, when you leave a merchant's shop, you will get a business proposition. Accept it, whatever the hell it is. Remember to write things down. This game was made in 1992. These missions vary, but usually involve one of the following things: getting a Tarnhelm, getting an old book, or killing a Raubritter (robber knight). Sometimes, these missions will send you way, way, way across the Holy Roman Empire. Even if you can't do them immediately, keep them in a list to do later. Of the three, Raubritters are the most likely to be proximal to your current city. They are also, by far, the most immediately dangerous to undertake. When you get your first Raubritter mission, do not go on it immediately. You may try the others if the destination is not hundreds of miles away. 
Raubritter Scams 
So, when do you pursue your first Raubritter? Well, here's a good strategy. Once a city's merchants have told you to pursue a Raubritter, they will give you a location. Don't go there, but go to other cities near the Raubritter's castle. Do the same thief-killing, Rep-building activities in these cities that you did in your first city. Eventually, you will gain bounties on the same Raubritter from up to three cities. As these bounties can often be many Florins, this is extremely lucrative. By the time your characters are universally rolling with 25q+ gear, scale armor, two upgrades of weapons, and at least four Essence of Grace potions, you can probably safely pursue a Raubritter. I won't tell you how to defeat a Raubritter, as there are many ways, and it is enjoyable to figure them all out. When you defeat one, you will get some nice armor and weapons (usually), and can go back to all of your clients to collect sweet, sweet Florins. 
Killing a Raubritter is a gateway to killing more Raubritter, which is also a gateway to exploring more of the world and completing those obnoxious early "get a Tarnhelm" quests that directed you from Ulm to Hamburg. 
Where's the Story, Bru? - SPOILERS SECTION 
When you decide that you want to follow "the story" in Darklands, there are a lot of places to begin. It all starts with visiting tiny villages. Do this until you find one that is full of Satanists . Defeat them and they will say something like, "We will have our revenge <direction> of <city_name> on <next_solstice_equinox_day>." Write this down this game was made in 1992. Did you already forget?! Go to that place at that time. There is no leeway, so don't think you can show up a day late and still check it out. If you do, you will have to repeat the earlier steps. When you get there at the right time, you will see a witches' sabbath . These own bones. "Deal with" them and you will be pointed toward the next steps (or receive a dream that does -- I can't remember . Just keep following the leads and you will go on a grand adventure. 
Other Things to Remember 
Your party leader always speaks for you, so set your high Speak Common or Speak Latin character as the party leader before chatting with people when that stuff matters (e.g. cathedrals, universities). Get as many saints as possible for your high Virtue character. These are super important, especially as the game goes on. If you have a second character with moderately high Virtue, there are plenty of low-Virtue saints you can call on. Just check the required Virtue before learning their mysteries. Virtue can be raised during the game, but very slowly compared to other skills. Write down where you find various alchemical ingredients or just use an online guide. Alchemy is really important in the long game. If you don't put effort into tracking down the ingredients, it's just a headache.
JESawyer responded to Tagaziel 4 Dec 12
The Enclave: SHADOW GOVERNMENT. Don't you think the éminence grise aspect of the organization could've been explored more thoroughly?
I think it could have, but I'm not sure where the appropriate place for it would have been. It's really back story in the Fallout universe and (IMO) less relevant than what's going on "today". The Fallout games don't focus a ton of attention on Pre-War events, but maybe a simulation-style episode like Operation Anchorage that focused on Enclave mustache-twirling would be a good place to explore it.
JESawyer responded to jvempire 5 Dec 12
How good is your writing? Both in legibility and in the content. [4]
My handwriting is usually rushed and has poor legibility. When I take my time, it's more legible but still very "long-stemmed". My personal notes are usually easy to decipher. I like to think that my technical writing is clear.
JESawyer responded to TheJMorgan 5 Dec 12
What are some of the ways you come up with and flesh out some of the locations or characters in FO: NV?
http://youtu.be/YFvvr8_CtaI
JESawyer responded to undecaf 5 Dec 12
There has been some debacle over the "invisible walls" in the New Vegas terrain that prevent the player from using certain "paths" over the land. Were they applied due to AI pathfinding issues, or do I misrecall and they are there for some other reason?
We put them up for four reasons: 1) to mark the boundary of the playable space (i.e. the outer edge of the game map) 2) to prevent the player from reaching a vantage point where the world looked "extra bad" 3) to prevent the player from being lodged in world geometry (this happened in Zion a lot) and 4) to prevent the player from standing in an unassailable (to AI) location. 
We never used collision volumes to intentionally block paths. Of the four reasons, 1) and 2) were by far the impetus for the vast majority of collision volumes we created. In retrospect, I think we should have ignored most of the 2) situations and just let the player see some extra-ugly terrain every once in a while.
JESawyer responded to dickslicer 7 Dec 12
With your mod, is it intentional for you to refill your canteen every so often even when full?
Unfortunately, I don't know what you're talking about. If you're talking about the Vault 13 canteen, there is no refilling mechanic for it.
JESawyer responded to LeopoldSkotch 7 Dec 12
Would you like to make a sequel to New Vegas?
Sure.
JESawyer responded to SerMcWorst 7 Dec 12
Chris Avellone mentioned that John Gonzales' take on the Legion was slightly different from your take for Van Buren. Assuming you can talk about it, what are the differences?
I don't know exactly what differences Chris was thinking of, but in Van Buren, the Legion was not an immediate threat. You encountered some of their dudes and heard rumors about them from the east, but they were a background faction for the most part. I can't remember any of the other details off the top of my head.
JESawyer responded to damiaen 7 Dec 12
Do you enjoy MMO's at all? Do you want to ever work on an MMORPG? Do you pronounce it MUH-MOR-PUH-GUH? Do you play Planetside 2 are you Vanu you are so Vanu aren't you??
I don't hate MMOs, but I don't get much enjoyment out of them. I think the last MMO I played was WoW. I played it for about five months after it came out and I don't think I've played any others since then.
JESawyer responded to scathoob 7 Dec 12
Why do the Enclave call themselves "The Enclave"? If they're the government shouldn't they just refer to themselves as that? (They do sometimes, but where did that word even come from?) It only serves to privatize and create exclusivity to outsiders.
I wasn't involved in creating the Enclave, so I don't know. Sorry.
JESawyer responded to Vault13citizen 7 Dec 12
Hello, Joshua. When asked if the Divide blocked all of NCR's northern land routes, Graham says "As if Death Valley weren't enough, they had the Divide and Big Empty to deal with". It means that Big MT is between Death Valley and Mojave, doesn't it?
Not necessarily, but it does mean that the Divide and Big Empty are also between NCR and their northern destinations.
JESawyer responded to Petrarch 9 Dec 12
From Software has brought in new directors for the Dark Souls sequel which has a number of people, including myself, worried for it's quality. Since you've acted as director before, how big of an impact did feel you had on the final product (FO:NV)?
Without knowing the company culture at From Software, it's hard to know how much influence individual director(s) have. In general, I believe people attribute too much to project directors (or equivalent). The high-level design of the companions and areas in F:NV (outside of the Strip) was entirely mine, as was the entirety of the system design, but I did not do any of the hands-on design for any quest or location, I didn't design the central plot or conflict (that was John Gonzalez), and I only wrote a small number of dialogues (Arcade, Hanlon, Kimball's speech and a few others). 
I dictated the overall tone and direction of the setting, story, and system mechanics, but there was a huge team of people responsible for doing the actual design work and implementation. At times, I demanded specific things, like the ability to kill any non-child NPC in the game and still complete the critical path. In most cases, I let the designers have a lot of freedom within a loose outline of what an area was supposed to be. Sometimes the designers convinced me to change the outline of those areas, so in the end, they had more influence over the high-level design than I did.
JESawyer responded to SonofHod 10 Dec 12
Which order would you recommend doing the DLC's in? I am getting them for the first time on Steam this Christmas Sale, and I wanted your opinion on what order to play them.
Personally, I think they work best if you play Honest Hearts first, then Dead Money, Old World Blues, and Lonesome Road. HH kinda sorta of fits into the overall arc, but DM/OWB/LR work better together. A lot of players also feel that HH makes the most sense as a lower-level adventure (I don't disagree). 
Getting to the start of HH is much more challenging than getting to the start of OWB or LR, but I think that spaces out the DLCs from the core game nicely.
JESawyer responded to 4657567 12 Dec 12
Few months ago, you mentioned the game length is going to be similar to Infinity games. Is it more like Icewind Dale (40-50 hours), or Baldur's Gate 2 (100-200 hours)? Sorry for my English, thanks for reply.
I don't think we'll know for quite a while. I know that's not the answer you were looking for, but I'd rather wait give out times. Based on previous experiences, what I am likely to do is give out the time it takes me, personally, to play through the game. Individual times vary too widely for me to speculate.
JESawyer responded to Melnorme 12 Dec 12
When you write about how all classes in Project Eternity should be "useful", what does that mean? Does it mean they need to be equally powerful and "balanced"? If so, what does that even mean in a single player, party-based RPG?
http://youtu.be/ZGv_-a8GBhY
JESawyer responded to Formspring 15 Dec 12
What is your favorite song?
It changes a lot, but Schubert's Wandrers Nachtlied II is commonly at the top of the list. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanderer's_Nightsong 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CUe_h9M9k8
JESawyer responded to crpgnut 17 Dec 12
Josh, we have rampant speculation over at RPGWatch about PE's total budget. Most believe that there is no way PE gets done for 4 million and that there is another form of money coming in (bank loan, private investors), can you comment?
We're scheduling/budgeting it for the money we received during the Kickstarter. I don't know what that exact figure is, but Feargus would be a better person to ask.
JESawyer responded to damiaen 18 Dec 12
in lieu of the recent mass killing in Connecticut, how do you feel about the way mental illnesses are portrayed in video games? Will Project Eternity have a strong focus or allusion to the theme at all?
They're usually portrayed poorly because writers lean on what they've seen of mental illness in popular culture instead of researching how mental illness actually "works". It's difficult enough to portray believable characters; mental illness adds a lot of potential complexity to those portrayals. For many people, mental illness, especially certain forms like depression, are hard to comprehend -- even among people with whom we have close relationships. 
I do not believe mental illness will be a large focus in Project Eternity, though we have discussed it. In Michel Foucault's early work Madness and Civilization, he described how perception of mental illness and social attitudes toward mental illness (and the mentally ill) changed from the Renaissance through the 20th century. The Dyrwood will likely mirror Renaissance attitudes toward mental illness with larger cities tending to marginalize (and attempt to normalize) the mentally ill.
JESawyer responded to IPureRapid 18 Dec 12
I know you love to bike so I was wondering, do you run much?
I love to run, but I can't do it anymore. I have arthritis in my right knee and running really hurts it after a few miles. It's what caused me to start cycling, which doesn't bother my knee much at all.
JESawyer responded to Melnorme 19 Dec 12
The big feature on Kotaku revealed many cancelled/aborted Obsidian games that the public was not aware of, in addition to the well-known ones. Care to tell us anything about these games, now that knowledge of them is firmly in the "public domain"?
Even if the public knows they existed, I don't think I can talk about any development details. Sorry.
JESawyer responded to Melnorme 19 Dec 12
Some of the abilities in the new update seem pretty twitchy and "click-intensive", like something out of an action-RPG. In particular, the Rogue abilities Escape and Reversal. Wouldn't the tactical nature of the gameplay be harmed by such abilities?
No.
JESawyer responded to Melnorme 19 Dec 12
Do you intend to do anything to combat the phenomenon known as "kiting" in Project Eternity?
I want to see how it feels to have ranged attacks use a slight aiming time buffer when you attack with them, and make movement interrupt reloading. It might be annoying as hell, but I think it would also drastically cut down on the efficacy of kiting. But if a player arrays a bunch of highly mobile ranged attackers and micromanages their movement well, there will probably always be exceptions. Then it's less of a battle and more of an ambush.
JESawyer responded to sobbery 19 Dec 12
Flanking in Project Eternity: will the rogue have to be behind the enemy to sneak attack or can it work from the sides or diagonally from the front? If it's the former, wouldn't that result in a lot of disproportionate micromanagement to stay effective?
Flanking requires you to be opposite an ally from the enemy you're attacking. There will be a somewhat loose angle requirement on this to keep it from being burdensome.
JESawyer responded to Hormalakh 21 Dec 12
Do you plan on having the same number of passive and active abilities for all classes or will some classes have more of one type over the other?
Some will have more than others. Traditionally spell-heavy classes like wizards, priests, and druids will probably have the most.
JESawyer responded to SerMcWorst 21 Dec 12
Since you seem to have more of an interest than most of the people I know in guns and "gun culture", and also seem like a reasonable person, what would you suggest in terms of gun legislation in the US? Assuming it's in need of a revision, obviously.
Universally consistent federal standards for purchasing/background checks (i.e. buying at a gun store from a FFL holder is the same as buying from some guy at a gun show), strong incentives and campaigns for safe firearm and ammunition storage (as opposed to laws requiring such), city- and state-level gun buyback programs, aggressive pursuit of straw buyers and corrupt FFLs, and a federal limit of one firearm purchase per 30-day period. The last is the most draconian, but unfortunately straw buyers and people abusing the existing system have ruined it for other people. 
I believe we should start by closing easily-abused loopholes (and pursuing abusers) and encouraging safety. Outright bans have not worked in the United States in the past, in part due to the overwhelming perfusion of firearms throughout the country. We should also not expect that any legislation is going to do anything quickly. We reached this point slowly, over time, and if we expect it to get better, it's also going to take some time. Looking at the specifics of one mass shooting or another and targeting the details in an effort to effect national change is foolish. 
Here's the problem: a lot of people have easy access to firearms who shouldn't have access to them. If we are to legislate, we should legislate in a straightforward and honest fashion to mitigate risk -- with the understanding that 300 million firearms at varying ownership and safe storage standards aren't going to turn into 100 million well-kept, legally-acquired firearms overnight.
JESawyer responded to phenphem 23 Dec 12
"Escape", "Reversal", "Recovery", etc. Are these names work in progress? While not being very explanatory of what they do, they're also not very thematic or "cool"-sounding. In fact they sound quite generic ARPG'ish. ex. "Magran's Call" >cooler>"Recovery"
"Escape" doesn't describe what Escape does? In your opinion, do Evasion, Cleave, or Dodge? Everything in the update is a basic class ability, not a powerful spell that a renowned wizard penned as his legacy. 
I think it's odd that you believe these sound like ARPG names. I'm using 3E/3.5/Pathfinder names a stylistic basis.
JESawyer responded to C2B 25 Dec 12
Merry Christmas from the Obsidian forum community and the Penny Arcade forum community!
Thanks!
Category:Out-of-game source texts