Final Fantasy III, VII, and Chronotrigger, all of which influenced my story design and companion design. I still cite all three to this day.

Not playing anything recently, but was in a Pathfinder “Ocean’s 11”-style heist RPG session (run by a UI programmer on Armored Warfare), which was preceded by a D&D 3.5 Greyhawk campaign run by Eternity’s level lead. Both were a lot of fun - well, until the encounter with the drow gypsy with the Deck of Many Things. :/

Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurke!

Grim Fandango, BioShock Infinite, Telltale’s the Walking Dead, Thomas was Alone, to name a few. There’s tons more I’m forgetting, I’m sure.

Tropes = Yes and no. My first approach is to either ask “what’s a 180 response/design for this” (which I’m worried is becoming a personal trope/cliche) or “what bugs me/what do I hate about X” which gives me energy. Planescape Torment allowed for a lot of both (and every game since). It hasn’t changed much, except I…

A: If I were to cheat, I’d say my favorite gun was Dogmeat, since he was more effective than one. For a real answer, probably either the Needler or the Solar Scorcher, although the ammo req. for the first one was kind of weird.

Appreciate it! And hope you enjoy Pillars, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed!

Thanks so much! I worked on both those titles at the same time, and I don’t think I’ve put more hours in the office in this lifetime (or the next, or the next...). At one point, I had two computers and would switch off testing between games while an area was loading to implement and test content as fast as I could. :)

This is a more philosophical question than you might realize. Me, I love to explore every dialogue like a dungeon, just to see what’s in there - if you enjoy it, do it. If you don’t pass it by, or leave it for the next playthrough. The goal is you should be role-playing and enjoying yourself!

I’d work on Warhammer in a heartbeat, had a 3 year campaign (Fantasy) and also played Fantasy Battle as well. The campaign was dark as all hell, but that’s probably what I loved about it. The players... maybe not so much with me at the reins. ;)

I try to play/review games at the studio when I can, although sometimes it’s limited to helping hiring and reviewing text and suggesting edits (which I also did on the tail end of Eternity). The Pathfinder game is among them, and we’d like our relationship with Paizo to continue as long as we can, they’ve been great…

LOVE IT. I have much respect for the Restoration Mod, and am so glad the files were still in there for them to use - but don’t get me wrong, they didn’t just use the files, they made content and did a job beyond what we would have been able to do, even with 2-3 months of extra time. Those modders have my utmost…

Well, when we got the Knights 2 opportunity, I was a little surprised. I’d had a lot of questions about the Star Wars universe for a long time, and I wasn’t sure how to tackle it - and then it occurred to me that the same questions I had might help form a context for the game (and giving them a voice in Kreia helped,…

Good question - so we go through a few phases with narrative: the 1-2 page outline of the story, then usually a 4-8 pager when the basic outline is approved, then a narrative doc of the global characters (1-2 page bios), then Region documents with other NPCs (1-3 pages), and once those summaries are approved and good…

Hells yes. We had already done the vision document for the sequel, which had a lot of elements I was pretty excited about.

I try to use the Force to accomplish this every day. :) We would love to work on another Star Wars RPG, and we have a lot of die-hard fans at the studio.

Yes, although usually we either create (or are given) a 1-3 paragraph descriptor bio or even go as far as a multi-page bio (like Kreia in KOTOR2), that we not only use for narrative reference, but also for art and audio, and it also usually includes sample lines for auditions.