WorstUsernameEver

Divinity: Original Sin's writing was okay but not very good. In the long run every comical character (which would be.. all of them?) ends up having the same overlong theatrical voice. Enhanced Edition needed to trim it for the full voice acting, or to go with a different voice direction, so it suffered a lot because of that. Great gameplay systems though, probably some the best of any isometric RPG I've ever played.

I'm way late to the party to reply to this, but I'll just say that, while you obviously don't think the game is propaganda, other people in the thread did, so I thought it was worth mentioning in my reply.

Jesus Christ.

I doubt you'd have gotten a bug fix if they didn't spend the time to nerf Unlabored Blade. Most likely, you just would have gotten a one-change patch.

That is a lot of ifs and hypothesis that anyone outside of Obsidian's offices can't prove. I feel like these exercises aren't helpful, personally.

I think this is a bit of a... reach, not knowing the man personally in any way.

The point is that, if Chris Avellone has been victimized in any way (and by victimized I mean being victim of a serious abuse/breach of conduct, not simply having creative differences with former co-workers), we have no idea of that, and there's no need to resort to using expressions that, frankly, belong into other more serious conversations. We're talking about video game creatives having differences concerning management and specific projects, the details of which I don't think anyone except for the people involved are privy to. I'm going to guess Sharp_one might have been referring to the account lock-up, which does sound bizarre, but right now doesn't really seem to be cause for dipping into that register.

"Victim blaming" was an expression used to talk about rape victims who were blamed for the abuse they went through, because people didn't want to place the blame on the actual abusers for various reasons (cultural, knowing the abuser personally, etc.) I dunno if Avellone is a victim, I wasn't in the Obsidian offices when they had this split, but it's certainly not an expression appropriate for this situation.

I'm not an idiot, it was clear to me that you were paraphrasing, but I couldn't find anything referencing Tyranny except for a tweet where he said the team deserved the credit. Thanks for the link, though.

I don't see any actual tweet saying that?

Considering what kind of hoops one has to jump to even get the Unlabored Blade to full soulbound level in the first place, the nerf seems like an unnecessary waste of time for everyone involved.

Really? How so? I haven't seen a lot of them yet, but what I've seen didn't feel particularly interesting. Traps are: 1) always visible in the environment, even though some of them aren't immediately conspicuous, which means that players are rewarded for being observant and switching to stealth mode at the right moment, rather than for playing in stealth mode all the time; 2) they seem to have done some fiddling with the math and balance to make sure that stealth is only required for characters with low subterfuge, so my party found most of them while walking at normal speed, which greatly improved the pacing of exploration; 3) traps work on enemies and allies alike, and I seem to remember (but I might be wrong, I haven't tested it) that some can be triggered multiple times; 4) there are also trap-like environmental hazards that don't necessarily fit the IE mold of traps, like the Banetraps in the Oldwalls. There's other stuff that I think Tyranny simply did better than PoE rather than differently*, but it's stuff that I assume will be carried over to PoE2 (spell effects being less likely to blow up and make everything look like a nuclear explosion just happened, full health bars only showing up when you hover your mouse over an enemy, status effects all getting their own animations and effects, etc.) * It goes without saying that PoE2 won't use a skill-based system and learn-by-doing mechanics, or that a 4-man party isn't indicated for an IE throwback, or that cooldowns for abilities would greatly reduce the differences between classes, for example.

I mean, from what I have seen their streams don't have a huge outreach. At the very least, they would have tried to hint at the announcement properly through social media so that people would tune in. Also, they might as well just announce projects through more traditional channels... and on weekdays. Besides, I don't expect an announcement this year, assuming the announcement will be for a (partially) crowdfunded project. inXile got the October spot, and now they're too close to the holidays, especially when you consider they've just released a project that will also appeal to the same fans. I suppose they could start teasing it at the end of the year, but I've never seen something crowdfunded have a very long lead-up to the campaign, you risk losing the excitement. This is, of course, all based on the idea that they are more likely to announce Pillars of Eternity II, the project they've hinted at for a while, and that it will be partially crowdfunded, just like Feargus strongly implied in previous interviews.

Most people in this thread are going to discuss combat minutiae, progression and writing, which is understandable, but I just wanted to point out that the implementation of traps in Tyranny feels a lot better than PoE's and is a further step in the right direction when compared to the IE trap mechanics, which never felt like they captured the joys of dungeon crawling and added a lot of busywork that matched the source material mechanically but not in spirit.

As far as I can tell, the treasure locations they showed were corpses on the ground. It simply saves loot that you'd already be able to see, so it's not like you get any information you normally wouldn't get.

This is a different survey than the one in the backer update and it's from a partner of Obsidian (I'd guess it's Paizo, but I don't think the survey notes who it is) rather than Obsidian themselves.

Yeah, he's on Prey 2. As far as I know, Dishonored 2 is all internal at Arkane Studios, though I know they hired some new people so my hope is that it has a better narrative than the original.

I doubt Chris Avellone would have trouble getting a gig because of this interview. He might have burned bridges with Obsidian, but he's a big name, as proven by the fact that the moment he went freelance, a bunch of devs approached him to work with them.

It's most likely based on this interview with Feargus: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2016-07-18-obsidian-entertainment-survival-success-and-independence Though, to claim that Feargus specifically wants the company to be bought based on the wording there would be a specific interpretation of what he says.

I'm okay with the idea of the player just being a normal person who rose through the rank because they're pretty good, but my impression is that the story won't go in that direction because of the events hinted at Ascension Hall and the Fatebinder's apparent affinity with the Spires. P.S. : I'm not entirely sure I approve of the idea of going back to the well of ancient civilizations again. It doesn't even feel like the cliché fits Tyranny's setting. But who knows, maybe they'll make it work, I think the take on that well-worn idea in Pillars of Eternity was executed pretty well.

The choice at the ending of Lonesome Road is pretty similar to the planned Van Buren ending, though at a smaller scale and without the same build-up.

It's easy to say it's sour grapes, but without knowing what exactly went on, it's difficult to know how justified Avellone is in his complaints. But, also, because both parties won't really communicate on the issue, it puts pretty much every bystander in the awkward situation of watching this unfold without knowing what the eff is happening. Only thing I can comment on is Avellone's stance on the Fallout setting, and personally, while I understand where he comes from and shared his opinion on the necessity to go back to a slightly darker tone for many years, now I'm not so sure. We live in an era full of similar Mad Max-y post-apocalyptic properties, so the fact that Fallout is moving in another direction offers the potential opportunity to explore new themes. Fallout 4's narrative was largely a failure, but it was also an example of a timid attempt to explore new thematic and plot directions.

Ah, they didn't buy Behaviour Interactive, but they did basically just get people from there for their new BGS office after collaborating with them on Fallout Shelter and Fallout 4. Not that I think it's very relevant to this discussion, just a cool tidbit that I don't see mentioned very often.

The title of the thread is pretty childish, but to be fair, there's no beating around the bush that the interview is very critical of Obsidian (mostly upper management, though apparently Chris also has some problems with the creative output on New Vegas.)

You are aware that they are on the same engine, right? Yes, but you know what I mean. ...not really? "Engine" seems to mean widely different things to different people, so I usually just stick to the actual definition.