But as @Wormerine has pointed out, and with which I concur, it ended up hurting PoE2. Badly. Why? Because PoE1 was so heavily hyped as THE spiritual successor to the IE games that when hardcore fans of the IE games played PoE1 many of them came away disappointed that the game was not EXACTLY like the old IE games they fondly recalled.
I think I need to clarify, that I meant that IE lineage hurt PoE artistically, rather then just commercially. Not that you are wrong, but that's not exactly the point I was trying to make (I didn't mean to present PoE's shortcomings as a failure of fans to appreciate it, but as a failure of the game to be as good as it could be).
Again, I don't think we're saying very different things. Your focus is on the impact of the IE lineage artistically. For me, it is both artistically and commercially. And the games falling short of their potential artistically, I think, is because Obsidian/Sawyer went too far in trying to hue as closely to that IE lineage as possible.
But, even if they fall short of what they could have been, I still find them to be superior to the D:OS games in every way: world-building, storytelling, characters and character development, mechanics, artsyle. Everything.
