Explore " obsidian entertainment" with insightful episodes like "Episode 298: Here it is, your moment of Ken!", "Josh Sawyer (Pentiment) on Art, History and What Will Be Remembered", "Episode 246: The Nerd Before an MMO", "Love is in the Air - Sly Cooper / Fallout New Vegas" and "Xbox Games Showcase 2020" from podcasts like ""Nick's Nerd News", "Origin Story", "Nick's Nerd News", "PopSchtick" and "Digital Days Gaming"" and more!
Josh Sawyer is a studio design director for Obsidian Entertainment. He has worked as the director on Pentiment, Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2, and Fallout: New Vegas. His most recent title, Pentiment, has won numerous awards including the Nebula for best game writing and best narrative and game of the year at the Game Developers Choice Awards.
Pentiment is a historical narrative-driven game focusing on character development, heavily stylized art, and choice-driven storytelling in early 16th century Bavaria. Players will play as Andreas Maler, a clever illustrator caught up in a series of murders in Tassing and Kiersau Abbey over the course of twenty five years.
We talked to Josh about how Pentiment came to be, the ways in which Obsidian designed their dialogue choice system to make difficult decisions for the player, and the state of narrative-driven games today.
Josh and Jeff decide they've done enough griping and want to cleanse the palate by talking about video games they absolutely love! Josh shares about his all-time favorite video game character. Jeff talks about a game that "was rigged from the start." The boys also get into upcoming video games and some exciting news.
Sly Cooper Remastered Trailer HERE
Fallout: New Vegas Trailer HERE
Thor Love and Thunder Trailer HERE
What games do you absolutely love? What do you go back to time after time? Let us know!
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Instagram: @popschtick
Email: popschtick@gmail.com
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Artwork by: Josh Jackson
Music appears courtesy of Leo Goes Grr:
Intro: The Thief from the ep The Thief
Outro: Sunset, OK from the ep We'll Come Back for You
Don't forget to check out Jeff's other podcast, Schtickless. Jeff and his wife, Meagan talk about everything from memes, to parenting, to marriage, and more.
Microsoft had their big First Party Studio/Launch Exclusive blowout and Dave and MJC are here to break it all down. Find out what Dave and MJC thought about Halo Infinite, Everwild, Fable and Xbox’s continued push of Game Pass and Game Pass Ultimate.
Enjoy our recap of the Xbox Games Showcase.
Opening song is Deja Vu by Popskyy - https://popskyy.bandcamp.com/
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Apologies to all for the slight delay, but the wait has TOTALLY been worth it because today we've got Nicole (Senior Narrative Designer at Crystal Dynamics, and before that a Creative Director on the unreleased The Wolf Among Us: Season 2, and a writer on season 2 of Minecraft: Story Mode, Guardians of the Galaxy, Batman, The Walking Dead: Michonne, Game of Thrones: Season 1, and The Wolf Among Us: Season 1) and Megan (Senior Narrative Designer Team Lead and Senior Writer on the recently-released Outer Worlds by Obsidian Entertainment, and before that she was a Senior Writer on Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire and Tyranny, and a Senior Game Designer and Content Zone Lead on Wildstar for Carbine Studios) joining us to talk writing/design tests, whether narrative design and game writing should be separate jobs, the hardest things to write and design, writers' rooms, rewriting processes, where they start with constructing branching narratives, what they look for in endings as creators and whether it's different than what they look for as consumers, meaningful choices, storytelling trends they'd like to see more of, NPCs, major influences, and a great deal more!
Our guests on the Internet
Nicole's Twitter.
Megan's Twitter, Website, and check out House of Ash and Brimstone (Gatewalkers Book 1)!
Stuff We Talked About
Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter by Laurell K. Hamilton
Sabriel by Garth Nix
More than Quest Givers: Why Good Characters Matter Konsoll 2019 Talk by Molly Maloney and Eric Stirpe
The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen
The Twelve Dancing Princesses by the Brothers Grimm
Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
Our theme music was composed by Isabella Ness, and our logo was created by Lily Nishita.
The Origin Stories panel returns to PAX West with some brand-new tales of success, sacrifice, and humiliating defeat. Join a group of developers, award-winning voice actors, content creators, and industry vets to hear the very true and somewhat harrowing tales of how they wrote, cosplayed, and sweet-talked their way into their respective careers in the video game industry. After all, if someone won't hand you your dream job, you may just have to do it yourself.
Ash Sevilla [Host / Community Manager, Nerd Appropriate], Amanda Erickson [Community Producer, Hi-Rez Studios], Kate Dollarhyde [Narrative Designer, Obsidian Entertainment], Cissy Jones [Voice Actor, Firewatch / Walking Dead], Abbie Heppe [Communications Manager, Media Molecule], Kelly Wallick [Founder / Overlord, Indie MEGABOOTH]
Ashly (actress, writer, and singer, who's acted in such games as Borderlands 2, Mortal Kombat X, Life is Strange, and Horizon Zero Dawn, and has written for Rocket Jump, Adventure Time, and Glitch Techs) and Kate (writer of speculative fiction, with her stories appearing in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Gamut, and Lamplight, and currently the co-Editor in Chief of the online magazine Strange Horizons as well as a narrative designer at Obsidian Entertainment working on Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire) are here to talk fan fiction, writing processes, letting your work breathe vs brute forcing it, whether games need their stories to be great or not, dealing with bad notes, voice acting and having too much or too little info to work with when you go into the booth, staying true to an IPs voice while also bringing your own, writing as a fan, ways to handle the problem of crafting stories when players might not be paying attention to/remembering key information, making players feel helpless, and much more!
Our Guests on the Internet
Ashly's Twitter, Website, and OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes.
Stuff We Talked About
The Science and Entertainment Exchange
Fueling the 'Pyre' With Supergiant Games' Greg Kasavin
Epistle 3 Jam (Half-Life 3 Game Jam)
Epistle 3 by Marc Laidlaw
Our theme music was composed by 2Mello, and our logo was created by Lily Nishita.
Matthew (writer, composer, and game developer on titles including the Call of Duty and Halo series, Destiny, The Infinifactory, The Arboretum, The Writer Will Do Something, and TIS-100) and Carrie (narrative designer on Pillars of Eternity, writer of The Buried Life and Cities and Thrones) join us this week to talk about maintaining your writing momentum, outlining, the writing process at Obsidian, Large Teams and the Problems they Cause, creating a Total Work of Art in video games, offering decisions that lead to chokepoints, motivating players with different play styles, the negative space that defines players’ experiences, how The Writer Will Do Something came about, that part of the meeting when everybody turns to look at you, when gameplay doesn't trump story, the linearity of relationship portrayals in games today, and should creators ever be involved in the post-release discussion.
Our Guests on the Internet
Matthew's Twitter and Website.
Stuff We Talked About
The Expanse by James S. A. Corey
My Brilliant Friend: Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante
St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell
Perdido Street Station by China Mieville
Our theme music was composed by 2Mello, and our logo was created by Lily Nishita.
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