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Eternity Josh Sawyer reflects on his failures with Pillars of Eternity

user

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Jan 22, 2019
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Not 100% sure what are you talking about, but Kingmaker's initial state definitely had an impact on it reception and Deadfire was nowhere near as bugged.
Really? So loosing all your money in a paying wages bug or quick lodaing only to see that your actions were still acknowledge from before and the whole place becoming hostile.....those were all imaginary things? Deadfire was filled with game breaking bugs,stop pretending that one game had less of them.

It had many nasty bugs too, but P:K was literally unplayable because it was riddled with bugs that halted your playthrough to a stop. And that was partially because of the way the game was deisgned: less forgiving, more "gmeo and "time sensitive" - which is good, just not with bugs. Steam reviews evern flirted with "negative" for a while, which happens rarely, as the % of positive ones fell as low as the 60s. That's a PR disaster for selling mainstream.
 

Desiderius

Found your egg, Robinett, you sneaky bastard
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Insert Title Here Pathfinder: Wrath
Not 100% sure what are you talking about, but Kingmaker's initial state definitely had an impact on it reception and Deadfire was nowhere near as bugged.
Really? So loosing all your money in a paying wages bug or quick lodaing only to see that your actions were still acknowledge from before and the whole place becoming hostile.....those were all imaginary things? Deadfire was filled with game breaking bugs,stop pretending that one game had less of them.
I cancelled my first Deadfire playthrough precisely because of the permanent hostility thing in one of the quests so I'm perfectly aware that the game was bugged. Actually, I also dropped my tb attempt once I realized tb mode causes all the guards in Tikitaka to become hostile whenever you initiate a quest-related combat encounter :lol:

Still, no point denying the fact that Kingmaker was a technical trainwreck on release that took much more time and effort to bring up to speed. It still has stuff like feats flat out not working, inconsistent/broken stacking etc., which is a pretty big deal for char building porn game that it is.

And you misunderstood my initial post anyway, I was writing about a hypothetical game that had Kingmaker's content and gameplay with Deadfire's production values (graphics, animations) and bug free, there was no comparison there with the last part.

No one is more annoyed at the remaining bugs in P:K than I am since they're so obvious and speak to bugfixers not being game players, but at this point it can't be said that they're anything but marginal. P:K was worse at release but has had more, one can say determined if not always knowledgable, follow-up.

Deadfire was a content desert right off the bat. The contrast with Diablo2 and BG2 is stunning.
 

Terra

Cipher
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Sep 4, 2016
Messages
896
I'm going to ramble and meander between points and I don't care enough to further cajole this into greater coherence, but my thoughts on Pillars as a series:

Pillars 1 was a lengthy game that didn't do a great job of hooking the player beyond "we are making an infinity Engine spiritual successor". Fact is, these guys were, at least in part, the guys that made Icewind Dale, not Baldurs Gate, and it shows. I know many codexers love full party creation as seen in IW, but it turns a lot of people off and I think on some level, the legacy of Icewind Dale passed into Pillars. The companions were not great, some were ok, but there are no real standouts that come to mind.

A thought I often had in mind regarding BioWare vs Obsidian characters (at least during the New Vegas>Pillars 1 era) was that BioWare created memorable characters, while by contrast Obsidian created starkly realistic characters. How that breaks down is, yes you may well be taking on a counsellor role in a BioWare game in terms of solving their Daddy issues or whatnot, but you were at least left with a character that stuck in your mind. Obsidian by contrast I always described as written well/realistically enough that they would/could solve their own problems by and large without needing my character's intervention. I'll always remember Viconia, Morrigan, Minsc, Sarevok, etc because they stick in my mind, even if that's largely because of their larger-than-life personalities. Another way I'd describe it would be that Bio's (pre-DA2 at least) characters are people that I would want to go on adventure with (from a fun/enjoyment perspective), whereas Obsidian's offerings would do fine on their own without my character's input. Essentially, one provides fun and enjoyment while I'm out questing, while the other... doesn't.

I'm not going to single any one person or thing out, but Pillars 1 had pacing issues and was in large part quite boring. I will note that using IE Mod to disable the gold backer npc interactions did improve the pacing on my 2nd, unfinished run through the game, but that's a whole bunch of superfluous dialogue that had no place being there to begin with. It made environments a chore to explore in much the same way Shadowrun Hong Kong faltered (Torment Tides being a recent extreme example of the same thing).

When it was first announced, Pillars 2 wasn't off to a strong start for me. On the face of it, its setting immediately made me recall Suikoden IV, the black sheep of that series. Sailing around a huge ocean visiting islands held about as much appeal as trekking through a desert to me. The "oh now you're a pirate, lol" thing just seemed slapped in there to justify this new approach as well. That said, when Pillars 2 got rolling, I ended up enjoying it a lot, plus, critically, I actually started caring about both my own Watcher and their companions fairly soon into PoE2, this wasn't the case with the first game so the second game was definitely doing something right. I enjoyed adventuring with most of the companions in PoE2 though the story progression was bizarrely segmented with how Eothas was handled. I'd probably have preferred them ditching the ship & open sailing entirely and doing something like Geneforge 3 did where you do all the quests on island 1, then you chase Eothas to island 2 (no backtracking permitted), and so on. This would have cut out a lot of the garbage bounty filler content they stuffed into the game as well. The sequences with the Gods and meetings with Eothas were also enjoyable, I just feel it would have been better as a somewhat more linear experience, I don't feel the sailing did anything except pad the game length and fracture the plot/pacing. DLC content also benefits from the tighter focus.

There's people in my friends list on Steam with Pillars 2 in their library, who won't jump into it as they never finished Pillars 1, a game they stopped playing presumably because it didn't hold their interest until the end of the game. When I think of Pillars 1, I think of a game with a lot of dry dialogue, frequent lengthy forays into the nuances of Dyrwoodan politics and a veritable army of backer npcs cluttering the streets with "click me!" signs over their heads just waiting to deliver a diatribe of irrelevant nonsense (poorly aping say the dream sequences in say Lost Oddysey, which were used sparingly and thus retained their narrative impact). In some ways PoE1 stands as a monolithic wall barring entry to a superior sequel.

Contrasted with the Baldurs Gate 1>2 transition which the overarching Bhaal story and Sarevok/Irenicus as primary antagonists, Pillars1>2's story around the Watcher wasn't immediately compelling; the Thaos setup didn't drive me along through the game like the revenge motivator did with Sarevok. Any personal motivators in the Pillars 1 plot fell flat for me, though I did like the world setup, especially with regards to souls.

I'll underline here, for any sequel where the previous game hasn't fully wrapped up a given overarching story, I would much rather play as a returning protagonist and I did genuinely come to love my Watcher in Pillars 2, but in the first game, the connection to my character just wasn't really there. For example, I despise the direction Dragon Age took, with a new protag each time but BioWare still cynically wanting to have their cake and eat it with all the returning companions, Dragon Age felt like a poor man's Suikoden because each game's story was never closed out properly and/or ended with a lead in to a potential sequel from which the original protagonist was noticeable absent. Getting back to the point; Pillars lacked both a compelling core story, hook or my attachment to my character. In that sense, I suppose it's quite impressive that the sequel managed to actually draw me in like it did, but due to the first game's failings I wasn't immediately excited to play as the Watcher again in PoE2, when normally, that is an immediate buy-in for a sequel for me

I'm not going to say Pillars is boring because Josh injects boring shit into the game or anything like that but there was/is very clearly something that is causing this feeling in Obsidian's games when some unheard of team can produce Kingmaker out of nowhere and hit much closer to the mark. It often felt like I was playing a game that wanted to be BG2, but was frequently hampered and dragged down into Icewind Dale territory because it wasn't the same team making it. Contrast this with say Pathfinder: Kingmaker (which is a slow starter and the pacing ebbs and flows at parts) but was far more consistently enjoyable than Pillars 1. Even with Dragon Age: Origins, I was still fully engaged the whole way through, I strongly believe dialogue brevity probably helped here looking back at it.

Gameplay wise I had almost no issues with either game so I really don't think that's a factor, whether Josh loves to over-balance things or not, I don't think that plays into low sales at all.

TLDR: Pillars 2 is paying for the shortcomings and mistakes of the first game. Pathfinder had a solid enough story and enough build up to see me through the whole game, same with D:OS2 and I, along with many others are excited for their follow ups. Pillars 2 just felt like a "middle" game and the ending was... odd I guess. I'd buy another sequel if it continued to improve over Pillars 2, but as to how to correct sales numbers and match D:OS2 & Pathfinder's, I'm not sure what needs to be done, you can't retroactively fix PoE's impression on people.
 
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Desiderius

Found your egg, Robinett, you sneaky bastard
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Insert Title Here Pathfinder: Wrath
Not 100% sure what are you talking about, but Kingmaker's initial state definitely had an impact on it reception and Deadfire was nowhere near as bugged.
Really? So loosing all your money in a paying wages bug or quick lodaing only to see that your actions were still acknowledge from before and the whole place becoming hostile.....those were all imaginary things? Deadfire was filled with game breaking bugs,stop pretending that one game had less of them.

It had many nasty bugs too, but P:K was literally unplayable because it was riddled with bugs that halted your playthrough to a stop. And that was partially because of the way the game was deisgned: less forgiving, more "gmeo and "time sensitive" - which is good, just not with bugs. Steam reviews evern flirted with "negative" for a while, which happens rarely, as the % of positive ones fell as low as the 60s. That's a PR disaster for selling mainstream.

It's the "let the players find the bugs" business model. I waited six months and got a great game. Game buyers are adapting.

It's a shitty model because then you have bugfixers who don't understand the game and leave glaring bugs unfixed.
 

Shadenuat

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Dec 9, 2011
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11,955
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Russia
PoE1 simply was not fun and dull and thus nobody bought sequel. IE baggage was the only thing going for it. Only people who played a lot of it were IE games autists like me. What do you recommend this game for, and whom? Story? Combat? Character building? You can't even recommend it to biofans (if there's left any) for romances.

Kingmaker has many flaws but at least you can wholeheartedly recommend it to people who like 3ed character building; similarly how you can recommend Pathfinder system itself to people who don't feel their interests are taken care of by D&D, so they prefer Pathfinder system.

In the end PoE was created to be familiar instead of interesting "to sell"; by a person who didn't want it, and never liked thing he was aiming to recreate anyway.

It's a child parents didn't want, and nobody loved.
 

Quillon

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Dec 15, 2016
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5,214
No need to dissect the games for the 34567th time. How much muh'successful PFKM sold? As much as PoE1? Half as much? There is not enough people interested in this specific type of game anymore(no, DOS is not the same type), media don't wanna cover it. Its dead jim. I don't believe there'll be a 2D-ISO PoE3 unless MS is letting Obs waste their moneh in unpromising projects. Prospect of making another game and hoping it to be as successful as The Great Kingmaker must be making them jump in excitement over at Obs HQ with 200+ devs in a very expensive part of 'murica.

There will be a 3rd game but with a smaller budget than Deadfire. It will feature the turn based mode at launch and it will be less open world than Deadfire.
You can still make a profit with a game like Pillars and with GamePass I'm sure Microsoft wants something like that for their service. But the budget will have to be smaller. 15+ millions isn't economically viable option at this point. It's peanuts for Microsoft in money, but at the same time it's a risk. Does Feargus want to use some of the goodwill from the overlords to throw money at a sequel to a game that failed commercially? Even with proper marketing this time around, it's still a risk if your aim is to make profit.
Something like 10 millions with a limited development time is what they should do. They won't try to reinvent the wheel again with the game mechanics which should save them a lot of time and resources.

I wouldn't really be surprised if Feargus would try an episodic format for the 3rd one. He talked about this earlier and with GamePass he has the perfect platform for it.

I think with Pillars of Eternity 3 they will also want to show that Microsoft is really letting them make the games they want to make. What better way to do it than finish the saga they started prior to the purchase. If the 3rd game fails, then they can stop making those games, but at least they tried.

Why isn't PoE1 already on gamepass? Why isn't Deadfire on PC gamepass already? If they wanted to use gamepass for "smaller" games then putting your already developed games on it should be a no brainer, no? Plus putting them on the gamepass would hopefully build new player base, new fans of the series that'd seriously help the sequel they may be developing.
 

Desiderius

Found your egg, Robinett, you sneaky bastard
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Insert Title Here Pathfinder: Wrath
PoE1 simply was not fun and dull and thus nobody bought sequel. IE baggage was the only thing going for it. Only people who played a lot of it were IE games autists like me. What do you recommend this game for, and whom? Story? Combat? Character building? You can't even recommend it to biofans (if there's left any) for romances.

Kingmaker has many flaws but at least you can wholeheartedly recommend it to people whole like 3ed character building; similarly how you can recommend Pathfinder system itself to people who don't feel they're interests are taken care of by D&D, so they prefer Pathfinder system.

BG2, Diablo2, and P:K are all overflowing with content. Constrast Old Sycamore with all the Perception checks and meaningful characters (some you don't discover until your fifth playthrough) with the starter island and the first islands, hell all the islands, you can sail to in Deadfire. There's just nothing freaking there. It's like the Devs didn't like the game enough to populate it properly while the other three games they couldn't contain themselves.
 
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the mole

Learned
Shitposter
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Aug 1, 2019
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833
and yet outsold deadfire...
imagine that
Call of Duty Modern Warfare outsold deadfire, minecraft outsold deadfire, electronic tuna that sing songs outsold deadfire, sales isn't a determinent of quality

Oblivion outsold deadfire and we all know it's the goat
 

fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
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Not 100% sure what are you talking about, but Kingmaker's initial state definitely had an impact on it reception and Deadfire was nowhere near as bugged.
Really? So loosing all your money in a paying wages bug or quick lodaing only to see that your actions were still acknowledge from before and the whole place becoming hostile.....those were all imaginary things? Deadfire was filled with game breaking bugs,stop pretending that one game had less of them.
I cancelled my first Deadfire playthrough precisely because of the permanent hostility thing in one of the quests so I'm perfectly aware that the game was bugged. Actually, I also dropped my tb attempt once I realized tb mode causes all the guards in Tikitaka to become hostile whenever you initiate a quest-related combat encounter :lol:

Still, no point denying the fact that Kingmaker was a technical trainwreck on release that took much more time and effort to bring up to speed. It still has stuff like feats flat out not working, inconsistent/broken stacking etc., which is a pretty big deal for char building porn game that it is.

And you misunderstood my initial post anyway, I was writing about a hypothetical game that had Kingmaker's content and gameplay with Deadfire's production values (graphics, animations) and bug free, there was no comparison there with the last part.

No one is more annoyed at the remaining bugs in P:K than I am since they're so obvious and speak to bugfixers not being game players, but at this point it can't be said that they're anything but marginal. P:K was worse at release but has had more, one can say determined if not always knowledgable, follow-up.

Deadfire was a content desert right off the bat. The contrast with Diablo2 and BG2 is stunning.
I am not saying that kingmaker didn't have bugs,but that both of them had a ton of them. Difference is that kingmaker fixed it shit and in the end it is a polished game,but deadfire still have many of its game breaking bugs. And yes,i have replayed both of those games after all their patches and dlcs dropped,deadfire is in a worst state bug wise at this point.
 

Desiderius

Found your egg, Robinett, you sneaky bastard
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Insert Title Here Pathfinder: Wrath
and yet outsold deadfire...
imagine that
Call of Duty Modern Warfare outsold deadfire, minecraft outsold deadfire, electronic tuna that sing songs outsold deadfire, sales isn't a determinent of quality

Oblivion outsold deadfire and we all know it's the goat

Devs gotta eat too.
 

Quillon

Arcane
Joined
Dec 15, 2016
Messages
5,214
Deadfire was bugfree for me in the latest patch, but performance got worse with every patch. Its probably running 25% worse than the release version.
 

the mole

Learned
Shitposter
Joined
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Messages
833
and yet outsold deadfire...
imagine that
Call of Duty Modern Warfare outsold deadfire, minecraft outsold deadfire, electronic tuna that sing songs outsold deadfire, sales isn't a determinent of quality

Oblivion outsold deadfire and we all know it's the goat

Devs gotta eat too.
Oblivion ate all the competition and call of duty modern warfare has been proven to be an rpg by scientific means
 

user

Savant
Joined
Jan 22, 2019
Messages
835
PoE1 simply was not fun and dull and thus nobody bought sequel. IE baggage was the only thing going for it. Only people who played a lot of it were IE games autists like me. What do you recommend this game for, and whom? Story? Combat? Character building? You can't even recommend it to biofans (if there's left any) for romances.

Kingmaker has many flaws but at least you can wholeheartedly recommend it to people whole like 3ed character building; similarly how you can recommend Pathfinder system itself to people who don't feel they're interests are taken care of by D&D, so they prefer Pathfinder system.

BG2, Diablo2, and P:K are all overflowing with content. Constrast Old Sycamore with all the Perception quests and meaningful characters (some you don't discover until your fifth playthrough) with the starter island and the first islands, hell all the islands, you can sail to in Deadfire. There's just nothing freaking there. It's like the Devs didn't like the game enough to populate it properly while the other three games they couldn't contain themselves.

Especially true for P:K - it was ridiculously/deliciously populated. Many areas had something interesting and were full of carefully distributed skill checks. Even some areas required a skill check to be visible. That's how you do RP. For example, pulling Jubi's cart out of the river was *damn satisfying*, with all those different skill/item checks, some of which requiring you to search the area.
 

Infinitron

I post news
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Why isn't PoE1 already on gamepass? Why isn't Deadfire on PC gamepass already? If they wanted to use gamepass for "smaller" games then putting your already developed games on it should be a no brainer, no? Plus putting them on the gamepass would hopefully build new player base, new fans of the series that'd seriously help the sequel they may be developing.

Maybe they're waiting for the Deadfire console release so they can release the series everywhere at once? Yeah, that's still not actually out yet.
 

Frozen

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Do you remember Roguey the exact moment, when you looked into Sawyer sad puppy eyes and realized there is nothing inside?

For me it was reading on Sawyer thread that he's a St.Vincent fan.
 

Max Damage

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Mar 1, 2017
Messages
657
For all the time I've put into Pillows, I can't remember much after Raedric's Hold, except for maaaaybe Heritage Hill and asylum. It really sucks playing a long game that peaks so early, if it weren't for full party control and some QoL features I'd drop this slog as fast as Lionheart. It is good that Sawyer called back his "no hard counters" policy eventually, but that was too little too late to justify sitting through endless loading screens. Like with NWN2, I played through most of the game but never finished it, because why bother? The gameplay and story were so dull and nonsensicall that I could feel my brain cells popping one by one by Act 3, right after that shitty trial, which is why I dropped and never bothered to replay Pillows. I never followed the development closely, but my hopes after New Vegas were optimistic. What I got is (eventually) polished turd. What I am saying is, I am not surprised Pillows of Boredom 2 flopped. Not sure who these games are made to appeal to.
 

vortex

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"We've taken a lot of playtests, we've worked with the team at Obsidian, to get a lot of feedback, to make sure everything feels right and feels good. Frankly, it's just one of those things where we've got to touch lots of little pieces, one at a time, to make sure things do feel right, and to ensure that the porting process keeps it feeling like the world of Eternity."

The Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions of Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire are currently scheduled to release this November. This Switch version on the other hand is currently looking to launch sometime in 2020.
https://www.gamereactor.eu/pillars-...the-same-great-world-fans-expect-on-consoles/
 

AdamReith

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Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is.
Man, so mixed feelings about this. I was actually under the impression PoE2 did really well, it had great reviews when it came out etc. I steered clear of it but I was hoping its success would inspire more spin off-y games along the lines of tyranny.

It's one of the rare games I refunded, just got a bad feeling from the setup. Basically a god telling you exactly what to do next was enough for me to send it back, it felt like they had learned nothing and I was not up for another confusing slog with negligible C&C.
 

SausageInYourFace

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Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Bubbles In Memoria A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit. Pathfinder: Wrath
Could the sales of PoE2 have been so bad if they actually go through the effort and risks to try a PoE3?
thinking.png
 

Elex

Arbiter
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Messages
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The same people who claim Pathfinder wasn't bugged also claim that Greedfall has no backtracking and fetch quests.

Connect the dots.
Greedfall have a teleport point every 30 seconds and the quest icon also tell what teleporter is closer to the quest point.
 

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