Obsidian General Discussion Thread

[Major_Blackhart]

Yep. Fergus is gonna try to suckle the Cacky MS Cash Tit for all it's worth, and be an overly obvious asshole about it too. Once the MS Bureaucracy gets going and sees the abuses and lack of viable products being put out, he's gonna realize he's over-played his hand. Either he'll take the fall or he'll throw a ton of others under the bus for his greed and arrogance.

 

[Flou]

"Most toxic and stressful management I've ever seen in the industry." I can believe it.

"Poverty level pay for the area in Irvine California." Except for Josh Sawyer.

"Too many projects and rapid growth are making work environment even worse." I can also believe it. Avowed and TOW 2 being two big ones going at the same time plus the smaller Grounded and Sawyer Elysium and who knows what else. Now that they no longer have to worry where their next project is coming from, it doesn't quite make sense to work on two big projects at the same time. Should have made the painful decision to put TOW 2 on hold.

Every place is toxic if you hair is dyed purple, green etc. Does not really surprise that some of younger generation don't fit well with old timey management methods.

Isn't that an issue with multiple gaming companies in the area? The living costs in Irvine, California are insane. Move the company to Bumfucktown, Alabama and everyone is rich.

Not surprised here either. They are constantly recruiting though, but it seems to be a slow process and with people leaving as well, they aren't a 250 staff member company (which they should aim for with that many projects).

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Infinitron]

[EN] Josh Sawyer was a nice enough dude to sit down for an interview with me (Iga Ewa Smoleńska). The interview goes into his passions and hobbies and helps us understand him better as a person. We also go into more detail about how he thinks about game design and what he values most as a professional. We also learn what Josh thinks about games being art and also what he doesn’t give much thought. Josh also shares a secret, so be sure to listen with focus!

(The interviewer is a quest designer on Dying Light 2 btw)

 

[Major_Blackhart]

The answer will simply be autism with California SJW Leftardian Elitism thrown in, coupled with ironic non-ironic bike collecting and shitty faux-intelligentsia car driving, along with jewelry for men, and why tucking it between your thighs and clucking like a chicken while a "lady" with broad shoulders and large hands spanks you in the ass with a dead fish is a socially acceptable fetish.

 

[Infinitron]

Roguey and others, tune in to 2:20:20 in the interview (especially starting from 2:24:30)

 

[vortex]

Josh ponders if players haven't been satisfied with Pillars1 enough and hadn't express themselves loudly therefore weren't enthusiastic for Deadfire.

 

[Alienman]

hehehe, many bad things and he is responsible for it all

Makes you wonder why it was even made like it was in the first place.

 

[Roguey]

Eh, he's said all that before (Deadfire has problems but the theory that everyone checked out because they were bored with Pillars 1 is unprovable).

Additionally, he reveals at the end that his favorite Polish word is zupy but only when it's mispronounced as zoopy as opposed to zupa which is how the Poles say it.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

I'd love it if a jaded dev who worked on Deadfire just dished all the bullshit behind the scenes that obviously went on there.

 

[Quillon]

Lmao "can't be provable". Not everything has to be provable Josh; you just look at the situation and should know it in your gut, PoE1 was overly hyped up and as far as journos concerned no one wanted to be seen as "that guy" who can't appreciate good old shit that everyone else seemingly can. And on the player level a lot of people who religiously followed PoE1's development just didn't care about Deadfire's; codex may not be a good example for this since people here still follow shit just to shit on it(but I don't really know since I wasn't here during PoE1's development) but a lot of other sites/forums I've seen this happen.

f.i. If PoE1 was really the masterpiece as journos claimed or just a really good game for most average joes who played it, angry joe would have played the sequel too and made a review for it as well :D but he like most others just didn't care, PoE1 couldn't hook them.

Even TOW was in a similar situation. Journo space got even worse since PoE1; other than the crooks, people who knew their shit a bit gave pity scores to TOW and youtubers were heavily influenced by Obs vs Beth and the game was hyped up that much just cos of Bethesda, nowadays people hardly speak of the game anywhere. But I guess this is also "unprovable" :D

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

I too think that people weren't interested in Deadfire because PoE1 didn't grab them. However, we should not pretend that hypothesis being unfalsifiable isn't a very strong point against it.

 

[Flou]

f.i. If PoE1 was really the masterpiece as journos claimed or just a really good game for most average joes who played it, angry joe would have played the sequel too and made a review for it as well :D but he like most others just didn't care, PoE1 couldn't hook them.

I think that Angry Joe didn't review the game because he didn't get paid to review it. Paradox most likely paid him to review the 1st one since they actually use YouTubers a lot when it comes to marketing.

Versus Evil sure as shit didn't pay for the review for the 2nd one and failed quite badly at marketing in general. It's not like there was massive hype behind the game that reviewing it would have given him many views and it takes time to play a crpg. And why would he review it for free? Part of his living comes out from reviewing games and getting paid by the publishers to do so.

 

[Quillon]

f.i. If PoE1 was really the masterpiece as journos claimed or just a really good game for most average joes who played it, angry joe would have played the sequel too and made a review for it as well :D but he like most others just didn't care, PoE1 couldn't hook them.

I think that Angry Joe didn't review the game because he didn't get paid to review it. Paradox most likely paid him to review the 1st one since they actually use YouTubers a lot when it comes to marketing.

Versus Evil sure as shit didn't pay for the review for the 2nd one and failed quite badly at marketing in general. It's not like there was massive hype behind the game that reviewing it would have given him many views and it takes time to play a crpg. And why would he review it for free? Part of his living comes out from reviewing games and getting paid by the publishers to do so.

I doubt it. I've seen his paid previews on youtube & twitch but never saw any mention of paid reviews, I know he isn't liked here but getting paid for reviews would have made him a joke even on normie standards.

 

[purupuru]

Huh, I didn't know Deadfire had 3 times the pre-order number of PoE1, was it that PoE1 had very little pre-order since most who would pre-order were already backers?
Glad that Deadfire actually went on to sell better and became profitable. Hope we will see a PoE3 one day (with more multiclassing options and proper turn-based mode).
I hate it when Sawyer focuses on whether "the theory" is provable. It's not, obviously. But if Sawyer actually thinks PoE1 is a fantastic game then he has such bad taste that he should never direct an rpg again. Well I still believe that deep down he knows, he is just pretending PoE1 is good since that's something no journalist can disagree with.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Huh, I didn't know Deadfire had 3 times the pre-order number of PoE1, was it that PoE1 had very little pre-order since most who would pre-order were already backers?
Glad that Deadfire actually went on to sell better and became profitable. Hope we will see a PoE3 one day (with more multiclassing options and proper turn-based mode).
I hate it when Sawyer focuses on whether "the theory" is provable. It's not, obviously. But if Sawyer actually thinks PoE1 is a fantastic game then he has such bad taste that he should never direct an rpg again. Well I still believe that deep down he knows, he is just pretending PoE1 is good since that's something no journalist can disagree with.

I wasn't sure how to rate this so I just laughed. Sorry. It's got too many things in it that are true, and each requires a different reaction.

 

[Latelistener]

Nobody wanted PoE, even Sawyer. Among other things people craved for New Vegas 2 (a figure of speech, I know it was impossible). Anything other than a BG clone. It only exists because higher ups at Obsidian decided that fantasy is a safest bet.

Now, how will a sequel for a game that nobody wanted will sell? A great mystery.

Also I find it improbable that it sells good. It has only 9k reviews on Steam. Pathfinder has 18k. Divinity 2 havs 110k.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

It's not that nobody wanted POE. It's that there was insane letdown after seeing the final product. The best Obsidian could do, the BEST, was aping a BG clone. They couldn't even mimic it. All they could do was ape along limply, trying to pull the wool over our eyes.

That's why Deadfire is Dumpsterfire. People who were enthusiastic about the original realized that Obsidian had no idea what made BG games great or enjoyable.

Fool me once, and all that, old chum.

 

[Riddler]

The issue is that there wasn't an insane letdown. Outside of Sensuki people were msotly a bit underwhelmed. If people actually were massively letdown then they would have whined about it (more than just here).

The slightly letdown people just quietly filtered out which left the sycophants and the obsessive haters.

 

[Grunker]

It's not that nobody wanted POE. It's that there was insane letd enthusiastic about the original realized that Obsidian had no idea what made BG games great or enjoyable

This is Codexian projection/wishful thinking. I realize there's mixed opinions here, but whether you think the reaction is genuine or not, the outside world generally praised PoE to the skies, even before White March (where even I was lukewarm on the game).

 

[Roguey]

Lmao "can't be provable". Not everything has to be provable Josh; you just look at the situation and should know it in your gut, PoE1 was overly hyped up and as far as journos concerned no one wanted to be seen as "that guy" who can't appreciate good old shit that everyone else seemingly can. And on the player level a lot of people who religiously followed PoE1's development just didn't care about Deadfire's; codex may not be a good example for this since people here still follow shit just to shit on it(but I don't really know since I wasn't here during PoE1's development) but a lot of other sites/forums I've seen this happen.

f.i. If PoE1 was really the masterpiece as journos claimed or just a really good game for most average joes who played it, angry joe would have played the sequel too and made a review for it as well :D but he like most others just didn't care, PoE1 couldn't hook them.

Even TOW was in a similar situation. Journo space got even worse since PoE1; other than the crooks, people who knew their shit a bit gave pity scores to TOW and youtubers were heavily influenced by Obs vs Beth and the game was hyped up that much just cos of Bethesda, nowadays people hardly speak of the game anywhere. But I guess this is also "unprovable" :D

Sawyer's argument against this is that Deadfire has had a strong long tail, so he truly believes in the "we messed up with our choice of publisher in terms of marketing" theory which is also backed up by multiple anecdotal experiences of people telling him they had no idea Deadfire even existed/had come out. There are thousands of hardcore fans who follow forums and news sites and the like, but the hundreds of thousands of potential customers are far more casual.

 

[Grunker]

Lmao "can't be provable". Not everything has to be provable Josh; you just look at the situation and should know it in your gut, PoE1 was overly hyped up and as far as journos concerned no one wanted to be seen as "that guy" who can't appreciate good old shit that everyone else seemingly can. And on the player level a lot of people who religiously followed PoE1's development just didn't care about Deadfire's; codex may not be a good example for this since people here still follow shit just to shit on it(but I don't really know since I wasn't here during PoE1's development) but a lot of other sites/forums I've seen this happen.

f.i. If PoE1 was really the masterpiece as journos claimed or just a really good game for most average joes who played it, angry joe would have played the sequel too and made a review for it as well :D but he like most others just didn't care, PoE1 couldn't hook them.

Even TOW was in a similar situation. Journo space got even worse since PoE1; other than the crooks, people who knew their shit a bit gave pity scores to TOW and youtubers were heavily influenced by Obs vs Beth and the game was hyped up that much just cos of Bethesda, nowadays people hardly speak of the game anywhere. But I guess this is also "unprovable" :D

Sawyer's argument against this is that Deadfire has had a strong long tail, so he truly believes in the "we messed up with our choice of publisher in terms of marketing" theory which is also backed up by multiple anecdotal experiences of people telling him they had no idea Deadfire even existed/had come out. There are thousands of hardcore fans who follow forums and news sites and the like, but the hundreds of thousands of potential customers are far more casual.

I think Superbunnyhop's reviews of the first and second game are interesting in terms of gauging the wider world's reaction to the games. He's a fairly good journalist but not very experienced with RPGs at all so he's sort of in the casual fan-category. He praised the hell out of PoE1 but was meh on the second one. But what's funny about the way he talks about them is that the second game gets a lot of criticism for stuff that was also in the first game, but that he only now finds it reasonable to criticize. You get the distinct impressions that it's not so much him actually having objective praise for the first game and objective criticism of the second, but more that he was just "RPG-ed out" at that point. This influx of fans who maybe played Baldur's Gate 2 once when they were kids were never RPG fans, so even if they got a good fix from the return of the genre, or maybe like DOS as it seems all casual RPG-players do, they were just not hardcore-RPG'd out.

It's a completely unqualified theory of course, but try and watch both reviews. I'm sure you'll agree that his very different sentiments towards the games is interesting.

 

[Quillon]

The issue is that there wasn't an insane letdown. Outside of Sensuki people were msotly a bit underwhelmed. If people actually were massively letdown then they would have whined about it (more than just here).

The slightly letdown people just quietly filtered out which left the sycophants and the obsessive haters.

That's actually the essence of the argument: casuals saw the hype around the game and bought it so the game has sold 1+ million in additioan reviews calling it masterpiece and shit(which encouraged Obs to spend way more on Deadfire), but the game didn't manage to hook them so they just didn't care about the sequel, there were never gonna be insane outrage outside of hardcore players, the game is overhyped af but it wasn't anywhere near f.i. No Man's Sky, nor had that kinda mass appeal.

Superbunnyhop's reviews

I stopped watching his channel all together when I come to the part of his Deadfire review where he said/implied MCA wrote PoE1 and now because he left Deadfire is shit :D I know MCA never tries to take credit for the shit he isn't responsible for but people give him credit for anything they can think of regardless. I'd expected someone who is doing reviews to know their shit.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

It's not that nobody wanted POE. It's that there was insane letd enthusiastic about the original realized that Obsidian had no idea what made BG games great or enjoyable

This is Codexian projection/wishful thinking. I realize there's mixed opinions here, but whether you think the reaction is genuine or not, the outside world generally praised PoE to the skies, even before White March (where even I was lukewarm on the game).

Games like poe are way less popular than games like fnv. And that's before we even consider the inherent advantage fnv has by easily being ported to consoles and appealing to console owners.

Would poe have done better if it was turn-based from the start? Probably. Turn-based is a format that translates much easier to consoles which is why deadfire got a tb mode(duh)

 

[purupuru]

Another unverifiable theory: Deadfire having a strong long tail may have something to do with the huge success of DOS2 and maybe even the hype of BG3. During these two years, many times on other gaming forums I have seen new players asking for modern rpg recommendations after they got into the genre with DOS2, and I would recommend Deadfire every time.