xzar_monty

Well, no it can't. I know you were not being literal, but you were not making sense, either. It definitely takes a certain number of hours to get to the end or even get anything realistic done (thus, not "as short as you want"), and after a certain point, there is nothing but repetition and/or walking across content-empty maps in games like this (thus, not "as long as you want"). Anyway, I looked at the gameplay on a trailer-type video, and the graphics were enough to put me off. Just not for me. Doesn't matter.

In one sense, I do get it, as the start tends to be a lot more interesting than the end, but it's still a bit odd. Beginnings contain an awful lot of possibilities, ends (quite naturally) much less so. In PnP, I find that the most interesting levels are somewhere between 5 and 15, and it's pretty much the same in cRPGs. Very early on, you're likely to die if someone sneezes or goes Boo, whereas by level 20 you're equipped to knock gods off their perches (sometimes that even happens to be your job), which is not as interesting as genuine challenges.

Wow. That's very interesting -- and slightly puzzling, too. I'm thorough, but I only tend to play a game once. BG2 is the great exception.

That doesn't exactly spell "stiff competition for PoE/Deadfire" for me.

I suppose what it may come down to is your last point: there is a broader trend. PoE1 succeeded because of a significant romantic and nostalgia-tinged desire for a game whose kind had essentially disappeared, but it did not create a market for the re-emergence of the genre as a whole. Although P:K did quite well, didn't it? So that may speak against that theory. This is an interesting discussion, however. Thank you for the list, btw. I know nothing at all about Torment, Wasteland and Shadowrun. Are they worth anything? I have tried Tyranny and DOS but stopped playing both in less than an hour and got my money back from Stream. They weren't for me.

That's a fair point, particularly when it comes to PoE1 being the first or only of its kind, but I'm not so sure about the later part. Plenty of competition? That should imply something like five titles to, or at least three. But were there seriously even two? If so, which ones? Btw, when it comes to movies, there is NO correlation between hype, marketing, budget, famous actors and success. NONE. There is NO predicting which movies become successes. The best predictor is excellent word of mouth, and that is completely unpredictable. (This has been studied mathematically, I can provide links if anyone's interested.)

I simply wish to reiterate what thelee says above. Everyone who played PoE knew about Deadfire. So it's not marketing.

Wow. Interesting. Thank you for this. My Italian is very rudimentary, and I certainly cannot read a magazine in Italian. Maybe in a year or two, though. I have previously noted that there have been excellent game mags in Scandinavia, even at a time when there were (apparently) none in the English-speaking world.

But we just don't know if that's true. There is no way of proving it.

This is an interesting topic, because Deadfire was a serious financial disappointment, so one might think that a lot of people didn't like it as much as the previous one. However, there's a fault in that logic: in order to not like it, they would have had to buy it, and this would have been reflected in the sales. So, the most obvious reason for the poor sales (right from the start) would appear to be that an awful lot of people were in fact seriously disappointed with PoE1 and therefore did not want to continue with the franchise. I wish to stress, however, that this is only a theory, although a logical one, and our only answer to the question of Deadfire's commercial failure, at the moment, is: "We don't know." As for the game itself, I think it's excellent and better than PoE1, although it does have its drawbacks and the best part in the entire saga for me is the early part of PoE1. As far as articles go, by the way, it seems to me that computer game journalism, as a serious form of journalism, has essentially disappeared. I would love to be proven wrong. I will be extremely grateful to anybody who can point me towards a site or a mag that contains proper computer game journalism and is impartial enough, well researched and exhaustive. Opinions are not journalism.

@algroth: Wow, superb, thank you very much. Definitely a pass for me, then, this game. That's ok.

I know it's a difficult question to properly answer, but how much shorter/smaller is The Outer Worlds than the games that "Obsidian usually makes"? Any way to quantify this?

For me, the funniest instance of things moving very fast indeed was this: I walked into that one guy's house to get the Cornet of Waves. Walked straight back to Dereo's lair. When I started to speak with Dereo, it turned out that a) Dereo had already heard I got the Cornet, and b) Dereo had already also heard that with the money he got from me, the other guy had already started to order wood (I think it was) to make new enhancements to his house. All this in what, half an hour? And I just thought, suure. Now, I do agree that making this more realistic is probably not worth the hassle, but still, sometimes it does look silly.

LotharVI's whole comment is a complete non-argument, just ignore it. I happen to work in a creative field (publishing), and I can assure you everybody welcomes criticism, even if it often doesn't feel nice when you receive it. Of course everybody accepts criticism, because it helps. Whenever someone is able to convincingly argue that something you've done is less than optimal, you should be thankful, because you can be better next time. As for my criticism concerning news travelling at the speed of light all over Deadfire: there may be a game mechanics related reason why choosing to do it that way is most feasible, and I'm perfectly happy to accept that, if that's the case. But I still think it was a bad call to make so many strangers on the streets of Neketaka comment on the watcher thing, or that thing at the docks. It just doesn't make sense: there's just no way they should know about me or the incident at the docks. But the way they talk about some other things is really interesting and nice.

That's a fair question, but it also has to be said that this type of stuff is handled with a remarkable lack of sense in the game. For instance, judging by the reactions of the people on the streets of Neketaka, pretty much everyone knows about the watcher thing (like, how?), and pretty much everybody knows the player character was behind that event on the docks (like, how?). I personally found this rather immersion-breaking -- and completely unnecessary, most of all. Why was it necessary to have everybody make those comments? Also, whenever anything happens in the narrative, the whole game world instantly knows about it. It's a bit strange. But, as I said, that's a fair question.

After you so aptly demonstrated your inability to understand the game mechanics (concerning the fact that people are aggressive towards you), I find it very difficult to regard your opinions as authoritative or trustworthy. But of course there's nothing wrong with level scaling.

So you advertise yourself as a pirate. Now, do you seriously wonder why others don't like you?

It's such a shame there are so few. BG2, PoE, Deadfire, P:K. That's about it. Sigh.

There is no problem with you identifying a shrine. Nobody said that. If you wish to have a debate, please respond to claims actually made and do not put words in other people's mouths.

For me, the last point you make is the most important: playing with the express intention of passing all skill checks simply doesn't sound fun. It's not cheating by any means (unless you do cheat), but it sounds like missing the point entirely. The game's an adventure with ups and downs, not a series of checks to be passed.

It's not realistic to expect to pass all skill checks, by any means.

The old adage about "knowing your enemy" might be a good reason why someone has excellent religious knowledge but zilch in terms of religious thinking.

The post-release nerfing has indeed been rather remarkable, summoning items being another good example.

There is no problem here. In the real world, for instance, an awful lot of people who study and/or teach comparative religion are not religious. Heck, I've studied it myself, and I'm not religious.

You do realise that when you write in a muddled and self-contradictory style like this, it's impossible for us to know what's going on, right?