Bachands

This is great. It feels good to see that people who work hard and really put effort and quality into their works are recognized and rewarded (hopefully Deadfire would have been a success in sales as well). Obsidian really does works that mark people. Concerning the thread, the writer of Outer Worlds has worked with the best in Pillars of Eternity and in Tyranny. There is no reason to doubt his work. Besides that it is silly to think that a person must be old to be given a leadership position.

A thread in the forum is not a good metric to know if people want or do not want romance. The fact that Obsidian put romance in the sequel to Pillars of Eternity, when they were more prepared than in the first part, that's a good metric. If Outer Worlds is successful (and it is very likely that it will, seeing the amount of attention it has called) it is very likely that Obsidian will dare to put romance in his next game, not only in a sequel, but in his next game in general. And it's totally logical, the point of a role-playing game is ... role-playing, and part of that is letting your character have romance.

Most people in this thread seems to ignore the fact that Obsidian don't putting any romance is not because "is better that way" but because they don't have the resources to put it in a good way. People like they romance, 10 pages of this thread already prove that.