Game News Pillars of Eternity II releasing on April 3rd, at least three DLC expansions planned

[Infinitron]

I hope you folks are right about the DLC. The only thing that's giving me concern is Feargus's comments on how the WMs cost more to develop than they brought in, and that they want to go with smaller, episodic DLCs instead of full-blown expansions in the future.

He considers the Fallout: New Vegas DLCs to be smaller and episodic - even though they weren't that small...

I wonder if Obsidian would consider, say, White March Part 1 without Siege of Cragholdt to be a $10 value "smaller, episodic DLC".

 

[Prime Junta]

I wonder if Obsidian would consider, say, White March Part 1 without Siege of Cragholdt to be a $10 value "smaller, episodic DLC".

If that's how he sees it, I for one am cool with it.

I am hoping they'll do a White March style expansion. If they split it into three more or less self-standing chapters for ten bucks each, that's cool. Classic story structure too.

 

[Lahey]

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire is our first sequel here at Obsidian

First sequel to one of their own games (unless you count MotB I guess)

 

[razvedchiki]

At least it's cheap in Turkish steam, below $20 so I'm gonna just grab it.

fuck the euro and the fucking eurozone!

 

[Jaesun]

Oh that's right, I didn't back this. Not going to pre-purchase it either. I STILL haven't played PoE lol.

Will await the eventual 700 Reviews for it to come shortly.

And remember: At The RPG Codex EVERY thread is a Pilliars of Eternity discussion thread....

 

[Zanzoken]

Announcing DLCs before release means they are intentionally selling you an incomplete game for full price.

 

[Bohrain]

Announcing DLCs before release means they are intentionally selling you an incomplete game for full price.

If the game is close to to going gold it's a way to create something worthwhile to do for the staff members that aren't committed to polishing and bugfixing. And in order to get actual sales for a DLC, you need to release while people still have the main game actually installed.
What I'm more worried about is the type of content they are planning to do. I'd rather have a large chunk of content at once rather than a bunch of smaller bits, since previously existing content is never reactive to newly implemented stuff.

 

[Infinitron]

If the game is close to to going gold it's a way to create something worthwhile to do for the staff members that aren't committed to polishing and bugfixing.

This is true, but for this game, we have no reason to believe they're even doing that.

Reminder: Pillars of Eternity 1 also effectively "announced" its White March expansion waaay back during the Kickstarter in 2012 by letting backers pledge for it. And I'm pretty sure nobody at Obsidian actually started work on it until the main game shipped. Why wouldn't these DLCs be the same?

 

[Sizzle]

If the game is close to to going gold it's a way to create something worthwhile to do for the staff members that aren't committed to polishing and bugfixing.

This is true, but for this game, we have no reason to believe they're even doing that.

Reminder: Pillars of Eternity 1 also effectively "announced" its White March expansion by letting backers pledge for it waaay back during the Kickstarter in 2012. And I'm pretty sure nobody at Obsidian actually started work on it until the main game shipped. Why wouldn't these DLCs be the same?

They pretty much confirmed that a short while ago. They plan on doing at least three, so they probably have at least a couple of ideas on what they want to do, but they'll only start working on them when the game ships (and maybe the biggest base game problems are identified, just like with TWM).

 

[Fairfax]

I hope you folks are right about the DLC. The only thing that's giving me concern is Feargus's comments on how the WMs cost more to develop than they brought in, and that they want to go with smaller, episodic DLCs instead of full-blown expansions in the future.

He considers the Fallout: New Vegas DLCs to be smaller and episodic - even though they weren't that small...

They're not particularly long either:

 

[Kem0sabe]

If these fuckers do yet another mid game expansion, I will promise myself to never buy another obsidian made rpg ever again.

I don't care about adding content to a single player campaign I already finished. I want them to expand the goddamned story.

 

[Trashos]

I hope you folks are right about the DLC. The only thing that's giving me concern is Feargus's comments on how the WMs cost more to develop than they brought in, and that they want to go with smaller, episodic DLCs instead of full-blown expansions in the future.

He considers the Fallout: New Vegas DLCs to be smaller and episodic - even though they weren't that small...

They're not particularly long either:

I don't understand how these values are measured. The first time I played Dead Money, it must have taken me about 2 hours just to get through the vault room with the holograms.

 

[Fairfax]

I hope you folks are right about the DLC. The only thing that's giving me concern is Feargus's comments on how the WMs cost more to develop than they brought in, and that they want to go with smaller, episodic DLCs instead of full-blown expansions in the future.

He considers the Fallout: New Vegas DLCs to be smaller and episodic - even though they weren't that small...

They're not particularly long either:

I don't understand how these values are measured. The first time I played Dead Money, it must have taken me about 2 hours just to get through the vault room with the holograms.

Users report how long it took them according to how they played, and then the website shows the average. You can see more detailed stats in each game's page.

 

[Urthor]

The fact the White March DLCs lost money is actually so sad

 

[ArchAngel]

If these fuckers do yet another mid game expansion, I will promise myself to never buy another obsidian made rpg ever again.

I don't care about adding content to a single player campaign I already finished. I want them to expand the goddamned story.

Are you sure about that? You want to play from lvl 1 once again? :D
These fuckers don't know how to make a sequel with same characters.

 

[Forest Dweller]

Wake me up in three years when the final game is released.

The fact the White March DLCs lost money is actually so sad

It's not.

 

[FreeKaner]

This garbage probably won't even be playable until after summer and even then it's likely better to wait until next summer.

 

[ArchAngel]

This garbage probably won't even be playable until after summer and even then it's likely better to wait until next summer.

Well in summer Pathfinder Kingmaker is coming out and that game will be superior so yea, PoE2 will be played in about 1 year or so.

 

[FreeKaner]

This garbage probably won't even be playable until after summer and even then it's likely better to wait until next summer.

Well in summer Pathfinder Kingmaker is coming out and that game will be superior so yea, PoE2 will be played in about 1 year or so.

Any proofs for this claim? What have we seen of pathfinder kingmaker that it will be good?

 

[Sizzle]

This garbage probably won't even be playable until after summer and even then it's likely better to wait until next summer.

Well in summer Pathfinder Kingmaker is coming out and that game will be superior so yea, PoE2 will be played in about 1 year or so.

Any proofs for this claim? What have we seen of pathfinder kingmaker that it will be good?

We've seen very little of Kingmaker so far, and while it does look promising, the logic behind the "of course it will be better than PoE2, like, duh!" is made up of two points try-hard edgelords love to regurgitate:

1) It's D&D, and that's automatically better than anything Sawyer, that balance obsessed twit, could ever come up with! (just look at NWN2 OC, it's sooooo good because it's D&D)

2) Even a random Russkie game studio is better than Obsidian. I mean, have you ever even heard of a good Obs game? That's right, of course not, everything they ever made has been complete shit. Everything. No exceptions.

Now, as someone who actually likes RPGs, I would be very happy if both of these games turned out to be good, but - this is the Codex, and some people get off more on shitting on game devs and predicting the eventual downfall of studios, than playing the games themselves.

 

[Jasede]

I know you are trying to be sarcastic but... yes, everything D&D is better than anything Sawyer can come up with, and NWN2 is bad despite the D&D, not because of it. To be honest, the D&D ruleset is about the only thing that keeps the game interesting until you get to some of the better parts later on.

I am trying to play PoE, I really, really am. But the system is terrible. It is easily the worst RPG system I have encountered, far worse than almost all that come to mind. And I played a LOT of RPGs. It's kind of stunning how bad they made real time with pause. It was always bad, but that you can make it that bad is almost horrifying. Sadly, everything else other than the combat is also boring. I am not trying to be edgy. The game is just no good.

 

[Jasede]

You dang old Jew!
It's not fucking edgy when I wasted DOZENS of hours trying to enjoy that piece of shit. It's edgy when I exaggerate on purpose or am contrarian for the heck of it; when that's my honest opinion it's just simply the plain old truth.

I hate that one of the admins/newsposters is on the fucking payroll shilling even here in fair Codexia.

 

[Sizzle]

Yeah, would not agree on this being edgy (at most - disagree). You don't like the system and game itself - fair enough.

IMHO, while I don't consider it successful in everything it attempts to do (but, then again, I don't think BG2 has the best RPG combat of all time, like some here do), I still appreciate how it made every class feel distinct from one another (and the options for making most classes feel and play differently by choosing different feats, equipment, etc.), the attributes playing a greater role (not a fan of the +/- 5% approach, but at least all of them do something, which is more than can be said for the majority of the IE games, sans PS:T), and a few other changes they made to the IE formula.

It failed in many other aspects (pre-TWM story, low-clarity in combat, etc.), but I still think the setting and system show potential, and something good could come out of it.

We'll see if that's the case in PoE2.

 

[Infinitron]

Re: Pathfinder

I've worked with the game's developers on finalizing the Codex backer content and other things, and I have nothing but good things to say about them.

But I will say this: I believe the thing that should worry you most about it is that they have to cover a six chapter pen-and-paper adventure path in a single game. And it's the first RPG they've ever made! I think it's not unlikely that the game will end up feeling Storm of Zehir-ish, content stretched tight with the player hopping from small area to small area.

 

[ArchAngel]

Re: Pathfinder

I've worked with the game's developers on finalizing the Codex backer content and other things, and I have nothing but good things to say about them.

But I will say this: I believe the thing that should worry you most about it is that they have to cover a six chapter pen-and-paper adventure path in a single game. And it's the first RPG they've ever made! I think it's not unlikely that the game will end up feeling Storm of Zehir-ish, content stretched tight with the player hopping from small area to small area (and without the free roaming world travel).

But you can already see roaming world travel in the recent demo. It is even more free than what Bg1 had because shit happens between areas as well that are not just random generic encounters.