Sven_

Can confirm that too. As somebody who rarely buys DLC for games, I've just only bought the season pass for Deadfire, actually. So even if this series is put on hiatus forever, still something apparently decent to play.

I've yet to finish this interesting series, but I found the answer. And yeah, I was surprised too. In particular as there was virtually zero German press regarding this, and you'd expect there to if a German artist would be involved in an international production. No matter how big or small. https://www.shacknews.com/article/103473/beneath-a-starless-sky-pillars-of-eternity-and-the-infinity-engine-era-of-rpgs?page=26 What I did find though -- probably because of the lack of press -- was a German forum where somebody was wondering whether Bell had ripped them off. The guy had also wondered whether he had ripped off another German Artist, as Aim Spirente sounded so familiar to his (they're just both based on an existing sea Shanty). The Shacknews piece is also interesting because it hints at how much the full VO must have upped Deadfire's budget.

Yeah, that "story urgency" thing holds definitely true. It's kinda like the BG2 chapter 2 trap, a bit. But then this was announced as spiritual successor, so. For something completely different, and in an attempt to brighten the depressing tone of this thread some up: Does anybody know how it came about that Obsidian worked together with Frölich Geschray for some of the game's music (in particular the tavern tracks)? Their homepage as well as Facebook hasn't been updated in ages -- one of the last news was about the impending release of Deadfire. Two years, wow. Sounds like a Josh thing. Could be wrong though.

If it was all that sailing around etc. was what kept people away (same as the "unusual" Scenario for such a game), that'd be pretty disheartening. I do love me some fine dungeon crawling in fantasy la-la land etc. , but there's got to be some games that shake that formula up or all that crawling in medieval Europe land would grow old real fast. Btw, as to personal tastes and opinions: Intererstingly, usually I am not that fond of all this "Player stronghold" kind of stuff. But in Deadfire, it felt far more natural, as the ship was your means of exploring the Deadfire. You can trace the origins of the player stronghold straight back to the original Baldur's Gate 2 (same as player romances). It's like some kind of repeat formula usually, and if every game does it, it gets tiresome real quick. I wish the random adventure sections during sailing wouldn't have repeated so fast, as there was so few of them. Additionally, strongholds eat up resources that could have spend on something else. Not sure if Tyranny needed those towers for instance (for PoE1, it was a backer Goal, so..). In my opinion, they added not much to the game -- but again, I'm usually biased against that sort of thing. Deadfire without the ship as such meanwhile would have been a different kind of game. Besides, the traveling as such isn't all that overly different to the original Fallouts.

Just you wait 'til Old Engrim comes knocking at your door!

Those are similar concerns I have for DOS1, actually, which is a bit disappointing. I wouldn't have expected them to drop that items themselves have levels, and as such are that powerful; e.g. a dagger from Level 2-3ish does like twice-ish the damage than its level 1 counterpart. However, perhaps in terms of exploration I would have them expected to do a bit more open. It's the same in DOS1 really, as you can see from These level maps. If damage/items scale this hard, it's no wonder that the game plays like it does. Possible spoiler inside: https://imgur.com/a/uK4zS#KEJXSrE I'd like DOS1 probably better as a tactical combat experience akin to Blackguards. No less as the inventory management and looting is perhaps the most tedious I have ever seen in an RPG, personally -- and this includes pre-Infinity Era 1990s games. Each char has ist own inventory (being a co-op game) plus you are constantly going through all that stuff as your gear eventually breaks or is being outlevelled. I'd like to see a timer of how much minutes an average player spends on the inventory screen and compare that to your average RPG. I'm betting all I have it would go through the roof. Good thing is that they seemed to have improved on their world building, that unlike the first part the freedom isn't as much about how you tackle combat due to reworked dialogue and quest systems -- and honestly, their presentations of it all in terms of "pen&paper like freedom" (which is their end goal) are amazing. All that praise they've received for the 2nd game in particular has to come from somewhere, which why I'm still interested (and have serious hopes for BG3). DOS1 was a make or break game developed on a budget; on BG3 they can go all-in now (plus have to stick to WOTC's rules).

Does that apply for the sequel as well?

Agreed. It makes you wonder how Black Isle was seen as "profitable", even making "a lot of money" given that none of the games they had ever developed on their own had the sales success of Baldur's Gate... so it comes down to budgeting/expectations. Obsidian HQ saw what Original Sin 2 had done for Larian and thought they could replicate it by bumping it all up to the max. Whilst that is not completely unreasonable, it's a different scenario than for the first PoE right from the bat. And then the game failed to live up to that. And suddenly it's game over. Bummer.

Pathfinder I'd recommend, though I 100% agree about the comment on the endgame encounters. If they can improve on Wrath, that's gonna be a very very good game. I've seen (German) people arguing even its writing was better than in PoE, but I think to a big extent that may be because the same people thought PoE in tendency to have too much prose // generally be too wordy. There's no denying that Pathfinder is simpler, more direct and also deals with more grounded matters [You be ruler soon my son, defend your kingdom and it shall flourish]. Likely not more so than any other game, but Steamspy estimates (I know, I know) around the weeks/months after release had estimated 100-200k owners, whilst now it's in the 500k-1M range. Naturally, two years after release and after various sales/discounts. One of which is happening right now. The estimates for Pathfinder are actually roughly in the same bracket, but that's one of the more unforunate things likely: Developing these games, any game, is pretty expensive where Obsidian are located from the go. Also, generally budgeting. What's one project's succecss is perceived as another's failure. Interestingly, I vaguely remember that when Obsidian had conducted a survey in early 2015, some of the questions centered around whether people would be interested into Pathfinder related games… it didn't sound like the research you'd do for something like Pathfinder Adventures, but a full-blown RPG.

PoE was inaccessible? Probably, but c ompared to what (genuine question). I mean story-wise, pretty much. It's pretty metaphysical, even as far as the main char's motivations are concerned to an extent. They could have gone an awful lot safer with a standard "kill the evil dragons and save the world" kind of fantasy romp. Actually, in retrospect I almost wish they had. Will be interesting to see how Wrath Of The Righteous eventually fares as a sequel. Totally agreed, which whould also carry over to the Deadfire. Optional boss fights, Fampyre crypts'n'stuff.

You bring up a couple viable points -- however, naturally, this entire series came about because games that required a modicum of "work" went out of style, fashion and publishers who'd fund them to begin with. And Obsidian have already tried to streamline much (in some cases successfully, in others they've arguably made things even more complicated, e.g. D&Ds straight forward simple Maths damage calculation vs. Pillars percentage based formula). It's something that could be balanced some more, but eventually you'd probably reach a point where the point of such a project is lost. I think we can all agree on that a big part of what makes Bethesda games so successful is that you can jump straight in, but... there's got to be various kind of middle grounds. Publishers such as Paradox have proven that there's markets for different experiences too. I don't mean that as a criticism, mind. As you argued, what's one man's "work" is another man's "leisure". That said, I've recently read an older interview with Guy Henkel (Realms Of Arkania, short stint at Interplay as a producer), and he argued that Baldur's Gate already back then had proven that there was a market for "lighter" RPGs. If you've played the RoA games (no way you could even manually make a character without a look into the manual), probably all a matter of perspective. It's kind of like how World Of Warcraft was seen as the "casual" thing in the MMO space back upon its release -- and now Blizzard reach that older audience again who'd gotten tired of the many streamlining made to WOW by releasing WOW Classic. As for the Pillars games specifially, at no point from my experience were you forced to optimize characters builds on normal difficulties. This is much more pronounced on Pathfinder Kingmaker, in which it is also possible to make flat out horrible characters that unlike Pillar's counterparts neither hit a thing nor can take any damage/spell themselves (the game was considered successful regardless). On the higher end of difficulties that is subject to change naturally. That there are/were sudden spikes in difficulty is another matter (the first being the Temple Of Eothas in PoE1). Deadfire got around that via the skull markers. That's my experience, though.

I too enjoyed Skyrim, but it's true that if you look to close, a lot of it is pretty shallow (the dungeons and puzzles, the melee combat, the lack of any consequences to anything and the inbuild GPS and mandatory, non-optional quest compass that kills what should be discovery). The TES series has been more than the some of its parts even back on Daggerfall already though. A first person game set in Eora could be pretty good. I'd imagine that Obsidian would add their own twists to it anyway. Fallout New Vegas is a far more interesting and deeper game than Fallout 3, for instance. Arguably it's one of the best games released ever since the collapse of the CRPG industry in the early 2000s/late 90s. And as Josh is a history buff, maybe they could even take a few cues from Kingdom Come Deliverance. Which would be an awesome format for a spiritual Darklands successor btw. As for an actual PoE3, they should stick to the formula of the predecessors though -- or at least make it a party-based tactical game again in some way.

This was likely just a very personal Project. If him and Adam Brennecke hadn't pushed so hard, the first Kickstarter for PoE may have never come about. As reports go, initially the management did object to it. Maybe the reason why the current project is apparently of such a small scale. Expectations won't be as high. Pressure not either. Still, sometimes games don't meet (audience/sales) expectations. And that isn't exclusive to games alone. There's entire (defunct) companies which catalogue of games should on all accounts been sold much much better (Looking Glass et all). In case he's reading, when the game came out it allowed me to escape from -- and due to some of its subject matter at the same time think about -- the loss I had just suffered from in my life. I have my beefs with it, mainly the main plotline (and its integration) and some of the companions. But I was glad it was around when it was. Mechanically in particular it did a lot of things better than the first game for sure. If I'll ever get to meet him in Germany, I'm gonna buy him a beer and a plate of corpse loaf. And hey, even the guy who ripped the first game a new one on the Codex enjoyed it... kinda.

Did they ever conduct a research on that one? I remember engaging in a survey they did early 2015. That was shortly after me finishing PoE, where I was in the state that I'd wanted to express: "ME WANT MOAR OF THIS KINDA STUFF IN THE FUTURE." And they did it, eventually. Fatigue/competition can definitely be a thing. Especially if you take into account that these are pretty big games. Purely anecdotical, of course, but back then I hadn't actually played both BG2* and IWD2 until years after their initial release. In parts that had happened as I was a bit burned out of These games. I had bought all of the prior ones when they came out -- and in between also had played Might & Magic 7, Lands Of Lore 3, D.W. Bradley's Wizards & Warriors (awesome dungeon design!) and several more. Games that may not be exactly like the IE style games, but close enough to the general idea nonetheless. I've yet to play a couple of CRPGS that came out in the past several years too. * That was pretty amazing, btw. I actually still found the floppy disk (!) I had exported my character to from the end of the first game like six years or so earlier, so could carry on with him after so many seasons passed.

Owlcat so far base their games on already existing, self-contained Pathfinder P&P adventure paths / modules. So they will get around that. https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Wrath_of_the_Righteous Will be interesting to see how the game does. That said, how BG3 does may be more important as to the future of party-based tacticval RPGs. Fingers crossed (also fingers crossed it's going to be a good game). Maybe there will be more decent D&D in the future too. I also think that Deadfire's narrative hook (some God from a prior game on a mission) was a really tough sell to newcomers. But that still wouldn't explain the significant drop in sales compared to PoE1. As usual, there will likely be a host of reasons. It is human nature to look for the one explanation that covers it virtually all. And that's not arguing that this wasn't one of those factors, mind!

Don't feel particularly strongly about this. I also hope that developers themselves are thinking a little more outside of those boxes. Larian for instance could have simply tried to ape X-Com, like Shadowrun or Wasteland 2 tried. But instead they did their own thing, in turn redefining some what TB(tm) combat can be like in an RPG. It was genuinelly entertaining to watch the most crucial rolls all going bad in the gameplay presentation of BG3 as well against all odds, and the audience anticipating the result and howling at every unlikely bad roll. That's genuine, and different, and something you'd never get out of the original BG games. And that's ok. For the sake of diversity, and what PoE was meant to be about, and me overall enjoying this too most of the time, I'll vote for real-time with pause (even though it may be better called pause with real-time instead in the more modern/recent incarnations, Kingmaker included as well).

I don't have 30 second load times on my entry-level SSD, I don't think I had those on an old HDD two years ago even, which is curious, but may be a thing depending on the setup (my computer in terms of hardware is pretty below average in general). That said, I think it's a bad decision to have no on/off toggle for auto-saves, as on every scene transition that auto-save is applied. In City hubs and similar that really adds up, as there are a lot of transitions going from one place to the next, even though the game is much smarter programmed in that sense than the first game in general. The first thing I did on Pathfinder Kingmaker was turning auto-save off. Plus, is or wasn't there something about performance scaling on higher end CPUs? There's still a big thread on Steam. https://steamcommunity.com/app/560130/discussions/0/2572002906843374108/

I've never used the AI, because on these games I'm a control freak. That said, this is just a personal Preference. I've enjoyed both PoEs. It's just that things have gotten bigger over the years (which oft applies to tabletop systems too). If I should make a comparison: Back then I'd much prefered Myth with its distinct but few types of units over any of those Command&Conquer clones that tried to beat the original at its own game by introducing ten times the amount of units (all of which a slight variation of one another). Eventually, there may come a point where you wonder how many shades of healing abilities do you need and how many gradually buffs to to-hit chances stacking on top of another? I'm the same in terms of itemization etc. too. Back on BG1 finding your first useful armor (wasn't even magical) was a moment to cherish. Now the supposedly "unique" stuff depending on the game can be all over the place, same as the inevitable level-up to reward the player at every opportunity. On Deadfire, you've barely escaped from Monkey, er, Tutorial Island and already went through that process a handful of times per character each. Eventually, if everything is supposedly some slightly differents kind of special -- nothing truly is. edit: That said, to bring that back on topic, going that approach of more and bigger should if at all be a boost to sales though.

Oh yeah, this was shortly adressed some also here… and in this Thumbs podcast AFAIR (be aware that the guys didn't seem to like PoE's combat in general. It's a more general gaming side, I found this interesting to listen to back then -- bit of a different perspective). edit: Yeah, it's at 19 minutes in https://www.idlethumbs.net/3ma/episodes/to-infinity-engine-and-beyond-1 Mind you, if you wanted to, you could focus on passive abilities in Deadfire entirelly. Not sure how that translates to the topic at hand. But, if you take a Closer look (and if Obsidian do one day), it's that Original Sin is a very different beast -- not merely in terms of Combat, but the entire focus of the game. Which is probably a reason why Larian find they have so much of an overlap with an audience of X-Com, perhaps moreso than other isometric RPGs (or PoE). PS: Sometimes I yearn for simpler times, actually. But that's just personal preference. There's lots of stuff that has crept into more traditional RPGs from MMOs imo, such as cool-downs and stuff (Tyranny), which I've much never liked myself as well. In an MMO you're just playing one character, that's fine. In party based games, your party basically is your character.

Currently playing DOS1. Does anybody know the Maths behind combat resolutions? The tool-tip suggests for instance that the DR from armor scales with enemy level. How exactly is nowhere displayed in-game, except that for enemies of your Level, x% of damage would be absorbed. Same as how saving throws against spell / ability effects are calculated. To-Hit-Chances. Anything. There's a combat log, but it doesn't go into very much detail.

Funny that you mentioned those, because you could actually import characters from both of those games. It is pretty much a German clone of those, but a bretty atmospheric one on A500's with 1megs RAM due to the environmental audio (wind, thunder, owls at night,...).

Back then I was this close on my Commodore 64 of picking up one of the Gold Box games in a shop -- but then I went with Hudson Hawk (the game) instead -- free Baseball cap inside. Eventually, it was this one (Amiga 500):

Is this realistic? I mean everybody keeps on doing console ports, so they must be some profitable. But did they really lift things to another level for Pillars Of Eternity before? As to the exact sales, the 110k estimate came forward roughly half a year past release. Pillars 1 had shipped ~500k in the first 7 months. We're now two years after the release of Deadfire, so some higher Steamspy estimates may naturally make some sense, in particular after several discounts. In Josh Sawyer's post mortem from June 2019 he talked about that Things had "worked out pretty well anyway." Suggesting that things in the end hadn't been a total desaster. In the context of that line he may have still meant something else rather than sales though. One thing is for sure, before they haven't analyzed why there was such a drop between PoE1 and 2, they may not move Forward with a possible 3rd game. Either that, or they wait until BG3 hits and becomes like the hottest thing, upon which they take an even closer look at the Larian approach.

If you count Tyranny into that, it's unfortunately been two very similar games "underperforming" as to their expectations (realistic or not) pretty much back-to-back. One game can always underperform for a variety of reasons: a tough release window, its main hook not being attractive to a larger audience, bad word of mouth, little exposure to the public, bugs, etc. But with two games like that, the format may be questioned. Though, as argued, apart of BG, no Infinity Engine game was ever a near million unit seller. BG was for the IE-style isometric subgenre of CRPGs what Football Manager is for sports management games --nothing comes quite close. Wondered about this elsewhere, but it would be interesting what eventually was more profitable for Obsidian, or how it all compares. The Outer Worlds, being a more traditionally funded game, or Pillars Of Eternity in general. Raw profits mind, not whatever boost the Kickstarter success did for Obsidian's exposure and reputation as a studio.

One thing that kept being argued prior to the Kickstarter in 2012 was that this specific Infinity-Engine style of game would have still have the player base, but that publishers didn't believe in it. And I'd argue most of the releases have proven that. Outside of Baldur's Gate, neither of those game shipped particularly large numbers. The core audience that staid for all the games was big enough so that a small/erish project such as Icewind Dale moved a decent units, but that's it. They've never sold in the million units range. They were still profitable, or else Interplay/Black Isle had never commited to doing yet another Icewind Dale in 2001 before they shut down. Brian Fargo too argued thathe would have been happy with if inXile's games could ship 200k units (minus backers). https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnyegriffiths/2013/04/03/brian-fargo-interview-torment-tides-of-numenera-kickstarter/#382497757ccd While I wouldn't mind if tactical, party based RPGs would eventually move to something slightly different from the IE style games to stay viable: Personally I think at least another game on the current tech would be pretty nice. If you discount the DLCs and add-ons back then, we'd have just as many games build on the Pillars "engine" (Unity tech) as the Infinity Engine (considering that inXile had used Obsidian's tech for Numenera). Agree that it's nice that Microsoft seems to support smaller projects just as well.