Interview Feargus Urquhart confirms Pillars of Eternity 2 in development, plus a new Cain/Boyarsky game

[SausageInYourFace]

Imma try The Book of the New Sun next. Maybe it won't suck so hard.

It won't. It is as literary as it gets for genre fiction.

 

[Infinitron]

About the expansion: it's a shame but it seems The White March was not a financial success for Obsidian. Feargus is talking from a business perspective here. Traditional expansion packs are dying out, you can thank the assholes who invented DLCs and the retards who keep buying/defending them.

Poor sales of White March also might have something to do with the fact that the game was pretty underwhelming and very few people actually finished it. Its pretty logical that people who dont care about finishing the game care even less about an expansion.

You might be right about people not wanting expansion packs for lengthy oldschool RPGs that they don't finish, but that isn't unique to PoE, which has a higher finished rate than D:OS.

 

[markec]

About the expansion: it's a shame but it seems The White March was not a financial success for Obsidian. Feargus is talking from a business perspective here. Traditional expansion packs are dying out, you can thank the assholes who invented DLCs and the retards who keep buying/defending them.

Poor sales of White March also might have something to do with the fact that the game was pretty underwhelming and very few people actually finished it. Its pretty logical that people who dont care about finishing the game care even less about an expansion.

You might be right about people not wanting expansion packs for lengthy oldschool RPGs that they don't finish, but that isn't unique to PoE, which has a higher finished rate than D:OS.

Correct me if Im wrong but both games have pretty bad completion rates, having a bit better finished rate then a game with poor one is not much of a praise. PoE was a game that only few people beside Obsidian fanboys continued playing or talking about it after the whole hype died down. That number seems very small if White March was a flop as people say. Also its not like the bad press about splitting the expansion in half did them any favors.

 

[Infinitron]

I'm not trying to praise anything. I am saying there might be a reason why D:OS and Wasteland 2 didn't even get expansion packs - because they wouldn't have done well either and the developers knew it.

PoE was a game that only few people beside Obsidian fanboys continued playing or talking about it after the whole hype died down.

lol

 

[markec]

I'm not trying to praise anything. I am saying there might be a reason why D:OS and Wasteland 2 didn't get any expansion packs - because they wouldn't have done well either and the developers knew it.

Well in my opinion both D:OS and W2 were also pretty underwhelming games. My logic is that underwhelming games like D:OS, W2 and PoE that dont sell multi million copies and few people finish dont have the market to sell expansion packs. As you say Larian and Inxile probably realized it, maybe Obsidian did too but they promised expansion and had to make it.

lol

I stand by my comment.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Numenara has always looked suspiciously original

good joke

 

[himmy]

Imma try The Book of the New Sun next. Maybe it won't suck so hard.

It won't. It is as literary as it gets for genre fiction.

Sure, if by that you mean that it's the work of a guy who knows nobody wants to read his undergrad-level attempt at discussing philosophy so he hides it under a shallow and boring fantasy/sci-fi setting, so "i'm really smart cause my mom tells me so" genre fiction fans can swoon at how 2deep4me it is. Might just be the single most boring and poorly written fantasy series I ever tried reading.

 

[Prime Junta]

Imma try The Book of the New Sun next. Maybe it won't suck so hard.

It won't. It is as literary as it gets for genre fiction.

Sure, if by that you mean that it's the work of a guy who knows nobody wants to read his undergrad-level attempt at discussing philosophy so he hides it under a shallow and boring fantasy/sci-fi setting, so "i'm really smart cause my mom tells me so" genre fiction fans can swoon at how 2deep4me it is. Might just be the single most boring and poorly written fantasy series I ever tried reading.

Well I have a soft spot for undergrad philosophy in fantasy settings. Guess that's why I love Planescape: Torment so much.

 

[Lady_Error]

(Although T:ToN is pretty much Dying Earth, I suppose...)

Numenera is so Dying Earth it's not even funny.

I finally got around to reading Jack Vance last week. Two take-home revelations I got from it.

One, it's no-good, terribad, awful writing. Swing a cat on the Internet and you'll hit better fanfic.

Two, Numenera is completely cribbed from it. Like, the entire setting, with just the names changed. It's all there. Sometimes they didn't even bother changing the names, like The Beyond for example. I could start listing things but fuck, it'd be a really long list.

I thought Numenera at least had originality going for it, as settings go, but it doesn't even have that. It's a bad re-interpretation of a bad fantasy setting, with the only change of note the replacement of raging misogyny with raging inclooooooosivity.

Imma try The Book of the New Sun next. Maybe it won't suck so hard. But seriously, this is supposed to be a fantasy classic, spoken of with the same reverence as... oh, Fritz Leiber, Ursula K. LeGuin, or even Robert E. fucking Howard?

After reading all 5 Demon Princes books I was disappointed with Dying Earth. It has some nice ideas, especially when it goes into scifi territory, but the rest is pretty much bad fantasy. The Demon Princes starts out slow, but the series as a whole is the best scifi I have read. The Last Castle is pretty good too, but short.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Well in my opinion both D:OS and W2 were also pretty underwhelming games. My logic is that underwhelming games like D:OS, W2 and PoE that dont sell multi million copies and few people finish dont have the market to sell expansion packs.

I think the fact is that only a minority of players finish long RPGs. Relatedly, Dragonfall has <20% completion rate I believe (iirc), and that game is short.

Unless you equate underwhelming and "don't sell multi million copies", in which case there'll never be an oldschool-style RPG that isn't underwhelming.

 

[markec]

Well in my opinion both D:OS and W2 were also pretty underwhelming games. My logic is that underwhelming games like D:OS, W2 and PoE that dont sell multi million copies and few people finish dont have the market to sell expansion packs.

I think the fact is that only a minority of players finish long RPGs. Relatedly, Dragonfall has <20% completion rate I believe (iirc), and that game is short.

Unless you equate underwhelming and "don't sell multi million copies", in which case there'll never be an oldschool-style RPG that isn't underwhelming.

By underwhelming I mean that they are mediocre games. People usually dont buy expansions for mediocre games they dont finish. I bet much of the PoE sales were due hype of Obsidian making a Baldurs Gate spiritual successor, everyone was hyped for their storytelling, BG like gameplay fueled by beautiful nostalgic screenshots, and many like me were disappointed with end result. But we are here talking about pure numbers not personal opinion about the game. Its logical to assume that pretty much only people who finished the game would buy expansion and even then not all of them would be interested. So a game that sold around a million copies at best has small percentage that marks possible customers, the more owners the more possible sales you have. Thats why logically games that sell multi million copies have a bigger chance of returning profits of a expansion. Of course you need to look at the cost of producing the expansion and it seems to me that Obsidian gave a lot of effort and money to make as best possible product. They also produced some bad publicity with cutting it in half but i doubt that had major influence on the sales but it also didnt help, in my opinion most people just didnt care.

 

[Sensuki]

I think the Enhanced Editions of WL2 and D:OS (and possibly SRD as well) were a lot more successful in comparison yeah?

 

[markec]

I think the Enhanced Editions of WL2 and D:OS (and possibly SRD as well) were a lot more successful in comparison yeah?

Personally I think that EE versions of WL2 and D:OS are slightly better then original but still not something I would call good games. SRD on the other hand I very much enjoyed despite its faults.

 

[Infinitron]

That's kind of an apples and oranges comparison. You can look at Pillars of Eternity after the release of the expansions and call that an "Enhanced Edition". PoE sold pretty good numbers after the expansions and Patch 2.0/3.0 were released, probably making more money than the expansions themselves did.

The Shadowrun games are mediocre sellers compared to WL2, D:OS and PoE, selling the same or fewer copies despite being much cheaper. They're not in the same league.

 

[m_s0]

I hope the new Cain/Boyarsky game is literally "something completely new" with their own setting rather than based on existing IP.

So, a safe non-copyright infringing knock-off of an existing setting, then

I hope they have enough stability for a setting that hasn't been done to death at this point. We'll see. Anything lead by Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky has my attention at the very least. And I hope that if they do come up with something creative it won't end up getting sacrificed to promote Fig.

How successful is Fig, anyway?

 

[Crooked Bee]

markec

Poor sales of White March also might have something to do with the fact that the game was pretty underwhelming and very few people actually finished it.

Your logic seemed, to me, to be that few people finished it because (you thought) it was underwhelming. Whereas in fact, few people finish video games, and long RPGs especially; for which purpose I referred to Dragonfall's completion rate, which is very low for such a short game.

But even if your logic was purely about numbers - "that pretty much only people who finished the game would buy expansion" - then no oldschool RPG expansion can ever be profitable a priori, since no oldschool-style RPG will ever sell more than "a million copies at best", nor will more than a minority of players finish it.

 

[LESS T_T]

Now I remember this. From the Reddit AMA for Eternity Kickstarter: https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1yy4v7/we_are_obsidian_eternity_team_ask_us_anything/cfotz7q

I know Chris Avellone has said he would love to make an RPG out of The Wire, but are there any books, films, etc that the rest of the team would be interested in adapting into a CRPG?

I think Roger Zelazny's "Lord Of Light" would make a great CRPG.

A possibility, I guess.

 

[markec]

That's kind of an apples and oranges comparison. You can look at Pillars of Eternity after the release of the expansions and call that an "Enhanced Edition". PoE sold pretty good numbers after the expansions and Patch 2.0/3.0 were released, likely making more money than the expansions themselves did.

I do wonder how many of those sales were on discounts, seeing how its a usual practice to discount the main game when expansions are released.

The Shadowrun games are mediocre sellers compared to WL2, D:OS and PoE, selling the same or fewer copies despite being much cheaper. They're not in the same league.

Its true they are not in the same league seeing how Harebrained Schemes are a small company with little experience in making RPGs and little marketing power. I do think their games have a large profit margin due reuse of engine and assets not to mention despite everything Dragonfall was better game then any of mentioned.

markec

Your logic seemed, to me, to be that few people finished it because (you thought) it was underwhelming. Whereas in fact, few people finish video games, and long RPGs especially; for which purpose I referred to Dragonfall's completion rate, which is very low for such a short game.

I said few people finishing PoE was reason why White March flopped and game being underwhelming is one of the reasons why that is, not only one or the biggest reason why.

But even if your logic was purely about numbers - "that pretty much only people who finished the game would buy expansion" - then no oldschool RPG expansion can ever be profitable a priori, since no oldschool-style RPG will ever sell more than "a million copies at best".

The problem is that old school RPGs today will struggle to sell just million copies, it would take nothing short of miracle to sell multi million. Maybe if we get a actually good game (unlike PoE) that get praised by all, gets massive amount of marketing and is accessible for large audience, then maybe. In the old times when RPGs like Baldurs Gate could sell massive numbers and development costs were much lower, it was easy decision to make a expansion.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

The only reason Obsidian even made the expansion is because they sheepishly promised it on Kickstarter. It was blatantly obvious that it won't sell. I hope it at least broke even.

Which is a shame really, because WM wipes the floor with the main game. It has superior level design, better encounters, main plot is actually coherent and engaging from start to finish. The dungeons might not have 15 levels, but they wipe the floor with anything Od Nua has to offer. Playing WM made me realize just how much of a rush job base game was.

Of course a lot of the credit goes to patch 3.0 which makes the entire game a whole different bag of dicks.

 

[Trashos]

I think Roger Zelazny's "Lord Of Light" would make a great CRPG.

A possibility, I guess.

False gods and attitudes against authority? I thought they made this game already.

 

[Infinitron]

Man, we don't even know how much the old expansions sold back in the day. The Baldur's Gate games were re-released in numerous compilations that included the expansions and I get the impression that they sold a lot of those over the years. There might not have been a lot of people who actually bought the expansions standalone.

They were pretty low budget I think. Tales of the Sword Coast took less time to develop and release than just the first part of White March.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Man, we don't even know how much the old expansions sold back in the day. The Baldur's Gate games were re-released in numerous compilations that included the expansions and I get the impression that they sold a lot of those over the years. There might not have been a lot of people who actually bought the expansions standalone.

Everybody was making them, so they were profitable.

They were pretty low budget I think. Tales of the Sword Coast took less time to develop and release than just the first part of White March.

With how efficient BG pipeline was, they could probably fart out entire PoE in a month.

 

[markec]

Man, we don't even know how much the old expansions sold back in the day. The Baldur's Gate games were re-released in numerous compilations that included the expansions and I get the impression that they sold a lot of those over the years. There might not have been a lot of people who actually bought the expansions standalone.

They were pretty low budget I think. Tales of the Sword Coast took less time to develop and release than just the first part of White March.

Thats the point, Baldurs Gates were a hit mainstream games and both of them had an expansions that, as said, had very small development time and cost.

How many more old school RPGs had expansions since then, since that market got much smaller and development costs got bigger.

PoE didnt have the numbers to make a profitable major expansion, but they made it because they promised they will, thats it.

 

[cherry blossom]

The Dying Earth sub-genre has been seriously ignored by crpg creators so far.

Funny, when you consider how much influence Vance has had on rpgs in general.

Not strictly fantasy, not strictly sci-fi, not strictly post-apocalyptic.

It's a wonder to me why nobody has done it yet.

(Although T:ToN is pretty much Dying Earth, I suppose...)

Sign me up for this^

Post release support is a plus for people who like chewing on turds and for developers' groupies.

Good and stable releases done on schedule are for people who actually care about what they are playing and have invested their backer's pledge, time & energy to playtest.

I'd rather not play a buggy mess in the first place, thanks.

Somebody wake this chipmunk up to the realities of game development.

 

[SausageInYourFace]

Might just be the single most boring and poorly written fantasy series I ever tried reading.

What fantasy/sci-fi do you like? What fantasy/scifi do you think is more literary and/or 2deep4me? Honestly curious.