Game News Josh Sawyer's long-awaited historical RPG is called Pentiment, coming next year

[Chippy]

Zed Duke of Banville Heh. I was thinking more along the lines of: "Only the penitent man will pass. And find the Holy Grail that is at the end of the eternal quest/ion: what is a RPG?".

And Sawyer ain't no Percevale.

 

[Nutria]

why look far and wide for some non-Euro Prester John fellow if not for diversity points

I dunno, maybe ask medieval Europeans since they're the ones who were so interested in him?

 

[Van-d-all]

Josh Sawyer, famed for his leadership on what is arguably the best Fallout game; New Vegas, as well as a personal fave, Pillars of Eternity.

This quote alone, makes everything else he said absolute garbage. "Arguably".

 

[Fowyr]

Volourn I would agree most of the time but you can make games about anything and some people should theoretically find that entertaining. The greatest power of rpgs has always been to try new things, like science fiction rpgs were a novelty in the 1990s

That's why Starflight is from 1986. SF RPGs were mostly produced in the end of 80s until 1991-1992.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

POE ... failed

it didn't

deadfire failed because of the setting, people who play these games know what they want and it isn't some weird colonial history mashup.

It's a masterclass on how to write generic fantasy 101.

deadfire would have been successful if it was "generic fantasy 101", they tried going the route you suggested and faceplanted


no real surprise their next game(outerworlds) was so by the numbers

 

[Dr Schultz]

why look far and wide for some non-Euro Prester John fellow if not for diversity points elbow-pressed into the pretense of historicity

Umberto Eco, may he rest in peace, wrote an entire novel about the myth of Presbiter Johannes and he didn't give the slightest fuck about woke culture, SJW and inclusiveness...

This novel (Baudolino) is easily one of the funniest things I've ever read and I'm pretty sure Sawyer is quite familiar with it.

Not that I'm expecting something remotely as good from today's Obsidian, mind you. My point is that you can easily write a novel about an imaginary Asian/African priest-king without going woke.

 

[RNGsus]

You don't need to respond to Maxie posts.

 

[Viata]

My point is that you can easily write a novel about an imaginary Asian/African priest-king without going woke.

You can do a whole game on that without being woke, but do you expect modern western game dev to do that?

 

[HeroMarine]

This novel (Baudolino) is easily one of the funniest things I've ever read and I'm pretty sure Sawyer is quite familiar with it.

Baudolino is a hilarious book (I need to reread it) but Sawyer is no Eco.

The book begins with German-Italian wars and the sack of Constantinople in the 4th Crusade. I doubt Swayer is interested in anything like that, he's more curious about sodomy with mulattos and other weird Something Awful marxist fixations.

 

[Dr Schultz]

You can do a whole game on that without being woke, but do you expect modern western game dev to do that?

Baudolino is a hilarious book (I need to reread it) but Sawyer is no Eco.

The book begins with German-Italian wars and the sack of Constantinople in the 4th Crusade. I doubt Swayer is interested in anything like that, he's more curious about sodomy with mulattos and other weird Something Awful marxist fixations.

Frankly this is not what concerns me the most.

I'm the kind of guy who considers Avatar (the first animated series) a textbook in fantasy writing even with its wokeness and its young target audience.
At the same time, I deem mediocre the writing of most of the games I've recently played, Obsidian's games included. And obviously this has less to do with the wokeness itself than with the basics of the writing process.

In short, a story-heavy game from Obsidian, given its recent track record, isn't particularly exciting despite the freaking interesting setting (not middle-ages, by the way). And this is not because its supposed wokeness...

 

[Tyranicon]

POE ... failed

it didn't

deadfire failed because of the setting, people who play these games know what they want and it isn't some weird colonial history mashup.

It's a masterclass on how to write generic fantasy 101.

deadfire would have been successful if it was "generic fantasy 101", they tried going the route you suggested and faceplanted


no real surprise their next game(outerworlds) was so by the numbers

POE failed to become a profitable franchise (we'll have to see how Avowed will do). Despite good reviews and sales for the first game, the sequel was something close to a monumental failure. Based on purely anecdotal evidence, I'd say this is mostly due to a lack of marketing and failure to build a strong casual fanbase, opposed to the merits of the sequel itself.

According to Sawyer:

pre-sales for deadfire were 3x higher than they were for pillars 1, but the sales on/after launch day were quite low, comparatively.

This indicates that while the core fanbase for the game is still excited for the sequel, others were not.

Critical and user reviews were also positive, so it doesn't seem like negative word of mouth hampered sales too much. What I think happened was that while many players of POE liked the experience, they didn't like it enough to buy the sequel. Obsidian also probably spent too much money on POE2 and needed to sell a massive amount of copies just to break even.

Additionally, the problem is that isometric cRPGs like POE are hyper niche games, whereas first-person RPGs are entirely mainstream. So switching their focus, especially for a bigger AA studio, is entirely expected.

 

[Diggfinger]

Combat DLC When__????>><<>>>>>

 

[HeroMarine]

According to Sawyer:

pre-sales for deadfire were 3x higher than they were for pillars 1, but the sales on/after launch day were quite low, comparatively.

This indicates that while the core fanbase for the game is still excited for the sequel, others were not.

To me this indicates that word-of-mouth after the game actually launched was really bad compared to PoE 1's word-of-mouth.

 

[Tyranicon]

According to Sawyer:

pre-sales for deadfire were 3x higher than they were for pillars 1, but the sales on/after launch day were quite low, comparatively.

This indicates that while the core fanbase for the game is still excited for the sequel, others were not.

To me this indicates that word-of-mouth after the game actually launched was really bad compared to PoE 1's word-of-mouth.

I think Sawyer is talking about the actual launch week in that quote, not the entire lifetime of the game.

A cursory glance at SteamDB will show what available analytics there are for both games. Pillars 1 had ~41k players on launch day, while POE2 only had ~22k, despite much higher pre-orders. The rest of the launch week follows the same trajectory. It must be said that launch week accounts for a huge % of overall sales.

Long tail player engagement seem very similar for both games, with it stabilizing to about ~1,000 players per day.

Not that word of mouth doesn't figure into it, it's almost certainly the reason I didn't buy POE 2. However, from a marketing standpoint, it may not be the only (or biggest) factor, especially in the first week.

 

[RNGsus]

Prester John was King of Tartaria.

Nah, Prester John is likely to have been a mythologization of the Nagusa Nagast/Emperor of Abyssinia/Ethiopia, which was a literal far-away isolated Christian kingdom on the other side of the Christian world.

I'm just going by what Lev Gumilev taught me, I'm not staking a claim on Prester John's historical personship.

 

[CrunchyHemorrhoids]

What I think happened was that while many players of POE liked the experience, they didn't like it enough to buy the sequel.

... or they simply disliked it. And then in spite of its many improvements POE2 leaned so heavily on the events/details/characters/plot twists of POE1 (moreso than any sequel I can remember) that it ends up alienating those who didn't like nor finish POE1 (probably the majority). Could've called it Part 2.

 

[Butter]

What I think happened was that while many players of POE liked the experience, they didn't like it enough to buy the sequel.

... or they simply disliked it. And then in spite of its many improvements POE2 leaned so heavily on the many events/details of POE1 (moreso than any sequel I can remember) that it ends up alienating those who didn't like nor finish POE1 (probably the majority). Could've called it Part 2.

We already know the majority didn't finish the first game. You can look at Steam achievements and see 14.4% completion rate. But that's true for most games and especially long RPGs. Divinity: Original Sin 2 has a similar completion rate, and people fucking rave about that game. And if a huge number of people simply disliked PoE, that doesn't reflect in its reviews (87% positive on Steam). I think the most plausible explanation is that Versus Evil was a fucking useless publisher that didn't advertise the game well. Their Youtube channel has fewer than 5k subscribers and nobody has ever heard of them; either Feargus alienated everyone else in the industry, or his brother is the CEO.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Something the codex will never accept because they love lolsoquirky non-standard settings:
Dumpsterfire failed because of the setting.

If it was standard fantasy it would have done well, just like outerworlds did well by aping generic sci-fi/beth fallout/mass effect. And outerworlds is easily a far worse game than dumpsterfire.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Divinity: Original Sin 2 has a similar completion rate,

mods disable achievements

 

[HeroMarine]

Something the codex will never accept because they love lolsoquirky non-standard settings:
Dumpsterfire failed because of the setting.

If it was standard fantasy it would have done well, just like outerworlds did well by aping generic sci-fi/beth fallout/mass effect. And outerworlds is easily a far worse game than dumpsterfire.

I have to admit I'm less interested in playing "exotic" pseudo-polynesian pirate-themed RPGs than regular European/North American forest themed RPGs.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Something the codex will never accept because they love lolsoquirky non-standard settings:
Dumpsterfire failed because of the setting.

If it was standard fantasy it would have done well, just like outerworlds did well by aping generic sci-fi/beth fallout/mass effect. And outerworlds is easily a far worse game than dumpsterfire.

I have to admit I'm less interested in playing "exotic" pseudo-polynesian pirate-themed RPGs than regular European/North American forest themed RPGs.

And this is why we can't have anything good. How much of the same Tolkienesque shit you have to consume to have enough of it? Jesus Christ.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Something the codex will never accept because they love lolsoquirky non-standard settings:
Dumpsterfire failed because of the setting.

If it was standard fantasy it would have done well, just like outerworlds did well by aping generic sci-fi/beth fallout/mass effect. And outerworlds is easily a far worse game than dumpsterfire.

I have to admit I'm less interested in playing "exotic" pseudo-polynesian pirate-themed RPGs than regular European/North American forest themed RPGs.

And this is why we can't have anything good. How much of the same Tolkienesque shit you have to consume to have enough of it? Jesus Christ.

more tolkien, less pwgra

 

[HeroMarine]

Imagine thinking there's enough good Tolkien-like cRPGs.

 

[TheImplodingVoice]

"Long-Awaited"? The only thing that is long awaited about this is in Infinitron's dreams where people actually care about his shameless shilling.

 

[Nazrim Eldrak]

Combat-less RPG...Is that all?
That is not much to judge.