Yeah but medieval greenery is different,it have a lot of decoration on it....like hanged man/elfs .And jungles don't have green in them? I don't have a preference, as long as it's well made, but if I had to choose it'd be something other than medieval Europe. It literally doesn't matter apart from that. Sci-fi, cyberpunk, Renaissance, Ancient Greece, Arabia, underground caverns, alien worlds, whatever.
Inb4 Ancient Greek strong women fight off the Persians.
This is sooooo racist,i will just go and write a twatt about it,just posting it. You will see,i will ruin your life because you are an evil racist white man!Inb4 Ancient Greek strong women fight off the Persians.
The problem isn't with the settings being medieval - there is great variance in "visuals" if you travel across Medieval Europe from north to south and from west to east - but that everyone presents the generic western European medieval style from the 13th-14th century (albeit with some armors form the late 15th) when it comes to architecture, clothing, weapons, political landscape and specific local politics in the region where the game takes place.What is this obsession with medieval settings? Haven't we had enough of those? I'd take PoE's jungles over another castle any day.
That is an opinion. I consider the era of Charlemagne and Norman conquest quite interesting.
Agreed. While Obsidian specializes in giving settings a slightly different patina from the standard Medieval-generic one (PoE: Renaissance, sort of; Tyranny: Bronze Age, sort of; PoE2: colonial, sort of) and calling it a day.The problem isn't with the settings being medieval - there is great variance in "visuals" if you travel across Medieval Europe from north to south and from west to east - but that everyone presents the generic western European medieval style from the 13th-14th century (albeit with some armors form the late 15th) when it comes to architecture, clothing, weapons, political landscape and specific local politics in the region where the game takes place.What is this obsession with medieval settings? Haven't we had enough of those? I'd take PoE's jungles over another castle any day.
If people studied more before they set out to work - like Warhorse does with KCD - the Middle Ages are a universe of styles and local peculiarities, and they span for about 10 centuries.
A lot of genre tropes of RPGs that are used in "Medieval" RPGs aren't even medieval anyhow. Plus, Early Modern period, especially 16th and 17th century are much more interesting than Not-England/France in 14th century.
That is an opinion. I consider the era of Charlemagne and Norman conquest quite interesting.
What Obsidian does sort of works, and is still better than generic fantasy western Europe stuff. Also when you have the intended audience of those three games, reasearch into historically correct settings wouldn't get any special appreciation from that audience, and isn't really worth investing in, and there is no point in even marketing it as a feature. PoE2 has this problem to some extent - it doesn't know what to market first - the fantasy RPG, the IE-like "spiritual successor" aspect, the "narrative driven", "deep story, characters and interactions", the free roam on your ship stronghold?Agreed. While Obsidian specializes in giving settings a slightly different patina from the standard Medieval-generic one (PoE: Renaissance, sort of; Tyranny: Bronze Age, sort of; PoE2: colonial, sort of) and calling it a day.
It 'sort of works' in the same ways the generic medieval patina 'sort of works' also. Which is why I get the feeling that the effort in creating the setting was due mainly to the legal requirements for the IP.What Obsidian does sort of works, and is still better than generic fantasy western Europe stuff. Also when you have the intended audience of those three games, reasearch into historically correct settings wouldn't get any special appreciation from that audience, and isn't really worth investing in, and there is no point in even marketing it as a feature. PoE2 has this problem to some extent - it doesn't know what to market first - the fantasy RPG, the IE-like "spiritual successor" aspect, the "narrative driven", "deep story, characters and interactions", the free roam on your ship stronghold?Agreed. While Obsidian specializes in giving settings a slightly different patina from the standard Medieval-generic one (PoE: Renaissance, sort of; Tyranny: Bronze Age, sort of; PoE2: colonial, sort of) and calling it a day.
We need a game on Eberron's setting
Avellone killed Deadfire. The true Eothas.
Eric Fenstermaker said:
- I don’t like discussing anything remotely negative about coworkers in the press. No one comes out looking worse than you when you do that. But here, I think I need to get more detailed than I would want to in order to clear something up.
To the suggestion that Josh “interfered” in the process involving cutting down Durance and the Grieving Mother, everything he did was professional and warranted by the circumstances. The budget on those companions was blown, not just a little but a lot. Very late in development. They were unimplementable in the time we had, and the company had promised them to the Kickstarter backers. So while I’d have preferred to have just worked it out between myself and Chris, at that point in production it was unfortunately not what the situation called for. A high-level decision needed to be made, so more people had to be looped in.
The interview characterizes ownership as having gotten worked up over something they didn’t know the specifics of, and I won’t speak for them, but if I were in their shoes, faced with this development, I would have been concerned. None of the potential outcomes looked rosy.
It’s been thrown around that objectionable subject matter was the reason behind the cuts. Sexual violence is dealt with elsewhere in the game, and there is swearing all over the place. So there was no looming censor. I don’t want to get into criticism here, but there were some choices that Chris made later in the writing that I thought bore more consideration, and in better circumstances if we’d been able to keep the thread, I’d have liked to discuss a different approach in some specific places. I believe it would have been possible without altering their story or defanging the material. It ended up being beside the point – the easiest cuts to make by far involved that story thread, and so it was left on the cutting room floor.
I did have a role in things turning out this way and I did apologize to Chris for it. I gave far too little oversight, thinking that a set of constraints and approval of an initial design, with periodic email check-ins would be sufficient. Chris was often offsite, I was swamped, and it was all too easy to backburner communication. I thought more regular feedback would only have been a hindrance to someone who’d made a lot of his reputation off of so many well-liked companions. If I had caught the issue sooner, we could have made the cuts sooner, in a much better context, and in that regard I should have done better. He did put genuine effort into the creative aspect, and that made the outcome that much more regrettable. I don’t know what Chris thinks about his own responsibilities and missteps in the matter, but I hope he recognizes them.
- The PoE story was approved by management not because of poor judgment but because it was time to say “good enough” and hope for the best. We had something that was a completed draft that incorporated many of the best elements from previous pitches. As a place to start, it was workable. An independent developer can only pay its employees to spin their wheels with nothing to work on for so long. I suspect that the story wasn’t far off from something that was more deeply satisfying, so I don’t think it was a bad bet to make, even if the end result was flawed. Sometimes in development, we get the story figured out well in advance, sometimes it doesn’t work out that way. Here, it didn’t.
- There’s kind of a strange insinuation in the interview that maybe I got a bad employee review because of the PoE story (?), and the phrasing almost seems to imply that this might have been related to my departure. I didn’t and it wasn’t. I always found Obsidian to be forgiving of mistakes as long as you were earnest in your efforts to learn from them, and I tried to be that. I appreciate the owners and my managers bearing with me.
Chris’s experience with Obsidian is his own. But it’s just that, one experience, filtered through a particular point of view, selective in its memory, and biased by its nature. So is mine. No one perspective should be taken for gospel. Me, I liked it there, enough to stay for more than a decade, and I wasn’t without more lucrative options. Good people ran the place. Good people (besides a few genuine personality disorder sufferers) worked there when I was there. Josh was a good director, the owners were good owners. I strongly disagreed with them many times, but it was never because they were coming from a place of bad intentions. Everyone’s just trying to navigate an insanely difficult and stressful business, and for that alone I think you have to approach the profession with a lot of forgiveness in your heart.
- There were a lot of other corrections I wanted to make or explanations I wanted to give about this or that, but looking at it now, I don’t think they’re important in the scheme of things.
Making games with idea of being just ''good enough'' is such a terrible thing to say, it seems to me that they don't have the drive or talent to do anything remotely decent anymore and having Avellone crusade agaisnt them is just the tip of the iceberg.
Making games with idea of being just ''good enough'' is such a terrible thing to say, it seems to me that they don't have the drive or talent to do anything remotely decent anymore and having Avellone crusade agaisnt them is just the tip of the iceberg.
Ehh. I think it’s fine to blame them for mismanagement of the project, but at some point you just need to ship.
What were they supposed to do? They don’t have infinite money.
But yeah, the whole thing was a shitshow it seems. Fuck, working there must suck.
I meant that I prefer it to the generic medieval patina.It 'sort of works' in the same ways the generic medieval patina 'sort of works' also
Yeah,i agree with you. They can't have the project in limbo until it is a masterpiece. But when i look at the game i see huge waste of money and potential. It is the job of management to put a good captain on the ship and the right crew under it. The whole game screams "Wasted potential". Such a shame.Making games with idea of being just ''good enough'' is such a terrible thing to say, it seems to me that they don't have the drive or talent to do anything remotely decent anymore and having Avellone crusade agaisnt them is just the tip of the iceberg.
Ehh. I think it’s fine to blame them for mismanagement of the project, but at some point you just need to ship.
What were they supposed to do? They don’t have infinite money.
But yeah, the whole thing was a shitshow it seems. Fuck, working there must suck.
Oh, well, me too.I meant that I prefer it to the generic medieval patina.It 'sort of works' in the same ways the generic medieval patina 'sort of works' also
Ehh. I think it’s fine to blame them for mismanagement of the project, but at some point you just need to ship.
What were they supposed to do? They don’t have infinite money.
But yeah, the whole thing was a shitshow it seems. Fuck, working there must suck.