I hope MS doesn’t ruin Obsidian. They tend to have good ideas but lack the funds to follow through.
I have mixed feelings about Pillars of Eternity. There was a lot to love, but the setting never gripped me the way even D:OS does. The game also had what I consider to be some design flaws. Replaying all of the Infinity Engine games has helped me isolate why. Compared to those classics, I spend a lot more time in POE tapping the pause button in difficult fights. Que up a few moves, play, immediately pause again, select abilities, play, immediately pause, and so on ad nauseam.
I don’t do this in IE games, because most of my party members don’t have as many skills to juggle. I’m mostly just selecting skills for spell casters and to a lesser extent, priests. Everyone else is largely autoattacking. In POE almost everybody has a selection of skills, so that requires more time spent tapping pause. More difficult fights often feel like a scattered slog.
Also, POE, especially #2 is overly balanced. The IE games are not, and that is a big part of the charm. When I discovered in ToB that I could defeat a dragon easily by casting timestop, polymorphing into a mind flayer, and attacking the dragon until it’s Int reached 0, and then watching it crumple when the timestop concluded, I was elated. It felt like cheating the system, but that was the point. D:OS2 has the same design ethos, where the player is rewarded and encouraged to abuse the system, so I think Larian is the perfect choice for BG3.
Couldn't agree more about the balance obsession that Obsidian (Sawyer) has. But I welcomed the added complexity in gameplay, specially for the martial classes, this allows for more customization and creating more unique builds.
I hope Larian is inspired by BG's design though, fuck balance, put crazy ways for the players to exploit the system there, because you can do crazy things even in the Pnp.
