Infinitron

You're probably exaggerating the degree to which "fresh and experimental games" are popular. Even among the new generation of oldschool RPGs, whose audience which you'd think would be most receptive to interesting settings, high fantasy rules the roost. In fact, I suspect Tyranny may end up being less popular than Pillars of Eternity due to being too experimental rather than not enough. Just look at Steamspy, the data is all there. But anyway, once you've decided it's in your DNA to become a big company, it's kind of hard to step back from that. Right now, I imagine Feargus feels something like this. "We made Fallout: New Vegas, one of the most successful single player RPGs of all time. We can do that again someday, with our own IP this time. And we need to be a big company for that."

Right, so you're founding a new RPG development studio in California in 2003. Whose example are you going to follow? A Swedish horror game developer that didn't exist yet, that made its fortune using an indie digital distribution model that didn't exist yet? A Polish videogame publisher best known for translating Baldur's Gate to Polish, that took 5 years to develop their first game which could easily have ended up as a horrible piece of Euro-shovelware? Or are you going to follow the example of the world's RPG industry leader at the time? I think you're placing an unreasonable demand on Obsidian's strategic foresight here.

RingMachine, in this argumentative framework that you've constructed that defines ambitious and non-ambitious developers, how would you classify BioWare? Because in interviews, Feargus has said that Obsidian was explicitly founded with the intention of repeating what BioWare had done a few years earlier. Find a "sugar daddy" publisher similar to Brian Fargo's Interplay in the late 90s, start with licensed products (like D&D and Star Wars) and then eventually graduate to developing their own IPs. Obsidian failed at this, in part because their games missed their marks in various ways, and in part because of structural changes going on in the industry (consoles, budgets, publisher dominance, etc) that made following in BioWare's footsteps difficult. But it wasn't some outrageously unsound strategy. They were following the example of BioWare.

Fairfax, is that you?

Icewind Dale 2 isn't an Obsidian game. Is this thread about Josh Sawyer's creative direction?

Yes.

It obviously won't be right away because it'll take a couple of years to make, while Tyranny is coming out this year. If they postpone it to make some other game instead, that means a PoE2 in what, four years? Way to lose the momentum on your company's only IP. That wouldn't make any sense.

It has a ton of dialogue, actually. Check out the last Twitch stream they did:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/385970/ https://www.gog.com/game/baldurs_gate_siege_of_dragonspear

He said it was a "ways off". Then we learned about Tyranny, so it makes sense that they'd wait a while before revealing it so as not to hog the spotlight. There's no reason not to start on the sequel right away - Larian went right onto a sequel after finishing up Divinity: Original Sin. It will be quite some time until it's actually released. Well actually in that interview with MMORPG he specifically said it was time for him to move on to something different, but then added a sequel to PoE would happen at some point but that was a way off. That's the complete context of his answer to that question. Also keep in mind that it's not just PoE that's come to an end but also AW and the Pathfinder card game. They are large enough of a studio that they can and need to have multiple projects going on at the same time. So it makes sense that they could have three projects ongoing at the same time - Vermont/Tyranny, Louisiana, and Indiana - with the chronologically last one of them, Indiana, being PoE2. So I stand by my projection that we will see another RPG of some sort between Tyranny and PoE2. *shrug* There is no Project Indiana that I've ever heard of. There is a Josh Sawyer with "Revua" on his Twitter profile and an Orlan on his Instagram. And he said "we'd like to move on to a new project". That project is Tyranny.

He said it was a "ways off". Then we learned about Tyranny, so it makes sense that they'd wait a while before revealing it so as not to hog the spotlight. There's no reason not to start on the sequel right away - Larian went right onto a sequel after finishing up Divinity: Original Sin. It will be quite some time until it's actually released. New Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/BDl7N1zJx3a/

Conquistador's budget was larger than that. 80k was just from the Kickstarter, they had more.

I know for a fact that unannounced KS game from 2014 wasn't Tyranny. I don't know what it was, but it wasn't Tyranny.

The main difference between PoE music and Baldur's Gate music is that Baldur's Gate music has drums.

Pillars of Eternity is Project Trenton. Yes, they use state capital names sometimes too. I'm not aware of any third unannounced project or Project Indiana.

Isn't that what they're doing?

Josh Sawyer admits that Riposte isn't good: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3706905&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=813#post457957813

Uh... http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/83320-project-louisiana-not-fallout-related/?p=1793728

You're probably joking, but he's had that location since at least March 5th.

Why does a "high level party" have to be level 16? Cut the imported character's level in half.

Tech support forum, dude.

The core Infinity Engine-style gameplay isn't really complex enough to support truly active skill systems outside of scripted scenarios and dialogue sequences. The only non-combat thing you do with the environment on a regular basis in these games is sneak, pick locks and disarm traps. You don't swim, you don't climb, you don't repair, etc. The skills as they exist provide some useful benefits, but they're mostly there for the sake of being there. They're not really a thing that you do.

Uh I know I'm a bit late here but he actually said he would do it again

Somebody whose favorite RPG is Fallout and thinks high fantasy tropes are boring?

Probably not for another 10 hours or so. Oops. I guess I should have made it clear that I meant these patches, not GOG: http://eternity.obsidian.net/downloads/patches