All you need to do to find brain dead morons on the Codex is to look in a Pillars thread. It is like Sawyer raped their mothers or something. What the fuck is wrong with this game to merit so much scorn?
I don't think the game has earned this hate, but it was definitely misleading. I liked the game myself, but people have the right to resent Obsidian (or at least some of the people there) for it, and I do as well to some degree.
All it takes is one look at the original KS page. This is the introduction:
Obsidian Entertainment and our legendary game designers Chris Avellone, Tim Cain, and Josh Sawyer are excited to bring you a new role-playing game for the PC. Project Eternity (working title) pays homage to the great Infinity Engine games of years past: Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment.
Project Eternity aims to recapture the magic, imagination, depth, and nostalgia of classic RPG's that we enjoyed making - and playing. At Obsidian, we have the people responsible for many of those classic games and we want to bring those games back… and that’s why we’re here - we need your help to make it a reality!
At first it looked like MCA, JES and Tim Cain would play important roles
together. They're mentioned as designers, after all, not as the roles they got in the end. However, it was not true in the slightest, and it does make a difference. The initial reaction would've been different if only Sawyer's name had been mentioned above and MCA and Tim were listed with the small contributions they had in the final game.
The next bit was just as misleading:
Project Eternity will take the central hero, memorable companions and the epic exploration of Baldur’s Gate, add in the fun, intense combat and dungeon diving of Icewind Dale, and tie it all together with the emotional writing and mature thematic exploration of Planescape: Torment.
[...]
You will engage in dialogues that are deep, and offer many choices to determine the fate of you and your party. …and you'll experience a story that explores mature themes and presents you with complex, difficult choices to shape how your story plays out.
Central hero? Alright.
Memorable companions? Depending on the BG, they weren't
all memorable, but speaking of PoE alone, I'd say only 3 or 4 tops were memorable, so no.
Epic exploration? False.
Fun? Entirely subjective, but I thought it was pretty boring at times.
It has the intense combat and dungeon diving of Icewind Dale, I'll give them that.
Emotional writing and mature thematic exploration of PST? It has that, but not like PST at all, so false as well.
Then near the end they added George Ziets as a stretch goal, which sounded great, but all he did was provide feedback during pre-production.
Most people thought -myself included- that this was the dream team working on a CRPG with the best aspects of each IE game and full creative freedom. What's not to like, eh? Instead at some point it became Sawyer's pet project, which played it extremely safe and tried to
fix the old IE games rather than pay homage to them, which was the main promise in the first place.
Again, I liked the game, but it's hard not to feel very frustrated and deceived.
