EveryThorn

Obsidian pitched a FPS open world game to Microsoft many years ago and its cancelation was the reason many in the studio had to be let go when the game prototype failed. Things are obviously different with the aquistion, though.

I find it pretty ridiculous that anyone would confuse the low sales of Deadfire and associate it with POTD. That's hardly the most visible aspect in a game purchase, and even the combat systems are something you'd need hours to realize the flaws, which usually is past the point of no return with Steam purchases.

Obsidian has largely abandoned the ports. My issue is if you're not going to do them properly or hire someone to do them properly or sell them ethically (by this, I mean, taking pre-orders to trick people into buying broken ports like the Switch Pillars game), they should not do them. There is no reason to keep at this practice except to make a temporary cash gain while eroding people's trust. The Outer Worlds switch port, for example, was nowhere near the level of the Witcher 3 port, but the difference is in the level of commitment to getting it right.

Avowed does not seem to be POE3, and while POE2 was a successful Figstarter, it did not sell well so painting a new look on the franchise (3rd person/1st person) to try to attract new buyers makes production sense. I do think it's telling and makes me very skeptical about Avowed is Sawyer unwillingness to be involved (burnout is understandable, but it's weird to put distance between a world you basically created) and the project director is someone who wasn't even involved in the Pillars games at Obsidian.

It's this incident (this isn't the link I'd prefer to share): https://boundingintocomics.com/2020/07/07/vampire-the-masquerade-developer-shane-defreest-refutes-jessie-pridemores-sexual-assault-allegation/ Speaking hypothetically as post-Obsidian producer, the CEO at Obsidian hired this person because he was a friend (nepotism and Obsidian are the same thing), and the CEO absolutely knew what happened and so did Paradox. I imagine they went silent and covered it up because of the damage it could cause both companies, and because the marketing event was done by both companies. Both share the blame.

I know it's a common defense to let it lie and have a dev walk away from their games, it still seems kind of sad when it's a franchise they own and should support. The console versions are probably the worst example of walking away, but the end state of POE2 even with all the patches still has room for improvement for sure.

You obviously haven't checked the Cyberpunk thread. The other games shipped a long time ago, not much active except technical issues/bug reports.

I laughed at this! Still, it was likely a production decision and meant more money from Epic, which should help development.

Is this the promised pen and paper Pillars game? Or is this something else?

I just wish they'd tried for something less generic for the trailer! Cinematic production costs being what they are, however, I can't blame them. Was just hoping for something more distinctive.

When is this supposed to be released? It feels like it's been going on for a while now.

I don't know if they'll do a POE3, POE1 was a deathmarch, POE2 didn't sell well, maybe they figured 1st person game would do better (like Bethesda did with Fallout).

After Outer Worlds, I think they needed to, especially if they're trying to compete in Next Gen space.

OP: Agreed on the bad naming, but it must be difficult to trademark names nowadays without running out of them. Also, "Avowed" is already getting the pun treatment, but not badly. I still don't know why they didn't just call it Pillars: [Insert Something] but maybe they didn't want to carry over expectations.

I think turn-based is only for Deadfire. It was hard enough to get Pillars 1 out the door from a production standpoint.