kanisatha

It's pretty clear to me that the dismal sales numbers for PoE2 must have played a significant role in convincing OE's owners to sell to MS. I would not be surprised if, given just how dismal those sales numbers truly are (I would even use the word catastrophic), OE was once again facing a very grim financial outlook.

I'm willing to wait and see, but "Microsoft exclusive" is what bothers me. I will never ever buy a console, and I will also not buy my games from the Windows Store. So will I still be able to play future Obsidian games? I hope someone from Obsidian will answer this question very soon.

Well, with the news of inXile being bought by MS I can now believe inXile indeed may be the studio working on BG3.

I think the claim that people prefer TB over RTwP is not supported by any evidence. TB preferring people tend to be more vocal about and more insistent on their preference but that cannot count as representing more people. Also, a similar claim is that the D:OS games are very popular, and they are TB, so TB games are popular. Not so. The D:OS games are popular because they are co-op games, though it is also the case that co-op games by their nature have to be TB because RTwP co-op games, while possible, are complicated. That's the bottom line for me for how I see things (even just within the RPG niche). Games have to be co-op/multiplayer to score big sales numbers. It sucks for me because I have no interest in co-op/multiplayer, but that is what a lot of today's gamers want.

https://www.space.com/42352-oumuamua-interstellar-object-alien-light-sail.html Fascinating ....

This is something I've often brought up myself to explain why I don't care for 2e D&D. I love playing fighters, and it was only with 3.5e that fighters finally got some respect. Not only the feats but also some really cool fighter prestige classes made playing fighters finally fun.

I much prefer RTwP than TB but I'm going to back it.

See, this was actually one of the (many, many) things I disliked about D:OS. How come these elements were always very available exactly when you needed them and very conveniently positioned exactly how you needed them? It was very fourth-wall breaking for me.

Yep, very sad news. I can see that many of you want to look for the rainbow in the dark clouds but I tend to be a harsh realist, and my realist senses tell me this will spell the end of our Obsidian, the Obsidian who's games we've loved all these years. Heck, you can even tell from that very terse statement from Take Two how palpably worried they are about what happens to Project Indiana. This kinda' explains the exodus of people from Obsidian in recent months. Bottom line for me, I won't buy from the Windows Store, and I won't buy console games. So if that's the direction a Microsoft-controlled Obsidian takes, I will sadly have to cease being their customer after all these years. Now I guess we just wait for that canned statement from Feargus telling us all how wonderful the future's going to be because everything will be just the same only better. HAHA.

@IndiraLightfoot, I feel the same way! I love FR first and foremost, but love 5e so much that I will take a 5e D&D game in any of the D&D settings, including the newest one - Ravnica from MtG which has now been made a D&D setting. Seems like you have about a decade of D&D experience over me. I started playing PnP D&D in the late '80s.

I can't say I know, or follow much the D&D tabletop stuff. You might have a point and a better insight. Sadly I don't actually get to play PnP D&D anymore because I don't have a gaming group, but I still very closely follow what's going on in the D&D/WotC world because I just love the Forgotten Realms and especially source books and novels from that setting. And what 5e has done for D&D is truly phenomenal. D&D has never been more popular than it is right now, thousands of people tune in to watch PnP groups playing D&D on live streams, and 5e D&D sales have been through the roof for WotC. Chris Cox, the CEO of WotC said in a December 2017 interview that they want to do big things with their D&D franchise, including making D&D games in every type and genre of video gaming including mobile, tablet, and console. And yes, there is at least one and possibly two big screen movie projects involving D&D underway. For me, if the only way I can get a video game set in the Forgotten Realms is one that is a AAA ARPG, then so be it. And I'm pretty sure that a D&D video game that is similar to Skyrim/DAI/Witcher 3 will literally sell millions. As I said in my previous post, many of the folks on a forum such as this one are just not the target audience for WotC anymore.

Larian and Beamdog have both confirmed they are not involved. This is what I wrote in another forum as my personal take: It won't be a prequel, nor will it be a direct continuation from where ToB left off. It will follow Realms canon involving events in the city of Baldur's Gate in the 5e timeline. The "Murder in Baldur's Gate" 5e PnP game module could very well even be the jump-off point for the game. "Adrian Abdel" and other canon characters from the old games (including of course Minsc) may be featured in the backstory for the game, but the game will have nothing to do with any of those characters. It will be a completely new story with completely new characters, but because it will be set in the city of Baldur's Gate WotC will claim it justifies the labeling of the game as BG3 (or perhaps "BGNext" in today's WotC-speak). There is precisely zero chance that WotC allows a new Forgotten Realms game to be made that is not set in the current 5e timeline. ZERO. They are extremely happy with how things have turned out with 5e and where the D&D franchise is at the present time. 5e is by far the best-selling D&D edition of all-time, and the new PnP game modules WotC has been cranking out on a frantic pace in the past several years have actually generally been very well received. Why would they not capitalize on all of that newfound enthusiasm for D&D? The target audience for a new BG game would NOT be old-timer fans of the original BG games. The target audience would be the literally millions of NEW D&D fans WotC has managed to generate in recent years for whom the old BG games are a quaint anachronism. BG3 will be open world. It will likely be third person, definitely not isometric. It may be party-based, but only because it will also be co-op/multiplayer. It will be AAA. Why? Because these are the game elements that the current D&DNext generation of gamers will want. And WotC will be looking to sell millions of copies of the game, not just a few hundred thousand copies along the lines of the IE EEs or even games like PoE or Pathfinder or D:OS. That's why I feel CDPR is the odds-on likely candidate for the studio working on BG3. They have recently announced that they are, in fact, working on a new AAA RPG game that is not from the Witcher franchise. And Witcher 3's record of 35 million copies sold worldwide has got to be super-attractive to WotC. The game being AAA, along with it being set in the current 5e canon timeline, are the two things I feel extremely confident that WotC will insist on. If you've followed, as I have done very closely, WotC's statements and actions in the past couple of years (since the release of D&DNext) you can't miss that they badly want "big" things from their D&D franchise - big screen D&D movies and AAA video games.

Surprised nobody's yet commented on this story in these forums: https://www.usgamer.net/articles/baldurs-gate-3-is-reportedly-in-development-by-an-unknown-studio-rpg-news-brian-fargo https://www.rpgsite.net/news/7843-report-brian-fargo-may-be-working-on-baldur-s-gate-3 Personally, my money is on CDPR as the studio working on this, assuming such a project does exist. They recently dropped hints on what they have in line to follow Cyberpunk 2077, saying effectively that their next project is a AAA RPG not involving the Witcher franchise.

Why is the game developer spending any time on a walkthrough? Assuming you are right here, I find this quite baffling. I thought they just made the game, and others played it. If someone out there wanted to do a walkthrough, they could, but I don't see why. (Isn't using a walkthrough the best possible way to ruin your game? Like, voluntarily giving the joy of discovery to other people, not having any yourself?) It was a KS add-on you could buy. I agree it's not the best use of their time, especially given they're a very small team, but it also means doing crowdfunding was also something they were learning on the fly. I think it is honorable that they are sticking with all their KS promises, even the ones that are not quite ideal.

Too hard for a lot of people. They go off the main quest and encounter something that's too difficult. Similar to Baldur's Gate. Go off the main quest and you might find yourself encountering a basilisk, get turned to stone and then complain on Steam that the difficulty is too hard and all over the place. Yup. Exactly. For that particular situation apparently they will now add in a warning to players about the difficulty of that quest and also gift some items to the party to help out in the combat.

Guys, a few things from over at the Owlcat forums: They're aware of the difficulty spikes issue and will address it in a hot fix very soon. Basically, they don't want to lower difficulty overall, but do agree that getting routinely killed in an encounter within the tutorial is a bit much. I think they also said something about giving players a bit more time to finish Act 1. Addressing issues with some KS backers not getting their appropriate in-game rewards. The detailed digital walk-through is behind schedule so they will release what they have now, which only goes through chapter 3, and release the whole thing later when it gets done. Additional playable races and classes are the primary thing they expect to include in expansions/DLCs. Seems like issues that should be expected with a very small company doing its first big game project. Keeping this context in mind, I feel they've done an incredibly amazing job with this game so far. I for one am more than happy to cut them some slack and give them some time to fix up whatever needs fixin'. I am so excited not only for this game but for the prospect of a stream of additional games from them in the future that will scratch my D&D itch, given that we're very unlikely to see an actual D&D crpg any time soon.

Well if that's the only way to save the game then I may never play the game, because I am a very casual player who loves having (and needs to have) lots of saves including quicksaves. I think I may have wasted my money in backing this game.

My biggest gripe since it is the one thing they can probably not patch is the saving system. While out questing you're essentially running across one time saving pillars in the world you can either rub for saving the game once or getting experience. It adds a certain element of dread to the game of course, but the systme is ridiculous considering one can't skip cutscenes and might lose an hour worth of progress to a technical issue. I was under the impression that following pushback on their forums when this was initially announced they made saving easier at least on lower difficulty levels. Is this not correct?

The actual game isn't bad. It's just that the program actively conspires against you playing it. The loading times that make Pillars pale in comparison, framerate drops, invisible icons in the inventory, skill points that appear placed but aren't, quest and item text that's barely readable due to terrible UI scaling, graphics and resolution settings that simply don't work, oh and the language setting that automatically resets every time you turn the game on. Yep. Those are bad. REALLY bad. Seriously?! Damn, that really sucks. I backed the game and downloaded it yesterday, but haven't played it since I don't play a new game right away. You'd think they would've learned from all the heat they took with the launch of T:ToN, yet this seems even worse. And they took so very long to work on the game too!

I think Fargo retiring might be the best thing that can happen to inXile at this point.

The only thing people need protecting from is governments. It is the height of patronizing arrogance to be telling people what is best for them. I hope a whole bunch of corporations simply stop doing business in these countries and the home countries of those corporations retaliate by counter-banning business originating from these countries.

On this I see it exactly the opposite way. You don't sell when you're on the ropes (if this is an option) because then you have no bargaining leverage whatsoever. You sell when you're at a high-point, because that's when you have leverage to get the most return.

This story has now been picked up by a couple of online sources: https://www.thenerdmag.com/obsidian-entertainment-might-be-acquired-by-microsoft-according-to-a-letter-of-intent/ https://gamestechica.com/2018/08/08/obsidian-entertainment-letter-of-intent-for-an-acquisition-by-microsoft-leaked/ We know Feargus has been openly saying for some time now that he wants to retire. So this story may actually turn out to be true. MS has deep pockets so the owners of Obsidian may see this as a great opportunity to cash out big time. And MS/Xbox could really use an infusion of quality RPGs into their stable of games.

My sentiments exactly. For years now the one thing that's been the foundation of any discussion about BG2 has been that it's a wizard-centric game, and many uber-fans of BG2 have oft stated that the main reason they love BG2 so much is precisely because it is so extremely wizard-centric. So, yeah, people are of course free to argue otherwise, but I have no interest in engaging with any such arguments because to me that feels like arguing with someone who claims the sun orbits the earth.

PoE is more wizard centric than any IE game ever was. Developer(s) found one mechanic to rule them all (similar to cooldowns in other modern RPGs) that is good enough at applying spell effects, and used it to apply all other effects in the game, by using same resource mechanic for everyone too. That level of uniformity is not terrible for pnp games where you need to play fast and all you can do is roll dice, but in a computer game that means that yes, classes mechanically behave the same. Uh right. You actually played Eternity at some point? You realize it is perfectly viable to beat it with no wizard at all? Good luck beating BG2 on any real difficulty level without a wizard. But Eternity, way more wizard focused. Yeah. Exactly. I do always take Aloth with me because I like the character and he's my high mechanics guy, but I never cast spells with him. I always play PoE with virtually no spellcasting and don't bother taking the druid or priest companions with me.