Resources. Our “bookends” for the game was (1) you have to leverage the Infinity Engine, (2) it has to use the Planescape license, and (3) it has to be an RPG. There were probably other stipulations, but that’s what I recall most. So isometric camera seemed the best choice - and Tides is a spiritual successor, so they…

THREE IS UNFAIR. But I will try, because that’s one of the first rules about game design - the parameters will always be unfair. So...

No stairs. Yet. If I get some, they will appear suddenly, and they will lead down into darkness, and be something filled with horrors.

You can avoid this by having the narrative reactivity come much, much later (the Witcher is great about this). At that point, they’re committed. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t have some immediate reactivity for choices, but “too soon to tell” is great advice for quest and consequence design.

I have to confess, I don’t know many details about it, but I trust those guys (we wouldn’t have Old Republic without them in the first place). Overall, I’m still reeling with the loss of the Expanded Universe, since I spent so much time researching it.

Yes, got all the equipment for home (mikes, headphones) thanks to advice from the community as to what the best LP set up is, asked our IT folks if I could have the Arcanum LP computer (the system is so old they were going to take it outside and shoot it, but I asked them if I could have it, and they said “sure.”)…

When writing the companions for Pillars, I focused solely on them for many months. I wanted to do something different and also do the best work I could do. There may have been detours and other design requests during that time, but it was 7 days a week, at least 10 hours a day, and weekends I saw as just another…

The game’s one-liner was “the RPG that happens after the death screen.” I tried to imagine what that character would be, but our character modeler and concepter, Eric Campanella did a much better job than me.

I didn’t feel any narrative constraints from the community - or from the project itself beyond that we were trying to recapture a certain feel of previous Infinity Engine games, and we sought to write towards that. I do think we kept the story close to our chest during development, but that was intentional.

Artistic Merit = Thank Grim Fandango - it was the first game that made me realize games could be... more.

It varies. I start with the character’s purpose (merchant, ambient flavor, reinforcing a theme - refugee fleeing a war, major quest giver/faction leader, companion, major adversary), and then I run through a checklist of (let’s use Fallout as an example):

Not really. There were a few things regarding this:

I think nihilism gives players something to fight against, especially in companions and in the world... and if you can give these NPCs hope or help the world, it sets an example against the seeming uselessness or darkness of it all. So part of it’s the contrast. The other part is I just like the darkness. ;)

She was pretty uncomfortable to write (as was Durance). I took a different approach with those two and tried to imagine characters that didn’t share my outlook (both have a number of principles I disagree with, but I wanted to give those a voice and listen to the characters talk about them and try to reconcile them).

I think I can hear Threadless weeping right now. For me.

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…