Super Bunnyhop Deadfire Review feat. Codex Screenshot

[Parabalus]

Making a direct sequel to a 100 hour game is a disaster. I hope all studios will learn from this. Direct sequels suck on principle too.

The reactivity, while great, is all of the kind where it could have worked with a different MC too with minor adjustments, kinda how the DA games did it. They really dug their own grave.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

People might be willing to play the previous games if it's something like Witcher, where you know the story isn't shit because it's based on books.

All witcher games have original stories, which happen after event in books took place.

 

[FreeKaner]

Making a direct sequel to a 100 hour game is a disaster. I hope all studios will learn from this. Direct sequels suck on principle too.

The reactivity, while great, is all of the kind where it could have worked with a different MC too with minor adjustments, kinda how the DA games did it. They really dug their own grave.

It isn't even necessary honestly, Shadowrun is best in this regard. They just have few mentions here and there about what is going in Berlin while you are playing Hong Kong and that drags you into world deeper with very little effort. They wasted so many resources and time for direct sequel and I couldn't care less for any of it. They certainly felt the burn though, with dumpsterfire fire tanking so hard. Especially since they seemed to have been expecting PoE1 levels of sales.

 

[Fedora Master]

Why not just have us play a new MC who has to deal with all the shit the Watcher stirred up in PoE1?
Otherwise you'll have people (like me) come in and try to understand the plot of PoE1 only to find out that all of it was meaningless drivel.

 

[Parabalus]

Making a direct sequel to a 100 hour game is a disaster. I hope all studios will learn from this. Direct sequels suck on principle too.

The reactivity, while great, is all of the kind where it could have worked with a different MC too with minor adjustments, kinda how the DA games did it. They really dug their own grave.

It isn't even necessary honestly, Shadowrun is best in this regard. They just have few mentions here and there about what is going in Berlin while you are playing Hong Kong and that drags you into world deeper with very little effort. They wasted so many resources and time for direct sequel and I couldn't care less for any of it. They certainly felt the burn though, with dumpsterfire fire tanking so hard. Especially since they seemed to have been expecting PoE1 levels of sales.

The best example is IMO Baldur's gate 2. It's a direct sequel and it gives fuck all about what you did in Bg1, with only a few item imports being changed. Actually, which Bg sold better?

They could have even gone the Kotor2 route, where you make it up as you go along, that was pretty good and they have experience with it.

So many things could have saved the Dumpsterfire, but alas.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Eh, but being a direct sequel doesn't explain shitty sales. First game moved over a million by 2017, and since then it was in couple of bundles and had multiple sales that usually land it on Steam bestellers list. So that should be big enough of an audience to make the game fly off the shelves, even if being a direct sequel scares some newcomers.

Besides, it's not really that direct of a direct sequel anyway. PoE1 finale has no cliffhanger or sequel bait. Couple of years pass, you're the same guy but in a new loation, doing new things with new people. The franchise can be easily picked up from the 2nd one, provided you spend some time figuring out the lore. They even have dialogue options written especially for that. Every PoE1 cameo I talked to had a dialogue option where I didn't know who he was.

 

[Teut Busnet]

Eh, but being a direct sequel doesn't explain shitty sales. First game moved over a million by 2017, and since then it was in couple of bundles and had multiple sales that usually land it on Steam bestellers list. So that should be big enough of an audience to make the game fly off the shelves, even if being a direct sequel scares some newcomers.

Besides, it's not really that direct of a direct sequel anyway. PoE1 finale has no cliffhanger or sequel bait. Couple of years pass, you're the same guy but in a new loation, doing new things with new people. The franchise can be easily picked up from the 2nd one, provided you spend some time figuring out the lore. They even have dialogue options written especially for that. Every PoE1 cameo I talked to had a dialogue option where I didn't know who he was.

I think PoE was for most people that actually played it a 'mild' disapointment.

Not enough to dislike the game, not enough to have a bad experience - and leave a negative review - and you couldn't be angry at Obsidian for not delivering what they promised, but a disappointment non the less. The many, major changes in balance surely didn't help either to encourage players to pick this up 'Day 1'.

I don't know why they were confident to have similar sales to PoE I.

As for the Video, I don't like George and he talks a lot of nonsense, but I agree with him about maps. I never had a sense of place in the first one and even a speculative map would have been great.

 

[Mark Richard]

As George notes, Pillars 1 was in the first wave of Kickstarter RPGs coming out during a time of drought. One has to wonder how much the desire for a success story may have encouraged leniency when it comes to the game's faults, and how tolerant fans would be to a sequel exhibiting more of the same. We've got so much more choice now.

 

[Morkar Left]

I think the game will sell enough over time. One reason not everybody was jumping on board is that rpgs are long (they have to to give you the ), the patching isn't restricted to bugfixes because the balancing is way off and the first one was dissappointing (But after replaying it right now it seems better, maybe good, with all the balance fixes. Combat is still kind of a mess though). And last but not least we had a fair amount of classic RPGs coming out in the last years (Thank God!).

As for the Video, I don't like George and he talks a lot of nonsense, but I agree with him about maps. I never had a sense of place in the first one and even a speculative map would have been great.

Personally I thought this was really odd. You have to pick a background which basically means you have to know some lore about the world, they published a campaign guide to the Eastern Reach and came up with all that made up words and shit but hadn't even figured out how the whole world should look. With the sequel taking place in the Deadfire Archipelago and with no less than having an actual ship to sail around they still haven't thought out where shit is located.

How should a player EVER connect with the world when he can't even figure out from where his main char is coming from (even funnier when Obsidian expects exactly that by letting you choose a background instead of being born in Dyrwood)?

World consistency in rpgs, especially in fantasy rpgs, is actually very important (as important as char progression). And it's not about the details here, it's about the overlay (mainly backstory, history and locations) which should be consistent or at least provide a good ingame reason why they are not.

 

[Alkarl]

Basically you could sum up poor sales and reaction to PoE 2 like this:
People played PoE 1.

The only reason they got the sales they did with the first game is more a credit to their marketing. They wanked that IE nostalgia boner HARD. They confused their sales numbers with a positive reaction.

 

[Jezal_k23]

Another weird tidbit: he implied the first game had better humor? BETTER HUMOR? Reeeeeeeeeeally? I recall the first game being depressing as hell and, what, some Hiravias and Iselmyr comments were funny. I think that was it.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Basically you could sum up poor sales and reaction to PoE 2 like this:
People played PoE 1.

Exactly this lol.

Poe2 sales are the last laugh of the roxor review of poe1.

 

[Ellef]

Second, he thought the writing in Deadfire was a lot worse than Pillars 1

How do you even get worse than PoE1

 

[Jezal_k23]

I wouldn't describe it as worse per se, but rather as weightless. With PoE they at least tried to explore some interesting themes. Deadfire has less of that (not none, but definitely less). It also has less narration, which is a positive.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Basically you could sum up poor sales and reaction to PoE 2 like this:
People played PoE 1.

The only reason they got the sales they did with the first game is more a credit to their marketing. They wanked that IE nostalgia boner HARD. They confused their sales numbers with a positive reaction.

I've been saying the same thing all along.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Yeah I don't know where the fuck did he get idea that first game had more humor. Deadfire has had more funny lines literally in the first conversation on the ship during the prologue, then PoE1 had in the entirety of PoE1 Act 1. And it didn't' get any funnier in the later acts either.

 

[Trashos]

Hiravias was supposed to be funny, but he wasn't.

 

[2house2fly]

Basically you could sum up poor sales and reaction to PoE 2 like this:
People played PoE 1.

The only reason they got the sales they did with the first game is more a credit to their marketing. They wanked that IE nostalgia boner HARD. They confused their sales numbers with a positive reaction.

How does this explain most of PoE1's sales coming AFTER there had been time for word of mouth to spread?

 

[AwesomeButton]

Basically you could sum up poor sales and reaction to PoE 2 like this:
People played PoE 1.

The only reason they got the sales they did with the first game is more a credit to their marketing. They wanked that IE nostalgia boner HARD. They confused their sales numbers with a positive reaction.

How does this explain most of PoE1's sales coming AFTER there had been time for word of mouth to spread?

Steam sales and discounts. PoE crossed the one million mark long after TWM2, which came out in February 2016

 

[AwesomeButton]

Look at the number of people who bought at least one of PoE's expansions - those are the real IE nostalgics. The others are either IE nostalgics who were disappointed by what was offered, or were curious people who like dwarves and elves, and wandered in, maybe at a discount, but weren't very impressed by what they saw.

Therefore, Deadfire going past the sales of PoE+TWMx buyers would be a success. Steamspy doesn't show data on DLC owners, so if anyone has a quote from an interview, please go ahead.

PoE currently has 1.1 mil owners, which includes the "less-than-impressed" segment.

 

[Rahdulan]

Basically you could sum up poor sales and reaction to PoE 2 like this:
People played PoE 1.

The only reason they got the sales they did with the first game is more a credit to their marketing. They wanked that IE nostalgia boner HARD. They confused their sales numbers with a positive reaction.

This may be true, but not necessarily in overtly negative fashion. It's the same thing you see across a lot of games that don't have the AAA marketing machine behind them - people buy the first game not knowing much about it, but seeing the hype that surrounds the product from word of mouth. They play it and realize it's not really their thing so they never pick up the sequel(s), leading only to core fans sticking around. I think Legend of Grimrock 2 was [sadly] one of the more notable examples of this "player base falling out" happening not so long ago.

 

[FreeKaner]

Look at the number of people who bought at least one of PoE's expansions - those are the real IE nostalgics. The others are either IE nostalgics who were disappointed by what was offered, or were curious people who like dwarves and elves, and wandered in, maybe at a discount, but weren't very impressed by what they saw.

Therefore, Deadfire going past the sales of PoE+TWMx buyers would be a success. Steamspy doesn't show data on DLC owners, so if anyone has a quote from an interview, please go ahead.

PoE currently has 1.1 mil owners, which includes the "less-than-impressed" segment.

Considering TWM was a net loss for Obsidian, this dumpsterfire is a shipwreck of colossal proportions that can only be salvaged by Cainarsky.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Look at the number of people who bought at least one of PoE's expansions - those are the real IE nostalgics. The others are either IE nostalgics who were disappointed by what was offered, or were curious people who like dwarves and elves, and wandered in, maybe at a discount, but weren't very impressed by what they saw.

Therefore, Deadfire going past the sales of PoE+TWMx buyers would be a success. Steamspy doesn't show data on DLC owners, so if anyone has a quote from an interview, please go ahead.

PoE currently has 1.1 mil owners, which includes the "less-than-impressed" segment.

Considering TWM was a net loss for Obsidian, this dumpsterfire is a shipwreck of colossal proportions that can only be salvaged by Cainarsky.

I may be completely wrong about this assessment. There may be factors I'm not taking into account which make Deadfire's potential playerbase much bigger, bigger than PoE. What could they be though?

 

[Parabalus]

Look at the number of people who bought at least one of PoE's expansions - those are the real IE nostalgics. The others are either IE nostalgics who were disappointed by what was offered, or were curious people who like dwarves and elves, and wandered in, maybe at a discount, but weren't very impressed by what they saw.

Therefore, Deadfire going past the sales of PoE+TWMx buyers would be a success. Steamspy doesn't show data on DLC owners, so if anyone has a quote from an interview, please go ahead.

PoE currently has 1.1 mil owners, which includes the "less-than-impressed" segment.

Considering TWM was a net loss for Obsidian, this dumpsterfire is a shipwreck of colossal proportions that can only be salvaged by Cainarsky.

Is TWM being a net loss confirmed? Missed that info.

 

[FreeKaner]

Is TWM being a net loss confirmed? Missed that info.

Yes, Feargus mentioned it somewhere although I can't find it right now.