kanisatha

This is so right on. The "prequel" label does not, and cannot, apply to Avowed no matter the time period of the game as long as it has nothing directly to do with the storyline of the PoE games.

Well it's also possible that one of those projects (IL or MS) is TOW2, which some people seem to believe exists at least as an exploratory project. And according to some of the recent articles on Avowed, its team is around 100 in size. This leads me to ask a question of the many of you who seem to be rather knowledgeable on these kinds of questions. If we look at comparable AAA RPGs from recent years, CDPR is said to have many hundreds--perhaps as many as 500-700--people working on CP2077. Larian has around 300 working on BG3. Skyrim surely had several hundred on its team. Yet Obsidian has only about 100 on the Avowed team. How is this possible? How can this work? Can someone please explain this to me?

Same here. Looking forward to trying it, but only once it is available on Steam. The EGS exclusivity left a bad taste for me.

Hope this doesn't turn into people whining about people airing their very legitimate concerns about first person perspective.

Thanks. Do we also know who is project/game director?

Yeah, 2023?! Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!! I don't think I can survive until then. Why do they test me so?

Aww. Too bad.

And I actually prefer Carrie Patel over Sawyer in this role (I know, shocking!)

I like the idea of a game in the time of Woedica's rise and fall. A few weeks ago in another thread I mused that this game could be in the time of the Engwithans. So a prequel is fine with me if it is sufficiently far back from PoE1. And that also means no cameos from PoE1/2 characters, which would be a good thing imho. Leave those cameos for PoE3 I say.

And cracking the whip? I wanted this new game yesterday!

HAAAAAA! I was thinking the same thing! Was also surprised he hadn't yet cracked some code somewhere to tell us about this game before its reveal. But maybe MS's people in black suits and hats paid him a visit?

Well, since @Shyla is asking us to "speculate, imagine and dream ..." about this new game here, here's my dream for this game: Please include a third person option. Please include companions in some form. Please keep the PoE class system.

Yes this is what I'm pinning my hopes on as well.

I wish classes could remain, but I can see it going classless, especially if there is no party and you are trying to gather many different abilities into one character. But I'm also hopeful that at least some form of companions, like in TOW, will be included.

Told ya' So excited for this game.

If this is a competitor to TES, shouldn't it have the option of playing third-person? I agree the game looks fantastic. The first-person part is the only thing I dislike here.

I've seen several of you post on the Assassin's Creed games in this and other threads, so would like to get some feedback from anyone about those games. Right now on Steam AC: Origins is 80% off and AC: Odyssey is 67% off, and so I was considering getting them. Any thoughts on these games, both positive and negative? In particular, should I bother with Origins, or else ignore that game and go straight to Odyssey? And also, I know they began introducing RPG elements only from Origins, so do these games actually have decent RPG value or else are they just mostly hack and slash action games with little of note outside of combat? Many thanks in advance.

Yup, and a spinoff is what I am expecting here. No doubt I would love a PoE3 someday because I love both previous games and expect to be replaying those games for years to come. But from a broader, non-personal, objective pov, if I were Obsidian, a spinoff is the direction I would take.

^This I am well aware of. Just wasn't sure how the concept of IP was being applied to videogame franchises. Your take does help. Thanks. Yes I also would've loved a PoE3. But if Obsidian's choices are (a) PoE3 with TB combat and other nonsense along the lines of Larian's take on BG3, or (b) a spinoff first/third-person open-world AAA Skyrim-style game, then sadly I am very much for (b) over (a).

Again, I need to repeat, I am NOT suggesting at all that this would be a game carrying the title of "Pillars of Eternity." It would NOT be called PoE anything. But the setting's history and mythology are not finite. Obsidian can continue to add and expand on all of that lore. I don't see any reason to view the lore of the setting as tied to the existing PoE games. Heck this game could even be in a timeline well before PoE1. It could be in the time of the Engwithans! Sure. But you also don't want too many IPs such that they just languish. Huge RPG studios like Bethesda, Bioware, and CDPR are operating with only a very small number of IPs that they keep going back to, and creating a new IP is considered a very big deal. But here again, I think we all are having some confusion about what is an IP, i.e. the definition of an IP. As an example, using the Baldur's Gate games, is "Baldur's Gate" the IP, or is "D&D" the IP? For me, I've always thought of it as "D&D" is the IP, and "BG" is one game franchise (among many) within that IP. But I have no idea. It could well be the exact opposite. I am not even close to being an expert on any of this legalese.

But as a fantasy RPG, why would they go to a new IP when they already have the PoE IP? And just to clarify, when I say "PoE IP" I mean using the setting and lore of PoE, not another game in the same series as PoE1 and 2. And yes, I also would expect that it will be "Skyrim" only in very general ways, and unlike Skyrim will have all those strong RPG elements that Obsidian is known for.

Is this credible? https://www.altchar.com/game-news/obsidians-next-aaa-skyrim-like-rpg-to-be-announced-at-xbox-event-this-month-abdVi4x5L11N If so, the game could be using the PoE IP but as a solo-play, first-person, open-world game I suppose. Don't know how I feel about that.

Yes I worry about this too. I can see many gamers having bought and played P:Km, had their frustrations with it, and as a result won't give P:WotR a chance. The Owlcat devs have gone to great lengths to listen to feedback and change their approach to many aspects of the game going into the second game, and so I hope people will keep an open mind. Well, the way I look at this is through a person's ego. Most people will consider it perfectly appropriate to write reviews complaining about bugs or other game-breaking systemic issues. But to put in writing a complaint that a game's mechanics and rules were too complicated and unintuitive for you to be able to understand and figure out what's going on? I feel most people will not say that out loud. Absolutely. I never buy the notion that a single variable can explain everything with respect to an issue involving human behavior. Models of human behavior are automatically multivariate for me. My theory is just meant to pull out one aspect that I personally feel was significant ... but by no means the ONLY thing. ^This. There are shades of grey in how people react to things. A person doesn't have to passionately hate something to feel a need to walk away from it. It can be a more subdued reaction along the lines of: 'Hey, it's not a terrible game. But it's not an awesome game either. It's just so-so. And given that in today's gaming world I have a TON of games available to play, I don't want to waste my time on a so-so game.'

Because, as I have explained, they experienced it in the first game. If game 1 was a certain way, it is reasonable to assume game 2 will be that way too.

I wouldn't say it's about becoming more dumb per se (though it could be that too I suppose). I think it is more that people today lack patience and the ability to commit to something or the willingness to make the effort to try to understand something that is not readily apparent to them. And they also crave instant gratification. As for PoE being intuitive and understandable to you, yes absolutely. It was that way for me too, and I dare say to most people active in this forum. But I don't at all, not even in the slightest, see the people in this forum as being representative of the overall RPG gamer population.