Voss

I'm curious. Did you by some miracle see EGS being a thing 3 years ago? Why would you have clauses on the game being on sold Steam (for PC) when that was the only platform the publisher would be willing to sell the game at that point. They sure as **** weren't going to give 30% to EA/Origin or Ubisoft/Uplay. Those were the other storefronts back then and keep in mind Take-Two does not publish games on GOG either. That leaves.... Steam as the only option. Did you see Epic throwing money at publishers for exlusive deals? Deals that actually make sense for the publisher since they are being guarenteed an amount of money and more publicity in the actual store than they could ever hope for on Steam. While idiots like you are blaming the developer for this, when it's the publisher. Private Division isn't taking a hit, because gamers are just clueless twats. Did you see Private Division and in some ways Take-Two make a test run on their 3rd party games (Ancients, TOW and others) and how well they sell and what is the reaction from gamers, so they know what to do with their own games (GTA, RDR)? You should reconsider naming yourself Captain Hindsight. Did you see me making ANY of those claims? No. I simply said this is a continuation of obsidians past behavior is making bad publishing deals. This doesn't require Epic or MS or China. It just requires basic familiarity with the company and how things went with them of the kotor2 and fallout new Vegas deals. They took bad terms and got shafted for it. That it happened again despite their experience with prior bad deals is indeed their own damn fault, just as much as the publisher taking advantage of their continued legacy of idiocy. Most competent devs in the industry can develop congenial relationships with a publisher for more than two rushed games. That obsidian can't and instead still rush to bad deals (despite the MS buyout looming when they signed with take 2) speaks poorly of them. It doesn't mean other parties are somehow innocent, just that this is consistent with company history. And frankly, no one sane signs a publishing agreement that reads 'the publisher can do whatever they like without consultation and agreement with the dev" which is what you are arguing.

Indeed, i relly appreciate that Obsidian is taking a stand./sarcasm It is understandable that these are business decisions and that Obsidian most likely didn't have a say in this but that's what you got for selling out to Microsoft Studios. Well done guys, as of right now i guess i'm not going to spend any more money on you. Nope. This has nothing to do with selling to MS. In fact, had they sold themselves to MS earlier, this wouldn't have happened (MS can rightfully sneer at Epic's exclusivity bribes). This is Obsidian signing yet another bad publishing deal where they don't seem to have any grasp of what's in the contract, or set any real limits on the publisher. Its another live demonstration that Obsidian -needs- to be owned by another party, else they'll keep shooting themselves in the foot. If we're really lucky the MS ownership will also mean less tolerance for shipping games as buggy messes.

Given obs' lengthy history of bad publishing deals (and inability to create lasting relationships, despite kickstarter AND fig), I see no reason to absolve them of blame.

Epic's cut is 12%, lower if the game uses unreal engine. That's 40% of what Steam takes, while they offer only 5% of the functions Steam offers. And they have the nerve to call Steam greedy. Its also clearly temporary, and developers will end up getting screwed in the end alongside the customers they're happily screwing now. But a long term anti-consumer move for a short term larger slice of a smaller pie is exactly the sort of poorly thought out decision I'd expect from the current games industry.

Yep,if this happens, I'm definitely out. I realize saying so doesn't matter much, since Obs spurns these forums, but still worth saying to the audience. Enjoy the higher percentage on lower sales. I'm honestly surprised the MS overlords would allow this. Its another weird relationship with a third party that doesn't benefit them.

You should, it will. All games are better on a machine that isn't pre-broken, which also has superior input devices. 'Epic store' is an irrelevance.

@chairchucker - confused by your responses. Deadfire was a buggy mess on release. I even got a persistent bug were enemies became immortal rather than dying during my first playthrough. Bugsidian isn't a 10 year old legacy, its current reality. Competing with fallout. Yes, the setting is different. But its the same style of game, and much the same style of camp. If you don't know why 'campy' is appropriate, there is a huge back catalog of B movies out in the world where both draw inspiration. But more importantly, obsidian devs made a big deal recently about their fans not picking on Bethesda, when their own relationship (at least publicly) was solely recrimination based for not getting the metacritic rating bonus. The idea that they didn't announce this in the face of fallout76 knowing how their fan base would react (literally cries of 'salvation!') is ridiculous. Generic shooter- from the footage, that seems entirely appropriate to me, silly 'science' weapons or not.

Dialogue isn't necessarily just to listen to, it can be a gameplay loop of its own. Planescape: Torment is the egregious example. Debatable, but irrelevant. The most common point in advertising for this game is how short it is. No reason to expect a PST level of text. (Though I'd argue most of that is infodumps, exposition, and sophomoric attempts at philosophy, not gameplay)

What does the game offer outside of combat, though? Granted there is some campy dialogue to listen to, but outside of that, you...shoot people or...? Is there a gameplay loop other than combat?

Not me. All I know about it so far is that it has not-so-funny campy dialogue and looks like a generic shooter designed to compete with fallout for the purpose of competing with fallout (but don't be mean and talk bad about bethesda!) And it's obsidian, so will definitely be buggy. Not a strong sell so far, and they aren't exactly making an effort to share info about the game despite announcing it in opposition to 76 (and to distract from the MS acquisition) If they want to sell this one, they need to start giving reasons to buy it.

That has jack to do with the class and everything to do with the specific weapon.

I sorta agree, at least in the sense of software bugs. But i encountered a fair few game mechanics bugs (including enemies not dying) and especially story/companion bugs. I'm far more intolerant of story bugs than I am of 'game glitches with certain rare graphics setups.' The latter is largely a matter of statistics (there are so many configuration combinations of hardware and software), but the latter is completely on the devs. Josh admitting that they cut the rationale underpinning the main story and none of them noticed adds some fuel to that fire. Though... Delaying the game for a month and still releasing in this state raises my eyebrows. How horrid was it back in late march?

Wait, who's claiming factions matter in this one? Let alone that they matter too much? They need a lot more fleshing out, since they've ended up the meat of the game by default. (As the 'main story' is an irrelevance and nonsense) @yoyoll- got to disagree. A lot of the mechanics are terrible. Poe1 wasn't great, but some of these changes are barely functional at all (like armor)

Some big dungeons would have fit just fine. The entire area has remnants of ancient civilizations (mostly the usual suspect) but exploring them is simply cut off in favor of rehashing the same tiny maps again and again.

Just abandon it completely as a waste of time. Go back and flesh out the faction and companion stories. Those are what matter.

Because sadly Obsidian gets lauded for this junk by people who don't know much themselves. Most of pillars, Kotor 2 and several other games are drivel based on half remembered philosophy 101 classes. Unfortunately, its largely new material to the critics and general audience, so gets an 'oh, wow' reaction. I had that response to planescape torment when I was in my teens. Replaying it in college, I was less impressed, having been introduced to the full version of those concepts. Replaying it as a full adult, I'm a little contemptuous of how badly basic concepts were handled. Its the same here, obsidian is struggling to reprise/reinvent concepts they don't even vaguely grasp.

That doesn't really make any sense. If Berath was in cahoots with Eothas, her best option is to do nothing. Granted that's exactly the same as what she did, but that's a problem with the story, not a plot point. Personally I want to see the rationale as to why the statue is immune to explosions and lava. Or even cannons. It was hand-carved by people, it isn't indestructible.

Winning is not stealing babies for no reason. Seriously, you don't have to pick up *everything*

Actually, you totally can. PoE1's story happens without you as written. Because the story of PoE 1 is the Leaden Key doing the Hollowborn thing. And they actually succeed. You come to every site too late, they've already done their little dances. You're always behind Thaos. He gets down to the bottom of Sun-in-Shadow way before you do (as you've got sidequesting to do, and he just paused to collapse a doorway) he has enough soul energy from all those soulless kids to do exactly what he intends to do (empower Woedica), and just needs to flip a few more switches on the machine to do it. But to make you feel special, the writing forces him to wait until the player shows up, regardless of whether you got down there in 8 hours or if you took 8 months to tidy up the loose ends. Thaos won, but bounced on your plot armor at the last minute, trapped in stasis for no good reason. The Watcher's Awakening is completely irrelevant to what's actually going on in the Dyrwood.

it doesn't make sense the way it is either. Currently (with the Wheel intact) new people/animals (births) only happen with enough souls, but ALL souls are recycled, and the gods even feed off them to sustain their power. By that system, they're facing decline, even if only pieces at a time. At some finite time they'll hit the point where their feeding will reduce the sum total of souls to zero (or low enough that the wheel can't push souls from the in-between to 'the Beyond' and back to Eora. . The system is basically unworkable in whatever state. It also happily retcon's PoE1 Wael's request to push the souls into the Beyond into pure gibberish, as the Wheel gets them there eventually anyway.

Yep. Ship combat is fairly pointless. The auto-close damages you a lot, if you just go straight to the enemy, most of them fail to shoot at you much. Also, sure it nets you money and whatnot, but it's never really important

They were created because thaos was an irrational f-wit, but somehow charismatic. Fearing a mechanical universe, he drove his people to suicide to make gods, and maintained the system with even more atrocities after that first one. All out of fear that godless people would commit atrocities. :/

I just saw it as an irrelevance. She was already dead long before he talked about her, and he didn't even like the kid. (Yelled at him like he was a blithering moron for not already knowing the secrets of the gods...despite the fact that we hadn't told anyone so far) It felt like someone randomly obsessing over a girl they took to a dance once in junior high.

The gods mention specifically that they discarded their bodies. So giant skeletons may be theirs. Magran, at least, considers giants to be something she can create for a job and destroy later with no qualms whatsoever. So they could be proto-guardians that were simply tossed out when it was convenient.

I'd actually say the main story is too long and too irrelevant. The game never gave me a reason to care about eothas and his random meanderings, I just had to deal with it. In the meantime I feel like there isn't enough side content, which is sad because that is where the interesting framework for the actual game resides. It just isn't fleshed out enough.