Sidekicks will have no banter

[Mazisky]

i Think they have no banter but they occasionally talk about stuff during the game.

[Gromnir]

banter in a full vo game with broad  localization is expensive... which is why we has complained 'bout the extravagant addition o' full deadfire vo.  as soon as full vo were announced, we assumed there would be no sidekick banter.

 

however, if sidekick quests is actual gone as well, then am surprised.  sidekicks were indeed mentioned as being similar to bg1 companions in terms o' development, at least those bg1 companions who also had brief quests attached to the their recruitment or party accommodation.  bg2 companions were contrasted by developers as being inconsistent with a few bg2 companions getting genuine deep development, such as jaheira, and those receiving relative little.  

 

but again, the sidekick side quests were mentioned along with the bg1 companion analogy.  am suspecting there will actually be sidekick side quest in deadfire-- am assuming miscommunication 'tween the genesis poster and josh during the recent twitch stream. however, one should recall the kinda scope we might reasonably expect.  bg1 companion quests were extreme limited, as were the companions as a whole... which has led to our fascination regarding the curious nostalgia folks have for a few bg1 companions.  we deride bg1 companions, en masse, as existing little beyond the 4 corners o' their character record sheet with a few catch phrases being interjected at seeming random moments.  in fact, on the old bg2 boards we gave lanfear a fair bit o' grief regarding her coran obsession as we noted how shallow were all such bg1 companions, but coran actual did get a bit o' development-- he were an unrepentant deadbeat dad.

 

...

 

german girl had no sense o' humor.  shocking. 

 

HA! Good Fun! 

[Yenkaz]

I always took it that

 

Companions in POEII ~ Companions in BG2

Sidekicks in POEII ~ Companions in BG1

 

They'd have dialogue related to the quest they were found on, but otherwise would be a few personality barks after that initial launch.

 

That was the impression I got when there was a push to reach the stretch goal of Ydwin as a full companion rather than a sidekick.

Companions in POE already had way more interactions and dialogue than they did in BG2.

[lordgizka]

All I could find that supports this particular "backer outrage" are second-hand accounts that Sawyer said that sidekicks will have similar level of interaction as Mazzy/Cernd in BG2 (see thread https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/96229-wtf-are-sidekicks/page-6).Mind, I couldn't find a direct quote by JS anywhere, or even a link to it. And, of course, both Mazzy and Cernd had banter, and quiet a bit of it. Cernd had his interactions in the druid quest too, limited as they were.

 

So yes, if the quote is genuine, this latest stream does constitute a broken promise. If not, well, Fig updates didn't make any lofty promises about what sidekicks would be.

 

That said, not giving people who are ready to throw money at you for mere promises "quite" what they want, may be both a smart business decision to widen the target audience, or a fast way to lose any audience altogether. I am personally watching steamcharts. For science, you see.

Edited April 26, 2018 by lordgizka

[daven]

I'm pretty sure nobody was looking forward to sidekicks anyway so it seems strange you're so angry about that.

 

It was a universally panned idea.

[Amentep]

 

I always took it that

 

Companions in POEII ~ Companions in BG2

Sidekicks in POEII ~ Companions in BG1

 

They'd have dialogue related to the quest they were found on, but otherwise would be a few personality barks after that initial launch.

 

That was the impression I got when there was a push to reach the stretch goal of Ydwin as a full companion rather than a sidekick.

Companions in POE already had way more interactions and dialogue than they did in BG2.

 

 

I didn't say they didn't. I used ~ to represent an equivalence relation between them, not an equals and to represent my understanding of their relation to each other...

[rjshae]

Saying IMO doesn't make a thing true. There are vast gulfs in how fleshed out the BG2 characters are, Valygar/Mazzy/Cernd are some of the easy examples of "barely any banter".

 

Funny though, Mazzy was one of my favorite characters from BG2. Hopefully at least one of the PoE2 sidekicks will be equally enjoyable to have in the party.

[Valmy]

 

 

 

Edit: Found the link: https://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/160089704591/greetings-mr-sawyer-my-username-in-the-forums-is

 

 

Ah ok. I guess I didn't just imagine that. Hopefully that turns out to be the case.

 

But I am good either way. Icewind Dale is one of my favorite RPGs and in that game your companions only interact in your imagination.

Edited April 26, 2018 by Valmy

[Bill Gates' Son]

I'm pretty sure nobody was looking forward to sidekicks anyway so it seems strange you're so angry about that.

 

It was a universally panned idea.

I was, and I still am.  Having access to more characters is something I always enjoy in an RPG.

 

Besides, even if they don't have a lot of banter with other npcs, I'm sure they will still have stuff to the player character f they're going to be hanging around on the ship.

 

 

 

Saying IMO doesn't make a thing true. There are vast gulfs in how fleshed out the BG2 characters are, Valygar/Mazzy/Cernd are some of the easy examples of "barely any banter".

 

Funny though, Mazzy was one of my favorite characters from BG2. Hopefully at least one of the PoE2 sidekicks will be equally enjoyable to have in the party.

 

 

Same.  They'll be good enough to me if they have as much content as the less important NPCs from BG2.

Edited April 26, 2018 by Bill Gates' Son

[evilcat]

It may be the lost opportunity.

In case of Durance i remember some barter from Temple and Salty Pole tavern.

So that is several lines, and already gives a feeling of definetly unique character.

[Yosharian]

Last stream josh stated that "sidekicks will have little to no banter". Then I asked him this: "so the sidekicks are just custom characters with some cosmetics?" he gave this reply: "this was precisely what the stretch goal said", so I made some research and no, that was not what the stretch goal said.

 

"Before joining your ranks, Sidekicks start out as unique NPCs integral to specific quests, complete with their own personalities and looks, and they may offer to join your party as a reward for completing their quest. Just like companions, these new characters have a custom portrait and voice sound-set. However, unlike companions, they do not have their own vision quest and will not participate in the relationship system outlined in our last stretch goal. We know you love more choice and flexibility when creating your parties, and Sidekicks are a way for us to give you that choice by providing a larger roster of characters to choose."

 

It was stated that they would not have a personal quest, I can understand that perfectly a personal quest is a huge work and need resources, and that they would not participate in the relationship system, again totally understandable, but no banters? How they will show their personalities without nothing to say?

 

Then I proceed to copy and paste this information, after no reply I got angry and said "well that is just lazy", and then Josh proceed to answer "actually banter is a lot of work".

 

There you have it, a 250k stretch goal for 4 portraits and 4 custom characters. A portrait is 60 dollars Obsidian, someone overpriced you a little bit. You can argue that they didn't have the resources to make some banters but they already proved that wrong, they had the extra resources to make the full V.O. something that no one asked, not to mention that the stretch goal was 250k, that is not enough for 80 lines of dialogues?

 

 

 

Ok so I'm gonna preface this by saying that I personally consider the approach that Josh and Obsi take, i.e. being completely transparent with us, open to criticism, willing to improve the game, is one that should not be taken for granted.  I appreciate that you made the response you did because you got angry, and that's understandable, but I think you should take into account the vulnerability that Josh and others expose by being publically available to us before you throw around statements like 'that's lazy'.

 

Most other game developers are completely shut off from the public, they don't listen to feedback, they don't care about conversing with their audience.  Obsi isn't like that, so don't take it for granted.  An accusation like that is really inflammatory.

 

Ok so that out the way, let's analyse this situation:

 

You're accusing them of spending $250'000 (to others wrote it as 250.000: it's a god damn comma/apostrophe, not a period, stop using a period to indicate thousands) on a few portraits and some custom characters.  However, I don't think this is accurate.  Creating a custom character is a pretty lengthy process, I think.  I think you're underselling it a bit.  We're getting 4 extremely well-crafted in-game models, with portraits to match, that have had tons of love and devotion put into making them appealing.  Obsi even went back and changed the portraits after feedback.  A lot of people are really hyped about these characters alone: I've seen tons of posts about how they love these characters.  So this isn't a few hours work on some portraits.  It's more than that.

 

That said, I do think we're not getting $250'000 worth of value here.  I agree there.  I just think you're being unnecessarily hyperbolic and not appreciating what we are getting.

 

Ultimately, I think what we're seeing here is a clash of different player expectations.

 

For example:

 

1) Some of us couldn't care less about full VO.  I tend to read conversation dialogues very quickly and skip to the next one as soon as I'm finished.  Maybe I'll take it slower with Deadfire.  Who knows.

 

2) Some of us place greater importance on written interactions than full VO.  It's understandable that we'd be looking at the 4 sidekicks and asking: why couldn't we just get more value in the form of written words?

 

3) I personally would rather have had, say, 30-50 extra player portraits, hair styles, etc in the character creation menu, than 4 sidekicks with no banters and no particular quests.  I despise the lack of customization in terms of starting abilities, attributes, and so on, that companions have, so my interest in using 4 sidekicks with no banter whatsoever is close to zero.

 

Those are just some examples, but you get the idea.

 

The thing I take away most of this is that we can't all get what we want.  I'm pretty happy with what we're getting in the game, from what I've seen.  I'd rather have fully customizable companions, and I'll defend that concept to the death, but whatever, I'm not going to on a rant about it, I already did that (haha).

 

Let's just all take a chill pill and enjoy the game, alright?  It is what it is, and there's no point ranting about stretch goals now.

 

Oh and as an extra aside, maybe $200'000 dollars were sunk into the Stronghold and the Caed Nua dungeon, but you know what else is true?  The stronghold f****** sucked.  And The Endless Paths were pretty boring.  They mostly served as a loot fest.

 

Maybe we should think on that.

Edited April 26, 2018 by Yosharian

[rjshae]

 You're accusing them of spending $250'000 (to others wrote it as 250.000: it's a god damn comma, not a period, stop using a period to indicate thousands) on a few portraits and some custom characters.

 

Note that not every nation uses commas to denote thousands.

[JerekKruger]

to others wrote it as 250.000: it's a god damn comma, not a period, stop using a period to indicate thousands

 

Minor point, it depends on the language of the speaker: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator#Examples_of_use

 

As a side note, I've never seen apostrophes used to separate thousands in large numbers.

Edited April 26, 2018 by JerekKruger

[huang]

 they had the extra resources to make the full V.O. something that no one asked,

 

 

 

I don't think they even had a choice here. After Divinity 2 (I haven't played it) had full VO, Pillars 2 had to have full VO too. It's very obvious to me, that if they wouldn't have done full VO, every single reviewer out there would have said right away, that Pillars 2 doesn't even have full VO like Divinity 2 already had last year (or whenever this game came out). Pillars 2 is a huge deal for Obsidian, so they can't afford to have it fail, having lots of people say at launch that this game feels "cheap" certainly would have hurt their sales.

[Ganrich]

 

 they had the extra resources to make the full V.O. something that no one asked,

 

 

 

I don't think they even had a choice here. After Divinity 2 (I haven't played it) had full VO, Pillars 2 had to have full VO too. It's very obvious to me, that if they wouldn't have done full VO, every single reviewer out there would have said right away, that Pillars 2 doesn't even have full VO like Divinity 2 already had last year (or whenever this game came out). Pillars 2 is a huge deal for Obsidian, so they can't afford to have it fail, having lots of people say at launch that this game feels "cheap" certainly would have hurt their sales.

 

 

Yup, even if PoE2 is a love letter to the IE games... Obsidian isn't some no name indie company who the press will forgive for cutting corners.   Also, I expect a large bit of feedback came back from Console gamers after PoE1 released to PS4 and Xbox.  So, with plans to hit all current consoles (even the Switch) full VO makes sense.  I know as a physical backer of the Deadfire Fig campaign (which gives me 1 physical and 1 digital copy on PC I do believe) I also preordered on my Switch, and I can't imagine trying to play it in handheld mode without full VO.  It may still be impossible, but I'm gonna try my hardest.  LOL

 

In the end, Obsidian is trying to build some name recognition for the PoE franchise, and as such they need more than just us Obsidian forum dwellers to do so.  They have more than hinted at a desire to make a game more like Bethesda's TES and FO stuff, and they would be best served ensuring the PoE games have mostly positive press. 

 

Full disclosure:  I prefer minimal VO, but I can buy books to scratch that itch.  I just want Obsidian to stay afloat as their near full VO games Kotor 2 and FONV are the best of those series IMHO (of the 3D Fallouts ofcourse).  Also, Alpha Protocol was really great too.   So, I trust Obsidian (mostly) with VO.  They haven't let VO cut their desire for solid C&C in their titles (thus far) which is what I value most from them. 

[Wormerine]

Details about sidekicks are disappointing yet expected.

 

They deliver exactly on what they promised - keeping against them that sidekicks wont include something they never said they will, is IMO not reasonable. Comparing them to Minsc is misleading, though - it seems that they will be closer to Mazzy.

 

As far as complaints regarding Obs investing money in VO instead of better fleshed out sidekicks - voice actors won’t write the lines. Extra money won’t expand what writers can do. Hiring extra ones might do a trick, but for some reasons they decided against it.

 

With smaller expansion size it seems unlikely that sidekicks will get some extra love after release. I am afraid, those four chaps will spend most of the adventure on my boat.

Edited April 26, 2018 by Wormerine

[Wormerine]

All I could find that supports this particular "backer outrage" are second-hand accounts that Sawyer said that sidekicks will have similar level of interaction as Mazzy/Cernd in BG2 (see thread https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/96229-wtf-are-sidekicks/page-6).Mind, I couldn't find a direct quote by JS anywhere, or even a link to it. And, of course, both Mazzy and Cernd had banter, and quiet a bit of it. Cernd had his interactions in the druid quest too, limited as they were.

 

So yes, if the quote is genuine, this latest stream does constitute a broken promise. If not, well, Fig updates didn't make any lofty promises about what sidekicks would be.

 

That said, not giving people who are ready to throw money at you for mere promises "quite" what they want, may be both a smart business decision to widen the target audience, or a fast way to lose any audience altogether. I am personally watching steamcharts. For science, you see.

I am 100% sure that in one of the streams Josh used an example of Minsc to describe an idea of a sidekick. Still, not something I would use against him - it wasn’t a promise, statement, just example used when discussing a concept. I don’t care enough to dig for th exact quote

[Yosharian]

 

to others wrote it as 250.000: it's a god damn comma, not a period, stop using a period to indicate thousands

 

Minor point, it depends on the language of the speaker: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator#Examples_of_use

 

As a side note, I've never seen apostrophes used to separate thousands in large numbers.

 

 

Comma, apostrophe, whatever.

 

Any country that uses periods to separate thousands is a backwards and savage place!

[Wormerine]

Any country that uses periods to separate thousands is a backwards and savage place!

Unfortunately mistreatment of women is still a widespread problem, even among more “civilized” countries.

[Yosharian]

 

Any country that uses periods to separate thousands is a backwards and savage place!

Unfortunately mistreatment of women is still a widespread problem, even among more “civilized” countries.

Umm... ok?

[Wormerine]

 

 

Any country that uses periods to separate thousands is a backwards and savage place!

Unfortunately mistreatment of women is still a widespread problem, even among more “civilized” countries.

Umm... ok?

Oh, come on! It’s funny.

 

 

I should really go to sleep.

[ShadySands]

Meh, wasn't planning to include them in my party before and this only reinforces that

[Karkarov]

I don't think they even had a choice here. After Divinity 2 (I haven't played it) had full VO, Pillars 2 had to have full VO too. It's very obvious to me, that if they wouldn't have done full VO, every single reviewer out there would have said right away, that Pillars 2 doesn't even have full VO like Divinity 2 already had last year (or whenever this game came out). Pillars 2 is a huge deal for Obsidian, so they can't afford to have it fail, having lots of people say at launch that this game feels "cheap" certainly would have hurt their sales.

I really don't agree with this statement.

 

People on this forum have a hard on for comparing Divinity Original Sin to Eternity, but I never saw any decent reviewer compare them in anything more than the most basic way.  Statements like, "And Divinity Original Sin is another entry in this new resurgence of isometric tactical RPG's, like Baldur's Gate, and the newer crowdfunded titles Pillars of Eternity and Torment Tides of Numenera."  That's about as far as any good writer took it.

 

Real reviewers, review games based on that game.  Not on what that game did or did not do, that some other game did or did not do differently.

 

Obsidian put in full VO because they had the budget for it, they knew a large amount of their player base would like it, and they felt it would be a strong enough selling point to justify the cost.  Don't kid yourself thinking there was any other reasons.

Edited April 26, 2018 by Karkarov

[molotov.]

 

 

Ok so I'm gonna preface this by saying that I personally consider the approach that Josh and Obsi take, i.e. being completely transparent with us, open to criticism, willing to improve the game, is one that should not be taken for granted.  I appreciate that you made the response you did because you got angry, and that's understandable, but I think you should take into account the vulnerability that Josh and others expose by being publically available to us before you throw around statements like 'that's lazy'.

 

Most other game developers are completely shut off from the public, they don't listen to feedback, they don't care about conversing with their audience.  Obsi isn't like that, so don't take it for granted.  An accusation like that is really inflammatory.

 

Ok so that out the way, let's analyse this situation:

 

You're accusing them of spending $250'000 (to others wrote it as 250.000: it's a god damn comma/apostrophe, not a period, stop using a period to indicate thousands) on a few portraits and some custom characters.  However, I don't think this is accurate.  Creating a custom character is a pretty lengthy process, I think.  I think you're underselling it a bit.  We're getting 4 extremely well-crafted in-game models, with portraits to match, that have had tons of love and devotion put into making them appealing.  Obsi even went back and changed the portraits after feedback.  A lot of people are really hyped about these characters alone: I've seen tons of posts about how they love these characters.  So this isn't a few hours work on some portraits.  It's more than that.

 

That said, I do think we're not getting $250'000 worth of value here.  I agree there.  I just think you're being unnecessarily hyperbolic and not appreciating what we are getting.

 

Ultimately, I think what we're seeing here is a clash of different player expectations.

 

For example:

 

1) Some of us couldn't care less about full VO.  I tend to read conversation dialogues very quickly and skip to the next one as soon as I'm finished.  Maybe I'll take it slower with Deadfire.  Who knows.

 

2) Some of us place greater importance on written interactions than full VO.  It's understandable that we'd be looking at the 4 sidekicks and asking: why couldn't we just get more value in the form of written words?

 

3) I personally would rather have had, say, 30-50 extra player portraits, hair styles, etc in the character creation menu, than 4 sidekicks with no banters and no particular quests.  I despise the lack of customization in terms of starting abilities, attributes, and so on, that companions have, so my interest in using 4 sidekicks with no banter whatsoever is close to zero.

 

Those are just some examples, but you get the idea.

 

The thing I take away most of this is that we can't all get what we want.  I'm pretty happy with what we're getting in the game, from what I've seen.  I'd rather have fully customizable companions, and I'll defend that concept to the death, but whatever, I'm not going to on a rant about it, I already did that (haha).

 

Let's just all take a chill pill and enjoy the game, alright?  It is what it is, and there's no point ranting about stretch goals now.

 

Oh and as an extra aside, maybe $200'000 dollars were sunk into the Stronghold and the Caed Nua dungeon, but you know what else is true?  The stronghold f****** sucked.  And The Endless Paths were pretty boring.  They mostly served as a loot fest.

 

Maybe we should think on that.

 

Yep, I don't care about full V.O. and like I said 2 times, the stream had bad to regular V.O. - not the companions, they were amazing.

 

 

Yes, I'm disappointed with the sidekicks, but I'll play the game, and now that I know they won't even have banter I'll not waste my time using them in my party, so everything is good.

 

 

 

 

I really liked The Endless Paths... maybe it's because I really enjoy the combat system.

[Karkarov]

Yep, I don't care about full V.O. and like I said 2 times, the stream had bad to regular V.O. - not the companions, they were amazing.

Not sure a stream where the game volume was very low, the vast majority of dialog was skipped as fast as possible, and it only showed an optional late game dungeon is a good indicator of VO quality in the game.

Edited April 27, 2018 by Karkarov