Obsidian and inXile acquired by Microsoft

[MRY]

Maybe the game was way ahead of its time and the market isn't ready for woke games yet?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

^ conceptually this doesn't look any different than PoE.

I mean, it's the same visual style, but everything from the names to the architecture to the tech level to to the color scheme is different. They certainly could be from the same game, but I think POE2 is definitely offering something new within the same parameters.

On some level, every game with this kind of visual looks the same.

Spoiler

How many people felt a strong urge to dive right in and explore the effects of colonization firsthand? 1 in 10? Less? Remember that question I asked earlier - why would anyone want to play Deadfire?

Well, if you loved POE and wanted more...

But, yeah, I don't necessarily disagree with the point. POE repelled me instantly with its setting, so you're in some ways preaching to the choir. From the moment I read the word bîaŵac and was told to look around camp to gather my gear from various containers, I was ready to quit out. It was just a matter of my computer spinning fast enough to get me to the options window.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I disagree. Focusing on pirate societies (rather than using them as favor) or vastly different cultures would have been a much safer bet - and way more interesting - than focusing on colonization and oppression.

Who was focusing on colonization and oppression? Political themes were used as a selling point by Polygons, Kotakus and the rest of the cockoo leftist gaming websites, not by Obsidian itself.

They wouldn't be focusing on them if they weren't the main themes, would they? As for Sawyer promoting them in interviews:

https://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2018/02/06/pillars-ii-director-interview.aspx

Sawyer: In the first game, another thing thematically is that you’re kind of in a post-colonial area. It’s an area that’s already been colonized, there were already wars between the native culture and the colonizers, and most of that stuff has been resolved even though there are still some lingering issues. But in Deadfire, it’s an area that is actively being colonized despite there being a native culture there. Those themes and issues are more to the forefront. One of the reasons why we chose to have two colonizing factions is I felt that if it were simply a native culture and a colonizing culture, it would be very easy for that to fall into a trope or a lot of tropes that aren’t necessarily that interesting to explore, and some of the things that I think are very interesting about exploring colonialism in Earth is that often you will get colonial powers not only fighting each other, but also trying to play that native culture against their rivals. That’s the space that I thought was interesting to explore in Deadfire in terms of the secular conflict on the ground.
...
One of the things that can up early on is we talked about “what is the reason for people to come here?” The Deadfire was a known place a long time ago, within the past few hundred years within the Pillars universe, so it asked the question why aren’t people already climbing all over this place? I’m looking at colonialism, for example, the exploitation of rubber in the real world.​

https://www.bleedingcool.com/2017/0...ernity-ii-deadfire-game-director-josh-sawyer/

Sawyer: Well, in terms of story and setting things, we do want to have continuity with the first game. So, for example, cultures like the Vailian Republic or Rauatai are still present here but they’re present as colonial powers. Something we tried to introduce in Pillars of Eternity was – instead of making it be set during a quasi-medieval period its set in a early renaissance period. So we’re getting into the age of exploration and colonization and the expansion of imperialist powers. The Dyrwood has already been colonized and that was the setting for Pillars I, but Deadfire is currently being colonized and sort of imperialist forces are moving in and either trying to set up their own colonies or set up their own deals with the native cultures for you know wether its shipping rights or access to resources or various things. So we’re trying to highlight social conflicts that you don’t always necessarily see in most fantasy settings.​

 

[Delterius]

well, they could have made a game about the germanic barbarian colonization of the roman world but it would be way too woke

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Yet you've just agreed that exploring the themes of 'whose kid is this and what do I do with it?' in that Eider questline was a mistake. While themes can be handled differently, the default appeal varies greatly.

I haven't played Deadfire, but I feel the questline described could be interesting if done by a competent writer. Isn't execution more important than the concept?

Why should the players give a fuck about it regardless of how it's done? How does it make Eidar an interesting party member? These questions should be asked and answered by the designers before they start working on it.

Do you think only power fantasy stories have an appeal? I mean obviously more people prefer power fantasy over other story types, but you seem to believe that no one is interested in any other type.

It may make Eder interesting if competently written by : humanizing him by showing his regret for leaving the girl, giving him difficult choice if it's worth to risk life for someone else kid for purely sentimental reasons (would work better if combat was challenging), exploring how the news about fatherhood would affects the murderhobo (maybe giving him temporally buff in the first part of the quest and debuff in the second?).

 

[Vault Dweller]

Maybe the game was way ahead of its time and the market isn't ready for woke games yet?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

^ conceptually this doesn't look any different than PoE.

I mean, it's the same visual style, but everything from the names to the architecture to the tech level to to the color scheme is different. They certainly could be from the same game, but I think POE2 is definitely offering something new within the same parameters.

No cheating. Let's compare it city to city:

How many people felt a strong urge to dive right in and explore the effects of colonization firsthand? 1 in 10? Less? Remember that question I asked earlier - why would anyone want to play Deadfire?

Well, if you loved POE and wanted more...

That's the diehard fans - 25% tops based on my observations.

A sequel that aspires to sell as much as the original, if not more, should solve two problems: how to convince people who kinda liked it but had enough to go for another ride and how to attract new players to replace people who were disappointed with the original. I didn't get this vibe from the interviews.

 

[Riddler]

So about same time as New Vegas and far less than IWD2? Damn Bioware are shit.

Bioware feared stagnation, which resulted in their decision to completely overhaul the graphics and the systems within that short timeframe.

They also made Awakening, which was far superior to DA2, in a shorter amount of time on a shoe-string budget.

I'm guessing the new graphics and visual design (shitty as they were) really cost a lot.

 

[MRY]

Vault Dweller They still look quite different to me. One is like some kind of Franco-Roman fortress city, the other looks like something in Hispaniola or something. Same engine and so forth, but certainly very different settings.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Yet you've just agreed that exploring the themes of 'whose kid is this and what do I do with it?' in that Eider questline was a mistake. While themes can be handled differently, the default appeal varies greatly.

I haven't played Deadfire, but I feel the questline described could be interesting if done by a competent writer. Isn't execution more important than the concept?

Why should the players give a fuck about it regardless of how it's done? How does it make Eidar an interesting party member? These questions should be asked and answered by the designers before they start working on it.

Do you think only power fantasy stories have an appeal? I mean obviously more people prefer power fantasy over other story types, but you seem to believe that no one is interested in any other type.

It may make Eder interesting if competently written by : humanizing him by showing his regret for leaving the girl, giving him difficult choice if it's worth to risk life for someone else kid for purely sentimental reasons (would work better if combat was challenging), exploring how the news about fatherhood would affects the murderhobo (maybe giving him temporally buff in the first part of the quest and debuff in the second?).

Power fantasy is an extreme but at least it has a strong appeal. The Jerry Springer-esque 'you're the father ... but it may not be your kid ... but the mother is dead ... and now the kid joined a death cult so you have to save him' is another extreme that has a very limited appeal.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

I disagree. Focusing on pirate societies (rather than using them as favor) or vastly different cultures would have been a much safer bet - and way more interesting - than focusing on colonization and oppression.

Who was focusing on colonization and oppression? Political themes were used as a selling point by Polygons, Kotakus and the rest of the cockoo leftist gaming websites, not by Obsidian itself.

They wouldn't be focusing on them if they weren't the main themes, would they? As for Sawyer promoting them in interviews:

https://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2018/02/06/pillars-ii-director-interview.aspx

Ctrl+F "oppression" = no results.

https://www.bleedingcool.com/2017/0...ernity-ii-deadfire-game-director-josh-sawyer/

Ctrl+F "oppression" = no results.

It appears that you have invented a main theme that doesn't exist and then you invented imaginary marketing for that theme, which also doesn't exist.

Deadfire is certainly inspired by colonial era, but Obsidian messaging was not political, media made it political.

 

[Ulfhednar]

I wonder if the nickels and dimes they collected from putting the White March out as an expansion would have been worth more down the road in good will had they followed Larian's lead and given it away in a Pillars 3.0 enhanced edition.

 

[Brancaleone]

A big if. Unfortunately, all the companion quests are tacked-on and disappointing. And virtually all their stories follow the same template. Read Josh's incoherent explanation about how he hates "subverting the tropes" writing, and his aim is not to be "subverting tropes", but to portray real-life situations where expectations and set goals don't match with where you actually end up (a nice metaphor for Deadfire itself).

He tends to take (what he thinks are) real-history dynamics and mindlessly tacks them onto fantasy settings that include stuff like magic sizzling everywhere, giant quasi-omnipotent soul-powered robots, everybody having soul-powa etc. etc., the least impactful of which would be a huge game changer within any kind of historical dynamic. Same with characters, (what he believes to be) real-life situations tacked onto mostly alien individuals.
To me the overall result feels a bit like watching a Flintstones episode: yes, there's dinosaurs and stone everywhere and animal hides as clothes, but everything feels incredibly mundane (the difference being, in the case of the Flintstones it's intentional).

 

[MRY]

Vault Dweller So, a question for you. Let's stipulate to your point that what Obsidian clearly wanted to make were games about colonialism, Eder raising his wife's son, etc. (i.e., in your view, their mistake was that rather than thinking about what the player wanted, they just explored the themes that interested the developers), and not heroic fantasy in which someone like Eder can simply proudly try to defend his people from evil or whatnot. How do you fit your criticism of the game for exploring those developer-centric rather than player-centric themes with your point earlier in the thread that self-ownership was the only meaningful kind of freedom there is? Didn't Obsidian do it exactly right, pursuing the themes that fascinated them as far as they could on Kickstarter money and brand goodwill, and then selling the company to a sympathetic parent when they couldn't go farther? If themes of fighting off colonialism and humbling Eder weren't capable of supporting Obsidian as an indie RPG developer, then what kind of freedom did they give up? The freedom to

I'm being a little facetious, but only a little. It seems like freedom to make what you want only matters if what you want is what the market wants*; if the only way to reach a market with themes of anti-colonialism is having Farcry-style budgets backing your game, didn't they take the only responsible step? Obviously, if you actually want to make games that the market wants, then being beholden to a corporate overlord who might push you to make something else is a constraint...

(* Unless you are independently funded.)

 

[AwesomeButton]

A big if. Unfortunately, all the companion quests are tacked-on and disappointing. And virtually all their stories follow the same template. Read Josh's incoherent explanation about how he hates "subverting the tropes" writing, and his aim is not to be "subverting tropes", but to portray real-life situations where expectations and set goals don't match with where you actually end up (a nice metaphor for Deadfire itself).

He tends to take (what he thinks are) real-history dynamics and mindlessly tacks them onto fantasy settings that include stuff like magic sizzling everywhere, giant quasi-omnipotent soul-powered robots, everybody having soul-powa etc. etc., the least impactful of which would be a huge game changer withing any kind of historical dynamic. Same with characters, (what he believes to be) real-life situations tacked onto mostly alien individuals.
To me the overall result feels a bit like watching a Flintstones episode: yes, there's dinosaurs and stone everywhere and animal hides as clothes, but everything feels incredibly mundane (the difference being, in the case of the Flintstones it's intentional).

'Souls' is nothing more than another word for 'mana' in the PoE setting, but that bit of mediocrity isn't attributable only to Josh I guess, and it didn't play a major part in why Deadfire was seen as underwhelming.

Vault Dweller So, a question for you. Let's stipulate to your point that what Obsidian clearly wanted to make were games about colonialism, Eder raising his wife's son, etc. (i.e., in your view, their mistake was that rather than thinking about what the player wanted, they just explored the themes that interested the developers), and not heroic fantasy in which someone like Eder can simply proudly try to defend his people from evil or whatnot. How do you fit your criticism of the game for exploring those developer-centric rather than player-centric themes with your point earlier in the thread that self-ownership was the only meaningful kind of freedom there is? Didn't Obsidian do it exactly right, pursuing the themes that fascinated them as far as they could on Kickstarter money and brand goodwill, and then selling the company to a sympathetic parent when they couldn't go farther? If themes of fighting off colonialism and humbling Eder weren't capable of supporting Obsidian as an indie RPG developer, then what kind of freedom did they give up? The freedom to

I'm being a little facetious, but only a little. It seems like freedom to make what you want only matters if what you want is what the market wants*; if the only way to reach a market with themes of anti-colonialism is having Farcry-style budgets backing your game, didn't they take the only responsible step? Obviously, if you actually want to make games that the market wants, then being beholden to a corporate overlord who might push you to make something else is a constraint...

(* Unless you are independently funded.)

This post got me thinking - what if we apply the "why should the player give a fuck" question to AoD, to better see what VD means. One of my major motivations for playing AoD was to find out more about the world (but that's the kind of motivation that usually gets me playing RPGs, as is probably clear by now). The combat was also glorious, but in this game it was more of a bonus for me rather than being the main thing that kept me going.

Going from this - I am very curious about learning more about the Engwithan culture and how it rose, declined, and eventually died out. This exploration of the fantasy world's mysteries is a subject that's much closer to the usual high fantasy RPGs subjects, and I think would attract more interest than exploring transplanted colonial power dynamics, while still allowing for real-world patterns from history and politics to be woven into the main theme - you are looking to discover what happened with an ancient civilization.

 

[Brancaleone]

A big if. Unfortunately, all the companion quests are tacked-on and disappointing. And virtually all their stories follow the same template. Read Josh's incoherent explanation about how he hates "subverting the tropes" writing, and his aim is not to be "subverting tropes", but to portray real-life situations where expectations and set goals don't match with where you actually end up (a nice metaphor for Deadfire itself).

He tends to take (what he thinks are) real-history dynamics and mindlessly tacks them onto fantasy settings that include stuff like magic sizzling everywhere, giant quasi-omnipotent soul-powered robots, everybody having soul-powa etc. etc., the least impactful of which would be a huge game changer withing any kind of historical dynamic. Same with characters, (what he believes to be) real-life situations tacked onto mostly alien individuals.
To me the overall result feels a bit like watching a Flintstones episode: yes, there's dinosaurs and stone everywhere and animal hides as clothes, but everything feels incredibly mundane (the difference being, in the case of the Flintstones it's intentional).

'Souls' is nothing more than another word for 'mana' in the PoE setting, but that bit of mediocrity isn't attributable only to Josh I guess, and it didn't play a major part in why Deadfire was seen as underwhelming.

What I meant was that if you have a setting where for example everybody has mana, you cannot try and mechanichally tack on "real-life situations" or "real-history dynamics" without taking it fully into accout. You have to draw the logical conclusions and develop the theme organically. No wonder that for me the most interesting stuff was the hollowborn plague (which should have been the focus of the entire game), unfortunately it was far too little of it. I think I you mentioned the same in the past, not sure if I remember correctly.

 

[Crescent Hawk]

The POE setting is just garbage even if it comes from a good starting point, even Tyranny does not sell me on its grim dark shit. Feels limp, everything feels limp and washed out like Carrie Patel hair colour of the week.

Somebody force feed LSD and heavy metal to these people.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

There will always be a better dev studio out there. There has been something better than Obsidian for a while now. Two of something actually: Iron Tower Studio and Stygian Software, makers and masters of Age of Decadence and Underrail.

Listen, I get people bemoaning Obsidian. But fuck it, they're dead, we're alive. Let's get on with living. And pour all our shekels into these two companies.

 

[AwesomeButton]

What I meant was that if you have a setting where for example everybody has mana, you cannot try and mechanichally tack on "real-life situations" or "real-history dynamics" without taking it fully into accout. You have to draw the logical conclusions and develop the theme organically. No wonder that for me the most interesting stuff was the hollowborn plague (which should have been the focus of the entire game), unfortunately it was far too little of it. I think I you mentioned the same, not sure if I remember correctly.

I think you can tack on those real life situations, and it would seem more or less strange, but how much exactly would depend on your game's overall tone and "level of taking itself seriously". This overly serious tone is another issue which I've pointed out with PoE as a game, and I think it only does bad, exposes the low quality of the writing more than if it was less serious and more goofy.

Take one of Fallout's more nonsensical quests - you get a quest to prove Gizmo is behind an assassination attempt, but you have to get hard evidence first, and you are even equipped with two items which you can use to obtain this evidence in different ways. Why is this game going through the trouble? It's not like Junktown has its courthouse or investigative journalists, or Killian would lose the next elections for mayor. It's an artificial premise to make the player do something, but it still kind of works, because the overall tone and style of the game permits it.

It works with Fallout, but Pillars sets its bar too high, and in Deadfire you can often see how for some quests and characters, the writers simply couldn't cope with how high the bar was.

 

[Alpan]

Vault Dweller So, a question for you. Let's stipulate to your point that what Obsidian clearly wanted to make were games about colonialism, Eder raising his wife's son, etc. (i.e., in your view, their mistake was that rather than thinking about what the player wanted, they just explored the themes that interested the developers) ...

I didn't get the impression that VD viewed that a mistake -- rather, he appears to be noting its natural conclusion consequence, which was to sell far less copies than expectations.

That is, what the developers care about and players care about may be at odds, and it's okay -- it's just that the game will shift less copies.

 

[Brancaleone]

What I meant was that if you have a setting where for example everybody has mana, you cannot try and mechanichally tack on "real-life situations" or "real-history dynamics" without taking it fully into accout. You have to draw the logical conclusions and develop the theme organically. No wonder that for me the most interesting stuff was the hollowborn plague (which should have been the focus of the entire game), unfortunately it was far too little of it. I think I you mentioned the same, not sure if I remember correctly.

I think you can tack on those real life situations, and it would seem more or less strange, but how much exactly would depend on your game's overall tone and "level of taking itself seriously". This overly serious tone is another issue which I've pointed out with PoE as a game, and I think it only does bad, exposes the low quality of the writing more than if it was less serious and more goofy.

Take one of Fallout's more nonsensical quests - you get a quest to prove Gizmo is behind an assassination attempt, but you have to get hard evidence first, and you are even equipped with two items which you can use to obtain this evidence in different ways. Why is this game going through the trouble? It's not like Junktown has its courthouse or investigative journalists, or Killian would lose the next elections for mayor. It's an artificial premise to make the player do something, but it still kind of works, because the overall tone and style of the game permits it.

It works with Fallout, but Pillars sets its bar too high, and in Deadfire you can often see how for some quests and characters, the writers simply couldn't cope with how high the bar was.

Yes, which is why within an extremely goofy tone like that of the Flintstone those disconnected everyday/real life elements work so well as parody.
The more realistic / historical is the element you are inserting, the more it has to be accounted for in order to work well. Unfortunately, Sawyer seems to think that the more realistic / historical an element is, the more it ensures that it will be successful in having its place within the setting. Basically, he has it the other way around, which is why I roll my eyes hard every time I hear Sawyer being touted as some kind of historian (I'm sure he likes to self-style himself as one), and people stating that he'd do a good job with his elusive historical RPG.

P.S. Fallout 1 has a very good justification for almost all of the everyday/real life elements: they simply somehow survived the nuclear holocaust. So we are led to overlook the feeling of disconnection even in the cases like you mentioned. Of course, Fallout 2 pushes things too far by a lot, and that gives a lot of people trouble.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Why the fuck are we even obsessing about colonialism angle? Deadfire is at its absolute best exactly when it explores these themes and stays close to the ground, being just a straight-up pirate game set in fantasy version of XVII-century Carribean. Sawyers historical expertise and attention to detail has made a huge positive impact on worldbuilding and faction design.

We know where Deadfire sucks, and that's not when it tackles colonialism. It sucks when it tackles the larger spiritual themes - and that just happens to be the ENTIRE FUCKING MAIN PLOT.

They've done a tremendous job fleshing out the human side of the archipelago and filling it with content that coherently fits together. And then there's a spiritual angle, barely hanging on by duct tape, with its boring, inconsequential, bickering Gods that nobody gives a shit about, its main antagonist who's agenda nobody gives a shit about, all the other spiritual wololo that nobody gives a shit about, and then in the grand finale you get to make a spiritual decision that you don't give a shit about.

That's what went wrong, not fucking colonialism for fucks sake.

 

[Alpan]

Why the fuck are we even obsessing about colonialism angle? Deadfire is at its absolute best exactly when it explores these themes and stays close to the ground, being just a straight-up pirate game set in fantasy version of XVII-century Carribean. Sawyers historical expertise and attention to detail has made a huge positive impact on worldbuilding and faction design.

We know where Deadfire sucks, and that's not when it tackles colonialism. It sucks when it tackles the larger spiritual themes - and that just happens to be the ENTIRE FUCKING MAIN PLOT.

They've done a tremendous job fleshing out the human side of the archipelago and filling it with content that coherently fits together. And then there's a spiritual angle, barely hanging on by duct tape, with its boring, inconsequential, bickering Gods that nobody gives a shit about, its main antagonist who's agenda nobody gives a shit about, all the other spiritual wololo that nobody gives a shit about, and then in the grand finale you get to make a spiritual decision that you don't give a shit about.

That's what went wrong, not fucking colonialism for fucks sake.

For someone so generally lucid about Deadfire, this is weird to read: You know both the character building and the itemization have greatly improved, but not so much the story. The best way to play Deadfire is a build-sperging playground where you 1111111 through the dialogue.

EDIT: That includes the colonialism parts!

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Yet you've just agreed that exploring the themes of 'whose kid is this and what do I do with it?' in that Eider questline was a mistake. While themes can be handled differently, the default appeal varies greatly.

I haven't played Deadfire, but I feel the questline described could be interesting if done by a competent writer. Isn't execution more important than the concept?

Why should the players give a fuck about it regardless of how it's done? How does it make Eidar an interesting party member? These questions should be asked and answered by the designers before they start working on it.

Do you think only power fantasy stories have an appeal? I mean obviously more people prefer power fantasy over other story types, but you seem to believe that no one is interested in any other type.

It may make Eder interesting if competently written by : humanizing him by showing his regret for leaving the girl, giving him difficult choice if it's worth to risk life for someone else kid for purely sentimental reasons (would work better if combat was challenging), exploring how the news about fatherhood would affects the murderhobo (maybe giving him temporally buff in the first part of the quest and debuff in the second?).

Power fantasy is an extreme but at least it has a strong appeal. The Jerry Springer-esque 'you're the father ... but it may not be your kid ... but the mother is dead ... and now the kid joined a death cult so you have to save him' is another extreme that has a very limited appeal.

Could you demonstrate your methodology on Fallout? Because I think you can put "why the fuck should I care" on every story, but I doubt it's why you meant.

 

[2house2fly]

When you go to eat in a restaurant and find the food to be shit, do you go to their facebook page and leave a bad review or do you just dont go there ever again?

Lots of people do both. And I'm skeptical that people who do like something are more likely to say something about it than people who don't- how many positive youtube videos about No Man's Sky can you find compared to negative ones? Or MGSV, which is actually a great game but the Metal Gear audience hated because they experienced it in real time instead of having the plot explained to them years after the fact on youtube.

Honestly, Obsidian silently losing lots of players between PoE and PoE 2 is pretty easy to explain. I personally read from quite a few people that got on board with PoE, even pledged to kickstarter, just to see what the fuss was about. If so many people are pledging to this project, there should be some reason why it's good, right?

When the game came out they launched it only to find that they can barely see what the hell is going on on the screen during fights, let alone hope to control them. At that point they didn't make a scene, didn't get red in their face in anger, didn't write ten disparaging reviews at every website they can imagine. They weren't particularly invested in this whole thing to begin with. They just concluded that this type of game is definitely not for them and clicked the uninstall button.

After paying for it? They concluded that the game wasn't worth the money they had given to it and shrugged their shoulders? I wish I was that well-off.

What's interesting is that Tyranny, which is widely and less controversially considered to be a second-rate/meh game, also has excellent Steam reviews.

Basically, Obsidian's fans really like Obsidian. Nobody has the heart to review bomb them. They're really lucky to have that.

I'd question how lucky when it means nothing in terms of sales.

But Obshitian already did the betrayal once so majestically nobody apart from its retarded fanbase would buy anymore of their games. I mean, the whole PoE being BG successor shtick. That massive joke.

But, as discussed, nobody felt betrayed by POE1.

TW2 had enormous competition by single player AAA games in that year alone, DOS2 was practically the only worthwhile single player release in 2017. I am not talking only CRPGs, i am talking EVERYTHING! In 2017 everyone and their dog just released multiplayer games and pixel art indies

Are you insane. Nier Automata, Yakuza 0/Kiwami, Horizon Zero Dawn, new Zelda and Mario both widely considered masterpieces, Prey, Nioh, Hellblade, Resident Evil 7, Persona 5. You could fill your gaming time in 2017 with quality single-player games from beginning to end and never have time to get to DOS2.

Wait a minute. I haven't tried neither of the PoE titles (not a fan of generic high fantasy). Are you implying that PoE 2, on top of its inherent handicaps (high fantasy+ sequel), was also infected with SJW-ism?

Yes: a few of the characters are bisexual

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

For someone so generally lucid about Deadfire, this is weird to read: You know both the character building and the itemization have greatly improved, but not so much the story. The best way to play Deadfire is a build-sperging playground where you 1111111 through the dialogue.

Mostly yes, but I wouldn't recommend doing the 11111 during interactions with companions unless you want your anus to be repeatedly violated. :D

 

[Vault Dweller]

Vault Dweller So, a question for you. Let's stipulate to your point that what Obsidian clearly wanted to make were games about colonialism, Eder raising his wife's son, etc. (i.e., in your view, their mistake was that rather than thinking about what the player wanted, they just explored the themes that interested the developers), and not heroic fantasy in which someone like Eder can simply proudly try to defend his people from evil or whatnot. How do you fit your criticism of the game for exploring those developer-centric rather than player-centric themes with your point earlier in the thread that self-ownership was the only meaningful kind of freedom there is? Didn't Obsidian do it exactly right, pursuing the themes that fascinated them as far as they could on Kickstarter money and brand goodwill, and then selling the company to a sympathetic parent when they couldn't go farther? If themes of fighting off colonialism and humbling Eder weren't capable of supporting Obsidian as an indie RPG developer, then what kind of freedom did they give up? The freedom to

I'm being a little facetious, but only a little. It seems like freedom to make what you want only matters if what you want is what the market wants*; if the only way to reach a market with themes of anti-colonialism is having Farcry-style budgets backing your game, didn't they take the only responsible step? Obviously, if you actually want to make games that the market wants, then being beholden to a corporate overlord who might push you to make something else is a constraint...

(* Unless you are independently funded.)

First and foremost, it's a question of balance: developers' preferences vs players' preferences. Disregarding or not paying attention to what your target audience wants comes at a price - low sales. Since the target audience is an active participant, their wishes MUST be taken into account. There's a reason we run everything by the target audience.

Second, if Obsidian insists on exploring social issues without giving the slightest fuck about the audience's preferences (not saying it's the case), the company should be smaller and leaner. Nothing restricts you more than your own weight. Just ask Telltale Games. Third, sales goals must always influence design (thus it's best not to have any sales goal you MUST hit or else and stay small and lean), so if Sawyer had to sell at least 500,000 copies, if not a million, he should have approached it differently.