People News Josh Sawyer says he failed with Pillars II, would direct a third game if he can figure out why

[Black]

Normies want high fantasy.

Apparently normies want more Outer Worlds.

 

[Frozen]

He should try to rethink his strategy as a starting point.
I wanted to like pillows and play it but just couldn't go past shitting quest tutorial. Several times.
It was all so...uninteresting, done before (and better) so why should I play worse version of a game that I did 20y ago?
What im trying to say is...most of his perceived core demographics does not exist. Zoomers don't want BG clone because they don't know what BG is.
But more important, most of older gamers that played BG don't want it either, or one that do are too few to make it "a financial success".
It doesn't matter if Pillows were the best BG clone ever, it still wouldn't hit $$$$$$ mark.
That doesn't mean you cant make a good retro RPG (D:OS) but you have to be less lazy.

 

[Dr Schultz]

No offence, but you feel that way justbecause your idea of god/godhood comes from an Abrahamic religion.

You talk about me like you know me personally.
I'm a chemist and have studied theology and philosophy at a university so I have a MUCH broader world-view than the one you describe.
The work that most influenced me is CTMU.

Good to know (and interesting link by the way). But, your original post seems to imply the gods of Eora should be archived as a plot element because POE I established that are man made.


I don’t’ think this is the case, given the way the gods are intended in this particular setting.

The way the gods are handled in PoE lacks consistency. Like others have said, there's total dissonance regarding the deific and atheistic. Leaden Key's major motivation is keeping the secret that the gods are a mortal construct. Why? Because they know that the 'gods' will lose power/ be detroyed if people realize they're manmade. Seems like a very Abrahamic stance right there.

And then when you finally learn that secret, defeat Thaos and essentially have the gods at your mercy.... the 2nd game comes along and resets all of that, goes back to gods being sacred cows, and takes away your agency.

TLDR: If gods can be made, they can be unmade. Lookin at you, Eothas.

Honestly I can't see the inconsistency...
You are assuming that 1) Now that your watcher knows, he's willing to spit everything out (which isn't necessarily the case) 2) the rest of the world will accept the words of the watcher and reject the "false" gods accordingly (which is definitely unplausible)

The backstory of Thaos and the heretic elf is there precisely to show that this is not how things usually work when religion is involved... Changing a belief system is a quite "complicated" and long term affair.

To me, the second game, simply started with this premise: The gods are not what people think they are, but they are still very powerful being that can shake the world at their whim. Deal with that...

 

[Dr Schultz]

The lie is not the gods themselves. It's what people believe they are. The question posed by the game is: "Is it better to tell to the people that the gods are not what they believe (depriving said gods of their power in the process) or to endorse the lie because an ordered world is better then the alternative".

It's like picking between the Spanish Inquisition and the Religius Wars.

How exactly would that deprive them of their power?

Well, it seems pretty clear in the game that the gods draw their strength from people's believe and people follow the gods because they believe they are the only true gods. That's why Thaos tryed to keep the secret at all cost. right?

Wasn't that the entire point of the Engwithan machines?

Yes, but weren't the machines fueled by the souls of believers?

 

[Dr Schultz]

Speaking of Josh, specifically, it is clear that he is a clever man. Pretty well read and would no doubt make for a good chat about matters historical, sociological and philosophical.

The thing is, though, the games he makes shouldn't be vehicles for 'look how clever I am and how much I know' moments. To belabor the earlier point: Irenicus was a relatively simple villain at first glance. His motivation was hinted at during the prologue, and was then spelled out later. Let's sum him up in a sentence:

Vengeful, broken, angry man does mad things for power

The BG2 storyline has you follow in his wake and pick up the pieces he leaves behind, with your paths intersecting both directly (Prologue, Yoshimo/the Asylum) and indirectly (Bodhi, the Dark Elves) before the final confrontation. Each of those intersections gives you a bit more about who this villain is and what he wants.

Now try Thaos... I got through three quarters of POE1, without knowing anything about him beyond 'he can possess bodies' and 'he's old'. That's bullshit. Seriously, though, that's bullshit.

Then we get POE2, and you're conversing with the 'villain' from almost the get-go. Grand. Unfortunately, said villain is also essentially removed from the actual story until its very ending, at which point he is - of course - a plot device. Where's the satisfaction? There's nothing personal (or even really philosophical) in this. Just lame. POE1/2 take care to notice all the trees, and miss the forest entire.

This pretty much explains what doesn't work in Pillars main plot to me. It's not a matter of themes (interesting) or setting (competent). The weak part is the actual storytelling

 

[Tramboi]

I think it's the same issue with Grimrock. The second instalment is better but the first sold more than the real user base.

 

[Darkforge]

So, according to you guys, Pillars sold well because of nostalgia, so why, 4 years later, PoE 1 has almost the same amount of players that Deadfire has?

Also, atm PoE 1 has 557 players whilst Pathfinder has 1221. There is something good about PoE 1 we just need to find out what it is.

I wouldn't be surprised if potential new customers of Deadfire just buys the first game first because they think that you need to play trough the first game to important your history etc etc. Deadfire starts with you picking your actions in first game this has to be off-putting for new customer who is interested in story. So those players buy the first game and...... never advance past act 1

I am convinced this is the reason... I forced myself to finally play through POE. Imported a save into II, then the turn based mod came out for kingmaker and I have never gone back. I suspect many people saw the generally positive critical reception for Deadfire and got POE1 with the intention of playing through, but will never actually finish the first one

 

[l3loodAngel]

Josh dude you didn’t fail with POE 2, relax, you failed with POE 1.

For me being a non developer it’s very hard to understand how do you screw up a combat system like that. From the point of being able to get few NPCs fighting you run countless iterations of what’s fun and what’s challenging. Then you ask a part of your audience to try. If it works cool if it doesn’t go back to step one.

Oh and make a setting coherent, that also helps...

 

[luj1]

He failed with both in different ways. With PoE he failed conceptually. With PoE II he refused to fix core systems and added a ton of feature bloat. He focused on eye candy, cape physics, minigames, romances, exploding barrels and talking parrots.

 

[StaticSpine]

I think the main problem with PoE II is that the game isn't fun to play. The story isn't catchy. The setting is also not very inspiring. The combat encounters are samey. It's hard to tolerate these issues even if the game looks fantastic.

I feel for Josh, but looks like he really isn't the guy who can make fun games.

 

[luj1]

Orma put some liquid nitrogen on that

 

[Zeriel]

We have talked about this endlessly in here.. But I will sum up my opinion to the following:

Promise spiritual successor to the BGs ->
Create everything from scratch (setting, systems, ruleset, story, characters) ->
Obviously fail compared to tried and true settings and rulesets etc ->
In addition improve game with payed DLCs which alienate some player base (not everybody wants to pay for 2-3 extra DLCs or sth) ->
And then release (improved) sequel to all of...that, in an even more "alien" setting with less marketing.

Well.. It failed economically.
I still don't get why they tried to reinvent the wheel in every possible aspect. P:K did so well simply from the ruleset and the setting. Imo the actual game is worse than Deadfire in every other aspect... apart from the gameplay itself

It's hubris. Josh talked about this extensively, his own words are out there. He really thought D&D was flawed, BG 1 & 2 did things wrong, and that experience from killing things was a bad idea. When someone decides they know better than 30-50 years of tried and true systems design popular with an audience of dozens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, well... anyone could see what was coming was either the best game of all time (unlikely, but possible with an actual genius) or a moronic failure.

 

[Popiel]

I’m not the biggest of PoE’s fans. I’m not even one. But it really, really baffles my mind that after all these years some of you people still debate most basic tenets of this game’s story, theme and lore, i.e. the gods and why their nature matter in the way it matters, the way you do. I mean... are some of you just stupid?

Game is overt, vulgar and obvious to the point of being insufferable with what it wants to say, it’s all spelled out loud like to little children in final confrontation with Thaos (that’s one of the biggest flaws of the whole thing if you would ask me: complicated themes put into a framework fitting for most average of a player, i.e. for an idiot). Engwithans chose to make two things: a) gods and b) mythology and lore of said gods. Gods are real in the sense that they exist, they are extremely powerful (but not omnipotent nor omniscient) and they are able to influence world directly (let’s not drag PoE2 idiotic additions into this). Gods are not real if you would judge them on the basis of the constructed mythology of the setting. Gods are supposed to be eternal rulers of the world. That's the orthodoxy which is fed to everyone. They are source of justice, law and social order. These things are reasons for which gods were made. Thaos tells a story about the world before the gods, Hobbesian misery in which everyone waged war against everyone else, which fits a setting with high magic (in such a setting natural human tendencies would grow exponentially, i.e. shitty human nature would become even more horrifying). Engwithans chose to impose order on this chaos and thus bring civilization and progress. It could not have been achieved as surely, in their opinion, if they shared that gods they manufactured were a work of craftsmanship. So they lied to everyone and left a guardian of this secret behind them. This is Thaos.

This is all a logical plan. Civilizations of this setting were founded on the unifying belief in the pantheon and its official orthodoxy, i.e. a lie which is mythology behind the gods. Engwithans predicted that peoples of the world could eventually grow to knowledge sufficient to see through the deception, so Thaos worked through his lifetimes to prevent progress in animancy and so on. If gods were created so they could be also unmade, and Engwithans knew that – and they could also have been killed. People need to believe that the gods are immortal and true in the sense in which an Abrahamic deity is true. What you seem to miss is that people of this world believe in this. If they would be told now that gods were just forged they would not immediately switch to a classic Greek or Roman mindset, or a mindset of a denizen of Faerûn. They would, in large, not accept it easily. It’s not possible. It’s much more possible that society would collapse, because most of the people would be presented with a reality in which there is no truth and no purpose beside the Wheel which grinds the souls to dust and oblivion (to quote Thaos). It’s a bleak reality, one for which this setting is not ready – or so Thaos believes. It's a reality in which chaos would destroy everything. Bombs can be made to nuke gods away, people can become immortal, everlasting liches and tyrants, kings would usurp gods as divine rulers of their societies and grow in power, some of them – at least hypothetically forever. Engwithan mindset is a logical conclusion of classical Conservative view of human nature: men are flawed and evil, so they must be restrained with chains of social order. Imagine if there would be magic with which you could make yourself imperishable, burn cities with fireballs and boil blood in your enemies’ veins, all with a single word. Engwithans feared that in a world with no objective truth and objective justice and with such means existing only the worst people, most ruthless and degenerate would hold power. And they were probably right.

Game uses the real world for some narrative tricks (or at least it tries), but you must not be fooled, it’s important that gods are not real in the way they say about themselves in-setting, not that they are not like an Abrahamic god supposedly is.

Idea is good. I would buy it if not for dogshit storytelling and awful delivery.

 

[Rostere]

Well, it would seem the reason is:

• Saturation of market: PoE was early in a Kickstarter nostalgia wave. When PoE 2 was released, we already had enhanced editions of this and that as well as numerous isometric RTWP and turn-based CRPGs.
• Sequel effect: Many people pre-ordered PoE due to hype. I guess not all of these liked the game, or still has it on their to-play list. Current players who are interested in PoE2 might feel they need to complete PoE before starting the sequel.
• Competing with nostalgia: Seriously, what odds would you give anyone tasked with reviving the Ghostbusters franchise, or the Pacman franchise - very well-known things with a lot of nostalgia behind them. Yet revivals and returns very often do not fully reach the heights of their prequels. PoE was bound to be compared to BG2 augmented with nostalgia. It was doomed to be a letdown for many from the start. This does not spell success for a sequel.
• PoE's bad state at launch: Backer NPCs were poorly implemented, and all the nitwits who didn't understand how to filter out backer NPCs went insane from cringy walls of text. Itemization was also very bad - magic items felt very boring and equipping your group a trivial chore. One of the first reachable dungeons featured enemies which completely subverted the main new combat mechanic, which led to a lot of butthurt from the low-IQ clientele. Optimization in the graphics department was negligent and the game ran slow on older PCs. All of this was later ameliorated, but at that point the first players had already been burned.

Being on Fig instead of Kickstarter I think could have been a minor contributing factor.

I don't buy the "unorthodox setting" explanation. Many mainstream settings were niche in the past, such as post-apoc. Other popular settings like Warhammer 40K are not similar to anything else. Also, PoE2 doesn't really have a very unorthodox setting (fantasy+pirates). If anything, PoE is rather similar to Forgotten Realms.

RTWP couldn't have played any part, since we're comparing PoE2 with its prequel.

Also, Chris Avellone wasn't on PoE 2 and he contributed the best writing to the first game.

I think it's the same issue with Grimrock. The second instalment is better but the first sold more than the real user base.

Yes, this is a good progression to compare PoE and PoE 2 to.

I think the main problem with PoE II is that the game isn't fun to play. The story isn't catchy. The setting is also not very inspiring. The combat encounters are samey. It's hard to tolerate these issues even if the game looks fantastic.

I feel for Josh, but looks like he really isn't the guy who can make fun games.

I have also thought about the main story (the pursuit of Eothas) of PoE 2 and how it is so unsatisfying.

Spoiler

It reminds me of postmodernist art in that it tries to subvert without inserting something else of interest or substance.

For comparison, Torment has a very unique villain and main story, but on a very superficial level the main villain is just an endgame boss, and the main story a string of dungeons and mini-bosses. Playing Torment as an idiot it must appear to have the same generic structure as many other RPGs.

PoE 2 doesn't have any proper end boss (story-wise), and the main story doesn't really develop anywhere, just to an anticlimax. As a player, you don't really understand the final consequences of the main story arch (apart from saving yourself) and the game pretty much even tells you this. The ending feels like a cliffhanger situation to something else, while the player ultimately didn't have agency over the conclusion. A type of shaggy dog story.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Yeah, PoE was really bad at launch. Still isn't amazing. People who were burned with PoE would not buy PoE2. Simple as that.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

He failed with both in different ways. With PoE he failed conceptually. With PoE II he refused to fix core systems and added a ton of feature bloat. He focused on eye candy, cape physics, minigames, romances, exploding barrels and talking parrots.

PoEs are nostalgia cash-grab BG clones made in a hurry by a team of people who (1) despise the BG series; (2) doesn’t understand D&D properly; (3) didn’t have the insano levels of commitment and energy of the young idealistic nerds behind the BG series; (4) didn’t have the same talent or proper management of Bioware; (5) didn’t have one-tenth of the funds that made BG2 so big.

It was bound to fail from a game perspective and it is a joy to watch this soulless opportunistic piece of crap failing commercially. The shills on this site defending WM and PoE2 as good as the original article should burn in hell because this is a terrible and indefensible lie.

 

[Robert Erick]

I’m not the biggest of PoE’s fans. I’m not even one. But it really, really baffles my mind that after all these years some of you people still debate most basic tenets of this game’s story, theme and lore, i.e. the gods and why their nature matter in the way it matters, the way you do. I mean... are some of you just stupid?

Game is overt, vulgar and obvious to the point of being insufferable with what it wants to say, it’s all spelled out loud like to little children in final confrontation with Thaos (that’s one of the biggest flaws of the whole thing if you would ask me: complicated themes put into a framework fitting for most average of a player, i.e. for an idiot). Engwithans chose to make two things: a) gods and b) mythology and lore of said gods. Gods are real in the sense that they exist, they are extremely powerful (but not omnipotent nor omniscient) and they are able to influence world directly (let’s not drag PoE2 idiotic additions into this). Gods are not real if you would judge them on the basis of the constructed mythology of the setting. Gods are supposed to be eternal rulers of the world. That's the orthodoxy which is fed to everyone. They are source of justice, law and social order. These things are reasons for which gods were made. Thaos tells a story about the world before the gods, Hobbesian misery in which everyone waged war against everyone else, which fits a setting with high magic (in such a setting natural human tendencies would grow exponentially, i.e. shitty human nature would become even more horrifying). Engwithans chose to impose order on this chaos and thus bring civilization and progress. It could not have been achieved as surely, in their opinion, if they shared that gods they manufactured were a work of craftsmanship. So they lied to everyone and left a guardian of this secret behind them. This is Thaos.

This is all a logical plan. Civilizations of this setting were founded on the unifying belief in the pantheon and its official orthodoxy, i.e. a lie which is mythology behind the gods. Engwithans predicted that peoples of the world could eventually grow to knowledge sufficient to see through the deception, so Thaos worked through his lifetimes to prevent progress in animancy and so on. If gods were created so they could be also unmade, and Engwithans knew that – and they could also have been killed. People need to believe that the gods are immortal and true in the sense in which an Abrahamic deity is true. What you seem to miss is that people of this world believe in this. If they would be told now that gods were just forged they would not immediately switch to a classic Greek or Roman mindset, or a mindset of a denizen of Faerûn. They would, in large, not accept it easily. It’s not possible. It’s much more possible that society would collapse, because most of the people would be presented with a reality in which there is no truth and no purpose beside the Wheel which grinds the souls to dust and oblivion (to quote Thaos). It’s a bleak reality, one for which this setting is not ready – or so Thaos believes. It's a reality in which chaos would destroy everything. Bombs can be made to nuke gods away, people can become immortal, everlasting liches and tyrants, kings would usurp gods as divine rulers of their societies and grow in power, some of them – at least hypothetically forever. Engwithan mindset is a logical conclusion of classical Conservative view of human nature: men are flawed and evil, so they must be restrained with chains of social order. Imagine if there would be magic with which you could make yourself imperishable, burn cities with fireballs and boil blood in your enemies’ veins, all with a single word. Engwithans feared that in a world with no objective truth and objective justice and with such means existing only the worst people, most ruthless and degenerate would hold power. And they were probably right.

Game uses the real world for some narrative tricks (or at least it tries), but you must not be fooled, it’s important that gods are not real in the way they say about themselves in-setting, not that they are not like an Abrahamic god supposedly is.

Idea is good. I would buy it if not for dogshit storytelling and awful delivery.

This is close to how I feel about it. This Baby's First D&D Setting is made with the mentality of the DM who feels that the tried and trusted "stereotypical" settings are not mature enough, so he creates a setting that is meant to subvert, shock, dazzle and tickle the intellect of those who partake (with the secondary but not unwanted effect of boosting the DM's ego), but it ends doing none of it except annoy. That is PoE to me: A waste of time that I could've come up with in one afternoon and annoy my friends with for a weekend. The fact that people still talk about it annoys me.

 

[l3loodAngel]

Orma put some liquid nitrogen on that

That’s likely one of Obsidians employees, be gentle with him...

 

[Roguey]

This is close to how I feel about it. This Baby's First D&D Setting is made with the mentality of the DM who feels that the tried and trusted "stereotypical" settings are not mature enough, so he creates a setting that is meant to subvert, shock, dazzle and tickle the intellect of those who partake (with the secondary but not unwanted effect of boosting the DM's ego), but it ends doing none of it except annoy. That is PoE to me: A waste of time that I could've come up with in one afternoon and annoy my friends with for a weekend. The fact that people still talk about it annoys me.

Sawyer has been explicit that nothing in PoE was meant to be subversive. He does think that the Forgotten Realms didn't have enough thought put into it, and that's true.

 

[Zeriel]

So he put more thought into his setting, and ended up with a worse result? Not exactly an endorsement. The one thing I can offer in his defense is lots of different people at different times worked on FR, and that does tend to result in lots of material to mine. But I think its undeniable that if their plan was to "beat" Forgotten Realms or design better systems than D&D, they failed.

 

[Robert Erick]

This is close to how I feel about it. This Baby's First D&D Setting is made with the mentality of the DM who feels that the tried and trusted "stereotypical" settings are not mature enough, so he creates a setting that is meant to subvert, shock, dazzle and tickle the intellect of those who partake (with the secondary but not unwanted effect of boosting the DM's ego), but it ends doing none of it except annoy. That is PoE to me: A waste of time that I could've come up with in one afternoon and annoy my friends with for a weekend. The fact that people still talk about it annoys me.

Sawyer has been explicit that nothing in PoE was meant to be subversive. He does think that the Forgotten Realms didn't have enough thought put into it, and that's true.

Coulda fool me. Especially with the god business, which to me reeked of trying to twist generic rpg/dnd derivative settings idea of gods and divinities, or if we're being more charitable, "trying to put a fresh spin on things" (he failed). And I can see why he doesn't understand his own setting, his own work and why Deadfire failed if he thinks Ed Greenwood's Forgotten Realms didn't have thought put into it. If he could stop sniffing his own rectum for a moment, he could take a look at it and try to understand why it's still the most popular official setting in spite of WOTC's herculean efforts of trying to make it as unappealing as possible and why it stood the test of time for longer than some of us have been alive.

 

[Roguey]

nd I can see why he doesn't understand his own setting, his own work and why Deadfire failed if he thinks Ed Greenwood's Forgotten Realms didn't have thought put into it.

Search in your heart and know that it's true, come to grips that it falls apart under scrutiny. A long blogpost he made https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...-patch-4-0-preview.124865/page-6#post-5902301

"Greenwood is a horny old hack" isn't a controversial statement in quite a few circles.

 

[Robert Erick]

nd I can see why he doesn't understand his own setting, his own work and why Deadfire failed if he thinks Ed Greenwood's Forgotten Realms didn't have thought put into it.

Search in your heart and know that it's true, come to grips that it falls apart under scrutiny. A long blogpost he made https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...-patch-4-0-preview.124865/page-6#post-5902301

I would like to think that I have enough experience with people to know that many of them, especially artists, are often confused, uncertain, and prone to using rationalization. Josh can ramble about what he thinks is and isn't but it doesn't change the facts. FR got butchered hard in the transition to third edition, yes. FR is also not a flawless setting, it's true. Yet, it's better, more compelling, more fun, and more interesting than Pillars of Eternity, simply because it's a fantastic setting, with fantastic imagery and features, meant to facilitate a compelling story, outside of the boundaries of normalcy. And before you reach for the "fantasy has to make sense" bullshit argument, yes, it has to follow its' own internal logic or else it falls apart and the willing suspension of disbelief is no longer willingly suspended. But I'll take having whacky and inconsistent things happening over a bleak, boring, meaningless nothingness, with absolutely nothing interesting, nothing fresh, nothing exciting or stimulating happening, which is what PoE is. Whatever Josh's goal was, he failed, because I found his opus to be on the same level of the shitty settings I, and many people I met, were making 20 years ago when we were trying really hard to break away from generic medieval fantasy settings that litter the RPG playgrounds.

Also you're fucking deluded if you think I'm ever going to take seriously an adult who capitalizes random letters in a word. Fuck Josh, fuck Pillars of Shiternity and fuck anyone who thinks you should waste time with this subpar gnostic period drama.

 

[Dr Schultz]

nd I can see why he doesn't understand his own setting, his own work and why Deadfire failed if he thinks Ed Greenwood's Forgotten Realms didn't have thought put into it.

Search in your heart and know that it's true, come to grips that it falls apart under scrutiny. A long blogpost he made https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...-patch-4-0-preview.124865/page-6#post-5902301

I would like to think that I have enough experience with people to know that many of them, especially artists, are often confused, uncertain, and prone to using rationalization. Josh can ramble about what he thinks is and isn't but it doesn't change the facts. FR got butchered hard in the transition to third edition, yes. FR is also not a flawless setting, it's true. Yet, it's better, more compelling, more fun, and more interesting than Pillars of Eternity, simply because it's a fantastic setting, with fantastic imagery and features, meant to facilitate a compelling story, outside of the boundaries of normalcy. And before you reach for the "fantasy has to make sense" bullshit argument, yes, it has to follow its' own internal logic or else it falls apart and the willing suspension of disbelief is no longer willingly suspended. But I'll take having whacky and inconsistent things happening over a bleak, boring, meaningless nothingness, with absolutely nothing interesting, nothing fresh, nothing exciting or stimulating happening, which is what PoE is. Whatever Josh's goal was, he failed, because I found his opus to be on the same level of the shitty settings I, and many people I met, were making 20 years ago when we were trying really hard to break away from generic medieval fantasy settings that litter the RPG playgrounds.

Also you're fucking deluded if you think I'm ever going to take seriously an adult who capitalizes random letters in a word. Fuck Josh, fuck Pillars of Shiternity and fuck anyone who thinks you should waste time with this subpar gnostic period drama.

Do you really think the setting is what makes PoE (I&2) plot bland?

In the first game alone you have an ancient civilization that engineered their gods, a crusade (sorta) that terminates with the literal explosion of one of them, a centuries old conspiracy whose goal is to hide the origin of said gods and a plague (again man-made) that strips away children of their soul ...

I don't know you, but to me these are really interesting premises ON PAPER. Problem is, the only Obsidian employee that was able to write interesting bits of storytelling with these premises left the company long time ago...

 

[Robert Erick]

nd I can see why he doesn't understand his own setting, his own work and why Deadfire failed if he thinks Ed Greenwood's Forgotten Realms didn't have thought put into it.

Search in your heart and know that it's true, come to grips that it falls apart under scrutiny. A long blogpost he made https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...-patch-4-0-preview.124865/page-6#post-5902301

I would like to think that I have enough experience with people to know that many of them, especially artists, are often confused, uncertain, and prone to using rationalization. Josh can ramble about what he thinks is and isn't but it doesn't change the facts. FR got butchered hard in the transition to third edition, yes. FR is also not a flawless setting, it's true. Yet, it's better, more compelling, more fun, and more interesting than Pillars of Eternity, simply because it's a fantastic setting, with fantastic imagery and features, meant to facilitate a compelling story, outside of the boundaries of normalcy. And before you reach for the "fantasy has to make sense" bullshit argument, yes, it has to follow its' own internal logic or else it falls apart and the willing suspension of disbelief is no longer willingly suspended. But I'll take having whacky and inconsistent things happening over a bleak, boring, meaningless nothingness, with absolutely nothing interesting, nothing fresh, nothing exciting or stimulating happening, which is what PoE is. Whatever Josh's goal was, he failed, because I found his opus to be on the same level of the shitty settings I, and many people I met, were making 20 years ago when we were trying really hard to break away from generic medieval fantasy settings that litter the RPG playgrounds.

Also you're fucking deluded if you think I'm ever going to take seriously an adult who capitalizes random letters in a word. Fuck Josh, fuck Pillars of Shiternity and fuck anyone who thinks you should waste time with this subpar gnostic period drama.

Do you really think the setting is what makes PoE (I&2) plot bland?

In the first game alone you have an ancient civilization that engineered their gods, a crusade (sorta) that terminates with the literal explosion of one of them, a centuries old conspiracy whose goal is to hide the origin of said gods and a plague (again man-made) that strips away children of their soul ...

I don't know you, but to me these are really interesting premises ON PAPER. Problem is, the only Obsidian employee that was able to write interesting bits of storytelling with these premises left the company long time ago...

Yes, because the plot is the setting. The plot exists as a vehicle for the writers to present their setting. The hero's journey is a long, boring car ride on an empty highway, with a couple of uninteresting and slightly obnoxious assholes in the back seat, with thousands of long signs passing by on which trivia is written, and the ride is very slow and you have to stop to read the signs multiple times. Sometimes you pass by an accident or a roadkill and you stop to look at it and try to help or eat it, but it's unsatisfactory and it leaves a bad taste in your mouth, and you get back in the car. And at the end of the journey, you are given an unsatisfactory conclusion because it's a revelation that you did not care about, because you didn't know where you were going, why you were going and it's not even where you expected to go in the first place, and the car isn't even what the manufacturer said it was going to be when you ordered it.

Anyway. my point is that you can have the most overwritten book in the world and there's probably some interesting ideas in there, but if you can't turn that into a story, it's just words on paper whose only purpose is to tell you that someone sat down to write on that paper. Nothing learned, nothing gained, nothing felt except indignation. Also most of the events you mentioned are not seen or interacted with, just told to you, and the only reason Thaos' stupid shit qualifies as "shown" is because of the technicality of you seeing past memories that you can't even interact with.