Eternity Avowed - Obsidian's first person action-RPG in the Pillars of Eternity setting - coming Fall 2024

[Roguey]

South Park isn't even an RPG. Why are people defending this game?

It's a western jrpg.

The official delay notice came in October and I believe the game was released in May. However I recall that the actual work on the game had stopped even before October and Avellone was quite available to work on FNV.

And he did work on it. But obviously someone can't come in as a lead months into development on a 18-month project.

I remember Avellone actually tweeted about the Sega's decision not to allow any development to done to the game. He really liked to burn those bridges when he could.

Sega already burned the bridge themselves when they announced there would be no Alpha Protocol sequel a month after it had been released. No intention of ever working with Obsidian again.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Reminder that a large portion of Chris’ contribution to NV base game was cut (Ulysses) for being too much content to implement and test with the dev timetable present.

 

[Sannom]

Feargus talks too much in interviews, Chris writes too much for his games, they complemented each other!

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Feargus deownered everybody for peanuts while in secret he already had Microsoft sale lined up. Art of the deal.

 

[S.torch]

We are not talking about old fantasy settings

Modern settings are inspired by old ones. In this particular case, Pillars was supposed to be inspired by Forgotten Realms. And I can sympathize with people who can't tolerate that they were promised basically a successor of Baldur's Gate (which setting was Forgotten Realms) and were actually given another type of fantasy. One that included many themes post-renaissance (like guns) and a different tone.

And I can have sympathy because if it were me, I would be angry too. Like anyone who like a genre and others come to disrupt it.

Yet many people here came swiftly defending and justifying these decisions saying basically that people don't understand big brain "historical" guns. When in reality, these "historical" guns are the ones out of place from the view of someone expecting his or her genre to be respected.

Warhammer

Case in point. Warhammer is not traditional fantasy, is sci-fantasy. Which implies from the beginning a focus on themes about technology and its effects on the world. Fans of that genre have no reason to be upset or don't expect those points.

What "none" are you talking about?

Any type of historical or technological pedantry don't belongs on fantasy.

 

[FreeKaner]

Modern settings are inspired by old ones. In this particular case, Pillars was supposed to be inspired by Forgotten Realms. And I can sympathize with people who can't tolerate that they were promised basically a successor of Baldur's Gate (which setting was Forgotten Realms) and were actually given another type of fantasy. One that included many themes post-renaissance (like guns) and a different tone.

And I can have sympathy because if it were me, I would be angry too. Like anyone who like a genre and others come to disrupt it.

This a matter of preference, I have never disagreed with someone who said they prefer medieval themes, medieval aesthetics or medieval settings at large. LOTR is a thoroughly medieval setting and a very good one. Forgotten realms is boring, but whatever.

Yet many people here came swiftly defending and justifying these decisions saying basically that people don't understand big brain "historical" guns. When in reality, these "historical" guns are the ones out of place from the view of someone expecting his or her genre to be respected.

It's not about historicity, never was and I have never talked about historicity or "realism". I talked about two particulars, one is themes and other is coherence. If you don't want renaissance setting, don't make one. Really simple. However this is not what is happening, people do make renaissance settings, everything in the setting is renaissance and sometimes even beyond renaissance by far, they use renaissance clothing, renaissance armor, renaissance architecture, renaissance social structure, renaissance aesthetics, renaissance philosophy, renaissance weapons, minus the guns.

Any type of historical or technological pedantry don't belongs on fantasy.

Definitely, the argument about guns being some sort of insurmountable or immediately altering technological invention is pedantry of highest sort and doesn't belong in fantasy. Fantasy can easily have guns. Case in point, pillars is a fantasy setting and has no trouble including guns in it.

If people want forgotten realm settings and its other derivatives they should demand them, BG3 is one for example. However the argument that there cannot be a fantasy setting with guns in it, or that guns are immediately violating concept of fantasy, or that renaissance doesn't belong in fantasy and shouldn't be made are demonstrably false. That's what was being discussed and that's what you responded to, not that people demanded forgotten realms and didn't get forgotten realms.

Here is the thread that was linked in that discussion:

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60265-please-no-guns/

Here is the exact quote for your convenience:

Obsidian, if you want guns, make a Fallout-inspired game (which I believe you are involved with in Wasteland 2). Stick to fantasy and leave guns in the steampunk, post-apoc type games. Please.

 

[whydoibother]

That's why I said there's been a decline, but now compare that to the company that made Baldur's Gate 2 tripping over their dicks for almost a decade making Mass Effect: Loldromeda and whatever the hell Anthem was.

Obsidian released a pretty complicated isometric RPG just a few years ago and then threw in a surprise turn-based mode post-launch. Like, that's pretty cool! It's not complete sellout husk territory, not yet.

Do you think there's a "deep state" situation in RPG studios, where the few public leads can quit the studio and it still keeps its culture and ability?
Or is it that you cull the elites/rulers and the whole thing devolves into garbage?

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

When it comes to Bioware I think the departure of Brent Knowles and to a lesser extent that of James Ohlen were probably the most precipitous factors in the decline of Bioware's output. It seems like the Docs were relatively decent managers as well so I'm sure it didn't help when they left, but the drop in quality that occurred as soon as Knowles left is pretty steep.

 

[KateMicucci]

Case in point. Warhammer is not traditional fantasy, is sci-fantasy. Which implies from the beginning a focus on themes about technology and its effects on the world. Fans of that genre have no reason to be upset or don't expect those points.

He's talking about the (old) Warhammer Fantasy setting, not Warhammer 40k.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Reminder that a large portion of Chris’ contribution to NV base game was cut (Ulysses) for being too much content to implement and test with the dev timetable present.

And this recurred during PoE's development.

 

[Fedora Master]

At no point in Poolars development did anyone say "Okay, that's enough text".

 

[whydoibother]

At no point in Poolars development did anyone say "Okay, that's enough text".

But someone did say "Okay, now lets re-write all of this text in ye olden english".

 

[gurugeorge]

At no point in Poolars development did anyone say "Okay, that's enough text".

But someone did say "Okay, now lets re-write all of this text in ye olden english".

Welsh. I think part of the problem is that Welsh is kind of an uncharismatic language to most people, all those "w"s are kind of unreadable to the glance. The Occitan inflections in PoE2 are much more charming and evocative.

They'd probably have done better to go with another old minority language that's got more instant readability.

 

[FreeKaner]

None of Pillars problems in regard to its writing has anything to do with their weird linguistics experiments.

 

[Delterius]

i can sympathize with people who like forgotten realms

you mean pure garbage

If you can look at the setting of Baldur's Gate and ask for more of that, then you're piglet looking for more slop. Simple as.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Yeah I noticed the Welsh / Celtic influence. I appreciate the attempt, but it did make trying to read or remember the terms an absolute bastard.
Welsh is...not an easy language for most.

 

[whydoibother]

At no point in Poolars development did anyone say "Okay, that's enough text".

But someone did say "Okay, now lets re-write all of this text in ye olden english".

Welsh. I think part of the problem is that Welsh is kind of an uncharismatic language to most people, all those "w"s are kind of unreadable to the glance. The Occitan inflections in PoE2 are much more charming and evocative.

They'd probably have done better to go with another old minority language that's got more instant readability.

Prince of Nothing trilogy put in the effort to have character names match their culture, but the end result is that my inner monologue invented nicknames for them, because I sure as fuck am not vocalizing Cnaiür urs Skiötha in my head during an action scene.

 

[gurugeorge]

At no point in Poolars development did anyone say "Okay, that's enough text".

But someone did say "Okay, now lets re-write all of this text in ye olden english".

Welsh. I think part of the problem is that Welsh is kind of an uncharismatic language to most people, all those "w"s are kind of unreadable to the glance. The Occitan inflections in PoE2 are much more charming and evocative.

They'd probably have done better to go with another old minority language that's got more instant readability.

Prince of Nothing trilogy put in the effort to have character names match their culture, but the end result is that my inner monologue invented nicknames for them, because I sure as fuck am not vocalizing Cnaiür urs Skiötha in my head during an action scene.

I think that for English speakers and readers, grammar quirks from other languages and transliterations of pecularities can work quite well and can be evocative, but using too many unfamiliar characters just puts people off (you can have one or two here and there, but there were far too many in PoE1 for sure).

Jack Vance was a past master at having evocative names for people and things, and he tended to spell his weird names out in plain English and very rarely used letters not found in it. Even if you have a sprinkling of the Slavic type of "sz" combinations (which Vance used a fair bit), that's more readable in English than something with a weird diacritical mark or whatever.

 

[whydoibother]

Jack Vance was a past master at having evocative names for people and things, and he tended to spell his weird names out in plain English and very rarely used letters not found in it. Even if you have a sprinkling of the Slavic type of "sz" combinations (which Vance used a fair bit), that's more readable in English than something with a weird diacritical mark or whatever.

Alusz Iphigenia Eperje-Tokay

• Tokaj is a historic wine region in the northeast of Hungary, about 40 miles from the county capital Miskolc
  
• Eper means strawberry, and -je is the possessive suffix, so "eperje" means "the strawberry of him/her/it"
  
• Alusz is not so unequivocal. There is a verb in Hungarian "alusz-ik" meaning "to sleep" (lit. "he sleeps"). The old form "aluszik" has been replaced by the modern "alszik", but the root "alusz" is still used in the adjective "alusz-ékony", meaning "sleepy".
• Iphigenia, of course, was a princess, the daughter of Agamemnon and Klytaimnestra, who was sacrificed in Aulis by her father to appease the winds blowing from the northeast, preventing the Greek fleet from sailing to Troy. Alusz, "sleepy", in connection with "princess" : The Sleeping Princess?

Not sure how palatable that is for Anglo tongues, and not sure what percentage of readers would catch the magyar lore.

 

[gurugeorge]

Jack Vance was a past master at having evocative names for people and things, and he tended to spell his weird names out in plain English and very rarely used letters not found in it. Even if you have a sprinkling of the Slavic type of "sz" combinations (which Vance used a fair bit), that's more readable in English than something with a weird diacritical mark or whatever.

Alusz Iphigenia Eperje-Tokay

• Tokaj is a historic wine region in the northeast of Hungary, about 40 miles from the county capital Miskolc
  
• Eper means strawberry, and -je is the possessive suffix, so "eperje" means "the strawberry of him/her/it"
  
• Alusz is not so unequivocal. There is a verb in Hungarian "alusz-ik" meaning "to sleep" (lit. "he sleeps"). The old form "aluszik" has been replaced by the modern "alszik", but the root "alusz" is still used in the adjective "alusz-ékony", meaning "sleepy".
• Iphigenia, of course, was a princess, the daughter of Agamemnon and Klytaimnestra, who was sacrificed in Aulis by her father to appease the winds blowing from the northeast, preventing the Greek fleet from sailing to Troy. Alusz, "sleepy", in connection with "princess" : The Sleeping Princess?

Not sure how palatable that is for Anglo tongues, and not sure what percentage of readers would catch the magyar lore.

It's evocative, exotic-sounding, posh-sounding and readable for an English speaker. Vance definitely favoured Eastern European lifts, but there are examples of lifts from other languages too. (e.g. The Languages of Pao, "Pao" being an East-Asian sounding word, sort of Chinese-sounding.)

From Vance's biography, one gets the impression that he was very widely-traveled and enjoyed visiting all different parts of the world. That's probably where he picked up sounds and words that triggered imagery, etc., and used them later in his works.

 

[Delterius]

'Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz' is apparently more readable than 'fampyr'

 

[whydoibother]

Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz is apparently more readable than 'fampyr'

Гжегож Бжечишчикйевич should drop the Latin alphabet, which is unsuitable for spelling his language.

 

[Fedora Master]

No, the problem with the writing wasn't the Welsh. Cope.

 

[gurugeorge]

'Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz' is apparently more readable than 'fampyr'

Is that a name used by Vance?

Btw, I recently came across a doozy from Polish. The village where Tadeusz Kosciusko (the Pole who fought the the American war of independend) was born was Mereczowszczyzna.

Which I make out to be Meh-reh-chofsh-chiz-na.

 

[whydoibother]

'Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz' is apparently more readable than 'fampyr'

Is that a name used by Vance?

"In a particularly famous scene, Dolas is questioned by a German-speaking Gestapo officer in Austria and answers that his name is "Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz"; the officer gets increasingly frustrated trying to write the fictitious Polish name."