They aren't only responsible for the narrative (which was awful in both games)
A problem here is that a good idea for a story doesn't mean it's a good idea for a story when implemented.
I haven't played the second, but the first was ultimately about getting no real answers, no real resolution, touching on the sense of nihilism that isn't the kind that chews the scenery in bitterness or contempt at life, but melancholy loss as no meaning to life when meaning seems to be the big thing we seek.
I can think of that as a neat idea, I could say it's a neat idea for a game, you know, the medium where meaning is massive relative to other mediums and so many revolve around saving the world and protecting things like meaning in life, if only it's a sense of progression. Wouldn't it be awesome to subvert games but having the game be about unanswered questions and unfulfilled longing?
It could be.... only those things aren't fun. Games are an entertaining medium
and an interactive one meant to grab your attention more than most and infusing your players with indifference make them not want to play. I know because I dropped the game after doing Sagani's quest and predicted the ending once it became clear her mentor reincarnated into an animal she was now looking for after completing Eder's, Kana's and Aloth's quests and got the same fucking ending tailored to each.
It may be novel to subvert and leave things unresolved with people resigned to never knowing, it could even be good as people seem to like movies like Melancholia, but people won't like it in a game they dedicate tens of hours over God knows how many days, weeks and months playing.
Your post should be sent back in time to Obsidian's office in 2012.
No matter how you look at it, the opening to Pillars is weak. It's not memorable and save for Thaos' brief appaerance in the end it has nothing to do with the rest of the world. The caravan was, from what I remember, just random people emigrating to America Dyrwood because they wanted work. The faction of native elves protecting the ruins never featured again from what I recall. The biawac soul-storm was just some random thing that happened once, wasn't it? Then there's the temporary companions that was a really dumb move. And the generic lizardmen trash mobs that had nothing to with the main plot whatsoever.
The annoying thing for me is the typical loaded intro where everything's on display that is then largely dropped once out of the starting area whether it's for lack of resources or simply to impress the reviewers who won't play beyond it doesn't matter.
It wasn't great, but I enjoyed picking your background shit and then seeing the ques to use it in dialogue afterwards come up. After the intro those dropped off with the only consistent ones being the demeanor emotes or whatever, which given that I picked a stoic, taciturn Barbarian as mine resulted in just a ton of "Glowers silently" options coming up in dialogue.
Agreed. I liked both games, but I have no interest in the world. I disliked the god nonsense in the first game, and was tired to death by it by the second game.
I like the Eothas stuff, at least as far as the first game. I like how things turn out that the companions you have from the war in the first game eventually come to realize they picked the wrong side of the war and he was what he stated to be without an ulterior motive. He came to help everyone and was killed due to the mechainations of the other gods. Eder's brother was right and Eder's choices that led him to oppose Eothas reveal him to be an apostate in the wrong while him thinking his brother was a fool is turned on its head.
Now if they had been the main focus of a setting based around the legacy of the Saint's War it could have been good, but even the Eothas focused sequel was going to be submerged in the rest of PoEs setting and screw with it.
I think FO:NV's opening hook is overrated. Which isn't to say that it's not a better opening than PoE's, but I think the people who view it as this, like, major thing that totally MAKES the game are getting it wrong.
I mean I can easily imagine an Obsidian isometric RPG that starts with you getting killed and then waking up at some healer's abode with lots of dialogue and people going "Wtf is this shit, I'm not invested". That's not really what it's about.
I think it's the events that happen after the opening that sell FO:NV. Encountering the game's first factions, organizing the townsfolk of Goodspring against the Powder Gangers, liberating Primm, participating in the NCR raid on the prison that visibly changes the balance of power in the world, all within the first hours of the game. THAT'S fucking cool.
That wasn't the hook for me, I couldn't have cared less for being shot.
The hook for me was hearing Ron Perlman continuing the history of the US Southwest after Fallout 2 with enough names and settings from Van Buren to feel like Fallout was back on course after Bethesda's meddling.
