Eternity Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire + DLC Thread - now with turn-based combat!

[MajorMace]

Both IWDs are severely underrated these days

I'd argue from my perspective, they always have been and probably always will be, unfortunately. It even feels like IWD is much more esteemed since the 2010s and was even more often disregarded before.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Maybe it's Josh's fate that the games he has directed will be disregarded. He did lead IWD2, which has to be the least-played of all the IE games. Josh Sawyer - disregarded game development specialist.

 

[Delterius]

hard to believe feargus directed iwd1 without de-ownering anyone

 

[Lacrymas]

RE: Why a million people bought PoE - imo, a few factors played into this. BG's reputation is bigger than its fanbase/actual players for one. All of my nerd-adjacent friends (and one actual nerd) have heard of the BGs but nobody has played them. Almost nobody knows what the reality of playing BG1 is. Those endless forests are not only an acquired taste, you also have to have played the entire thing in order to retrospectively appreciate what they are doing to the structure and why they are there in the first place. PoE1 fails miserably at imitating this, so it stood no chance with the normies anyway. Playing BG1 and 2 is a challenge for most people these days, not only mechanically but culturally as well. Its values are almost bizarre in the context of the current state of RPGs, both tabletop and video game. They are not "like 5E" or "like D&D" in general anymore. Just watch a D&D session for 3 minutes on Youtube and you'll see what I mean. Either way, my point is that people didn't know what they were getting themselves into and bought into the hype they knew nothing about.

On top of all that, PoE1 base game is just bad. Full stop. The opening is bad, the middle section after Maerwald is even worse, and endgame/Twin Elms is bewildering (but almost no-one got to there anyway). I'm willing to bet most people who finished the game did so because of reasons unrelated to its quality. It was certainly the case for me, I was too bewitched by the idea I'm playing an "isometric" Obsidian RPG to notice nothing is making an impression and a lot of it is aggressively bland and boring. It took 2 years for me to force myself to replay it in order to see White March content. By the time WM1 came out, no normie was even thinking about this game anymore, the abysmal WM completion rates certainly seem to confirm that. In light of that, is it really that much of a headscratcher why Deadfire didn't sell? It had nothing to do with its own merits, imo, and all to do with PoE1's and the hype surrounding the BGs.

 

[Lambach]

IWD - best writing among the IE games

First time I've seen someone praise IWD's writing. Mostly because it's rare to see someone who payed enough attention to it to judge its quality, what with chopping up hordes of Yuan-Ti and blowing up armies of Orcs taking precedence.

 

[Bigg Boss]

Also deadfire didn't sell because it's a pirate RPG. It's that simple. The idea that the modern steam consumer seeks 'The BG experience' is crazy. The average buyer plays western RPGs once every 5 years. The rest of their time is spent on Skyrim, persona and MMOs. They do not care about our autism.

It did not sell because it is unique. Such a sad statement but true.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Also deadfire didn't sell because it's a pirate RPG. It's that simple. The idea that the modern steam consumer seeks 'The BG experience' is crazy. The average buyer plays western RPGs once every 5 years. The rest of their time is spent on Skyrim, persona and MMOs. They do not care about our autism.

It did not sell because it is unique. Such a sad statement but true.

I've left a lot of unique turds in my toilet if you want to go fish some out.

 

[Lambach]

>market the game towards a fairly niche crowd, really hype the fuck out of it
>hype works, sell 1+ million copies
>game is thoroughly mediocre in almost every way
>market the sequel towards the same crowd, because who else are you going to market it to? Cowadooty players?
>crowd largely unimpressed and disappointed by the fist game, doesn't buy into the hype again, figures part deux will be just as lacking, skips it

There, just solved the great mystery. Bloody shame it turned out that way, tho, because if either of the two games deserved to sell well, it was absolutely Deadfire.

Unrelated, I really want to see whether the PoE effect holds up for CDPR's next game and if its sales will suffer because of KurwaJunk 2077.

 

[AwesomeButton]

hard to believe feargus directed iwd1 without de-ownering anyone

Josh has said in retrospectives/answers to questions, that IWD was a low-priority project, sort of "can we push a quick game with the same engine, and with minimal effort, by assigning interns and junior people?" This lead to the positive side-effect that they didn't have much writing or voice acting because there was no budget. But this happens to tie in perfectly with the setting because the dales are supposed to be very sparsely populated anyway.

Additionally, since everyone was a junior designer, there were no real leads, the team was small, and the juniors would decide among themselves when someone was unsure how to deal with something. All factors which seem to lead to better games. The situation sort of repeated with Deadfire's expansion DLCs. Beast of Winter was done by junior designers, and writers and turned out being really good, same for "Seeker, Slayer, Sawyer" (as I like calling it). I don't remember about Secret Sanctum, but I do remember when designers of Beast of Winter were on a Twitch stream presenting the DLC, where it was mentioned that they were all juniors and worked with minimal oversight.

First time I've seen someone praise IWD's writing. Mostly because it's rare to see someone who payed enough attention to it to judge its quality, what with chopping up hordes of Yuan-Ti and blowing up armies of Orcs taking precedence.

Check this thread if you haven't: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/order-these-games-by-how-bad-their-writing-is.120683/

 

[Yosharian]

SSS was tedious as fuck.

 

[Lambach]

Check this thread if you haven't: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/order-these-games-by-how-bad-their-writing-is.120683/

I still don't see it. Maybe because it's such a secondary element in a game that's all about making your custom D&D party and hacking away until your eyes bleed that I just don't care enough. Last time I replayed it was 'bout two years ago, give or take, and I mostly don't even remember what the main plot is about. Things like dialogues, narration etc, I remember it all being functional and doing an OK job of giving you a purpose for the several genocides you commit, but nothing particularly memorable sticks out to me. Some things were also just dumb, like Yxunomei in little girl form being all cryptic and weird just for the sake of being cryptic and weird.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

IWD popularity is the end result of codex hipsterism
same reason they're moving on from IWD to IWD2 now
hope that clears things up

 

[Ziggy]

the game didnt sell at launch because there was no fucking marketing whatsoever, other than the cross promotion with critical role (lol), the viewers of which dont play games (if they did, they wouldnt be watching critical role)
people generally simply didnt hear about this, and the pirate setting is certainly not too weird for the mainstream audience (if anything, there could be made an argument that the setting isnt weird enough to stand out amongst all the other generic fantasy bullshit)

 

[rusty_shackleford]

the marketability of a setting is inversely proportional to how much the codex likes it

 

[AwesomeButton]

The codex doesn't overwhelmingly like PoE or Deadfire.

I still don't see it. Maybe because it's such a secondary element in a game that's all about making your custom D&D party and hacking away until your eyes bleed that I just don't care enough. Last time I replayed it was 'bout two years ago, give or take, and I mostly don't even remember what the main plot is about. Things like dialogues, narration etc, I remember it all being functional and doing an OK job of giving you a purpose for the several genocides you commit, but nothing particularly memorable sticks out to me. Some things were also just dumb, like Yxunomei in little girl form being all cryptic and weird just for the sake of being cryptic and weird.

It's toned down from the "epic fantasy" standard, and says much with few words. Just re-watch the intro cinematic, or watch a lets-play and hear the dialogues in Chapter 1.

 

[mediocrepoet]

The codex doesn't overwhelmingly like PoE or Deadfire.

As far as I can tell, most Codexers think both are bland bullshit, potentially with a few redeeming features that get brought up such as Deadfire's itemization. I've seen more praise for both games (mostly Deadfire) off the Codex than on it.

 

[AwesomeButton]

IMO both were an instance of the teams biting off more than they can chew, and as a result shitting out a half-digested shit.

Where their scope was right, i.e. bit off just enough are the expansions.

 

[Fluent]

It's toned down from the "epic fantasy" standard, and says much with few words. Just re-watch the intro cinematic, or watch a lets-play and hear the dialogues in Chapter 1.

Hey. You could watch my LP, i just started one for IWD1:EE. youtube.com/gamegodfluent <3

 

[Lambach]

IWD popularity is the end result of codex hipsterism
same reason they're moving on from IWD to IWD2 now
hope that clears things up

Nah, IWD is good, I just never thought of its writing as one of its strengths.

IWD 2, tho, I wanna say is also good, but after my first full playthrough, I never managed to beat it again. I have fun until I reach the goddamn Monastery, at which point it just drains my will to play and I give up, thinking I'll get back to it in a couple of days, but never do. IWD 2 in general has more puzzles and other pace-breaking stuff, and the Monastery is probably the worst offender.

It's toned down from the "epic fantasy" standard, and says much with few words. Just re-watch the intro cinematic, or watch a lets-play and hear the dialogues in Chapter 1.

I'd use "technically proficient" to describe that, but that by itself doesn't do much for me. Yes, you told your story well and eloquently, but that doesn't matter if your story is bland enough that I forget about it 20 minutes after I hear it.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

IWD is good,

how long until the codex starts saying NWN is good

 

[Lambach]

how long until the codex starts saying NWN is good

Now you're just being unreasonable.

 

[Fluent]

To those that "know", as in, those that use NWN for its intended purpose - a game engine where u can download other user's adventures and play through them - NWN is probably one of the most amazing CRPGs ever. That is because there is a wealth, and I mean a WEALTH of user modules that range from good to extraordinary that one can play with a very sound engine and ruleset in NWN. Hope that helps!

 

[mediocrepoet]

IWD is good,

how long until the codex starts saying NWN is good

Glad you're around to keep asking the dumb questions, rusty. This would be like Volourn asking how long until the Codex would starts saying Fallout 76 is good.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

IWD is good,

how long until the codex starts saying NWN is good

Glad you're around to keep asking the dumb questions, rusty. This would be like Volourn asking how long until the Codex would starts saying Fallout 76 is good.

I give it two years until people are praising NWN as misunderstood.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I'd use "technically proficient" to describe that, but that by itself doesn't do much for me. Yes, you told your story well and eloquently, but that doesn't matter if your story is bland enough that I forget about it 20 minutes after I hear it.

You are right, but even that is very rare nowadays. It's always a subjective thing that, but IWD's storytelling, both in the base game and the expansions, gives me a sketch and lets my imagination complete the picture, the same way as a well written book would.

Going off on a tangent again, that's what I think games' storytelling should always be aiming for. A game should be interactive, and the player doesn't have access to "the story, told-word-for-word the way that the writer intended it", but he co-writes it. The book's interactivity is more limited, as the reader can picture specific images or "camera shots" of what's described, and the author doesn't have control over that part, but in the game, both scenes and story can be interacted with. Contrast this with the "narrator text" which became all the rage since D:OS, and which rarely accomplishes anything, at least for me.