Eternity Josh Sawyer reflects on his failures with Pillars of Eternity

[Readher]

Just remembered this gem, thought I'd share.

For those who don't know, the original pasta was about Harry Potter:

Spoiler

What did you expect from one of the dullest franchise in the history of movie franchises. Each episode following the boy wizard and his pals from Hogwarts Academy as they fight assorted villains has been indistinguishable from the others. Aside from the gloomy imagery, the series’ only consistency has been its lack of excitement and ineffective use of special effects, all to make magic unmagical, to make action seem inert.

Perhaps the die was cast when Rowling vetoed the idea of Spielberg directing the series; she made sure the series would never be mistaken for a work of art that meant anything to anybody, just ridiculously profitable cross-promotion for her books. The Harry Potter series might be anti-Christian (or not), but it’s certainly the anti-James Bond series in its refusal of wonder, beauty and excitement. No one wants to face that fact. Now, thankfully, they no longer have to.

>a-at least the books were good though
"No!"
The writing is dreadful; the book was terrible. As I read, I noticed that every time a character went for a walk, the author wrote instead that the character "stretched his legs."

I began marking on the back of an envelope every time that phrase was repeated. I stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times. I was incredulous. Rowling's mind is so governed by cliches and dead metaphors that she has no other style of writing. Later I read a lavish, loving review of Harry Potter by the same Stephen King. He wrote something to the effect of, "If these kids are reading Harry Potter at 11 or 12, then when they get older they will go on to read Stephen King." And he was quite right. He was not being ironic. When you read "Harry Potter" you are, in fact, trained to read Stephen King.

And no, I have no idea why it's accompanied by Brosnan's photo, but it's like that literally every single time someone posts that pasta - always with a black and white Brosnan pic.

 

[DalekFlay]

You really can't blame Josh for sticking to bland fantasy formula honestly. The Kickstarter for PoE appeared to be driven by Baldur's Gate nostalgia, and studios of all types have it in their heads that "weird" settings don't sell. Even on here there's always plenty of people bitching when an RPG setting strays too far from D&D/Tolkien. Don't get me wrong, I thought PoE was bland too in a lot of ways, but I think Tigranes is right that it's more an issue of writing and events that unfold, rather than setting. I'd also guess a lot of people thought they wanted a Baldur's Gate nostalgia trip that was very similar and then played it and realized they didn't want that at all.

Honestly though, now that I've played Divinity OS, I feel the need to point out that sales mean jack when it comes to quality. I'd rather play PoE ten more times than replay Divinity OS once. Its sequel might have sold a million times better, but that has more to do with bright visuals, whimsical writing, turn-based combat and co-op play than it does the quality of anything people bash about PoE.

 

[JarlFrank]

it's a design failure to generate interesting situations on-stage.

Nail on the head right there.
I'll always remember Donn Throgg staging a riot with orc factory works in Tarantum, the general position of orcs in the city, the conversation with Bill Gates Gilbert Bates about orcs.
And that's just Tarant. Without getting into the tech vs magic stuff between Dernholm and Tarant, the politicking in Caladon, or the fact that gnomes are Jews.
I remember very little of Deadfire.

And the socio economic difficulties of lower races is nothing new, irl or in fiction. It's been done to death. But it was done well in Arcanum, with real examples in its world.
Fucking show, don't tell.

Yeah the way Arcanum handled world reactivity was amazing. Tarant would even change and add new content at different stages of the game, with the orcish labor strike only popping up later in the game. The gnomes being evil jews planning to rule the entire world with their guile wasn't loredumped on you, but you got to experience a conspiracy first hand with the Half Ogre Island quest. And then there was the persuasion master quest where you had to go to Caladon and convince the king to join the Unified Kingdom in an alliance treaty, and you were encouraged to make him agree to points that would put Caladon in an inferior position, transferring much of its power and economy to Tarant. When you know what the gnomes are like, it's obvious that they're trying to gain control over Caladon the same way they gained control over Tarant, but it's never spelled out to you.

Oh yeah and if you wanna live dangerously, you can do a quest for someone who wants to see Caladon's king dead. If you perform the assassination, the entire fucking city will become hostile towards you, but you can still finish the game.

There's nothing of that in the PoE games. You hear a lot about this faction and that faction and get pages of lore thrown at you, but when you ask "Ok cool can I actually do something related to that lore stuff?" you get cockblocked. The lore doesn't exist to be interacted with, it just... exists. You can't even play with it. Fucking lame.

 

[jac8awol]

Personally, I didn't feel that stuff like Vailians being too 'Italian' was the fundamental issue with POE/Deadfire setting. It may not be the best fantasy setting or culture ever made, far from it, but there was plenty of interesting stuff in there to work with. The far more fundamental, recurring problem in both games was that they couldn't work out how to leverage what they had for interesting dilemmas and situations that actually occur in the game itself.

I've thumped on about this multiple times in the past, but basically, you hear about Waidwen, you don't get to ever do jack shit around it. Same goes for the POE1 Deionarra. Same goes for colonial tensions in the Deadfire. Why isn't there a massive native riot in Neketaka while you are there, a riot which quickly devolves into finger-pointing and deception? Why do you do all these quests for the different factions, but you never get to actually screw over one faction in a truly decisive way and see how that changes the fate of the islands? Why isn't there some kind of Neketaka council election where you can see the results of your influence, or an instance where the Rauatai actually take over a Vailian island and impose different rules and hang some people on a stake? You spent all this time on a world map and a ship and stuff but like you don't even get to see cosmetically a faction expand and get more ships or plant their flags anywhere.

Deadfire doesn't necessarily need a more creative/imaginative/awesomely designed Huana/Vailians/etc. This isn't grand literature, there's plenty of sufficiently interesting shit in that lore to pull out for a fun game. The history nerdisms in POE aren't the culprit, it's a design failure to generate interesting situations on-stage.

I think Sawyer said it somewhere recently, he dislikes making things canon. I'd imagine that's a roundabout way of saying his team had all these grand ideas of making big sequels to these massively successful games, and they didn't want to paint themselves into a corner. They were saving all these big dramatic events for the next big production..... that will never come.
It's like that other thread on here, biggest mysteries in dragon age that you want revealed in the next sequel. No one cares now. They had their chance but they kept looking to the horizon while ignoring the shit on their shoes.

 

[Sailor Woedica]

I think Sawyer said it somewhere recently, he dislikes making things canon. I'd imagine that's a roundabout way of saying his team had all these grand ideas of making big sequels to these massively successful games, and they didn't want to paint themselves into a corner. They were saving all these big dramatic events for the next big production..... that will never come.

Um they're making Avowed sis.

 

[jac8awol]

I think Sawyer said it somewhere recently, he dislikes making things canon. I'd imagine that's a roundabout way of saying his team had all these grand ideas of making big sequels to these massively successful games, and they didn't want to paint themselves into a corner. They were saving all these big dramatic events for the next big production..... that will never come.

Um they're making Avowed sis.

Ha yeah, you know what I mean though. Doubling down on their shitty ideas and then looking all confused on release when people don't buy them. Alienating the ones who were interested at the start, but got pushed further away with each release. Can't wait to play First Person Spellcaster: Call of Durance.

 

[Ol' Willy]

If you perform the assassination, the entire fucking city will become hostile towards you, but you can still finish the game.

And if you help Don Trogg the entire Tarant will turn hostile. You can become persona non-grata in two biggest cities of the game!

Man, stop this shit, you make me want to replay Arcanum sooner that I planned.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

you make me want to replay Arcanum sooner that I planned.

just remember how shit the combat is, that helps me every time

 

[Ol' Willy]

just remember how shit the combat is, that helps me every time

I like Arcanum combat. It is fun. The only game when you can create the most nonsensical build and still dominate. Like, Mage-tank using Hammer of the Lost Time - that was awesome.

 

[DalekFlay]

I think Sawyer said it somewhere recently, he dislikes making things canon. I'd imagine that's a roundabout way of saying his team had all these grand ideas of making big sequels to these massively successful games, and they didn't want to paint themselves into a corner. They were saving all these big dramatic events for the next big production..... that will never come. It's like that other thread on here, biggest mysteries in dragon age that you want revealed in the next sequel. No one cares now. They had their chance but they kept looking to the horizon while ignoring the shit on their shoes.

Dragon Age Inquisition was a big sales success, Bioware's biggest selling game at that time. Not sure where this idea of it being a failure that ruined the series comes from, other than just the Codex opinion that the game sucks (which I share mostly, but it means zippo). People will generally be excited to see the presumed Tevinter/Solas stuff come to a head in 4.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I think Sawyer said it somewhere recently, he dislikes making things canon. I'd imagine that's a roundabout way of saying his team had all these grand ideas of making big sequels to these massively successful games, and they didn't want to paint themselves into a corner. They were saving all these big dramatic events for the next big production..... that will never come. It's like that other thread on here, biggest mysteries in dragon age that you want revealed in the next sequel. No one cares now. They had their chance but they kept looking to the horizon while ignoring the shit on their shoes.

Dragon Age Inquisition was a big sales success, Bioware's biggest selling game at that time. Not sure where this idea of it being a failure that ruined the series comes from, other than just the Codex opinion that the game sucks (which I share mostly, but it means zippo). People will generally be excited to see the presumed Tevinter/Solas stuff come to a head in 4.

Codex has a strong opinion that DA:I sold poorly for some reason. The amount of DLC it received(ranging from small to full expansion pack sized) would suggest otherwise.

 

[Tyranicon]

I think Sawyer said it somewhere recently, he dislikes making things canon. I'd imagine that's a roundabout way of saying his team had all these grand ideas of making big sequels to these massively successful games, and they didn't want to paint themselves into a corner. They were saving all these big dramatic events for the next big production..... that will never come. It's like that other thread on here, biggest mysteries in dragon age that you want revealed in the next sequel. No one cares now. They had their chance but they kept looking to the horizon while ignoring the shit on their shoes.

Dragon Age Inquisition was a big sales success, Bioware's biggest selling game at that time. Not sure where this idea of it being a failure that ruined the series comes from, other than just the Codex opinion that the game sucks (which I share mostly, but it means zippo). People will generally be excited to see the presumed Tevinter/Solas stuff come to a head in 4.

Codex has a strong opinion that DA:I sold poorly for some reason. The amount of DLC it received(ranging from small to full expansion pack sized) would suggest otherwise.

Let's be honest, a lot of games the codex dislikes sold well. If you want commercial success, it'd be wise to compile a list of everything the codex likes and do the complete opposite.

Substance never sells anymore anyways.

 

[DalekFlay]

Codex has a strong opinion that DA:I sold poorly for some reason. The amount of DLC it received(ranging from small to full expansion pack sized) would suggest otherwise.

Being Bioware's best selling game at the time according to EA, which was after KotOR and the Mass Effect trilogy released, is pretty telling.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I think Sawyer said it somewhere recently, he dislikes making things canon. I'd imagine that's a roundabout way of saying his team had all these grand ideas of making big sequels to these massively successful games, and they didn't want to paint themselves into a corner. They were saving all these big dramatic events for the next big production..... that will never come. It's like that other thread on here, biggest mysteries in dragon age that you want revealed in the next sequel. No one cares now. They had their chance but they kept looking to the horizon while ignoring the shit on their shoes.

Dragon Age Inquisition was a big sales success, Bioware's biggest selling game at that time. Not sure where this idea of it being a failure that ruined the series comes from, other than just the Codex opinion that the game sucks (which I share mostly, but it means zippo). People will generally be excited to see the presumed Tevinter/Solas stuff come to a head in 4.

Codex has a strong opinion that DA:I sold poorly for some reason. The amount of DLC it received(ranging from small to full expansion pack sized) would suggest otherwise.

Let's be honest, a lot of games the codex dislikes sold well. If you want commercial success, it'd be wise to compile a list of everything the codex likes and do the complete opposite.

Substance never sells anymore anyways.

Outside of Troika games this really isn't true, and Troika games generally sold poorly because of how buggy they were and the studio became known for releasing buggy games.

 

[Ol' Willy]

If you want commercial success, it'd be wise to compile a list of everything the codex likes and do the complete opposite.

Twitcher 3. Nuff said

 

[DalekFlay]

Twitcher 3. Nuff said

Witcher 3 shows you can please the Codex and mainstream console gamers at the same time with the power of tits and a well written story.

 

[prengle]

the abbreviated thread title on the front page of the forum is "Josh Sawyer reflects on his failure" and i thought that was mildly amusing. but not enough to exude a mild snort

 

[Tyranicon]

I think Sawyer said it somewhere recently, he dislikes making things canon. I'd imagine that's a roundabout way of saying his team had all these grand ideas of making big sequels to these massively successful games, and they didn't want to paint themselves into a corner. They were saving all these big dramatic events for the next big production..... that will never come. It's like that other thread on here, biggest mysteries in dragon age that you want revealed in the next sequel. No one cares now. They had their chance but they kept looking to the horizon while ignoring the shit on their shoes.

Dragon Age Inquisition was a big sales success, Bioware's biggest selling game at that time. Not sure where this idea of it being a failure that ruined the series comes from, other than just the Codex opinion that the game sucks (which I share mostly, but it means zippo). People will generally be excited to see the presumed Tevinter/Solas stuff come to a head in 4.

Codex has a strong opinion that DA:I sold poorly for some reason. The amount of DLC it received(ranging from small to full expansion pack sized) would suggest otherwise.

Let's be honest, a lot of games the codex dislikes sold well. If you want commercial success, it'd be wise to compile a list of everything the codex likes and do the complete opposite.

Substance never sells anymore anyways.

Outside of Troika games this really isn't true, and Troika games generally sold poorly because of how buggy they were and the studio became known for releasing buggy games.

I'm not sure which part of my post you're disagreeing with. Is it the substance never sells part? Look at Arcanum and PS:T sales compared their contemporaries. Having substance in your game, whether it's elegant systems, good writing, etc, takes loads of time and/or money. It's a crapshoot whether it works out or not. Having great style however (graphics, animations, premise, etc), is a much better indicator of potential success.

An example off the top of my head is actually not a RPG, but rather a platformer/reverse horror called Carrion. It has an interesting premise (you play as a tentacled horror) and good (pixel) graphics.

And that's it. The game has absolutely zero substance. The combat and "puzzles" are repetitive, mind-numbing chores, the abilities are not well thought out, tied to health, and honestly already pretty generic. There essentially is no story, no work spent on lore, or dialogue, or collectibles, whatever.

For 20$ it's fucking lame, but it sold hundreds of thousands of copies because of the premise alone. The same for hundreds of other games. And Carrion isn't even that bad of a game. You could find hundreds of other crap games on steam that sold better than [whatever indie/obscure RPG you really like]. It's honestly disheartening for RPG devs.

 

[DalekFlay]

For 20$ it's fucking lame, but it sold hundreds of thousands of copies because of the premise alone. The same for hundreds of other games. And Carrion isn't even that bad of a game. You could find hundreds of other crap games on steam that sold better than [whatever indie/obscure RPG you really like]. It's honestly disheartening for RPG devs.

Marketing flash, journalist shilling and an intriguing premise can make a mediocre game like that more popular than it deserves. However very few people would play a game they actively dislike. At the end of the day people enjoy wandering around pretty worlds doing banal checklist tasks and collecting flags, or else those wouldn't be the most popular games in the world no matter how much marketing and shilling they received. Transformers and Marvel movies wouldn't be the most popular movies in the world if people didn't like snarky jokes and CGI spectacle, no matter how much marketing you lavished on them. It is what it is.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

I thought this was already settled business? PoE2 didn't sell, because PoE1 was a hollowborn not-D&D/Forgotten Realms doppelganger with dissatisfying gimmicky mechanics. The franchise didn't get a second chance on their second game, because their first chance was botched. PoE2s sales was a reflection of PoE1s failure. No amount of post-postmortems can challenge that statement.

 

[Erebus]

Arcanum is overrated by the Codex hivemind in so many ways that I guess it's not surprising to see it mentioned here as an example.

Ah yes, its amazingly reactive setting ! Why, I remember the time when I slaughtered dozens of innocents in the streets of Tarant, in full daylight, yet nobody was ever sent to arrest me and I barely lost a few points of karma.

And I remember all the occasions where I had to make some seemingly important decisions that didn't actually change anything except for a tiny part of the epilogue.

And the many imaginative places, such as the elven city, the dwarven mines and the cemetery full of undead.

And the last part of the game, that made you fight Generic Evil Wizard #23904 and had nothing to do with any of the elements of the fucking setting.

 

[Roguey]

Troika games generally sold poorly because of how buggy they were

As Bethesda keeps proving, people will forgive bugs if they find the game enjoyable enough, and Troika didn't deliver that for the masses.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Troika games generally sold poorly because of how buggy they were

As Bethesda keeps proving, people will forgive bugs if they find the game enjoyable enough, and Troika didn't deliver that for the masses.

I agree with you, but what Bethesda games also provide which allow people to overlook many of the bugs is the modability of their games. I doubt that otherwise they'd be as succesful.

 

[Roguey]

I agree with you, but what Bethesda games also provide which allow people to overlook many of the bugs is the modability of their games. I doubt that otherwise they'd be as succesful.

The millions of console players know nothing of any mods.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

I agree with you, but what Bethesda games also provide which allow people to overlook many of the bugs is the modability of their games. I doubt that otherwise they'd be as succesful.

The millions of console players know nothing of any mods.

Well, console players are either casuals engaging in some good ol' consoooming or clinically retarded. Beyond their console exclusives, they probably just buy whatever's already popular with the PC crowd.