Sven_

Does anybody know where to get the fungal growth from to combine the cream with?! edit: Never mind, found it.

I actually think the amount of players who hadn't played those games upon their initial release but came in later to the show would be surprisingly high. E.g. "It's only the old geezers in their 30s and up who play this type of game anymore." May have been worth a poll when the forum was a bit more busy, e.g. by the time of release. This doesn't merely imply players of the Enhanced Editions, mind. There's likely quite a few of players who've played Pillars as their "first" for instance because it was an Obsidian game, a new RPG to play, etc.

Doing VO itself seemed to have helped preciously little though. Doing VO is the same game albeit with a somewhat different coat of presentation paint. This is a good topic though. It would be interesting to see how much players of Pillars, or Pathfinder used to Play the IE games back in the day. It would be also interesting to see how many newcomers these games managed to bring into the fold. My guess is, the overlap between IE players and pillars would be somewhat higher, as it was specifically sold first as a "nostalgia thing". That was a strong selling point in the entire Campaign back then. Pathfinder meanwhile, well the Pen&Paper is pretty popular in itself, and Pathfinder was at its Peak when D&D was entering its 4th Edition, so well past Black Isle had folded. And this goes out to Beamdog, how many newcomers their Enhanced Editions brought in. On the topic of Pillars, it is/was in big ways a nostalgia thing. Maybe a third game could wrap it all up, and then let's see where we're going next.

It's comparable. On occasion I skip the voiced dialogue early though as you're usually faster reading than listening.

IIRC VO Questions were part of the Survey Obsidian did back in 2015ish, around the time of PoE's release. This discussion shouldn't be side-tracked by the merits of voice overs specifically. It would be interesting for instance what the actual VO budget was en detail, but we'll never know exactly. It obviously was a time consuming thing, as also outlined by the Shacknews article linked to earlier. The cast was also pretty big. As for my own experience, I liked the VO in Deadfire (I'm reading/playing in German, actually). Good Job. It's not a make or break feature to me though. Some lines of VO are pretty nice, as it manages to convey a character better if decent casting is involved (IE style). However, at the end of the day, as with anything -- budgeting. And about how much text there's going to be, that's up to the writing department. I'd rather play a decent game on a budget than no game at all.

Selling 600k copies of a game which main audience is bound to be PC based. As argued, outside of Baldur's Gate (plus ist Sequel), none of the Infinity engine games got anywhere near to selling 1M during their entire lifetime (nor any of the original Fallouts). They were still seen as being profitable, so was Black Isle as a division. Not sure what inXile's Goal for Wasteland 3 is likewise -- it seems higher than for 2 -- they're likely eyeing the X-Com/Original sin crowd too. However, back when Kickstarter was still a hype, IIRC Fargo would argue they'd be happy to ship ~200k additional copies of their games (that plus the backer copies, naturally). I could be wrong of course, but Wasteland 3 seems another project that sets itself up to "fail". Full VO expectations may be "real", but it seems you're not going to convince anybody outside the core audience of these game's to suddenly pick them up in masses just because that stuff is all voiced. Pathfinder didn't have it, and won't have it for Righteous either. If the aim is truly to expand this core audience, then you've got to change the games, but given that the entire premise was proving the audience is still there, what's the point?

According to that Fig Investor "leak" in late 2018, the game would have needed to sell close to 600k copies for the Investors to make profits. E.g. the break even for Fig Investors was 580,000 copies sold at 50$. Not sure if both are the same shing, but that really is a lot considering how the Infinity Engine games sold on average (and still managed to turn out a profit each). Sure, hindsight bias. Still there were decisions made by the management which also should be questioned.

Doesn't surprise me that there's a significant amount of actual dislike for the DOS games. (I've only played the first but the 2nd is said to be similar in structure). Apart of the narrative stuff: Their entire world design is essentially one tactical combat puzzle (where do I go next, and how do I deal with the foes there?). With areas being strictly level gated in an extremely linear fashion (due to how hugely damage scales with levels/items). Also google "Level Maps original sin" if you want to see what I mean in a Picture. The Pillars game, whilst they have lots of combat, are nothing like that. Sure, you can meet opposition yet too strong, but there's usually a) several places to go next and come back later (not all with a heavy focus on combat) and b) progress isn't always halted by opposition deliberately placed straight into your pathway. Additionally, you can actually beat opposition above your tier every once in a while, whilst on DOS, it's oft a straight party wipe. I've pointed this out probably before, but Larian Marketing found more of an overlap with the audience of tactical game's such as X-Com than with Pillars.

Awesome based! Reminds me, I've still yet to try a fully playthrough on TB myself….

Wild West sounds awesome. Btw, there's gonna be Weird West from the new Studio of Raph Colantonio (Arkane of Dishonored fame). It's not AAA naturally though. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1097350/Weird_West/ As for Josh, I'd personally prefer him to keep working on his smaller project. I suspect he's the same at the Moment. No pressure, no high demands -- and this includes backers, who have their wishes too. Could be really interesting. Perhaps much more interesting than Obsidian's yet to be announced next AA/A game.

I've just bought the 5e beginner's box (German edition). Actually, I wanted to buy the Dark Eye beginner's box, knowing that there were a couple solo adventures (actually 5 small ones IIRC) in the box which introduce the basic rules and classes each. However, neither shop I visited had that on stock, and unlike Dark Eye in the 90s, I'd never played D&D except the Computer games, so... I gave it a shot. I assumed the adventure in the D&D beginner's box would be of a similar ilk, since it's a beginner's box, but it's one for the DM and for a party already. - Are there any solo adventures for D&D, preferably low-level? - Is there a way to play the box adventure solo (maybe somebody has experience with converting such?) inb4 anybody says that playing D&D solo would be silly. The Dark Eye has/had actually a couple decent solo adventures, and I want to learn the thing first before trying to find a group to play with..

The change in setting actually reminded me of another series which sequel was perceived to have underperformed, sales-wise. Dishonored. The first Dishonored was set in a gritty Steampunk Version of London ca. 1850ish. The second took place further south and replaced that with vistas that reminded you of going on holiday in Southern Europe-- in a good way. Man, that's one game that really hurt bad to see flopping. Such all around fantastic level design. Such amazing world building. And now there probably will be no more of that.

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.