Why couldn't Obsidian make a commercially successful isometric RPG like Larian?

[Blutwurstritter]

Obsidian took a fundamentally flawed system (RTwP) that's only revered due to nostalgia by a small percentage of gamers, and claimed that they could make it better. They did succeed at that too imo, but that didn't matter because the end product was still mediocre at best. Some of the old schoolers who liked the old games despite their flaws weren't there anymore, for one reason or the other. Casuals (i.e. the people who actually determine whether your game is commercially successful or not) would rather play something like Dragon Age: Origins. They failed to ride that initial kickstarter craze, and what they did for the second game didn't matter, as it rarely does.

Larian took a tested an proven system that's usually thought of as "boring" by casuals because of them never actually trying it. They focused on the "fun" aspects of the game during their marketing campaign, like the humour and being able to spend quality time with your partner. In the meantime they made it obvious where the inspiration was coming from and filled their game with little homages. Casuals didn't care about the flaws because they were in it for the fun, and the old schoolers were happy to shill the game with passion because it scratched their itch properly. Rest is history.

So it was essentially a matter of the smart guy at the head of Larian making good decisions, and the opportunist guy at the head of Obsidian making uneducated ones.

RTwP is not a problem, the success of the Pathfinder games by Owlcat is proof of that. You can clearly still make RTwP rpgs with decent sales numbers if the whole package is good.

I didn't say RTwP was the problem, only that it was flawed. If people enjoyed something flawed years ago, they can enjoy it now too. I also played and enjoyed Kingmaker as a RTwP game until that absolute genius came up with the TB mod.

What made me like Kingmaker wasn't the game being RTwP. But the RTwP aspect of it didn't annoy me too much either, because it was familiar. Can't say the same for PoE.

PoE lacked soul (heh) in terms of writing and the story. But there are very successful games that are even shittier in those.

Then we agree mostly. I just found it strange that you mention RTwP so explicitly, when the choice to use RTwP it is not the main reason that PoE1/2 failed to meet expectations. However, I disagree that they made it better. The mechanics and combat are not designed well for RTwP. Sometimes less is more and PoE's convoluted systems are good example for that.

They made the RTwP part itself better as in they improved how it plays and made it easier to control your characters and understand what's going on (barring the exaggerated visuals)

Sawyer also had the right idea in that adapting a turn based system to a real time where every 6 seconds is one turn had created a lot of problems for these old games. But the real issue was that he isn't good enough to come up with better mechanics than people who's been developing D&D for years, people who's actually jobs were to create game systems rather than video games (talking about D&D up to 3.5 as that's where I stopped paying attention). Hence me saying the game is mediocre at best. No reason to parrot what everyone has been writing here for years.

I don't mind how Sawyer changed stats and their meaning, that is one of the few interesting aspects. What I mind is the action speed calculation, the small percentages on everything and the interaction of these parts with the hit-miss-graze system. I cannot simply and quickly estimate average damage or attack speed in this system. I also don't think BG1/2 would be any better if they used this attack resolution and attack speed system. The same goes for spells. The outcomes can vary wildly and are hard to estimate. The lack of some sort natural unit of time, like the 6 second round, also doesn't help. A standard like that allows it to easily judge how fast/slow something is, and I don't mean that everything should follow fake rounds, but that the game should have some sort of easily recognizable patterns or norms. PoE lacks any such reference and makes it much harder to judge if abilities or spells with durations are worth it or not. The mechanics are in principal not necessarily bad, but the way that they are tuned and implemented in PoE is. They are next to no improvement over the much simpler and easier to work with system from the old games. Obsidian should have started from there and added a few changes to improve it gradually. What makes matters worse is that it takes a lot of time to engage with the system deeply. I never thought it was worth my time. That makes it convoluted.

 

[Daedalos]

Pillars 1 could have been a bigger hit, if it was turn based and less trash mob encounters, and just polished up like bg3 was. the story and setting surely was interesting enough to warrant the BG3 polish and VA and all that.
despite all that, it was a decent game.

poe2 was shit.

Right now, Owlcat and Larian are holding up the true cRPG torch, and Obsidian aint gotten no clue

 

[Roguey]

Having to look at tool tips to get an idea of what stats do is the opposite of intuitive.

Let's face it, if you're not reading the words of what attributes actually do when making a character, you're stupid.

 

[scytheavatar]

RTwP was not the reason it failed though.

RTwP was a big reason it failed. Josh Sawyer complained about how Pathfinder Kingmaker was a success despite being RTwP, he seemed to have missed how Pathfinder Kingmaker had a selling point of simply being a Pathfinder game. What selling point did POE 2 have? The nostalgia bait selling point was already spent on POE 1. Being RTwP makes it just another of the many Baldur's Gate wannabe CRPGs out there. You can't sell a game just with a pirate theme cause it interests only a few people. Trying to sell a game with the Obsidian brand is even more laughable considering Obsidian has always been niche. The DOS games were able to stand out simply by being turn based, which made them different from the rest of the genre.

 

[user]

RTwP was not the reason it failed though.

RTwP was a big reason it failed. Josh Sawyer complained about how Pathfinder Kingmaker was a success despite being RTwP, he seemed to have missed how Pathfinder Kingmaker had a selling point of simply being a Pathfinder game. What selling point did POE 2 have? The nostalgia bait selling point was already spent on POE 1. Being RTwP makes it just another of the many Baldur's Gate wannabe CRPGs out there. You can't sell a game just with a pirate theme cause it interests only a few people. Trying to sell a game with the Obsidian brand is even more laughable considering Obsidian has always been niche. The DOS games were able to stand out simply by being turn based, which made them different from the rest of the genre.

That's not how I see it at all.

Every normie and their mother knows Obsidian, one big reason being NV.
And it was a much better advertised (by CR etc) sequel by Obsidian VS the first game of an unknown company with the Pathfinder IP, broken at release to boot. Among the steam crowd, even DnD fans, how many do you think even know or are fans of Pathfinder?
The nostalgia bait and RTwP worked just fine with P:K.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

RTwP was not the reason PoE failed. It failed because its system was contrived gimmickry. The story was pretentious and not compelling once you leave the first town.

So it missed the mark as a game and failed as a story. It wasn't abysmal, but it only reminded us of what we actually wanted PoE to be. It was like taking a starving man into a restaurant, let him inhale the savory scents of the kitchen, then serve him boiled potatoes.

 

[Kem0sabe]

BG3 proved one thing, production value sells copies, especially in a genre starved for AAA content like RPGs.

In game cinematics, high definition characters and game world, quality voice overs, exciting presentation all around. That makes for cool trailers, for streaming and social media views.

Presentation has always taken the back seat in Obsidian games, even after they were bought by MS and had all that money to spend, they still released that terrible Avowed gameplay trailer, that looked like something from two console generations ago.

At this point, Obsidian is such a gamepass shovelware studio so MS can pad their game catalog.

 

[scytheavatar]

RTwP was not the reason it failed though.

RTwP was a big reason it failed. Josh Sawyer complained about how Pathfinder Kingmaker was a success despite being RTwP, he seemed to have missed how Pathfinder Kingmaker had a selling point of simply being a Pathfinder game. What selling point did POE 2 have? The nostalgia bait selling point was already spent on POE 1. Being RTwP makes it just another of the many Baldur's Gate wannabe CRPGs out there. You can't sell a game just with a pirate theme cause it interests only a few people. Trying to sell a game with the Obsidian brand is even more laughable considering Obsidian has always been niche. The DOS games were able to stand out simply by being turn based, which made them different from the rest of the genre.

That's not how I see it at all.

Every normie and their mother knows Obsidian, one big reason being NV.
And it was a much better advertised (by CR etc) sequel by Obsidian VS the first game of an unknown company with the Pathfinder IP, broken at release to boot. Among the steam crowd, even DnD fans, how many do you think even know or are fans of Pathfinder?
The nostalgia bait and RTwP worked just fine with P:K.

Normies and their mothers don't even know Obsidian worked on New Vegas, they probably do not know the difference between Obsidian and Bethesda. Bethesda was able to build up their brand name through not just one game but multiple ones, it is hard for Obsidian to be well known just from New Vegas.

And among D&D fans you are not going to find many who have never heard of Pathfinder. And most of them even if they have never touched Pathfinder know of Kingmaker as a legendary best Adventure module ever. People have underestimated how big Pathfinder became.

 

[luj1]

Love this pure shill threads

Guess someone of you made this? Infinitron Roguey

 

[luj1]

RTwP was not the reason PoE failed. It failed because its system was contrived gimmickry. The story was pretentious and not compelling once you leave the first town.

Core systems were rotten from the inside + bland forgettable Harry Potter world/writing

But this has been said 1000000 times

I hope someone from Obsidian is reading this and learning from it, because the staff is really going full throttle on desperately trying to keep them relevant by mentioning them. Would be a shame to shill for nothing

 

[Grampy_Bone]

I definitely think that RTwP RPGs piggybacked from the success of RTS. No mainstream RTS anymore means no shared "language" with RTwP to boost sales.

One thing that gets discounted a lot around here is these sorts of transitional games. For example I'd bet Assassin's Creed pulled a lot of action gamers into playing RPGs by virtue of similar controls and themes. Likewise games like Bioshock and Far Cry 3 are ever so slightly RPG-adjacent they pushed normies into playing Skyrim and Fallout 3. That all sets the stage for more complex RPGs becoming mainstream. I had a roommate who'd never dare touch an RPG back in the day, but he's playing BG 3 now. Of course I don't think there'd be any big successful turn-based RPGs now if it weren't for NuXcom.

So part of this is just reading room and seeing the way the winds are blowing.

 

[smaug]

Having to look at tool tips to get an idea of what stats do is the opposite of intuitive.

Let's face it, if you're not reading the words of what attributes actually do when making a character, you're stupid.

Ugh, I hate this stupid percentage based system. One of the reasons why I don’t bother with DoS or PoE.

 

[ropetight]

Tyranny got nothing, TOW got one DLC and almost nothing of support, Pentiment I hope got nothing.

Tyranny was funded by Paradox, TOW by Private Division. Pentiment didn't need much of anything in post-release support, it's a narrative adventure game, not an RPG.

Decisions on the support probably were not Obsidians in the cases Tyranny and TOW - but Obsidians name was heavily marketed and attached to those games.
What you as player could expect from the game made by Obsidian is part of sales.
Blame it on Obsidian or not.

Obsidian separated its focus to all games mentioned above, plus Pathfinder trading card game and some freemium MMOs in that period.
They always were guns for hire - lots of projects with very little in common, probably neccessary to keep company afloat.

Obsidian made game-unique features that were half-baked tangential gameplay elements as Stronghold in PoE, and ship management in PoE2.
These experiments were not liked by public, so they were not repeated.
All this adds to the image of being inconsistent.

When you are buying cRPG from Larian, you know what you are buying.
With Obisidian, it can be everything between Pillars and Pentiment.

 

[JarlFrank]

You can't sell a game just with a pirate theme cause it interests only a few people.

See, for me the pirates in an exotic archipelago thing was a selling point.

But then they shoved their retarded ultra-high fantasy where gods involve themselves in mortal affairs in physical form into what could have been a cool little pirate adventure, and I lost all interest.

 

[Roguey]

Deadfire was a nautical-themed adventure, but it wasn't about piracy (Sawyer seethed about this misconception constantly, imagine it bothers him almost as much as people using steampunk to refer to the Victorian era)

 

[Butter]

Deadfire was a nautical-themed adventure, but it wasn't about piracy (Sawyer seethed about this misconception constantly, imagine it bothers him almost as much as people using steampunk to refer to the Victorian era)

OK, is Sawyer familiar with the concept of an elevator pitch? "Pirate fantasy RPG" sounds a lot more exciting and compelling than "Nautical colonialism fantasy RPG".

 

[Roguey]

OK, is Sawyer familiar with the concept of an elevator pitch? "Pirate fantasy RPG" sounds a lot more exciting and compelling than "Nautical colonialism fantasy RPG".

He's a history autist, doesn't matter. There's one pirate faction among many, but the game isn't about pirates or committing piracy (unless you side with the pirates).

 

[likash]

Swen bet the company, and I'm ready to believe this is more than bragging after the fact, on BG3. Obsidian's leadership didn't have the balls nor the perception of business trends to even stay independent. They are looking at retirment, and the developers who are left there seem to just be kicking the can down the road.

Obsidian was formed by the remnants of Black Isle that never had any balls. The ones with ballls at Black Isle left after Fallout 1 when everybody started to intefere with their work. I;m talking about the 3 amigos.They had balls back then and were also quite young but the Troika stuff really killed their spirit. If Troika would have been formed 20 years later during crowd funding and steam era they would have killed it since the trio would have gotten serious money without having to deal with companies lilke Sierra to distribute their product. They would have had more time to focus on games than managing the company. Boyarsky is still "shell shocked" and you could see the pain in his eyes when he talks about Troika. I could imagine them churning patches for Arcanum with steam and gog platforms

Sven is the right dude at the right time because he would have failed 20 years ago. The crowd funding for his first games really helped his company and bought him enough independence to do what he wanted. BG 3 is his "magnum opus" and i think the peak of his success. If he is smart he will milk this with 1-2 more games and retire rich with a good reputation.

bonus: I loved how Todd Howard saw BG3 winning most important gaming awards while Starfield got fuck all. His "sweet little lies" cought up with him and Bethesda.

 

[JarlFrank]

Too many game devs these days don't know how to build a good adventure story. They get lost in pretentious high concept ideas, but players just want an adventure.

Basically this would make for the perfect RPG:

 

[Alex]

Having to look at tool tips to get an idea of what stats do is the opposite of intuitive.

Let's face it, if you're not reading the words of what attributes actually do when making a character, you're stupid.

Maybe, but nowhere near as stupid as a system designer making strength increase healing amount.

 

[JarlFrank]

Having to look at tool tips to get an idea of what stats do is the opposite of intuitive.

Let's face it, if you're not reading the words of what attributes actually do when making a character, you're stupid.

Maybe, but nowhere near as stupid as making strength increase healing amount.

PoE clerics:

 

[Shaki]

Pillars 1 could have been a bigger hit, if it was turn based and less trash mob encounters, and just polished up like bg3 was. the story and setting surely was interesting enough to warrant the BG3 polish and VA and all that.
despite all that, it was a decent game.

poe2 was shit.

Right now, Owlcat and Larian are holding up the true cRPG torch, and Obsidian aint gotten no clue

POE2 was far better than the first one. Story and companions sucked dick in both, but the second one had at least some decent itemization and 10x more possible character builds thanks to dual-classing being added. First POE was one of the worst RPGs ever in both these categories.

I tried to replay both about a year ago, and I still fucking hated POE1, it's still cringe and boring af both from story and gameplay perspective, it just has nothing going for it, 0 redeeming qualities. But I actually managed to get some fun out of Deadfire when playing it in turn based mode, using mostly custom mercs and treating it as a pure exploration/combat game.

 

[Viata]

Why couldn't Obsidian make a commercially successful isometric RPG like Larian?​

My friend, the answer is so simple: first we have all the shit that happened with Chris Avellone, then we have Sawyer working there and finally we have Tim Cain saying this:

I had someone lie to my face about something and when I discovered it later, and I called him out on it, he said "I was told
to lie to you"

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...w-youtube-channel.147060/page-82#post-8814876

Now, knowing that, why would you even expect a good game from such shitty environment? Literal garbage in, garbage out.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Having to look at tool tips to get an idea of what stats do is the opposite of intuitive.

Let's face it, if you're not reading the words of what attributes actually do when making a character, you're stupid.

This screenshot is a particularly bad illustration for what you've said.

 

[Riddler]

I definitely think that RTwP RPGs piggybacked from the success of RTS. No mainstream RTS anymore means no shared "language" with RTwP to boost sales.

One thing that gets discounted a lot around here is these sorts of transitional games. For example I'd bet Assassin's Creed pulled a lot of action gamers into playing RPGs by virtue of similar controls and themes. Likewise games like Bioshock and Far Cry 3 are ever so slightly RPG-adjacent they pushed normies into playing Skyrim and Fallout 3. That all sets the stage for more complex RPGs becoming mainstream. I had a roommate who'd never dare touch an RPG back in the day, but he's playing BG 3 now. Of course I don't think there'd be any big successful turn-based RPGs now if it weren't for NuXcom.

So part of this is just reading room and seeing the way the winds are blowing.

There are plenty people playing MOBAs though, which are arguably closer to RPGs than RTS are.