Main Story way too short for an RPG! I am very disspointed...

[Jayngo]

I don't want to start a war here, that is not my intention, but I found this interesting:

 

PoE Kickstarter brought in $3.9 million

Deadfire FIG brought in $4.4 million

 

Divinity Original Sin Kickstarter brought in just under $1 million

Divinity Original Sin 2 Kickstarter brought in a little over $2 million

 

Now, I know as close as these games feel to each other, there are some vast differences 3D world/vs 2D backgrounds, etc, but I just recently played both Divinities for the first time and I was blown away by the brilliant mechanics and overall writing. The character abilities are most excellent too and both those games are longer to play than either PoE game if you check howlongtobeat.com

 

Point is, I wonder if PoE/Deadfire cost more to make? One would think that the Pillars games raked in a ton of money, but compared to D:OS games, they are shorter and not as up to par when it comes to story, etc.

 

I am not trying to bash Obsidian. I love them and I love the old school feel of both Pillars games, it just seems odd that for how much these games got from crowd funding, they seem a step below to some things that D:OS has done, including full VO and narrator.

Edited May 15, 2018 by Jayngo

[Aramintai]

If Araminrai is right, then the Deadfire critical path would be around as long as PoE1's, but, then again, I see the whole ship/island exploration thing making it far harder to actually follow that path consistently... but that might just be me.

 

It really isn't, because those locations are pretty short and many fights can be avoided.

[Ryz009]

I don't want to start a war here, that is not my intention, but I found this interesting:

 

PoE Kickstarter brought in $3.9 million

Deadfire FIG brought in $4.4 million

 

Divinity Original Sin Kickstarter brought in just under $1 million

Divinity Original Sin 2 Kickstarter brought in a little over $2 million

 

Now, I know as close as these games feel to each other, there are some vast differences 3D world/vs 2D backgrounds, etc, but I just recently played both Divinities for the first time and I was blown away by the brilliant mechanics and overall writing. The character abilities are most excellent too and both those games are longer to play than either PoE game if you check howlongtobeat.com

 

Point is, I wonder if PoE/Deadfire cost more to make? One would think that the Pillars games raked in a ton of money, but compared to D:OS games, they are shorter and not as up to par when it comes to story, etc.

 

I am not trying to bash Obsidian. I love them and I love the old school feel of both Pillars games, it just seems odd that for how much these games got from crowd funding, they seem a step below to some things that D:OS has done, including full VO and narrator.

 

D:OS has practically no banter so that's one thing they saved on. Their companions have like zero reaction to one another. (It's one of my main issues with DOS really. It really revolves around the PC). There's no back and forth like there is in deadfire.

 

That said I would say a lot of DOS length came from its turn based combat. There's a lot of fights in DOS where I'm twiddling my thumbs waiting for the enemies to *finally* move. Compared to POE the combat is vastly slower. Also DOS1 when it came out got a lot of crap for its writing. That was slightly improved in the Enhanced Edition and even more improved in DOS2. But their storyline wasn't all that great to begin with no. EVen DOS2 has a really big problem with the final act being buggy and disjointed. It's just near the end of the game which most people won't see. (Also DOS1 is more difficult but Deadfire will hopefully improve that with balance patches though there were broken things in DOS2 at launch looking at you Marksman.)

 

They also had the benefit of being very open with their audience and giving us a lot more to work with for the early access beta. For DOS2 and DOS1 you got pretty much all of act 1 where Obsidian was so scared of spoilers all we got was 2 islands that weren't related to anything else. If they had done what Larian had done and give us actual story content just early on story content most of the import bugs that show up early on would've been caught. Same with some balance issues.

Edited May 15, 2018 by Ryz009

[E.RedMark]

Ryz009: I can confirm the bug DOS2 had..when it launched (as much as POE2 is having) . But their Dev were very nice..they gave me a save so I could actually see the ending . And when it came to patch..the first patch didn't fix everything either . And it took a couple of fix , cose the quest were a mess (Both side quest , and companions quest where companions quest dont trigger or is left unfinished and such) . 

[DarthWhite]

While the numbers are questionable I'm sure that POE2's critical path is the shortest I've ever seen in a... how to call it? "Big" RPG.
It's really incredibly short. All the Obsidian, Bioware, DOS games feel much longer. Like minimum 2 times longer!

The game itself is great in my opinion - I'm from those people who even trully enjoyed sea battles xD But I couldn't bring myself to complete like probably 40-50% of the quests because It started to feel boring without development of the story and characters. So... yeah, it shouldn't be this way.

[Starwars]

Personally, I'm all for critical paths being short. Especially if one is able to "shortcut" parts of it, like the Fallouts for example.

 

That's not saying that I find Deadfire's story particularly great but it doesn't have to do with its shortness.

 

I'd much rather have a game like Deadfire, where the meat of it is how you interact with the factions and Deadfire has that stuff in spades. Just the freedom of it, both in terms of travel as well as how you interact with the powers in the world.

 

Story has certainly never been the most important part of a RPG for me, far from it (though I can appreciate a good story certainly, Planecape: Torment is one of my favorite games). The "Bioware model" is most often quite tedious for me, and the "JRPG model" even more so.

[Jayngo]

Well, howlongtobeat.com show Deadfire is 10 hours shorter than Pillars across all play throughs. That's disappointing.

 

Of course, I usually go at a slower pace and explore a lot, so maybe I'll get more out of it.

[warbaby2]

Well, howlongtobeat.com show Deadfire is 10 hours shorter than Pillars across all play throughs. That's disappointing.

 

Of course, I usually go at a slower pace and explore a lot, so maybe I'll get more out of it.

Then again, they also list BG2 EE as being 20 hours shorter than original BG2 without ToB... even with fast mode, that's bull.

Edited May 15, 2018 by warbaby2

[Voltron]

 

 

I can't say much about critical path of Deadfire as I didn't beat it yet, but it feels chock full of content. I see faction stuff, and side areas as critical part of the game. What IS the critical path, hmmm? The areas you have to visit in order to beat the game? Areas with interesting content? With important story? 

Factions are side quests. Critical path is you following Eothas, so it's

Fort Maje (fix the ship)->Neketaka (talk to the Queen)->Hasongo->Ashen Maw->Ukaizo

 

Pretty sure you can even skip Hasongo and go straight to Ashen Maw.

 

 

Yup, its riddiculous how short and bad the main story is. Considering how many side quests and other activities there are around- how they could drop balls on Main Story, which is like... most important!

 

And it's shorter than PoE1 main story :/

[El Kabong]

Bigger doesn't always means better ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

 

In a more serious note: Bigger doesn't always means better.

 

The game is filled to the brim with content, Josh said the critical path was purposely shorter than the previous game, as they feel that the longer the story goes, more bloated it gets. On the other hand they put MUCH more content on the game in terms of sidequests and objectives... So i don't see any problem.

 

I don't like this trend we get that every game should have 100 obligatory hours of gameplay. Most of the time it results on pedantic and convoluted stories that try to sound smart but are really half assed.

[SonicMage117]

I have no issue with shorter games, played many games which are 15 hour rpg's that put Baldurs Gate 1&2 to shame in terms of writing and gameplay. If were being honest, Sometimes games are shorter because the devs and writers purposely leave out the bs filler and unnecessary stuff.

 

I have to agree with the people saying that there is nothing disappointing about a shorter rpg or a short rpg. Though, you certainly have the right to your "bang for the buck, hours for dollar" argument. There is nothing illogical about it. Some people love the filler stuff, grinding and so on.

[Voltron]

I have no issue with shorter games, played many games which are 15 hour rpg's that put Baldurs Gate 1&2 to shame in terms of writing and gameplay. If were being honest, Sometimes games are shorter because the devs and writers purposely leave out the bs filler and unnecessary stuff.

 

I have to agree with the people saying that there is nothing disappointing about a shorter rpg or a short rpg. Though, you certainly have the right to your "bang for the buck, hours for dollar" argument. There is nothing illogical about it. Some people love the filler stuff, grinding and so on.

 

But main story is not even good....

[morhilane]

Well, howlongtobeat.com show Deadfire is 10 hours shorter than Pillars across all play throughs. That's disappointing.

 

Of course, I usually go at a slower pace and explore a lot, so maybe I'll get more out of it.

Main+Extra leisure is 10 hours longer than Completionists leisure, it should be the other way around. Completionists Rushed is just as long as Leisure which makes no sense. Seems like some people just put the same time everywhere. I saw two person claims it took them 70-75 hours to finish the game and neither claimed to be completionists.

 

You won't have a lots of people who play slowy done after just one week. Not only do they play slow, they also usually can't spare that much time per day to play games.

 

I'm a fast player (I always end up in the rushed range for all games) POE1 Main+Extra (no White March, level 5 endless path only, only a few bounties, not all companion quests) took me ~37 hours. I am ~15 hours into Deadfire and I don't see me ending this in just 37 hours like POE1 for Main+Extra. I probably could finish it in 20 hours if I focused just on the main quest right now, but I love all the other stuff.

 

On top of it, there are people who play Deadfire on double speed out of combat. Put that in any game and the how long to beat with be halved. I play on normal speed...

 

edit: I forgot the time for POE1 is based on the save time, so that doesn't include reloads.

Edited May 15, 2018 by morhilane

[tela2k]

100% completion with reading/listening to every dialogue but fast moding through all the running and all the combat after Neketaka (Obsidian please..) took me 75h.
I even sunk every other ship in the archipelago because the king of pirates doesn't stand for competition. Honestly I don't think you can do more derping around than I did.
And when they fix the difficulty the game is going to slow down a lot.

Yes, if you compare the main quest to BG2, it is really short, but I don't think it's a fair comparison, because Deadfire is also supposed to be about the factions kind of like New Vegas.
The point is, I think, that you do some quests for every faction, decide on which one you want to go with, and that alone takes quite a bit of time. Only then if you're really gonna skip all the side content you go down the main quest line. What I mean is I'd separate the faction content to be different from side content and say that it's all actually supposed to be part of the main quest even if it isn't compulsory. Then there are the compaion quest lines, which I'd guess unless you're speed running, you will do, and they will take more time. Something I'd also consider kind of core quests.

And probably not shorter than ME2. It's 80% companion quests 10% main quest and 10% random side content. All in all actually pretty similar to Deadfire in most aspects.
If you could skip all the companion stuff then ME2 is just:
Lazarus (very short) -> Freedom's Progress (very short) -> Horizon -> Collector Ship -> IFF -> Collector Base.
It's only made longer by the fact that it has those weird mission count timers in between the main missions so you can't just zerg it.

But without picking a faction and doing no companion quests, yeah, I think speed runs for Deadfire are going to be really quick.

[SonicMage117]

100% completion with reading/listening to every dialogue but fast moding through all the running and all the combat after Neketaka (Obsidian please..) took me 75h.

That's about 25-50 hours less than it takes to 100% a Lego game (average Lego game taking 100-125 hours for completionist, going by record analysis on Steam graphs).

[Wormerine]

 

I can't say much about critical path of Deadfire as I didn't beat it yet, but it feels chock full of content. I see faction stuff, and side areas as critical part of the game. What IS the critical path, hmmm? The areas you have to visit in order to beat the game? Areas with interesting content? With important story?

 

Factions are side quests. Critical path is you following Eothas, so it's

Fort Maje (fix the ship)->Neketaka (talk to the Queen)->Hasongo->Ashen Maw->Ukaizo

Yes, I understand that. But claiming that so called “crit path” to be all RPGs are about? fallout1&2, Fallout New Vegas, Baldurs Gates, Arcanum. Feels to me that idea of sidecontent is fairly modern. Faction stuff in Deadfire feels to me like the meat of the game, while Eothas is just the McGuffin to keep you going, very much like waterchip or GECK from fallouts.

 

Not to argue, that if the story really won’t have a payoff, it will be disappointing after rather inspired PoE1. I enjoy Deadfire a lot, but story rings hollow so far.

[Yonjuro]

.... I just recently played both Divinities for the first time and I was blown away by the brilliant mechanics and overall writing. .....

 

 Can you say a bit more about what you liked about the writing in D:OS1&2? 

 

 I liked the game play of the first one enough to buy the second one (though not enough to finish playing it - I was hoping for a better story in the sequel). I thought the writing of the second one was better, but I still never cared enough about it to finish the game.

 

 People have different tastes, of course. When I find a game where I care about the characters, then I will enjoy it and play it to completion. Game play and quest design matter to me too (and, generally, I like exploration more than linear stories), but if a game doesn't draw me in somehow, I don't bother with it. I can't even explain why some games draw me in and others don't - so, I am genuinely interested to hear your take on the D:OS's.

 

 Deadfire works for me (Pillars 1 less so, but I liked it enough to finish it and liked it a lot more after the expansions came out). Neither of D:OS  games drew me in enough to care about them. 

[warbaby2]

 

.... I just recently played both Divinities for the first time and I was blown away by the brilliant mechanics and overall writing. .....

 

 Can you say a bit more about what you liked about the writing in D:OS1&2? 

 

 I liked the game play of the first one enough to buy the second one (though not enough to finish playing it - I was hoping for a better story in the sequel). I thought the writing of the second one was better, but I still never cared enough about it to finish the game.

 

 People have different tastes, of course. When I find a game where I care about the characters, then I will enjoy it and play it to completion. Game play and quest design matter to me too (and, generally, I like exploration more than linear stories), but if a game doesn't draw me in somehow, I don't bother with it. I can't even explain why some games draw me in and others don't - so, I am genuinely interested to hear your take on the D:OS's.

 

 Deadfire works for me (Pillars 1 less so, but I liked it enough to finish it and liked it a lot more after the expansions came out). Neither of D:OS  games drew me in enough to care about them. 

 

Same here... the world and writing are just sooo... meh. I never got into the Divinity series, even the old games, and the "humor"?

 

To be fair, I didn't care much for PoE's world either at first, but as soon as I realized they simply ripped off the Forgotten Realms, it was all good for me... somehow.

Edited May 15, 2018 by warbaby2

[Ryz009]

I didn't like POE1's story that much. I did like Eder and Aloth and that was enough for me to keep playing.

 

But the storyline? Hollowborn children, Thaos who I had no strong feelings about (which is terrible for an antagonist), Iovara who gets randomly dumped on you near the end of the game, some malady my character is suffering from that's only explained via crappy dream sequences that explain nothing. It's just...I don't see what people really liked about POE1's story. It was serviceable but it certainly wasn't good.

 

Deadfire at least gave me a personal connection with Eothas though it's not all that great either the faction quests at least make up for that failing.

[warbaby2]

I didn't like POE1's story that much. I did like Eder and Aloth and that was enough for me to keep playing.

 

But the storyline? Hollowborn children, Thaos who I had no strong feelings about (which is terrible for an antagonist), Iovara who gets randomly dumped on you near the end of the game, some malady my character is suffering from that's only explained via crappy dream sequences that explain nothing. It's just...I don't see what people really liked about POE1's story. It was serviceable but it certainly wasn't good.

 

Deadfire at least gave me a personal connection with Eothas though it's not all that great either the faction quests at least make up for that failing.

Can't say much about Deadfire's story, but to me the PoE story only got good in retrospect... I mean, even if the "twist" isn't really imaginative, it has interesting context throughout the game. Many of the main story beats, as well as the side stuff, get quite some more depth, once the ending rolls around.

 

Also, the world and characters had just the right balance of familiar and strange... but that, again might just be me.

Edited May 15, 2018 by warbaby2

[Yonjuro]

 

...

 Can you say a bit more about what you liked about the writing in D:OS1&2? 

 

 I liked the game play of the first one enough to buy the second one (though not enough to finish playing it - I was hoping for a better story in the sequel). I thought the writing of the second one was better, but I still never cared enough about it to finish the game.

 

 People have different tastes, of course. When I find a game where I care about the characters, then I will enjoy it and play it to completion. Game play and quest design matter to me too (and, generally, I like exploration more than linear stories), but if a game doesn't draw me in somehow, I don't bother with it. I can't even explain why some games draw me in and others don't - so, I am genuinely interested to hear your take on the D:OS's.

 

 Deadfire works for me (Pillars 1 less so, but I liked it enough to finish it and liked it a lot more after the expansions came out). Neither of D:OS  games drew me in enough to care about them. 

 

Same here... the world and writing are just sooo... meh. I never got into the Divinity series, even the old games, and the "humor"?

 

 Yes, the humor. Oh, how whimsical. Oh, how whimsical. .... Oh, how annoying.

 

 Maybe if the story and characters had been more compelling, the humor would have worked better, but as it is, no - not for me anyway.

[Yonjuro]

I didn't like POE1's story that much. I did like Eder and Aloth and that was enough for me to keep playing.

 

But the storyline? Hollowborn children, Thaos who I had no strong feelings about (which is terrible for an antagonist), Iovara who gets randomly dumped on you near the end of the game, some malady my character is suffering from that's only explained via crappy dream sequences that explain nothing. It's just...I don't see what people really liked about POE1's story. It was serviceable but it certainly wasn't good.

 

 

 I think the cast of characters is what saved it for me too. I wasn't really drawn into the story - possibly because events that happened in a previous life don't work as a personal motivation (?). 

[Sven_]

Not having played Deadfire yet: I can respect the opinion that games, RPGs, should be a certain kind of length. What I detest is that this has somewhat become the yard stick to judge games by. This goes for RPGs in particular. Reason why: RPGs have a long-term history of adding (filler) content just so that you have more hours to pour into them, and that's not merely MMOs. Additionally, a lot of games could be a lot more focused and better if the filler was left out and the good stuff was in and iterated upon. Think the Raedric quest from PoE. Fallout 1 too can be one of the shorter RPG experiences in your lifetime depending on how you play it. Heck, you can waltz from the starting location straight into the endgame, there's nobody holding you back if you know how and are skilled for it. And it still remains one of the boldest RPG designs to this day precisely because of it.

 

It also remains one of a kind likely because for that reason too. Every quest was designed to have a multitude of solutions (think Raedric in PoE), and it's hard to get that in unlimited numbers unless you are on an infinite budget. This is relevant for this kind of game, no less as it will never have the budget of a Witcher. If you go down that route, then you're just doing the same, but less of it. This was a criticism also leveled at Tyranny. I'd argue it wasn't so much that Tyranny was "too short". It was that the main narrative ended abruptly, just when it appeared to approach the climax and kick into overdrive. PoE also had that "pacing issue" here, where after a fairly "padded" mid-game suddenly the entire thing fell into place just seconds before the end credits rolled. However, if you are promoting your game as a sort of successor to epics such as BG, then that carries certain kind of understandable expectations.

Edited May 16, 2018 by Sven_

[Ryz009]

 

I didn't like POE1's story that much. I did like Eder and Aloth and that was enough for me to keep playing.

 

But the storyline? Hollowborn children, Thaos who I had no strong feelings about (which is terrible for an antagonist), Iovara who gets randomly dumped on you near the end of the game, some malady my character is suffering from that's only explained via crappy dream sequences that explain nothing. It's just...I don't see what people really liked about POE1's story. It was serviceable but it certainly wasn't good.

 

Deadfire at least gave me a personal connection with Eothas though it's not all that great either the faction quests at least make up for that failing.

Can't say much about Deadfire's story, but to me the PoE story only got good in retrospect... I mean, even if the "twist" isn't really imaginative, it has interesting context throughout the game. Many of the main story beats, as well as the side stuff, get quite some more depth, once the ending rolls around.

 

Also, the world and characters had just the right balance of familiar and strange... but that, again might just be me.

 

 

Yeah during the actual game it was meh. That said at least White Mach was compelling all the way through and showed the learned something.

 

I was really so so on it. If I hadn't clicked with Eder and Aloth I probably would've dropped it when I reached Gilded Vale.

 

 

I didn't like POE1's story that much. I did like Eder and Aloth and that was enough for me to keep playing.

 

But the storyline? Hollowborn children, Thaos who I had no strong feelings about (which is terrible for an antagonist), Iovara who gets randomly dumped on you near the end of the game, some malady my character is suffering from that's only explained via crappy dream sequences that explain nothing. It's just...I don't see what people really liked about POE1's story. It was serviceable but it certainly wasn't good.

 

 

 I think the cast of characters is what saved it for me too. I wasn't really drawn into the story - possibly because events that happened in a previous life don't work as a personal motivation (?). 

 

 

Yeah and it's not like you and Thaos were even that close to each other. He was just your leader so it's not even like you're chasing down your friend/brother/lover from a past life to get answers about why they screwed you over. It really doesn't help that the relationship isn't explained til near the final stretch either.  Most of my favorite villains have a very personal hook to the player (Irenius, Li, Malak, so on). So when they screw you over there's an actual hook. Thaos lacked that severely.

 

Like the past life thing can work...but it has to be someone close to you then and whose close to you now. And Thaos failed on both those fronts.

Edited May 16, 2018 by Ryz009

[Phyriel]

I was really hoping for long main story critical path as it should be in RPG. 

 

Who said main story should be long? There is no standard in a genre saying it should be XX hours or its bad. I'm very happy with the game as a whole, we get an much more dynamic world with day, night cycles, stunning graphics and effects for that kind of game, much of the content is voiced. I'm happy to give up some of the main story length for more immersive world as a whole as it provides great platform for later dlcs to expand on game length.