Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Super Bunnyhop Deadfire Review feat. Codex Screenshot

AwesomeButton

Proud owner of BG 3: Day of Swen's Tentacle
Patron
Joined
Nov 23, 2014
Messages
16,153
Location
At large
PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath

Parabalus

Arcane
Joined
Mar 23, 2015
Messages
17,432
Is TWM being a net loss confirmed? Missed that info.

Yes, Feargus mentioned it somewhere although I can't find it right now.

I don't recall they ever said that, there was that report which said TWM made 2 million compared to base game's 16 million, at the time.
I don't recall seeing it either, but I have not been following every bit of sales info on PoE.

I remember the sales being low, but not Feargus/OE outright admitting that it was a net loss.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
Patron
Joined
Jan 4, 2007
Messages
33,052
Location
KA.DINGIR.RA.KI
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Basically you could sum up poor sales and reaction to PoE 2 like this:
People played PoE 1.

The only reason they got the sales they did with the first game is more a credit to their marketing. They wanked that IE nostalgia boner HARD. They confused their sales numbers with a positive reaction.
How does this explain most of PoE1's sales coming AFTER there had been time for word of mouth to spread?
Steam sales and discounts. PoE crossed the one million mark long after TWM2, which came out in February 2016

Yeah I pirated the game originally, played it halfway through before I lost interest, then later got it on Steam as part of a Humble Bundle.

To this day, I haven't installed PoE on Steam yet because I just don't have the motivation for it. And I even installed and played Torment Numanuma after getting it in a humble bundle. Not PoE though.
I do want to attempt another playthrough of it one day, but I'm putting it off because I remember it feeling more like work than fun due to its blandness in everything.

I'll pick up Deadfire one day too, when it's in a bundle.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,232
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Is TWM being a net loss confirmed? Missed that info.

Yes, Feargus mentioned it somewhere although I can't find it right now.

I don't recall they ever said that, there was that report which said TWM made 2 million compared to base game's 16 million, at the time.
I don't recall seeing it either, but I have not been following every bit of sales info on PoE.

I remember the sales being low, but not Feargus/OE outright admitting that it was a net loss.

Correct, I don't believe he ever explicitly said it was a net loss.

Feargus on TWM: http://www.rpgcodex.net/article.php?id=10317
$2 million figure: http://www.rpgcodex.net/article.php?id=10578
 

a cut of domestic sheep prime

Guest
Basically you could sum up poor sales and reaction to PoE 2 like this:
People played PoE 1.
This. I would have bought if not for this.

(And the fact that the pirate stuff isn't interesting for me.)
 

Grunker

RPG Codex Ghost
Patron
Joined
Oct 19, 2009
Messages
27,385
Location
Copenhagen


I posted this on the SBH thread, who the fuck moved it?


aiEJH.gif
 

IHaveHugeNick

Arcane
Joined
Apr 5, 2015
Messages
1,870,124
can't be good pr to write on the codex

My brilliant writing style that mixes impeccable logic with swashbuckling vocabulary could convince the Pope to become Jewish. Turning couple of mongrels on the Codex into rabid Obsidian fanboys is almost trivial.
 

Lutte

Dumbfuck!
Dumbfuck
Joined
Aug 24, 2017
Messages
1,967
Location
DU's mom
Funny review. Some things he said right in the beginning of the video jumped out at me.

First, he was freaked out at the word biawac which strikes me as weird for the #1 super fan of the first game.

Second, he thought the writing in Deadfire was a lot worse than Pillars 1. He blames the decline in writing on Avellone leaving.

This is funny for several reasons.

So he is clearly unaware that MCA was barely even involved with the first game, and the fact that he attributes his leaving to Deadfire's decline in writing is especially amusing. This means that he thought Avellone had a hand at writing the masterpiece that he considers Pillars 1, WHICH MEANS he probably praised the first game so much under the assumption that MCA had input on it.

So my theory is, he PERCEIVED Pillars 1 as well written because MCA was there, and he likewise perceives Deadfire as inferior because Chris left.

I'm not saying he's wrong. Deadfire probably does have inferior writing - just not for the reason he thinks.

This makes me wonder whether he would have praised the first game's writing so much if he knew Avellone was not really very involved at all. His praise of the first game might just have been a psychological reaction to playing MCA's brand new masterpiece.

This is why obsidian should not have fucked avellone. Avellone has become a brand in itself and it dwarves the obsidian brand so much even casuals like bunnyhop become negative about their games without that name stamped somewhere. His presence at obsidian served as a placebo to sell pretty much any of their game even when he didn't write a single line on them.

That fact shouldn't even surprise anyone. Why do you think Avellone is often made a "kickstarter stretch goal" with many other studios? TTON sold very badly for example, but I would bet the sales would have been even worse if they hadn't pulled his namebrand as a stretch goal, marketing the game to that segment of nostalgia driven people who see the name and think buy without delving further into it realizing he's only going to write a tiny part of it.

Obsidian, so far, hasn't ever worked twice with another studio/publisher. Games like FNV and Southpark were one offs. PoE 2 will announce whether they will enter the inescapable death spiral or not based on whether they can convince the remaining audience of classic RPGs to stay with them. It's the only thing they can rely on. It being a failure might finally end them for good.
 
Last edited:

Alkarl

Learned
Joined
Oct 9, 2016
Messages
472
Obsidian, so far, hasn't ever worked twice with another studio/publisher. Games like FNV and Southpark were one offs. PoE 2 will announce whether they will enter the inescapable death spiral or not based on whether they can convince the remaining audience of classic RPGs to stay with them. It's the only thing they can rely on. It being a failure might finally end them for good.

I think you might be on to something here, but I doubt PoE 2 failing will hurt them too bad. In fact, I think they are still going to turn a modest profit.

The interesting take-away from some of what you said concerns the higher quality of work they seem to produce when working with pre-existing material. They don't have to fabricate so much lore. Cause they're terrible at it.

Character Creation in PoE is proof enough. There is damn near a novels worth of text for every race, disposition, talent, etc. You don't need all that when you're asking a player to make a Jedi or an elf, people are pretty familiar with those concepts. But an Aumar(sp?)? It's like.. a fish-guy, right? All a player needs to know is what they're race bonus, penalties are. Like, Wizardry 6, another game with off the wall races, doesn't waste your time telling you from whence Felpurr hail or what island nation they rule. I get these are two different kinds of games, but I feel like the latter would just show that shit if it were important. And that's the thing, they stuff these games full of so much inocuous shit.
 

AwesomeButton

Proud owner of BG 3: Day of Swen's Tentacle
Patron
Joined
Nov 23, 2014
Messages
16,153
Location
At large
PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
That's pretty subjective. The only difference in the ridiculous-ness of an Aumaua race vs Elves is that one concept is already familiar to you.

When someone doesn't care about the "lore" they just don't read it. In PoE's character creation the bonuses are pretty visible. If anything is complex during character creation, for me at least, it's keeping track of the derived stat changes that the different base attributes cause, because each base attribute has to affect something.

I think I would benefit from a more vague character generation, like in the IE games, but there are many players who just want to know the numbers and don't care about the descriptions.
 

Alkarl

Learned
Joined
Oct 9, 2016
Messages
472
Sorry, I feel I gave the wrong impression, let me try to word this another way.

PoE feels like the try-hard of writing lore. There are so many words to describe all the things and places, most of which you'll never go. They might as well not even exist. Instead of giving me a national geographic biopic of all these races, why not just show them in game doing their thing?

Obsidian didn't have the advantage of working with a pre-existing body of work, so they wanted to generate as many potential references as possible to create a world that felt internally consistent and somewhat real. What you end up with is 16 novellas worth of words and maybe 3 chapters worth isn't bullshit. Obsidian can't write good lore, because good lore isn't just written. It's iterative. Look at franchises with far more interesting shit going on, some you like, and you'll probably find they started out pretty bare and developed more over time. Though, more isn't always best.

Look at Star Wars, the first three movies concerned a young space wizard who saved the galaxy from an evil space wizard. That sounds pretty lame, but it wasnt the lore that characterized the series, it was the characters and locations. The conflicts, etc. Not the ten codex entries Luke found laying around Mos Eisley. And certainly not Jar Jar Binks, or Princess Amidala, or medic.. medich.. loreans. Fuck it, I can't be bothered to spell that shit. :roll:

But I do generally agree with you, it is subjective in most cases.
 

AwesomeButton

Proud owner of BG 3: Day of Swen's Tentacle
Patron
Joined
Nov 23, 2014
Messages
16,153
Location
At large
PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
Instead of giving me a national geographic biopic of all these races, why not just show them in game doing their thing?
We'd all prefer that. The answer is, the budget. And honestly, with the kind of writing talent they have assembled right now, I'd rather they don't leave the general descriptions of races and lands, instead of trying to go full Tolkien because I'm wary of what I'm going to see if they do.

I agree that PoE feels like the tryhard of writing lore, but I think the reason for that is that Josh is ok with gathering his deisgn notes on the setting, form them into coherent chapters and release them as a guidebook. I'd rather keep these for circulation within the team, and pass to a good writer, like the one they lost in 2015, to develop into a "Pillars Bible" type of book or design document.

Josh says he wants to keep the writers' hands free, and that's why he is easy on the details, but I think this happens at the expense of the minority of fans who are actually curious about the world, and also produces the impression of the setting not being completely fleshed out. I believe if you are trying to hammer the image of a new setting into people's heads, you have to hit them with the big guns, bury them in culture, history and geography descriptions. When you go only halfway you end up with a situation like what we have - those who have little interest give the response is "they are trying too hard, this is bland, lacks detail, no need for me to be interested in it when they are only covering the basics", and those who are actually interested in it give the opposite response - "they are not doing enough, there's no reason to get invested in this".

Obsidian can't write good lore, because good lore isn't just written. It's iterative.
I believe good lore needs good old academic knowledge to get involved. Middle Earth was around before there were "franchises", it wasn't even a franchise, but everyone saw the value in it, because it managed to intertwine the familiar with the fantastic, the curious, the wonderous. To do a fantasy setting with style, you need academic experience, but for someone to accumulate that, it takes very specific factors to align. That's why good fantasy is so rare...

I think Josh and George Ziets (I think it was him) have done a great job with the world and gods, to the extent to which they have gone into details about them. The world makes me want to know more, and I wish they had started with a larger base of known information about it.
 

Alkarl

Learned
Joined
Oct 9, 2016
Messages
472
Instead of giving me a national geographic biopic of all these races, why not just show them in game doing their thing?
We'd all prefer that. The answer is, the budget. And honestly, with the kind of writing talent they have assembled right now, I'd rather they don't leave the general descriptions of races and lands, instead of trying to go full Tolkien because I'm wary of what I'm going to see if they do.

I agree that PoE feels like the tryhard of writing lore, but I think the reason for that is that Josh is ok with gathering his deisgn notes on the setting, form them into coherent chapters and release them as a guidebook. I'd rather keep these for circulation within the team, and pass to a good writer, like the one they lost in 2015, to develop into a "Pillars Bible" type of book or design document.

Josh says he wants to keep the writers' hands free, and that's why he is easy on the details, but I think this happens at the expense of the minority of fans who are actually curious about the world, and also produces the impression of the setting not being completely fleshed out. I believe if you are trying to hammer the image of a new setting into people's heads, you have to hit them with the big guns, bury them in culture, history and geography descriptions. When you go only halfway you end up with a situation like what we have - those who have little interest give the response is "they are trying too hard, this is bland, lacks detail, no need for me to be interested in it when they are only covering the basics", and those who are actually interested in it give the opposite response - "they are not doing enough, there's no reason to get invested in this".

Obsidian can't write good lore, because good lore isn't just written. It's iterative.
I believe good lore needs good old academic knowledge to get involved. Middle Earth was around before there were "franchises", it wasn't even a franchise, but everyone saw the value in it, because it managed to intertwine the familiar with the fantastic, the curious, the wonderous. To do a fantasy setting with style, you need academic experience, but for someone to accumulate that, it takes very specific factors to align. That's why good fantasy is so rare...

I think Josh and George Ziets (I think it was him) have done a great job with the world and gods, to the extent to which they have gone into details about them. The world makes me want to know more, and I wish they had started with a larger base of known information about it.

Both informative and well-written. Kudos.

:bro:

Perhaps I misjudged and need to revisit and reevaluate my stance. Dat actual gameplay though.

What you say reminds me of how I initially felt about Dragon Age Origins, that had a similar approach as Pillars. We all know how that ended. Maybe I'm just jaded at this point.
 

Kjaska

Arbeiter
Patron
Joined
Nov 23, 2015
Messages
1,471
Location
Germoney
Insert Title Here
He is also very liberal, if I recall correctly, as I remember him making a video complaining about trump and brexit on new years or some such ridiculousness.

He was also on the side of gamers, when shit hit the fan and made sense of the situation like a true professional:

 

Monkey Baron

Arbiter
Patron
Joined
Jan 28, 2018
Messages
411
Location
Chris Avellone's Rape Dungeon
I helped put crap in Monomyth
He is also very liberal, if I recall correctly, as I remember him making a video complaining about trump and brexit on new years or some such ridiculousness.

He was also on the side of gamers, when shit hit the fan and made sense of the situation like a true professional:



No he wasn't. He was on the GameJournoPros list and as far as I know he never disclosed that. He had a way more balanced perspective compared to anyone else but he brushed aside the claims of collusion because he didn't want to implicate himself.

Basically you could sum up poor sales and reaction to PoE 2 like this:
People played PoE 1.

The only reason they got the sales they did with the first game is more a credit to their marketing. They wanked that IE nostalgia boner HARD. They confused their sales numbers with a positive reaction.
How does this explain most of PoE1's sales coming AFTER there had been time for word of mouth to spread?
Steam sales and discounts. PoE crossed the one million mark long after TWM2, which came out in February 2016

Also it has been in a Humble bundle and a Humble monthly. I personally didn't want it... :negative:
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom