kanisatha

The criticism of the game was largely about the DM/coop side of the game and that it deviated significantly from D&D rules despite supposedly being D&D 5e. If you play the game single-player, and don't get too caught up in whether or not it is "truly D&D," it is actually a pretty good and fun game. You definitely should also check out Tower of Time. It has RTwP combat that it somewhat challenging.

I seem to recall in an interview the producer of the show saying that even though she personally would like to highlight the Yen and Ciri characters she understands that the show by its very title needs to have Geralt front and center, and so Geralt will be the main focus.

How about Tower of Time? And there's always also Dragon Age: Origins.

Well people can take a stand against this nonsense and just insist on calling it Xbox 2. On forums, social media, reviews, news stories, in stores, even on MS's own forum, if people insist on calling it Xbox 2, there's nothing MS can do about it. This is exactly like how Windows versions used to be named back in the '90s and I hated that so much.

But a person can say it is best for me, and there's nothing wrong with that. And, I think when people say "best" in these kinds of contexts, they almost always do mean "best for me" even if this isn't explicitly stated.

I would strongly recommend you also give Pathfinder: Kingmaker a try. Feel free to set the kingdom management side-game part of it on 'auto' if that's not your thing.

This was my take on this game too. And the terraforming stuff late game doesn't help because it takes so very long to get it going that it does not alleviate the boredom. It's a very fun game in the early stages but eventually I just quit and restart on a different map. So I never get all the way through to the end in any of my play-throughs. Thankfully there are a ton of different maps to play on.

For me what matters is if the game will have an option to turn on that removes the "extermination" X from 4X. I love playing Civ as a civ builder only, without the going to war with each other part. And even when this is not inherently built into the game, someone always creates a mod for it, as is the case with Civ 5 which is what I currently play.

Oh I see. Yeah I did read that part but I (also) interpreted it as not really a return of "kingdom management" but rather that some sort of management element would be included, like you say perhaps "managing" your crusade.

Huh? Confused. There's no kingdom management style anything in the new game. What am I missing?

And Beregost in BG1.

Yes I think something like this could've mitigated a lot of player angst. But at the same time, I have gone to some of the PoE wikis out there where the combat mechanics are explained in numerical detail, and have to say some of how those numbers work just makes you want to throw up your hands in frustrated resignation.

I only presented D:OS as a possible comparison because it sold well. But any comparison with a relatively similar game that sold well would be ok. I just feel that a big problem the PoE games had was that their combat mechanics were not intuitively understandable or relatable to a lot of people (and this beyond just that they were not well explained within the game). Even such basic elements as attack and damage and armor were not simple and straightforward and easily understood as to how they worked. By contrast, in D:OS, you didn't even need to have them explained to you to be able to (easily) understand how these mechanics worked.

I am really loving this discussion about the comparative pros and cons of combat mechanics and gameplay between PoE1 and 2. The depth of some of the analyses presented here is truly incredible for someone like me who loves to play games with complex mechanics but without myself getting too caught up in the details. But to the point of the thread, would it not make more sense that instead of comparing PoE1 to PoE2 we should be comparing the PoE games (either one or both of them) to, say, the D:OS games? Very much unlike the PoE games, the D:OS games had (for me) very simplistic, superficial and easy to figure out combat mechanics: no classes; every character has the same set of abilities; all abilities have cooldowns; a standard resource pool for using abilities where that pool is regenerated not just every encounter but every round within an encounter. Seems to me, very sadly on a personal level, those who like and want complex and sophisticated mechanics are a very small group that is concentrated here in this forum, whereas most gamers - and even classic RPG gamers - very strongly prefer simple and easily understood mechanics such as those used in the D:OS games. So, if they want to sell well, is this what all future cRPGs should aspire to wrt combat mechanics? Please share your thoughts as I am truly curious about this question.

I actually see overlap between what @Wormerine and @Boeroer are saying. I agree that it is very nice to have a nice bustling hub with shops and taverns and temples and smiths, and yes also some place - not necessarily a stronghold, just a hole in the wall place will do - to dump your stuff and know it'll all be safe. But I agree I don't like for so many of the quests to begin and end in that one place. It's always nice to have a range of different places to visit, and to have meaningful reasons to visit those places.

I too am in the camp of PoE mechanics being way better than D&D, and agree on not wanting to return to D&D, especially because to me D&D 5e is a dumbing-down and oversimplification of the D&D mechanics to broaden D&D's appeal. But with respect to settings, the Forgotten Realms will always be the fantasy game setting I love the most. As such, I would be quite happy to see a NwN3 from Obsidian, which I think would be far better received than IwD3.

Which may be the long-rumored AAA open world RPG project, which some have associated with Parker but maybe not so. Hmmm. Very interesting. Grounded being "Maine" threw me off as well, though yes I also think it's likely this game came together as a real project very suddenly at the last minute. And as a side-note, thanks a lot for sharing this kind of information because I for one love playing around with these puzzles in my head. 😀

Aww man! Too bad. But it's to be expected some of these projects will not work out. And I suspect that at least one and maybe more of "Mississippi", "Illinois", and "Alabama" are indeed canceled projects because projects like Parker's, for example, seem to have been launched much more recently and as such may have a codename that comes after "Missouri".

So while we are in speculation mode about current projects underway at Obsidian, what do you all think of the prospect that one of those very-early exploratory projects could be NwN3? I mean, even though apparently Obsidian also sought it, the BG license eventually went to Larian. So why not the NwN license possibly going to Obsidian?

Thanks! And we know from that same Eurogamer(?) story that Parker's project is currently active.

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.