Tencatta

Feargus is leading this project? Not sure if that's a good thing or not. Sad Josh doesn't want to keep Pillars going (in the digital world), but understand the burnout. I think players and devs both needed a break or breath of fresh air from Pillars 2, though - but the problem is the game left on a "in the third game..." kind of vibe, which I doubt Avowed will continue. I'd be surprised if anyone could pry that from Howard's cold, dead fingers. I also would be surprised if Bethesda didn't sign something saying they had full control over who does Fallout so it can't be farmed out (especially since even though it was a Zenimax studio, F76 seemed an embarassment, and even game journalists were quoted as saying Zenimax thought New Vegas was bad for the company, although I'm not sure players would agree). If they had ever wanted Obsidian to do a NV2, they would have reached a deal long before now, I imagine. Anyway, this doesn't really light a hopeful torch for Avowed, since the New Vegas and Outer Worlds folks are the closest to first person creators at the company and the New Vegas staff is only a small % of the original team (which showed in Outer Worlds, unfortunately).

This is fair - also, this response made me laugh out loud, so thanks for that.

Metacritic reviews shouldn't be used as a basis - no sane person would give Knights 2 anything above a 7 (technical issues, bad/unfinished ending). Sales shouldn't be used as a basis, either. New Vegas is the best game Obsidian made, even as buggy as it was.

I noticed both Adam B. (can't spell last name) and Josh Sawyer both aren't on Avowed, although it seems other sub-leads are. Was there ever an official reason stated for this? (Not looking for speculation, looking for quotes and answers - although you can speculate on those if you find them.) It seems kind of odd that both of them wouldn't want to continue another game in their franchise, makes me a little uneasy about Avowed.

I absolutely will! Still reading through the other critiques, it's reminding me about a lot of stuff I hadn't articulated about the game, so the forum's good for that.

Had to ask, most of these forums feel like there's cobwebs covering them - is there some other forum or Discord where the actual discussions are taking place? Even the Paradox forums (not the best) still feel more active. Yeah, I know, whine whine whine. But still, a serious question.

Is it just me or is this forum kinda dead? It's too bad, I think there's a lot to discuss. Was rereading some of the critiques and this one hit me: The whole lack of caring about whether the gods were real also bothered me in Deadfire, but I lost that in the other critiques I had, since it was strangely minor for such an important lore point. Thanks for reminding me. Also, this must be the first game I can think of where the narrative needed a patch to actually have it make sense and give meaning to it.

Pillars seemed to get most of its support because of the promise of "nostalgia" as some put it. I don't think its quality hurt the game's sales, but may have hurt Deadfire, especially if people hadn't bothered or wanted to finish Pillars 1 first and didn't want more of the same. Why play Deadfire if you didn't like playing POE1 that you purchased and likely didn't refund? (I'm not even sure you can refund games on Kickstarter.) I don't think mod support would have helped a ton, but it would have helped some. There was another thread about why POE2 sold so poorly in the POE2 forum, though, which I liked (I'll see if I can find it and link it).

Deadfire ports were not done by Paradox, IIRC. Still would be nice if Obsidian was more active in helping to resolve the issues with them, though.

At least you didn't play the console versions. You wouldn't have gotten bored as fast, you would have just gotten frustrated. I was hoping they'd do more to fix them, but Obsidian seems to have distanced themselves from the ports as much as possible.

I feel like the big telling point is somehow Divinity 2 managed to sell well, and POE2 didn't, so it's not that isometric RPGs are dead, there was something specifically wrong with Deadfire. I know there's a joke about no Kickstarter, but Fig is partly to blame - they say they'll market your title, but they don't have the reach. The fact Obsidian had to go with Fig because the Obsidian CEO was on the board was really disappointing... it's like the CEO actually ended up causing the product to do poorly in exchange for being on the Fig board (not sure they still are, though, and Microsoft is much better at getting the word out).

Thanks for the link, Womerine! Some choice bits I agree with: - The exposition vs. interactive story and world reveal information (you summed it up nicely). Got tired of exposition dumps. - The new companions were pretty... meh. - And what was worse that you pointed out is the returning companions. For me, they didn't feel like the POE1 companions, and while I don't think they did, they still feel "phoned in," I guess. Thanks for linking me to your review, thought it was great.

Bloodlines 2 development has been a mess, but these last few months... wow. They hyped, then fired Mitsoda (no idea if he deserved it, but if he did, then it was their mistake to hype him), then to add insult to injury, they hired a Mass Effect: Andromeda writer Samantha Wallschlaeger to be the new lead writer. So glad Obsidian doesn't work with Paradox anymore, Paradox sounds horribly confused about how to make a game, or at least an RPG.

I'd love links to this. The story in 1 was "meh" but 2 felt worse overall.

Had no idea Pathfinder was over, good to know (I missed the official announcement, if there was one). Maybe things with Paizo didn't end up being all that great (although lack of financial success would contribute to that).

I wish there was one forum that consolidated the bugs across the different ports - not a lot of people would be aware that Paradox did them, only that Pillars is an Obsidian game.

Yeah, Obsidian washed their hands of the ports (the Outer World ports to a lesser extent). I don't think it's helped either franchise by them doing so, though - and I'd like to think Obsidian would want to protect the quality of their franchises, regardless of what platform it is on, but this just seems like "give us money, you go do ports, leave us alone." It can be difficult to refund Switch games, there was a lot of Reddit posts on the Pillars Switch port where people had to argue with Nintendo for the refund, even though it was clearly a broken game, which sucked. This whole experience taught me that if you can't fully commit to a port (both franchise holder and port company), they probably shouldn't do it. Not every game needs a Switch port if you can't do it well.

I feel like without some developer support, the chances of PS4 compatibility mode for titles is an iffy thing, and I know Obsidian has distanced themselves from their own console ports and didn't work on those anyway (or really support them much, especially with VS EVIL as the publisher).

Deadfire definitely raked in the cash (although that's technically pre-sales, and that money was used before release, which contributes to the "low sales" aspect). I think Fig was smart about gathering all the major Kickstarter moneymakers, but I don't know if it helped those same moneymakers with getting their products' message out and funding, which is ironic. Also, I always felt like Fig was a dodge so these same developers had more freedom with what to do with their crowdsourced projects, which isn't a bad thing, but comes across as kind of shady... at the least, it's unfortunate that Fig didn't ring all the bells when it came to crowdsourcing. On the good front, at least Obsidian doesn't need Fig anymore!

I've really been hesitant to check this out (I was disappointed when it was revealed), but I'm trying to take in the positives for it. For those who have played it, how does it compare to Obsidian's other games in terms of character advancement and narrative? If I like Obsidian RPGs, would I have a chance of liking this, or is this more of a Rust experience?

It would be nice if the outstanding questions and the hanging plot of POE2 was resolved, for sure.

If he just writes companions, yes, but I wouldn't want him writing the plot after Pillars 1. Also, feel free to hate on this, but I thought a lot of the companions in Pillars 2 got worse even when the same writers were present, and Eder was no exception. Still, I'd trust Eric more than some of the other writers.

I don't think anyone dislikes Sawyer. For me, him not being on Avowed was actually a big negative because there isn't any positive reason why he wouldn't be. I know he's been pretty down on Obsidian management since 2018, so maybe he just got burned out - and also with one of the Obsidian executives in charge, he probably wouldn't be able to make an impact on the game.

Sawyer isn't involved with Avowed, right? That was my big negative about the reveal (although I thought the trailer was very "generic LOTOR" which was another clear sign Sawyer was not involved). I also don't think his role allows him to dictate anything, especially when one of the company executives is the project director, so good luck regardless.

Avowed is a pretty awkward name, agreed.