On the road to... Pillars of Eternity 3

[Elfevivi]

Hi every one,
First post here, but I'm a huge fan of PoE and I live in France (so sorry for the bad english language sometimes).
So my question is: what would you like to improve in the existing games for a PoE 3 ?

Because I mean this game has to exist ! I mean more than ever (especially in this periode) we need something that connect the magic to the soul of the players.

We want to dream, and live wonderfull adventures. And Microsoft is clever enough to know that this game Pillars of Eternity is THE game who deserves to reach a large audience ! And the people who work on it are really talented, and also the richness of this game is in his details.

So for myself:

I love everything in that game: mecanics, strategy, graphics, characters, colors (especially in Deadfire), diplomaty, stories, the attention to details ... 

What I would like to see in a 3 would be:

- Less loading times who break the path of the game and are too frustrating. And they also break the impression that we are in an open world.

- To have the possibility to zoom on characters and beautifull settings (landscapes..) to admire and feel more connected to them. If not it's a little bit frustrating.

- Please keep the isometric view (or 3D only for few scenes. A full game in 3D makes me sick) and because this is the "essence" (DNA) of the game.

- More beautifull stories (with gods), and why not travel in times ? Like mousketeer times... It would be wonderful if the Pillars or the gods could regenarate you in another body and another time for example. Isn't it a wonderfull idea ? ;)) ) (I'm a scriptwriter by the way ^^)

- I love the pirates and the islands in PoE2 but I wasn't convinced with the naval battles. It's more for a paper and a pen. In a game we need to see more things maybe. But I like to see ships and battles on it.

 

So in the next Pillars of Eternity 3 you could be who you want to be and travel in another places and another times...

And you ?

 

[AeonsLegend]

There's a thread about this here: 

For my answer. Short: no more open world. Please no more. Back to Pillars 1 mode of story progression and exploration. Keep the combat system, lose the party members that are tied to factions. In fact, maybe no more factions either. Every frikking game has factions. Meaningless.

Also, time travel is likely a terrible idea. It ruins most stories. Much like it ruined Avengers: End Game. It's a writers tool when he's out of ideas.

Edited April 14, 2020 by AeonsLegend

[Wormerine]

1) They would invest in a solid, top down 3D engine. For all the things I don't like about D:OS2, I am amazed by engine it is powered by - As big of a hub as you want, with moving inside and outside without any issues, multiplayer maps etc. I wouldn't necessarly want the structure of D:OS, but lack of gameplay interuptions. Yup, yup, yup.

2) I would like to have Josh back at the helm, and use Microsoft money and hopefully lack of interference, to appeal neither to publishers nor fans. Make best Pillars game he can make. Is it even possible? Pillars as a world and game was created to appeal to IE game fans afterall. But I like to think there is a game he wants to make and we want to play. Or maybe I would hate it... who knows.

[Elfevivi]

2 hours ago, AeonsLegend said:

Also, time travel is likely a terrible idea. It ruins most stories. Much like it ruined Avengers: End Game. It's a writers tool when he's out of ideas.

I don’t agree with that. Time travel opens up possibilities both in terms of stories and settings, décors.  Many examples (cf Assassin’s Creed, Doctor Who etc.) show that it is a great concept if it is well done.

[AeonsLegend]

36 minutes ago, Elfevivi said:

I don’t agree with that. Time travel opens up possibilities both in terms of stories and settings, décors.  Many examples (cf Assassin’s Creed, Doctor Who etc.) show that it is a great concept if it is well done.

It only works if time travel is a pivotal part of the story. It doesn't work if it's a gimmick. Time travel as a gimmick usually ruins an entire storyline. Have you seen Avengers? The last movie made all others poinless because some lazy writer got drunk and had to write a script and only had a day left to do it.

Edited April 14, 2020 by AeonsLegend

[the_dog_days]

6 hours ago, Wormerine said:

1) They would invest in a solid, top down 3D engine. For all the things I don't like about D:OS2, I am amazed by engine it is powered by - As big of a hub as you want, with moving inside and outside without any issues, multiplayer maps etc. I wouldn't necessarly want the structure of D:OS, but lack of gameplay interuptions. Yup, yup, yup.

2) I would like to have Josh back at the helm, and use Microsoft money and hopefully lack of interference, to appeal neither to publishers nor fans. Make best Pillars game he can make. Is it even possible? Pillars as a world and game was created to appeal to IE game fans afterall. But I like to think there is a game he wants to make and we want to play. Or maybe I would hate it... who knows.

I agree with both. Prior to TOW I didn't like the idea of using a 3D engine, but given how relatively few bugs that game had, I would welcome it. I would add an optional camera mode that's third person over the shoulder for console players, too. Frankly, POE 3's potential success might lie in how well they manage to increase appeal to console players.

[Boeroer]

9 hours ago, AeonsLegend said:

Have you seen Avengers? The last movie made all others poinless because some lazy writer got drunk and had to write a script and only had a day left to do it.

While I don't consider Avengers (or any marvel movie really) to be the pinnacle of filmmaking, that is wrong. Time travel IS the pivotal part of the story there - and it is done quite well with the travels back to scenes of the former marvel movies - and also making it clear that altering the timeline splits it up into alternative realities - so you can't just kill baby Thanos in the past and that's it. It's done better than in most contemporary movies with time travelling, excluding Interstellar and Arrival (those I have seen and they handle that time thing very well), but certainly better than in Back to the Future where it's the main part of the story but still wildly nonsensical (but fun for me as a teen nonetheless). 

I personally don't like time travel too much because it always feels like a loophole and takes away consequence. But saying that its use in Endgame made the former movies pointless (why?) or that writers were lazy is just wrong. 

This time travel was set up since Ant Man's quantum realm and Dr. Strange's time stone. That doesn't indicate that anybody was lazy or only had one day left to do it. 

BUT: I totally agree that I don't want to see time travel in PoE3, should it ever come out. It's just stale by now. And I also 100% agree on open world: not worth it in such a game that is supposed to be driven by narrative and character development. 

Edited April 15, 2020 by Boeroer

[AeonsLegend]

55 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

While I don't consider Avengers (or any marvel movie really) to be the pinnacle of filmmaking, that is wrong. Time travel IS the pivotal part of the story there - and it is done quite well with the travels back to scenes of the former marvel movies - and also making it clear that altering the timeline splits it up into alternative realities - so you can't just kill baby Thanos in the past and that's it. It's done better than in most contemporary movies with time travelling, excluding Interstellar and Arrival (those I have seen and they handle that time thing very well), but certainly better than in Back to the Future where it's the main part of the story but still wildly nonsensical (but fun for me as a teen nonetheless). 

I personally don't like time travel too much because it always feels like a loophole and takes away consequence. But saying that its use in Endgame made the former movies pointless (why?) or that writers were lazy is just wrong. 

This time travel was set up since Ant Man's quantum realm and Dr. Strange's time stone. That doesn't indicate that anybody was lazy or only had one day left to do it. 

BUT: I totally agree that I don't want to see time travel in PoE3, should it ever come out. It's just stale by now. And I also 100% agree on open world: not worth it in such a game that is supposed to be driven by narrative and character development. 

Don't troll man. Time travel in Avengers was the biggest writing mistake they could have ever, EVER made. The reason is because it invalidates all other movies. If you introduce time travel in a story the story itself needs to revolve around that aspect. You don't introduce time travel to fix a writing block. It's also dangerous because it can screw over everything you do if you don't understand what you're working with. Time travel in stories is not a simple thing.

It splits into multiple time lines is what avengers states. So how on earth does Captain America turn up as an old man in their time line? According to the way time travel works in Avengers this is 100% impossible as his being there would have created a new time line. You see this is just a simple example and there are loads more where they F-ed up. Because introducing new entities in the past already creates new time lines. By being there they created as many new time lines as their appearances. 

But that's not even my major issue. The issue is that time travel that allows you to invalidate things that have been done before in the earlier stories. just because the Sorcerer Supreme doesn't agree with it doesn't mean you can't. They could have easily picked up Nat in the past and still have the Soul Stone. They could have brought back everyone from the past including quicksilver and be done with it. I mean Loki escaped with the tasseract as well and he's still alive as well.

Another thing wrong with End Game is the whole way it was introduced. First they try Tony, but he doesn't want to do it. So they go to Banner who has no idea what he is doing, but messes with things and finds a way to make people immortal. Because he can wind back time of a persons body without messing their brain. That equals immortality, but no one seems to care.

Then Tony just has a cup of coffee fiddles with a setting for about a day and discovers time travel. Whooptidoo. 

L.a.z.y. writing. without thinking of any consequence of what they were trying to do. All they needed to do was think of a way for the Avengers to beat Thanos, but they couldn't so... time travel deus ex machina. Boom. Lazy.

Now all we need is for someone to be strong enough to wield the stones, go back in time and use the stones before Tony does and travel back. Bam Tony alive. Or you know, if you're keen on the single/multiple timeline mess in Avengers you could pick up Tony and bring him to the future. It just makes his death and everything that was built up towards it meaningless.

Edited April 15, 2020 by AeonsLegend

[xzar_monty]

The elephant in the room is of course the well-nigh incontrovertible fact that there is no road to Pillars of Eternity 3, because such a game will never be made. Boy would I be happy to be proven wrong.

[AeonsLegend]

1 minute ago, xzar_monty said:

The elephant in the room is of course the well-nigh incontrovertible fact that there is no road to Pillars of Eternity 3, because such a game will never be made. Boy would I be happy to be proven wrong.

Very true

[Dyxx]

PoE3 will happen. Not this year, not next year but in 2022 rumors will and it will be announced 2023.

Don't ask me why I know it, it's a feeling.

Now start laughing and we all talk again in 2022/23

Greetings Dyxx

[Boeroer]

4 hours ago, AeonsLegend said:

Don't troll man.[...] 

K, but animals are fair game?

9 minutes ago, Dyxx said:

PoE3 will happen. Not this year, not next year but in 2022 rumors will and it will be announced 2023.

I'm pretty sure that some Pillars game will be done. But PoE3 as another sequel? Most likely not. The sales numbers were 7 times lower than those of PoE and while that was a financial success (given the small budget) it also wasn't selling like hot cakes either. 

Feargus said that he would love to do a skyrim-like Pillars game and after the success of the Outer Worlds I can't think about a reason why this wouldn't be tackled. Also Josh said recently about this topic: "Well Feargus wants to make such a game and usually Feargus gets his way."

Josh himself stated that he thinks that someone else should direct a PoE3 should it ever come out. He said instead he would like to do a "Tactics" game with the Pillars IP. Which sounds awesome. It's not an RPG though and I don't know how Microsoft thinks about such a game (given that they bought Obsidian in order to expand their RPG portfolio). But who knows?

If you ask yourself "Where do these infos come from?": Josh does a stream nearly every evening since he's working from home due to Corvid-19. There he talks about this and that while playing games like Darklands or Battle Brothers and so on. Lately he even held a presentation/talk about reputation systems which was very nice. He often answers questions from the chat. 

[xzar_monty]

7 times lower? That really hurts. And I don't mean mathematically, because it's incorrect -- you should be saying Deadfire only sold 1/7 of PoE, as 7 times lower doesn't really make mathematical sense(*) -- but in almost every other conceivable way. I mean, Deadfire is an excellent game. I'm perfectly open to the debate about whether it's better or Poe or not (I think it is), but I can't see any reasonable way to regard it as that much inferior. Something went wrong somewhere, and it certainly didn't deserve sales as poor as that. What a shame.

 

(*) Couldn't help it. Sorry. Don't mean to be pedantic, although I am, of course.

[AeonsLegend]

1 hour ago, Boeroer said:

K, but animals are fair game?

yes

[thelee]

7 hours ago, AeonsLegend said:

Don't troll man. Time travel in Avengers was the biggest writing mistake they could have ever, EVER made.

Not trolling here, but I think this is way too extreme. Fundamentally, I think virtually all time travel is flawed, because the inherent concept is going to produce paradoxes, no matter how much you try. But as a popcorn-logic lark (and slowly disseminated across several movies and not some writer coming up with it in one day as you allege), it's fine. But I mean while I agree with Boeroer that Interstellar and Arrival did it pretty OK, it's not because they "solved" it or carefully thought about it, it's because they deliberately under-explore the time travel in those movies, because thinking about it too hard is going to be weird. In both Interstellar and Arrival there is some future "thing" that is able to solve the problem for the present-day characters

Spoiler

in interstellar it's some future version of the human race that creates the tesseract inside the black hole, and the wormhole that takes everyone there

in arrival, it's seeing a future version of the protagonist who has already solved the problem and has access to the information--the phone number--that the present day character does not have.

in either case if you think of it for more than a few seconds, you realize that there is essentially a deus ex machina (even bigger than the plot device of time travel) solving the problem for everyone, and there is a gaping writing hole in which they never actually connect present-day to future-day, and instead the problem has essentially always been solved, which is rather unsatisfying.

 

There's literally no way to do time travel plot device that holds up for more than a few minutes of careful thought unless you abide by the laws of physics, at which point no information in the present can influence the past and no information in the future can influence the present (at least at a rate faster than the speed of light), at which point it's not really time travel anyway.

 

Anyway, all this is to say - while pop-time-travel can be fun (hey, back to the future is completely nonsensical but is still fun to watch) I like PoE's serious world-building and its internal consistency, please don't hurt my head by introducing time-travel to it.

Edited April 15, 2020 by thelee

[Dyxx]

@Boeroer it will take time till PoE3 will be developed or even announced. 

But I think Josh won't abandon this series.

I believe it was planned to be a trilogy.

Today there is no chance cause of sales numbers. Maybe not even Josh knows it

But I strongly believe that he will never ever abandon PoE like it is now.

There will be a time when he can't get it out of his head and develop something in his head, as an idea, a little spark.

And this spark will grow time after time.

He will prove his self to Microsoft that he is worth to be supported and together they'll create PoE3.

It's only a matter of time. 

I really believe that

[AeonsLegend]

1 hour ago, thelee said:

Not trolling here, but I think this is way too extreme. Fundamentally, I think virtually all time travel is flawed, because the inherent concept is going to produce paradoxes, no matter how much you try. But as a popcorn-logic lark (and slowly disseminated across several movies and not some writer coming up with it in one day as you allege), it's fine. But I mean while I agree with Boeroer that Interstellar and Arrival did it pretty OK, it's not because they "solved" it or carefully thought about it, it's because they deliberately under-explore the time travel in those movies, because thinking about it too hard is going to be weird. In both Interstellar and Arrival there is some future "thing" that is able to solve the problem for the present-day characters

  Reveal hidden contents

in interstellar it's some future version of the human race that creates the tesseract inside the black hole, and the wormhole that takes everyone there

in arrival, it's seeing a future version of the protagonist who has already solved the problem and has access to the information--the phone number--that the present day character does not have.

in either case if you think of it for more than a few seconds, you realize that there is essentially a deus ex machina (even bigger than the plot device of time travel) solving the problem for everyone, and there is a gaping writing hole in which they never actually connect present-day to future-day, and instead the problem has essentially always been solved, which is rather unsatisfying.

 

There's literally no way to do time travel plot device that holds up for more than a few minutes of careful thought unless you abide by the laws of physics, at which point no information in the present can influence the past and no information in the future can influence the present (at least at a rate faster than the speed of light), at which point it's not really time travel anyway.

 

Anyway, all this is to say - while pop-time-travel can be fun (hey, back to the future is completely nonsensical but is still fun to watch) I like PoE's serious world-building and its internal consistency, please don't hurt my head by introducing time-travel to it.

Yea we're on the same page. It can be fun and it can be made to work, but not as a gimmick to solve something or just introduced as a later idea. I remember playing Spellforce which was built around time travel and it was made to work even though it was kind of a gimmick the reason for this is that nothing had any effect because it was going to happen anyway. And you don't trave back in time. You have another person traveling back in time to prevent something and in doing so he actually causes what will happen. I kind of liked that idea. It's not a new idea and has been explored before in different fashion. But going back in time to "fix" something... no that's not for me. And it's usually done so poorly that it just becomes annoying.

4 minutes ago, Dyxx said:

@Boeroer it will take time till PoE3 will be developed or even announced. 

But I think Josh won't abandon this series.

I believe it was planned to be a trilogy.

Today there is no chance cause of sales numbers. Maybe not even Josh knows it

But I strongly believe that he will never ever abandon PoE like it is now.

There will be a time when he can't get it out of his head and develop something in his head, as an idea, a little spark.

And this spark will grow time after time.

He will prove his self to Microsoft that he is worth to be supported and together they'll create PoE3.

It's only a matter of time. 

I really believe that

To be honest I don't care about POE enough to have a 3rd installment. Especially if you continue the Watcher story. I enjoy playing the game because of the combat only. Everything about POE2 was forgettable. I had much more immersion in POE1. I felt my character was important and part of the world. In POE2 I feel it's disjointed and irrelevant somehow. Not like my character is really there.

Edited April 15, 2020 by AeonsLegend

[xzar_monty]

14 minutes ago, AeonsLegend said:

I had much more immersion in POE1. I felt my character was important and part of the world. In POE2 I feel it's disjointed and irrelevant somehow. Not like my character is really there.

I just finished my second playthrough a couple of days ago, and to certain extent I agree with what you're saying here. The main character is completely irrelevant in Deadfire(*). Eothas does whatever he does no matter what you do. The only thing that you can affect is timing. In other words: Eothas does nothing until you go to the places where he does his things, but once you get there, he always does the same things no matter what you say or do.

So, in one sense, everything that's truly interesting about Deadfire (and for me, there's plenty of that) happens completely outside the main storyline. I cannot help but think that this is, in some sense, poor design and poor storytelling. There's no getting around that.

 

(*) It's a bit like Indiana Jones in The Raiders of the Lost Ark. Indy does nothing in the story. He affects absolutely none of it. The Nazis would have found the ark, opened it and died without Indy. Indy is a non-entity in the movie, nothing he does has any effect on anything.

[Boeroer]

27 minutes ago, Dyxx said:

@Boeroer [...]

But I strongly believe that he will never ever abandon PoE like it is now.

He's currently writing the Pillars TTRPG system (mostly in his free time) which so far seems to turn out pretty nicely. So for the foreseeable future he has plenty of work with Pillars stuff. I think that this is more up his alley because it's classless and there are no boundaries for him: he's allowed to do as he wishes with this project. 

[Boeroer]

2 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

Eothas does whatever he does no matter what you do. The only thing that you can affect is timing.

That is not entirely correct: 

The Wheel will get destroyed no matter what, but you can influence Eothas to do more than just smashing the Wheel. For example you can convince him that it's best to destroy the flow of souls completely so that every living thing with a soul (gods included) will die out and the world ends.

Edited April 15, 2020 by Boeroer

[xzar_monty]

Wow. I therefore stand corrected. Thanks for that! I wonder if this kind of influence is regarded as "cruel" in the game. Do you know?

Edited April 15, 2020 by xzar_monty

[Boeroer]

Ouf, no, sorry. I'm sure that Rymrgand approves that message though.

[thelee]

1 hour ago, Boeroer said:

That is not entirely correct. The Wheel will get destroyed no matter what, but you can influence Eothas to do more than just smashing the Wheel. For example you can convince him that it's best to destroy the flow of souls completely so that every living thing with a soul (gods included) will die out and the world ends.

You can also convince Wael's avatar to go destroy Eothas as well.

[xzar_monty]

30 minutes ago, thelee said:

You can also convince Wael's avatar to go destroy Eothas as well.

Does it succeed? If so, what happens to Eothas's plan to destroy the Wheel? This is very interesting!

[thelee]

26 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

Does it succeed? If so, what happens to Eothas's plan to destroy the Wheel? This is very interesting!

Spoiler

It does succeed, but like the options that Boeroer mentions, it doesn't ultimately change anything. Basically Wael tears apart Eothas, and Eothas falls onto the wheel, which still ultimately destroys it. So a bit of a lame cop-out writing-wise, but it does mean you can't convince Eothas to do anything different [like give people inspiration], and it is just a fun bit of reactivity from the end of FS.