[Spoilers] Was Project Eternity a day dream since the beginning?

[Delterius]

The Road to Eternity documentary has an interesting portion where Feargus, Brennecke and Sawyer talk about the excitement that took over the studio during the Kickstarter craze. After what had been very difficult years of downsizing and cancelled projects for Obsidian, the whole situation shifted once fans showered the studio with millions. The goal was reached at a very early point of the campaign and everything that came afterwards was not really planned for. They were overwhelmed and the words "sounds like you are coming up with these things as you go" are not only an apt description of the stretch goals Obsidian put forward but they also belong to none other than lead designer himself. This lead to a case of Kickstarter feature creep, characteristic of the bigger crowdfunded CRPGs.

Also, an interesting contrast between the bigger and more successful pitches from InXile and Obsidian versus the smaller projects from indies who took to kickstarter is that the former big names sold... dreams. Even Larian's Divinity Original Sin stands somewhere between a Wasteland 2 and a Paper Sorcerer, indeed, it seems that the Kickstarter audiences work under a strange logic. The more of the game could be readily shown, the lesser its reach. A wider and larger fanbase was built on vague promises carried by name recognition. A situation not entirely unlike that of the devil we all know, the marketing and PR departments from AAA studios.

Lastly, the wishful cloud that the dream sellers from Obsidian tapped into was particularly diverse. Planescape Torment, Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate 2 entered our collective memory for different reasons each. A great, focused and personal storyline; a dungeoneering experience with full party creation; and a run of the mill coming of age adventure through the Sword Coast with a sheer size that is unrivalled to this day. The Infinity Engine was used in very different projects, it catered to very different audiences which, by the way, fragmented into the fanbases of a few studios. And Project Eternity named every single one of those games as inspiration.

All that said, I always feared that the real problem with Project Eternity would be its scope. That it would try to do too much at the same time. That with a colossal effort, all Obsidian would manage is one of those 'mediocrity done right' games (to steal felipepe's words on DA:O). My playthrough more or less confirmed it.

Sure, everyone has their own very special Judas. That one design principle or basic aspect of the game that they'd discard and or improve, increasing their own enjoyment of the whole thing one thousand times. To most detractors its the Sawyerist heresy. To many others its the of nakedly underdeveloped NPCs who can barely cover their privates with the tiny cardboard cutouts the creative department could afford to give them. Not to mention the issue with the avalanche of infodumps that claimed the lives of at least seventeen people this past few months. A few are even burnout of Realmsy settings, as is their God given right since calamity of 2006.

But let me ask you something: what binds all of these and others together? A lack of focus. Pillars tried to do too much with too little.

In combat, Pillars played at delivering nostalgia (at least superficially) and doing its own nearly unique thing. In story, it attempted to A) Introduce a new setting, B) Slightly twist its genre and C) Delve in universal metaphyisical storylines, all at the same time. The only time Pillars really tried to dial things back somewhat was in respects to content density, which was a wise decision. But then again, it did so when comparing itself to Baldur's Gate 2 of all things.

It is no surprise, then, that combat still has a lot of kinks to solve and that the story didn't have the time or room to flesh out anything or anyone.

Finally, consider this: take the two main storylines of Pillars of Eternity and place them in two different games. One is about Dyrwood and its like the Neverwinter Nights 2 OC, it focuses on estabilishing the setting. The other is about the Leaden Key and its the Mask of the Betrayed expansion, delving in larger than life, world spanning events.

Maybe then Dyrwood's status as a post revolutionary (republic? I don't even know who gets to vote) would amount to more than a lot of Not!Americans killing each other in an orgy of FREEEDOM. More could be done of the city's faction play. There would be more room for characters like Duke Aevar and Lady Webb to act, to be more than disposable plot devices, such that you'd actually care about their climatic deaths. You'd see more of the actual daily problems with Animancy outside the scope of the conspiracy and the madness of totally Not!Necromancers. The ideals put forward by the revolution and Durance's creed could be challenged and fleshed out more as we focus on the Purges.

Likewise, the whole plot of the Leaden Key and the PC's personal quest for survival would have more room to work. Who knows? Maybe the precedent set by the spirit gauge could be tapped upon and it would feel like your character really is in danger. Thaos would be more than a clumsy old man who succeeds due to raw power and apparently never intrigue. Grieving Mother would be more than a schizophrenic ghost with random seizures whom you meet randomly on an ordinary road.

TL;DR: You can't be BG2, PS:T and IWD at the same time. Hell, you can't even be BG2.

 

[Morality Games]

"shrug" It's almost a foregone conclusion the sequel will be better than the original. How much better, I'm not sure.

 

[Gord]

Finally, consider this: take the two main themes of this topic and place them in two different threads. One is about why the OP was disappointed by PoE and its like a dozen other existing ones, it focuses on thrashing the game and venting frustration. The other is about the Kickstarter craze and its actually something interesting, delving in principal questions regarding crowdfunding.

Fixed.



Seriously though, I think its an interesting question whether Kickstarter is a good funding method for games with the scope and background of PoE (or W2, D:OS, SRR, etc...), or whether it's much more suited for smaller, more focused games, or games from much smaller teams.
All the big Kickstarters so far have essentially overpromised and underdelivered if compared to their initial pitch and final campaign. Even D:OS, probably the KS with the best result (and incidentally the one with the biggest additional non-KS funding behind it), in the end was a much smaller game than Larian aimed for at the end of the campaign.

 

[Pope Amole II]

You can't make a proper BG2 follow-up on the kickstarter money. Not with the appropriate level of graphix and not in USA, at the very least. Gathering more than they planned for was already kind of bullshit - do you think they really hoped to make this kind of a game on $1kk? They're not dumb.

So it's rather predictable that the game is more illusion than reality - just an attempt to fill all those checkboxes somehow so it might seem like a proper game (just like it was with the Wasteland 2). We'll see its true colors only in the expansion/sequel, whichever gets their proper attention.

 

[dragonul09]

The main problem is that they went on a very safe route with this game,they didn't even tried to risk a little bit and add some kind of innovation or something that will make you say''Wow they really did give a shit''.I understand that people want another Baldurs Gate,Planescape but to blatantly ''copy'' them and call it a day was not their brightest idea.

They have to take the risk and make another ip,something that's not the same generic garbage rpg that we got since the 80s,for fuck sake it's not like they gambled with their own money.

 

[Delterius]

You can't make a proper BG2 follow-up on the kickstarter money. Not with the appropriate level of graphix and not in USA, at the very least.

Well, I never claimed that this was the problem. In fact, I even point out that the one part PoE did not overreach was when it comes to quantity of content. They never tried to top BG2's scale. I think the problem is of a qualitative nature. They tried to shove different kinds of games into Pillars - not just a BG, but also a Planescape and an Icewind Dale.

 

[Roguey]

something that's not the same generic garbage rpg that we got since the 80s

Pretty sure there's more thought put into Eternity's world than any other semi-original fantasy crpg.

 

[dragonul09]

something that's not the same generic garbage rpg that we got since the 80s

Pretty sure there's more thought put into Eternity's world than any other semi-original fantasy crpg.

And i'm pretty sure it's irrelevant as long it feels like the same regurgitated garbage that we got since,well the damn 80s.

Talking about originality and interesting lore
Blue Orcs
Fampyrs instead of vampires (that took some long motherfucking thinking)
Godhammer bomb (not silly at all)
Giant beetles ,because why the fuck not
Blue slime,black slime,green goo

And the list goes on and on.

I don't give a shit how much thought went into this game,it just feels like they checked every god damn point on the ''Make a generic rpg'' list.

 

[Roguey]

This doesn't feel like an 80s RPG at all, what an oversimplification.

Aumaua are nothing like orcs when it comes to their culture. Additionally, I don't recall any other crpgs where vampires degenerate into zombies who degenerate into skeletons when they can't get enough sustenance.

 

[Cadmus]

I liked the Godhammer story, I think it's quite original and was mostly well told. There were some issues around it, like Durance suddenly being totally amazed that the other bomb carriers were being killed off being relevant to their being the bomb carriers, but fuck it. That part was pretty good, imo.

 

[Immortal]

something that's not the same generic garbage rpg that we got since the 80s

Pretty sure there's more thought put into Eternity's world than any other semi-original fantasy crpg.

Sawyer pulled this setting out of his ass. Forgotten Realms had years of development behind it before you ever heard of it (When it was bought by WoTC / Hasbro).

EDIT:
I would argue that the Elder Scrolls has more interesting and original idea's the PoE. This setting feels like exactly what it is. A Middle-American History Obsessed hipster creating a setting in under 6 months.

 

[hell bovine]

something that's not the same generic garbage rpg that we got since the 80s

Pretty sure there's more thought put into Eternity's world than any other semi-original fantasy crpg.

And i'm pretty sure it's irrelevant as long it feels like the same regurgitated garbage that we got since,well the damn 80s.

Talking about originality and interesting lore
Blue Orcs
Fampyrs instead of vampires (that took some long motherfucking thinking)
Godhammer bomb (not silly at all)
Giant beetles ,because why the fuck not
Blue slime,black slime,green goo

And the list goes on and on.

I don't give a shit how much thought went into this game,it just feels like they checked every god damn point on the ''Make a generic rpg'' list.

How many stories feature vampires that turn into zombies then skeletons if not fed, people nuking incarnations of gods with bombs?

Well, I liked the vampire lore from Elder Scrolls much better. Divine spears and all. :D

I've wrote it before, but to me Pillar's played like a patchwork of ideas. And while some of them were interesting, others were neither interesting, nor that original. The entire "vision time with Thaos" reminded me of Irenicus and Bhaals visions from BG. The "ancient, extinct civilization made crazy tech and also gods" reminded me of Dwemer in ES. Doesn't Morrowind feature gods, who made themselves divine with the help of ancient tech anyway? And you get to play a reincarnated hero too.

 

[hell bovine]

The visions were there to give you a look into what Thaos was doing, and the Bhaal visions were more a mystery in the first one.
Yeah, and the dwemer reminded me of atlantis? Like, why does it need to be 100% original there, bud?
Soul manipulation and shit isn't the same as what they did in morrowind, and you are not even remotely a reincarnated hero in Pillars of Eternity. You were a religious zealot who tortured and burned people for not doing what you wanted. Since reincarnation and past lives are important to literally everyone in Pillars of Eternity, comparing it to morrowind is just pure folly.

Also, you didn't name any stories where vampires turn into ooga booga skeletons without enough feeding, and you didn't name any stories where gods get nuked to death. You just said "I like another game's fictional shit better." I get it, you love elder scrolls, and that's fine, but stop.

That's not criticism, that's shitposting.

Here is the thing, I don't even like ES that much, and yet I would rate its lore as more interesting than Pillar's. I found the entire "fampyrs into zombies and skeletons" story boring, even if it's new; just because an idea is original, doesn't automatically make it interesting. The vampire mythos in folklore is far better anyway (e.g. the two hearts/ two souls origin) and compared to that, both Elder Scrolls and Pillar's fall flat. But of those two, at least Vivec's sermon made for an amusing read.

Same goes for visions and reincarnations. All those "pick your history" dialogues, which really don't make much difference in the end, make the game loose whatever dramatic effort they were hoping to achieve. Oh sure, let me think for a moment, do I want that tortured ghost lady, whom I just met, to be my lover/mentor/poker buddy? What's the point of that? Why would I care that my character was a murdering religious zealot in her previous life, when she did much worse in the game with little consequence? Thanks for lending me a hand in killing that pregnant woman from your village, Eder.

You can present a trope in a way that still makes it fun to read, and you can take a novel idea and deliver it in a way that made me skip dialogs.

 

[MilesBeyond]

Yeah, I think Pillars rode a bit too hard on the "spiritual successor" tagline, which I think is an incredibly stupid thing to do. "Spiritual successor" works as a marketing approach - saying "Hey, remember this game? Well if you liked it, you'll probably like our game, too!" - but it's a horrifically bad idea from a game design perspective. When your entire purpose is to be like a game that already exists, I end up thinking "What's the point of even playing it?" I think this problem was compounded further in PoE because there seemed to be some confusion over whether they were trying to make a spiritual successor to BG or PS:T. The thing is, aside from the engine and ruleset, BG and PS:T were extraordinarily different games, and trying to merge them doesn't really work.

So I agree with OP. The nature of the project led to them being torn between a variety of different directions and styles and as a result the game ends up not really being exceptionally good in any area. I know a lot of people around these parts like to blame Pillars on Josh Sawyer, but I think it's actually the opposite. I feel like the game suffered a bit from having too many chefs in the kitchen, as it were. There didn't seem to be a coherent design philosophy shaping everything.

And just to clarify, I am someone who enjoyed the game. I'm not saying these things as "This is why the game sucks," I'm saying "This is why it's 8/10 rather than 9/10"

I do think that comparing PoE to BG is a bit unfair. Because BG was AD&D it had its ruleset and setting all mapped out for it to use. I mean as much as people love to hate Faerun it's probably the most detailed fantasy setting this side of Middle Earth. You could throw a dart at a map of Faerun and anywhere you hit you've got decades worth of supplemental material describing it. The IE games benefited, I think, because they were able to pour all their energy into encounter design, story, and gameplay. The PoE team had to concoct an entire setting and ruleset from scratch, as well as design a game to use it in, so they really couldn't invest the same resources into other things.

That being said, it's a comparison Obsidian explicitly invoked so it's not that unfair.

 

[Roguey]

Sawyer pulled this setting out of his ass. Forgotten Realms had years of development behind it before you ever heard of it (When it was bought by WoTC / Hasbro).

Sawyer put a lot of effort into making a fantasy world that makes sense, whereas Forgotten Realms is a theme park made by a hack writer.

EDIT:
I would argue that the Elder Scrolls has more interesting and original idea's the PoE. This setting feels like exactly what it is. A Middle-American History Obsessed hipster creating a setting in under 6 months.

The ES setting became a joke the day Bethesda decided that Cyrodiil should be a European forest instead of a jungle.

 

[Immortal]

Sawyer pulled this setting out of his ass. Forgotten Realms had years of development behind it before you ever heard of it (When it was bought by WoTC / Hasbro).

Sawyer put a lot of effort into making a fantasy world that makes sense, whereas Forgotten Realms is a theme park made by a hack writer.

EDIT:
I would argue that the Elder Scrolls has more interesting and original idea's the PoE. This setting feels like exactly what it is. A Middle-American History Obsessed hipster creating a setting in under 6 months.

The ES setting became a joke the day Bethesda decided that Cyrodiil should be a European forest instead of a jungle.

All your subjective feels. So since feels are an argument - PoE's setting is utter crap. Forgotten Realms is great before WoTC raped it.

 

[A_Leftist_Pig?]

Am I missing something? Didn't the game receive critical acclaim? Does it have shitty dialouge? Im just reading up on everything now that summer has come and it seems there's alot of heat coming from the Codex vs this game. Anyone got a summary? I haven't bought it yet, should I?

 

[ArchAngel]

I agree with Delterius, PoE was over promised and under delivered just like WL2. Hopefully the expansions and sequels fix it. Or we get an enhanced edition.

 

[Prime Junta]

IMO many of P:E's biggest problems can be traced straight back to the KS. Endless Paths which throws the XP curve out of whack, turning the late game into a sleepwalk for completionists, the stronghold with no meat at all around its mechanical bones, the proliferation of same-y "unique" items, one or two classes too many, thinking-out-loud on all kinds of stuff from nonweapon skills to crafting. Not to mention tons of dopey godlikes in animu armor standing round smoking their pipes and looking annoying.

We did get that twitterstorm which got Obsidian to declare their allegiance in the Great Internet Social Justice War, so it's not all bad.

I don't think there's anything much wrong with the story or companions, but yeah, the game does suffer from being pulled in so many directions. Cut all that peripheral shit, and they would've had time to make a decent crafting system and get rid of the most egregiously OP spells and abilities. Would've gotten a lot closer to Josh's "no degenerates!" goal.

 

[A_Leftist_Pig?]

How is it being pulled in too many conditions? Gameplay wise then since you liked the story?
So the game becomes too easy late game and full of shit you "just have to finish" ?

Is it possible to just play the game a bit faster, ignoring all the junk laying around you in form of what I supposed are endless rewards and just go for the narrative and thus still have a challenge?

 

[Delterius]

If you play on PotD and stay on the critical path you'll likely come across one or two encounters that will demand some level of creativity. In my case it was precisely three. Everywhere else the usual experience is the same. Each class has a specific role in combat, which means that your party make up has a specific tactic set up to it. The only matter is how much that you are going to apply, that is, how many of your per rest resources you'll spend in this or that encounter.

 

[Athelas]

If you play on PotD and stay on the critical path you'll likely come across one or two encounters that will demand some level of creativity. In my case it was precisely three. Everywhere else the usual experience is the same. Each class has a specific role in combat, which means that your party make up has a specific tactic set up to it. The only matter is how much that you are going to apply, that is, how many of your per rest resources you'll spend in this or that encounter.

That's pretty much it right here.

Fighters are tanks. Wizards are AoE disablers. Druids are damage casters. Priests spam AoE healing. Rangers cast marked enemy on the same big asshole and then use wounding shot. It's the same thing every encounter. If you don't like this you won't like PoE.

Making a fighter a tank is a huge waste of their offensive capabilities (they have about half a dozen passive skills that boost their weapon damage) and they don't even have the best defenses. Spamming heals with a priest is typically counterproductive since healing spells don't actually heal health in this game. Your other classifications are also dubious.

 

[MilesBeyond]

Am I missing something? Didn't the game receive critical acclaim? Does it have shitty dialouge? Im just reading up on everything now that summer has come and it seems there's alot of heat coming from the Codex vs this game. Anyone got a summary? I haven't bought it yet, should I?

Darth Roxor wrote a review on the game that's floating around the Codex somewhere. I'm not sure if the review was representative of the Codex perspective at the time or if it influenced the Codex views - probably a bit of both - but either way it summarizes a lot of the complaints people here have.

Criticisms basically boil down to three things:

1. Mechanics. There's quite a few design decisions in the underlying ruleset that many Codexers seem to dislike. This includes: The engagement rule; using RTwP rather than TBS for combat; buffs and defensive spells only being castable while in combat; classes lacking versatility to instead fit defined MMO roles like Tank, DPS, Healbot, etc (I don't agree with that last one 100%, but I'll certainly concede the general point)

2. Encounter design. Fights in Pillars were easy, bland, and repetitive

3. Underdelivering. Basically, Pillars promised a hell of a lot, and didn't really manage to bring it. The stronghold is maybe the best example of this, but really it applies to the game overall. To hear the pre-release hype tell it, we were looking at something that would be like BG2 and PS:T combined, only better.


As far as I can tell, I'm in the minority because I agree with 90% of the criticisms the Codex levels at PoE but still think it's a good game - just not a great game. Hell, I didn't even want to discuss it when it first came out just because the conversation was so charged. Everyone was being all dramatic about it and talking about how it was either the salvation of gaming or the end of RPGs as we know them. Also the Codex has this weird and frankly creepy fixation with some of the individuals behind the game. Also some backer content being changed led to some weird-ass controversy that was impossible to care about.


Also some people criticize the story and setting, but to me that's a tougher one since those things are almost completely subjective.

 

[A_Leftist_Pig?]

Ya I noticed that fixation, what the fuck. The peeps behind it are some cool dudes from what I know.

I'll google for that review I guess.

 

[A_Leftist_Pig?]

Read it. Probably won't try the game now. I thought the game wouldn't be a dungeon crawler in the sense of random but repetitive mobs. Don't like that you get stuck in some sort of combat and that you can''t kite.