kanisatha

This I absolutely grant you, which is also why I was among those who were not fazed by the Microsoft acquisition. I am excited by the prospects of the very talented devs Obsidian has (including of course Sawyer, who I was afraid was going to be leaving Obsidian) now being able to make the games they have long wanted to make.

Thanks! I love keeping track of this kind of info. So then perhaps MS, IL, and AL are (not in order) the projects of Adler, Perez, and Parker?

So this^. For all the hyperbole about D:OS2, let's not lose sight of the fact that while it sold way better than PoE2 that way better sales number was still ONLY in the 1.5-2 million range. So the much-ballyhooed D:OS2 was very much a niche game, and PoE2 was simply a niche within a niche game. And the only way studios like Obsidian (and yes even Larian) will keep making niche games that under the best of circumstances will still only post (relatively) tiny sales numbers is if they are making a boatload of money with their other non-niche games.

Depends on what one means by "developing." For me, if there's someone thinking about how to do a game and putting together ideas for the game, it's in development. It doesn't have to be that programming has begun. And Tim Cain in a recent interview said they were indeed doing this for a sequel game and essentially all but confirmed there will be a TOW2. Beginning this sort of early pre-planning for a sequel before the first game is released is actually quite common, and was the case for PoE2 as well.

Oh yes I forgot about Parker's project. Agree 100%! I would also suggest that the entire cRPG genre may go the way of the dinosaurs if we don't get more young gamers interested in and comfortable with playing RPGs. This new game seems a perfect way to introduce RPGs to young gamers, and I applaud Obsidian's brilliant long-term strategy here. Can't wait to see what Parker, Perez, Adler and Sawyer have in store for us.

Exactly what I've been saying. If I were a betting man I would bet they have at least three RPG projects currently in some stage of development: TOW2 from the Cain/Boyarsky team, a spinoff game using the Pillars franchise (but not PoE3) (maybe with Adler as lead?), and Sawyer's Project Missouri.

Yes It's not a game for me, but I don't get all the negativity. As with any business that wants to grow, Obs needs to expand its base both financially and creatively. And nothing here says this project is in lieu of some other project that got shelved to make room for this one. New Obsidian is being very aggressively ambitious, and I for one like that. From the bits and pieces of information from a variety of sources I have been able to put together Obsidian currently has five individuals holding the title of project/game director. And, following the state names system Obs has been using for their game projects it seems that there are five state-named projects currently underway. If so, then what's the big deal of one of those projects being this one? It still leaves at least 2-3 other projects currently being worked on that are likely to be true, classic RPGs in the tradition of Obsidian games.

Given that Obsidian has been operating with roughly three development teams recently based on various interviews, no surprise to me that one of those teams is working on a new IP. I said as much in a post a few months ago. The big question for me is what type of game is this going to be? Specifically, is it going to be an Xbox-only game or for PC as well?

This seems to be the general view of TB fans, that any party-based RPG must of course be TB. There's zero logic to it, but that's the line that gets pushed. The overwhelming majority of negative reviews on Steam for both the PoE games and P:K are some varient of: it's RTwP so it's a horrible game.

Don't we already have this very discussion going on in multiple other threads?

Oh come on. That was just figure-of-speech style exaggeration for effect. How would I, someone not associated with Larian, even be able to provide a true guarantee?

I think the core problem for the PoE games was that they were based on appealing to the nostalgia of people who had played the IE games 20 years ago. As such they were designed to appeal to that previous generation of gamers rather than the current generation of gamers. But even appealing to the nostalgia of the previous generation did not work because (a) nostalgia is likely to appeal only once and not a second time for a sequel, and (b) nostalgia is about remembering your experiences from a long time ago in a positively-biased way such that even when someone makes a new game using that same old formula you come away saying to yourself: "Well I don't like this, because this is NOT how I remember those old games." By contrast, Larian took a very different approach to their D:OS games. They made D:OS1 specifically to appeal to the current new generation of gamers, and then improved on that formula further in the sequel. So what appeals to the current generation? I would argue such things as availability on consoles, fancy 3D graphics, full VO, (combat) mechanics that are easy to figure out and intuitive to use, and systems that are not complex and without an excessive number of choices. But most importantly of all, being able to play in co-op/multiplayer mode. Many of these things are exactly what the grognards hate but for younger gamers they are a must, especially for those who are coming to these games with little or no prior experience with RPGs or complex D&D-like games. My expectation is that there will NOT be a PoE3. Instead, there will be a reboot of the Pillars franchise with a completely new game whose design will start with multiplayer and consoles. Then, it will have high-end 3D graphics, full VO, and likely be third-person perspective. Finally, the systems and mechanics from the PoE games will be significantly streamlined and simplified so that people who are not hardcore RPG gamers can still dive right into the game and easily figure out how everything works, what all the numbers mean, where you don't have an overwhelming number of options to consider and weigh against one another when deciding what you want to do in a particular combat situation, and so on.

Boeroer, I disagree. I see this as yet another instance of Swen slowly trying to bring the hardcore IE fans around to accepting a TB BG3. As such I stand by my claim. We shall see.

Yeah I agree some sort of reboot of the franchise is the most likely outcome, where the new game is set in Eora but is completely separate and different from PoE1&2.

Source: me But there is this recent interview which to me is about as close as we can get of confirmation that BG3 will be TB: https://www.gameinformer.com/interview/2019/11/07/a-knight-in-shining-armor-swen-vincke-talks-the-long-road-of-larian-studios

Yeah BG3 will absolutely NOT be RTwP. It is guaranteed to be TB.

Ok I can see this, but then how does one explain the popularity of D:OS2? If anything that game should have been even more of a hard no for D&D grogs. And in this I would set aside anything to do with TB v. RTwP. There are many popular RTwP games and many unpopular TB games. The whole "it should've been TB and then it would've sold well" line is just from TB fanatics for whom every single game must be TB. I would submit that in addition to the pirate theme and not being sufficiently D&D-ish/Eurocentric, it was also a matter of no multiplayer, 2D art, complex mechanics that were opaque to many, the ship combat mini-game, too much of a focus on gods, and very poor marketing.

I wish Sawyer would at least occasionally come on this forum to discuss these kinds of issues. He's certainly willing to talk about it, but apparently only on every other forum or platform but this one.

Yes Home is default under Library. My issue is that now when you are on the page for one of the games in your Library, there is no News section on that page. You have to click on Discussions or Community Hub and then on News to get there. A real pain. I would much rather have the News section than the stupid Community Content section which is now most of the page.

The news section is missing for me. How do you bring it back?

I feel really terrible for Josh. He needs to understand he did not make a bad game. PoE2 is an incredibly good game, regardless of the purchase decisions of RPG gamers.

Over on the Beamdog forum the forum manager posted an excerpt from a post by Josh Sawyer from somewhere called badgame.net for which you need an account there to access it yourself. At the bottom of the excerpt there is a sales comparison with P:K. https://badgame.net/index.php?topic=54476.msg14375799#msg14375799 "i don't really know how productive this discussion can be because it's hard to pinpoint definitively why people bought or didn't buy something. deadfire was made on the assumption that the sales and reviews of that game indicated both a general desire for games of that type in the market and that the press and consumers thought that we did a good job overall. it made money and it reviewed well in the press and among players, which doesn't mean it's objectively good, but to us it indicated that 1) we should make a sequel and 2) we should identify the things that people didn't enjoy in the first game and address them. i was involved in the PR and marketing pushes for both games and we had a lot more trouble getting marketing pieces out for deadfire. when we did research into how product awareness was tracking, deadfire was struggling leading up to its launch. it's true that critical role did draw a lot of attention to the game, but it's unclear how far that reached outside of our core market. yes, by now many more people are aware of the game, but the bulk of most games' sales are still made in the first two weeks following its release. whether the scores and sales are deserved or not, pillars 1 had an 89 metacritic and sold over a million copies within a year of its release. deadfire had an 88 metacritic and sold much worse. i don't think i stuck my head in the sand re: criticism for pillars 1, so if there was a strong undercurrent of indifference or dislike for the first game and i just completely botched the sequel, it's hard for me to identify where i went wrong. the reason why i didn't/don't want to direct another pillars game isn't just general fatigue, but also because i don't think i have the critical insight to understand how to move forward with the series. the quality of the game is my responsibility, so if it's really that bad, it's my fault. still, by the numbers we had, general awareness was low outside of our core leading up to the launch. D:OS2 sold incredibly well, way better than pillars 1. pathfinder: kingmaker sold better than deadfire. idk if it sold better than pillars 1."

Same for me with Ps:T. I actually had bought a CD copy of it many years ago, though not when it first came out, but just never bothered to load it up. Then, when the EE came out, based on all I'd heard about the game for years, I bought it and played it. I did finish the game, but everything @thelee says about it is exactly how I found it as well though for me even the writing was good but not amazing (never been very enamored of Avellone's writing). So when I went into T:ToN, I did not at all do so with Ps:T as my point of reference or comparison. I think unfortunately for T;ToN, many people who were huge fans of Ps:T went into it with Ps:T as their frame of reference, and this badly hurt the game's reception. Not that there aren't legitimate things about T:ToN that can be criticized, but many people I feel never gave the game a fair chance.

Why? It's not like I'm saying we should have access too all the companions all the time. I'm just saying there should've been a specific situation, for example being on your ship, where you can bring up a UI that includes everyone. In fact, it is Obsidian that did exactly this, in NwN2, where within your stronghold you can access all your companions at the same time.

Yup, and apparently there's even a scene of him in a bathtub.