Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General New interview with Sven by Gamespot

I don't know exact numbers. It was disappointment as PoE1 did really well, and PoE2 got much bigger budget hoping for a bigger return on the investment. It made it's money back eventually, that I know for sure, so it didn't fail, but wasn't a massive profit either, unless pre-Avowed hype will boost sales.

I seriously doubt that Avowed is a kneejerk reaction to PoE2 not succeeding - I doubt those decisions are made overnight, and Feargus (Obsidian CEO) has been talking about Skyrim-in-Eora, way before PoE2 was out. You are more or less correct about PoE3, though.

Man, I thought all things considered Poe II was a net improvement over the (very mediocre) first, but reading people describing it as their favorite game ever is vaguely bizarre.


That aside, for anyone interested most of these games have very entertaining/informative "post mortem" available on Youtube:

Why? PoE fans from my experience tend to be very well aware games shortcomings - the most passionate fans I interacted with, also tended to be the most critical. PoE1&2 are easily among my favourite games in recent years, though they both could be much better - that’s one of the main reasons I hope that, after a break and rethinking, Obsidian will attempt another one. There is room for improvement, but I like overall direction and underlying goals. I played both games multiple times, and I am itching to do another run. And I must say, I enjoy those games more and more with each playthrough, in spite of their flaws. They are interestingly flawed games, at least to me.

Unfortunately, they seem to land in this awkward niche space that doesn’t satisfy people who actually like DnD systems (aka. Kingmaker) and doesn’t manage to bring newcomers in large numbers

So many things he brought up make me really nervous. No DM mode, which really makes me thing character export/import isn't a priority. No Paladin, because they don't want Smite to pop up..........what??? And they are modeling the Melee characters after OS, which sounds like laziness to me. I have scoured the forums and nowhere is anyone asking about "D:OS melee combat". I see a lot of people asking for this to NOT be D:OS3, but it looks like that's what we are getting. Where do we sign up for refunds?

@Dez, @Tarlonniel, others, don't give up hope on Avowed. I too cannot play a game in first-person, but I remain hopeful that Obsidian will do what Bethesda did with Skyrim, which is to have a third-person option for the game. When TOW came out as only first-person, and many of us complained in the Obsidian forum, one of the devs actually posted a response saying they would've liked to include a third-person option but their budget did not allow it. Now, with MS money, this should not be an issue.

Well said. I also consider both PoE games among my most favorite cRPGs, and games I will replay for years. Yes they have flaws, but that is to be expected when someone is developing an entirely new game mechanics system from scratch. But most importantly for me, the setting and lore of the games is fantastic and really interesting and I cannot wait to play more in that setting.

I love first person RPGs, but I can't get that hyped for Avowed because TOW is so mediocre but sold well, meaning that Obsidian might think they should do the same thing with the next game.

Because while the PoE games are decent (subjectively speaking) there isn't much special about them either, if you have experienced the greatness (also subjectively speaking) of storytelling, world building, combat and character development in other games of the genre. They don't come close to the other games in any aspect. The games may have elements that could make a cRPG great, but none of those elements were pushed to any significant degree. That's how I feel.

Because almost everything about POE II was more or less mediocre, bar some fairly pretty visuals for the genre (especially compared to the predecessor, which at time was downright ugly).

You are certainly welcome to your opinion, but I don't share it. I quite liked PoE 2. I won't claim that it was a perfect game of course, but I found the setting to be interesting, and the itemization was (again, IMO) quite good. I would really like to see more games follow the path of unique and upgradeable items sprinkled throughout rather than have the strongest items gated by the end game.

I guess we're kindred spirits <3 I loved PoE1, and I thought PoE2 was pretty well done (although it had plenty of issues that I had not experienced in the first game...). I just really, really, REALLY wanna find out how Aloth ...


And I would skip Avowed just because I am not a FPS player by any means. I've tried most of the RPGs that uses FPS, but I simply cannot get around it. :[ It doesn't click. BUUUT! I *REALLY* wanna support Obsidian in anything related to the PoE universe - I mean, as far as I've heard, Avowed will be in the same universe but in a completely different timeline - probably long before the Watcher's story. I have this small theory that we might even play one of the Watcher's earlier lives, judging by the hints that people have found in the trailer video!



Agreed. <3


Oh, don't worry. I am patient. I would much rather wait 10 or more years than have them rush something without the passion required for a good game. :] *I'll be waiting*


I 100% agree - I loved the setting, I loved the voice actors, I loved the music (OH THE MUSIC <3), I loved the combat and I loved MOST part of the story!

And I will most certainly not give up on it! I will try it even if it does not have third person view But if it DOES have a third person view, then I'll be happy! It is not my ideal route for fantasy games, but I spent so many, many intense years playing APB(:R) that I can make-do with third person view. :] Regardless of which - I am 100% buying it!

I absolutely agree that there is a long list of things PoE could have done better (especially the second one, imo - idk but there were so many annoyances in the second game that I never experienced in the first one Oo) - and those are things I hope they will improve for PoE3, assuming we'll ever get it. Either way - I am not sure if it is because I hold a special love for dark settings (coming from a ARPG background with loads of hack n slash games like the Diablo serie, Grim Dawn, Victor Vran, Wolcen etc) but something in Pillars of Eternity one just said *click* and I was beyond hooked. The eerie music, the tone of the voice actors, the hidden humor in an otherwise grim world... I loved every companion character so dearly - without exceptions.

I don't know. I don't even remember anything about the control system, I just remember the absolutely amazing story from PoE1, and intensively I loved each and every aspect of it. I do remember being absolutely amazed and bewitched by the Arcane Archer in the second game though! <3

Anyway,


That first video breaks my heart. :[ Might have to leave a comment there later.

The second video though - really happy to hear his thoughts on the armor system! \o/

Josh Sawyer from Obsidian on the opinions of EA/Beta test Gamers:

"Your audience is self selected to the most hardcore enthusiastic people. They give very good feedback but it is also feedback for psychotic gamers. They...like...have the strongest opinions , they are going to grind your game into the dust. It is very valuable but it can kind of skew your understanding of how your game plays for a wider audience."

From Josh Sawyer, Breaking the Mold RPG Revolution - the PoE2 Post Mortem.

Just watching through the beginning of the Josh Sawyer talk. He mentions how they felt they had to go to everything being voiced because of DOS2 and streamers. ugh. it kills me that streamers, who are the equivalent of someone who only wants to "read" picture books had any effect at all in developing a crpg.

Yeah, I watched dozens of times.
I was sure someone would attempt to hold that as a cheap excuse to defend bad design.

You'll find just as many developers making arguments for the opposite point, by the way: "You'll tend to get attached to your own design to the point of defending it almost irrationally. Listen to the feedback you'll get from your audience" etc, etc.

An audience in its totality may not always be reliable when it comes to picking an ideal solution, but you can almost always trust the background noise when it comes to identify the existence of a problem.

It makes perfect sense, when you think about it.
Did you ever watch someone attempting to play an all-text game for an audience? They are some of the most miserable bastards on the planet.

It always starts with the cheerful, jolly streamer telling to his/her audience "WE ARE PLAYING THIS AWESOME RPG! So, SO AWESOME! Hehe, you can't imagine how awesome it is!"
...and then fifteen minutes into the gaming session, while reading every single line aloud, you star feeling the tiredness and exasperation in their voice as they begin to realize what they got into, exactly.
The day after (or two days later if they are incredibly stubborn) they dropped the game and moved to something else that doesn't consume their vocal cords.
If they chose to NOT read aloud? Even worse. They spend minute glaring at the screen with dead eyes while reading in silence and the audience starts to complain that it's boring to watch and leave the channel.

Incidentally the day I started to notice this trend is when I realized that all that old school whine about "voicing dialogues being a waste of money" is tragically outdated.
These days it's something expected as a baseline. And frankly unless your game bombs for plenty of other reasons it's something basically that repays itself, for how it expands your user base.

To be clear, I am not defending any bad design decisions. I just thought that it was a funny quote. Its true - Everyone on this forum, including me, is certifiable.

100% crazy-town banana-pants. Mods too! ^^

But listen, my brother used to say "Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't after you"

Which - is to say that doesn't make the feedback invalid - even if it comes from nutcases. You just need to know how to sift it.

Incidentally I did stream Wrath of the Righteous beta phase 1. Though it was only really intended for friends, I kept getting a consistent 15+ viewers or so, even though I was mostly silent throughout.

Then again, I was probably the only person streaming far into the beta (most others evidently stopped towards the end of act 1), and from what I've heard, literally every other person streaming was testing out one of the mounted combat classes or doing crazy multiclassing. Which apparently annoyed a lot of people because mounted combat mechanics were still in a rather buggy state in beta 1. I just stuck with my usual Eldritch Archer and keeping all of the companions single-classed.

i just have to comment, if anyone hasn't seen the Josh Sawyer video, it's so worth a watch. So many things he's talking about feels like he's just talking about Baldur's Gate 3. It's great to see the devs side of the picture and where THEY think they went wrong vs what I as a player thinks.

PoE2 had better mechanics PoE1 and I liked the freedom to explore but in comparison:

1. The story really suffered. In PoE1 Woedica is has spent eons working to ensure that the truth is never uncovered. In PoE2 she become the chatty pal who won't stop texting you. "Just wanted to make you were up on all the secrets!"

2. The politics were a bit too close to real world politics for my taste. So if we side with the indigenous people technology and innovation is retarded. What's being said here? Not sure I know but I do know it made me feel uncomfortable.

So in many ways PoE2 is the inverse of BG3. With BG3 I'm happy with the story / character development thus far but not happy with the game mechanics.

PoE2 needed to have a tighter focus on the narrative, I feel. The main quest could have used a couple more steps, I think it moved far too quickly, which didn't give the companions enough time to develop as a result. There's a reason why I think the game's biggest falling is that a lot of the new companions feel like extensions of the factions they represent rather than their own thing, and they felt very one-dimensional as a result. The fact that the actual companion quests were mostly stripped down didn't help either. Then there were the sidekicks - and it's kind of nuts that one of the prevailing opinions is that some of the sidekicks were far more interesting than the actual full companions, especially in the case of Ydwin and Rekke.

DOS2's companions were super one-dimensional too, but at least the writing and story was never the main selling point of that game. They were the main selling point of PoE2, and that makes the situation there even worse.

Oh yeah, PoE2's ship combat was shoehorned in by executives. That's another major misstep. Like the game had a lot of ideas but nothing that was really refined in the end. It's pretty telling that the expansions with a much tighter focus and not having to deal with external systems found in the rest of the game were received much better than the main game.

On the topic of Avowed, one of the main theories is that it's not a prequel at all. PoE2 has a couple hints that the next game in the setting was taking us to the Living Lands (including one quest which ends with the player character choosing one of two characters to exile specifically to the Living Lands for their crimes, which screams 'sequel outcome choice'). The footage in the trailer for Avowed looks like something that could resemble it, and honestly with how the region is described as a mysterious frontier island full of valleys with different biomes and unstable weather, a first person game would likely be more proper for the region than an isometric cRPG in terms of visuals. A proper PoE3 would likely take us in the direction of the other hinted region instead, Yezhua, which would need a more text-heavy setup to explore the implications of a region previously cut off from the rest of the world with people that had only worshipped one singular god instead of the pantheon.