Obsidian and inXile acquired by Microsoft

[2house2fly]

It's interesting that there are two camps with regards to Pillars Of Eternity:

1) They did what they wanted, instead of refining a commercial product with a specific audience in mind

2) They just checked off features and there was no passion put into it

I wonder if these apparently-irreconcilable positions are a result of blind men touching an elephant, or if they can both be true and thus speak to division within the development team

 

[deuxhero]

Did PoSE II even attempt to do anything to portray any part of colonialism in a remotely positive light? Surely someone in the colonies appreciates not shitting in the streets, the demolishing the caste system, the existence of higher education, better agricultural science and ending the constant on-off warfare with their neighbors (because they've also been conquered as well, or at least don't want to piss off a world power)?

 

[Jason Liang]

Look. We knew what sort of developers Obsidian and InXile were before, and now no one can say for sure what they will be like under Microsoft. Perhaps they will be the same or worse, but now there's an actual chance they'll be better. And I say that chance is better than what we had before which was NO CHANCE AT ALL. Seyla.

 

[2house2fly]

The native Huana caste system is portrayed as extremely inefficient and cruel, relying on a belief in social mobility through reincarnation to function. There's also some ambiguity with the Rauataians, who are themselves descended from the Huana. One Huana island is specifically trying to appeal to Vailians so they get a Vailian outpost and the money that would bring. They need the money because the island they're on is inhospitable; they've had to relocate due to the various colonial powers' expansion into the Archipelago. You also see times when the Huana have displaced native wilder, species within the POE setting which largely occupy an evolutionary niche between great apes and humans- capable of using tools and communication but in some way unable to function in a society and so be considered "kith"

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

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).

Yet some codexers here nurture this bizarre notion that Sawyer would make a brilliant game if he had the means to make "his" "historic" cRPG.

 

[Quillon]

It's interesting that there are two camps with regards to Pillars Of Eternity:

1) They did what they wanted, instead of refining a commercial product with a specific audience in mind

2) They just checked off features and there was no passion put into it

I wonder if these apparently-irreconcilable positions are a result of blind men touching an elephant, or if they can both be true and thus speak to division within the development team

I think they did what they wanted with narrative/writing but rest of it was a Sawyering act and we saw how retadred their thinking were about what is & isn't acceptable for their target audience with the example that they can remove per rest, no problem but tying consumables into rest system would be going too far

 

[Brancaleone]

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).

Yet some codexers here nurture this bizarre notion that Sawyer would make a brilliant game if he had the means to make "his" "historic" cRPG.

Because such an assumption would allow them to perceive themselves as highly sophisticated gamers. It's a win-win scenario for all of the ego's involved, but unfortunately not for the games produced.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Did PoSE II even attempt to do anything to portray any part of colonialism in a remotely positive light? Surely someone in the colonies appreciates not shitting in the streets, the demolishing the caste system, the existence of higher education, better agricultural science and ending the constant on-off warfare with their neighbors (because they've also been conquered as well, or at least don't want to piss off a world power)?

They take a neutral stance on colonialism. You get to see colonizers exploit and manipulate naive islanders, but you also get to see islanders eating from the same ground they shit on, while the higher echelons of their tribal society are busy cuddling their pet lions. You can help the colonizers install outposts, take over islands and grab control of the trade, or you get to help the islanders preserve their ass-backwards culture. You see both good and the bad.

There's absolutely zero modern-lefty preaching about colonial oppression of evul white men, and I have no idea where that idea is even come from. Other than VD keeps writing essays about the game he evidently didn't play and has opinions based on nothing except interviews with Sawyer he googled 3 minutes ago.

 

[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.

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.

You can as it's very subjective (the moment you leave the relative safety of "there be monsters, you must kill them" and engage in storytelling, there's a pretty good chance to lose players) but I think Fallout did a much better job exploring the post-apocalyptic ethics and such than PoE2 did exploring the post-colonial ethics.

On a scale from 1 t 10, giving a fuck about your party member's paternity woes and the fate of some stupid kid who joined a stupid cult is about 1-2 because it doesn't affect your character or the location/gameworld at all. In comparison saving Tandi in Fallout is more about going against the raiders, which is a lot more engaging (challenge, acquiring weapons and armor which is critical at that point, different ways to handle it), then about saving someone who actually does need saving (unlike the stupid kid in Pillars 2 who's eager to drink poison). Basically, Tandi is a lead-in.

From a walkthrough:

If you save Bearn

• If you manage to resuscitate Bearn after he drinks the poison, he'll be upset and confused that he's still living even though he had made the choice to sacrifice himself for his God. Eder tells him that he'll have a long time to think about whether what he did was the right thing or not.
• If you successfully convince Bearn to drop the vial, Bosc will then ridicule Bearn for his betrayal to Eothas, and then proceed to kill himself. Bearn will be left shocked at what he was about to do - however is still convinced that by not following through, he has wronged Eothas and will never be forgiven. Eder will breathe a heavy sigh of relief.
• After the ordeal, Eder feels that the most appropriate thing to do would be to take him back to Hasongo. Upon returning, Bearn is lost and confused - wondering what to say to Eothas when he meets him one day. Eder explains that it is Eothas who owes him an explanation, not the other way around - ending the quest.

If you cannot save Bearn

• Looking down on Bearn, Eder lets out a cry of frustration, thus ending the quest. Eder is left wondering; were the Partisans the creation of a raving madman, or a divine plan from Eothas himself?

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

I give Fargo credit for trying these experiments and not dying wondering if there's still a place for these kinds of games at the mid-tier level, something which Obsidian; much to my chagrin; didn't risk trying. Unlike almost every other guy from that time, he actually made effort to go in that direction rather than just pay lip service and name drop, then do something totally different or fucked up like the Ultima Ascendant guys.

The Codex has yet to come to grips with Brian Fargo's status as elder statesmen of the CRPG industry.

 

[Vault Dweller]

There's absolutely zero modern-lefty preaching about colonial oppression of evul white men, and I have no idea where that idea is even come from. Other than VD keeps writing essays about the game he evidently didn't play and has opinions based on nothing except interviews with Sawyer he googled 3 minutes ago.

I played it for 22 hours.

 

[Parabalus]

Did PoSE II even attempt to do anything to portray any part of colonialism in a remotely positive light? Surely someone in the colonies appreciates not shitting in the streets, the demolishing the caste system, the existence of higher education, better agricultural science and ending the constant on-off warfare with their neighbors (because they've also been conquered as well, or at least don't want to piss off a world power)?

They take a neutral stance on colonialism. You get to see colonizers exploit and manipulate naive islanders, but you also get to see islanders eating from the same ground they shit on, while the higher echelons of their tribal society are busy cuddling their pet lions. You can help the colonizers install outposts, take over islands and grab control of the trade, or you get to help the islanders preserve their ass-backwards culture. You see both good and the bad.

There's absolutely zero modern-lefty preaching about colonial oppression of evul white men, and I have no idea where that idea is even come from. Other than VD keeps writing essays about the game he evidently didn't play and has opinions based on nothing except interviews with Sawyer he googled 3 minutes ago.

Dumpsterfire's depiction of colonialism is neutral-positive at worst, it really depicts the natives as backward savages - dunno how accusations of SJWery can be thrown because of that.

 

[MRY]

Could you demonstrate your methodology on Fallout?

Fallout has a really simple goal (everyone you care about is going to die or be displaced unless you can find a water chip) and it puts you in a setting that conditions you to think that you are outside conventional morality. Notwithstanding that, most of the quests offer ways to feel straightforwardly heroic in different ways. It's been a ong time since I played it, but it seemed pretty much like a traditional western where you're the guy in the white hat.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

There's absolutely zero modern-lefty preaching about colonial oppression of evul white men, and I have no idea where that idea is even come from. Other than VD keeps writing essays about the game he evidently didn't play and has opinions based on nothing except interviews with Sawyer he googled 3 minutes ago.

I played it for 22 hours.

Well then you'll have to take our word for it, mate. The game definitely tries to smuggle some Important Social Issues (tm), but it definitely wasn't some grand design that was commandeered from the top.

The most obvious example is that Sawyer gave companion writers free choice of companion sexuality. It turned out exactly as you could predict - all companions are into buttsex. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[2house2fly]

Fallout has a really simple goal (everyone you care about is going to die or be displaced unless you can find a water chip)

I don't care about them. The player character cares about them. In much the same way that Eder cares about Bearn, and Pallegina cares about Giacolo

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Fallout has a really simple goal (everyone you care about is going to die or be displaced unless you can find a water chip)

I don't care about them. The player character cares about them. In much the same way that Eder cares about Bearn, and Pallegina cares about Giacolo

Not our fault if you're a sociopath incapable of having emotions

 

[Rev]

There's absolutely zero modern-lefty preaching about colonial oppression of evul white men, and I have no idea where that idea is even come from. Other than VD keeps writing essays about the game he evidently didn't play and has opinions based on nothing except interviews with Sawyer he googled 3 minutes ago.

I played it for 22 hours.

Well then you'll have to take our word for it, mate. The game definitely tries to smuggle some Important Social Issues (tm), but it definitely wasn't some grand design that was commandeered from the top.

The most obvious example is that Sawyer gave companion writers free choice of companion sexuality. It turned out exactly as you could predict - all companions are into buttsex. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Yeah, I would say that the high design of the game is not "SJW-ish", while the individual characters sometimes are depending on who have written them.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

I don't care about them. The player character cares about them.

Not our fault if you're a sociopath incapable of having emotions

 

[MRY]

Fallout has a really simple goal (everyone you care about is going to die or be displaced unless you can find a water chip)

I don't care about them. The player character cares about them. In much the same way that Eder cares about Bearn, and Pallegina cares about Giacolo

"Care about" doesn't matter then. "Everyone you've known your entire life is going to die or be displaced unless someone finds a water chip, and the entire community is placing its hopes in you to carry out that task."

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

Fallout has a really simple goal (everyone you care about is going to die or be displaced unless you can find a water chip) and it puts you in a setting that conditions you to think that you are outside conventional morality. Notwithstanding that, most of the quests offer ways to feel straightforwardly heroic in different ways. It's been a ong time since I played it, but it seemed pretty much like a traditional western where you're the guy in the white hat.

Look, the first Fallout has an unique sensibility and tone that comes directly from Tim Cain's brain. It can't be replicately that easily because his gigantic brain works in mysterious ways.

 

[Latelistener]

Fallout has a really simple goal (everyone you care about is going to die or be displaced unless you can find a water chip)

I don't care about them. The player character cares about them. In much the same way that Eder cares about Bearn, and Pallegina cares about Giacolo

Not sure if he does. Tim Cain said the player character simply draw a short straw. This allegedly explains why we have a retard looking for the chip (but doesn't explain why they didn't send someone more qualified for the job 5 months before the disaster).

 

[2house2fly]

Not our fault if you're a sociopath incapable of having emotions

I don't know who the "our" is here. Did you work on Fallout?

Regardless, the point is that at some point there's a buy-in on the player's end. In Fallout you have to say "OK, whether or not my character cares about the people in the vault, he desires to help them" otherwise you can't keep playing. The implicit value of human life is used to nudge you in that direction, and you just ignore how clearly running out of water wouldn't be a death sentence because there's a town a few miles away. In Baldur's Gate the buy-in is that you assume your character cares about an NPC named "Garion" getting killed, in Pillars Of Eternity it's that your character would want to stop himself from going insane. etc

 

[Crescent Hawk]

Guys lets not forget amidst all this, about Pallegina.

Pallegina.

Her existence alone silently says everything we need to know about POE.
Its not even about sjw boogeyman is it, POE has as much of it as say Prey with its stronk female womyn. God knows the true far left mental cases are out there but the entertainment industry is still full of well meaning Avellone types, which were centre left at one time.
POE is just lazy, except for some parts like Eothas which in concept is actually nice. Vailia is colour swap Italian niggers, people don't complain about Redguards, they are actually cool and have an interesting culture.

And I am not saying turn it into serious business Witcher Game of Thrones bullshit dirty fantasy, POE looks great in art, just needed more solid factions, and center the story around something like the godhammer, make the MC the one that detonates the fucking bomb and has to carry that weight.

Shit it was all there, and it was all thrown into the trash.

 

[santino27]

It's interesting that there are two camps with regards to Pillars Of Eternity:

1) They did what they wanted, instead of refining a commercial product with a specific audience in mind

2) They just checked off features and there was no passion put into it

I wonder if these apparently-irreconcilable positions are a result of blind men touching an elephant, or if they can both be true and thus speak to division within the development team

I think they are both true. That's the joy of multiple people involved and what appears to be shitty direction/leadership from the top; you get a game that's all over the place, with pieces that don't mesh well together.

Also, I think AwesomeButton nailed it when he posted:

Those are two examples of the phenomenon I described elsewhere - this is Josh sneaking into the game stuff which he personally likes, even if it contradicts, in tone and style, the expectations that are set for the game.

I appreciate the political dynamics of colonial conflict translated into the Pillars setting both as a concept and as execution, (though I admire much more the way in which political dynamics were woven into Fallout New Vegas' plot) but I realize that a) I'm a very small minority, and b) This setting is supposed to house a spiritual successor to an epic fantasy game. Dude, your style is cool, but it's not what the audience is asking for...

It felt like this was JES trying to find something interesting for himself in a world he was bored with for a game he didn't want to make. To VD's point... if Sawyer was making a smaller game, it could've been a passion project built around these themes. Since it was the studio's 'one big sequel', he didn't have the freedom to do so, so we instead got a mix of 'give the player what we think they want', 'add themes that scratch Sawyer's historical fantasy autism itch', and 'let our tween writers do whatever they want for companions, but make sure the main plot arc is a study in pointlessness.'

 

[2house2fly]

Chris Avellone's vendetta against bad management and acknowledgment that he can only openly speak out against it because he's financially comfortable enough to not worry about needing to work impky that his beliefs are still somewhat lefty