There was romance in the Outer Worlds, just not PC romance. I distinctly remember Parvati (the mechanic character) having a cute romance quest that you help her on.
That being said, it's good Josh Sawyer knows his limits. I'd rather see him do another smaller project like Pentiment than attempt a Baldur's Gate 3. Obsidian really just doesn't have the sauce to do something like that right now (and likely will never).
I never got around to PoE2, but I'm definitely one of the handful of people disappointed that Tyranny will never get a sequel lol (it's still fun as a shortish CRPG, though!)
Also, there's next to no chance that Avowed is going to be a good game.
I don't think Josh was involved in Outer Worlds. There's an option or two for romance in Pillars 2 though, and you can set two companions up.
I only mentioned it since the Slandered Gaming video specifically mentioned Outer Worlds. You're right, though, that one was Tim Caine and Leonard Boyarsky co-directing.
I'm not a big player romance in CRPGs person, but all of those old Black Isle guys were never great at it lol
It's all hype, high production values and name recognition. There's nothing particularly special qualitywise about Baldur's Gate 3, it's just the first CRPG that we've got since the original Dragon's Age that has actual cutscenes. There are a ton of people who will not play a game that stays in the isometric perspective for the cutscenes or doesn't feature full voice acting. People do actually really like these long-ass RPGs with party members, they just need to be that slight bit more approachable than games like Pillars of Eternity or the recent Pathfinder games have been.
This 100%, people really love games like DA, Mass Effect, KotOR and in last years we weren't given any of that. Well, Forgotten Realms is also good thing, still one of the better fantasy settings.
I think it also doesn't help that BG3 has mass appeal because the story doesn't really have much to say and all the companions are extremely easy to get, so you can focus on the funny quips. I don't think something like I dunno Durance this ugly angry zealot could fit in BG3 much less as a companion and the pathos of something like the Grieving Mother would stick out like as well much less horny nerds trying to mod her.
BG3 is the quippy fun blockbuster movie, Pathfinder the B-movies, Pillars some movie a director pulled favors for to tell their story and Disco Elysium is made by a soviet director.
Yes, compared to Disco Elysium, Pillars of Eternity, Planescape Torment and Arcanum etc. the story really doesn't have much to say. Like it boils down to 'People are abusing their authority which is bad'. Which compared to the story and themes in other games is less impressive. Like I'm sorry but BG3 compared to those games really doesn't say anything, or at least anything controversial. Choices boil down to:
Do you help the refugees or side with the fascists and kill them all.
And almost all companions have the exact same problem of having to confront their superior being that fucked their life, and in three cases indoctrinated them to become a worse person. BG3 doesn't have much to say doesn't mean you can't enjoy it the story or the writing or the companions but yes in the end it isn't saying much.
lol, a hexbear user touting Disco Elysium as better than BG3 for the story. I enjoyed DE, but I wouldn’t say it was better than BG3. It was unique. What else would characters do, punch down on lesser beings? What fun that would be.
Dang did the tankie write something you dislike? I didn't even say the story was bad I said the story really doesn't have much to say, and it doesn't like their central theme of nature vs nurture is incredibly muddled and comes out incredibly weak.
Shadowhearts nature is to be good no matter how much suffering and indoctrination she went through her good nature always shone through.
The Emperors nature is to be deceitful and lie and be evil he keeps saying that and does it as well.
Karlach rejects her nature because uh well it's about nurture you see nature doesn't exist.
Lae'zel wasn't born evil, non of the gith are it's due to the careful indoctrination(nurture).
Again muddled if you are just vibing with the fun dialog and voice acting that's fine not everything needs to be a grand thesis statement but also that means that yes BG3s story doesn't have much to say.
Which we can now look at all the others I've mentioned what is Discos central theme? How the past influences us, and finding joy and meaning in a broken world, and it does that in a very tight package that doesn't overstay its welcome. Some anglo I believe has said 'brevity is the soul of wit'.
Pillars first ones central theme is funny enough again the past and how it shapes and influences our lives, colonialism, religion and eugenics
Pillars two colonialism again, also isolationism and traditionalism in face of that colonialism, religion and eugenics
Planescape Torment what can change the nature of a man? Wow look it's another game where you are haunted by the ghosts of the past, being a misery vortex and all that jazz maybe I just like those games or maybe they are just really good.
Arcanum, wow hey victorian era fantasy world, it's magic (feudalism) vs technology (capitalism) baby!!!!!!! Wow look at all that change the continent is going through, look how it reacts to this radical change oh shit phrenology, we also have some nihilism and Camus getting quoted.
I'm not even going all in here I've put out the more popular ones I can mention even more but I didn't want it to read like I'm going 'Stop liking BG3'
5-10% of the beginning of act 1 and 3 is about refugees and how they’re treated by local populations. That theme carries through the game with the Tieflings. Insert random Arabic war or the invasion of Ukraine and resulting refugee population here. The overall story is about mind worms being used by a central hive mind (the absolute), which draws a parallel with our current internet age and the sort of propaganda those with the resources can wreak upon a populace (thralls), but could also be interpreted more literally as religious zealotry, which is thematic throughout the game. There’s more, but the story is much more than just the individual characters’ loyalty quests.
My guy, my pal, my buddy.
Do you know why I mentioned the companions whole thing? Because apart from the main quest they take up most of the narrative attention, and if that is one of your chosen themes let me tell you it's weak, if BG3 was about it maybe it'd be more than window dressing in the third act it'd make up a central pillar of the theme of that act, you know when the refugees ARE in Baldurs Gate?
As for the other alright dipshit, it's called an elder brain, or netherbrain if we take what BG3 calls it, and the rest is just nonsense propaganda? zealotry? My guy, my baby boy, the game literally yells it at you several times AUTHORITY, like for fucks sake it's called the Absolute, it is about control and power and here you are going, 'Well it's about propaganda innit and like the stuff' just amazing, am I supposed to take whatever you say serious when you don't know what themes are? When it doesn't seem like you have any media literacy, and I'm somewhat convinced you haven't really played a lot of RPGs because you have nothing to say about any of the games I've mentioned, which just tells me that you are a baby whose opinion can be safely discarded.
This is presumably from his recent Q&A? Anyone have a link to the response? I'm curious why he doesn't understand the audience, he's a huge D&D/tabletop guy so like the BG3 audience should be a group he has a connection with...
The particular form extremely of extremely horny D&D fan is a new phenomenon that people who have been settled into the hobby for a very long time without engaging on that front could easily not be engaged with. I'm not saying horniness is new to D&D, but it's traditionally in the Frank Frazetta sort of way.
The particular form extremely of extremely horny D&D fan is a new phenomenon that people who have been settled into the hobby for a very long time without engaging on that front could easily not be engaged with
I say this with love; it is not a new phenomena! When Ed Greenwood was running the campaign that got turned in to Forgotten Realms he had public orgy holidays and all sorts of other "dare you enter my magical realm" stuff. I can get, like... somehow maybe missing this, but also the cover of Queen of the Spiders is literally a bunch of black Elf women in Dominatrix gear! There's an entire species of mean bondage femdom ladies! D&D has been silly levels of horny for forty years! Hasbro turned it down but go look at all the art in the old Monster Manuals and supplements, there are a lot of naked people in there who, given their profession and prevailing climate, should probably be wearing pants.
Bards seducing everything with sentience is a cliche for a reason.
A lot of responses in this thread are concerned with narrative or aesthetic issues, especially romance. But Sawyer's odyssey has little to do with that and more about the nitty-gritty of systems and RPG design. Sawyer is borderline traumatized by his stint as lead of both Pillars of Eternity games. Both were games where he attempted to re-design many of the core assumption of the CRPG subgenre. Which, up until the 2010s renaissance, had mostly comprised of people creating ever more faithful adaptations of D&D.
Pillars 1 saw a very contentious design period, with people opposing many if not most of Sawyer's ideas on the obsidian forums. A lot of it was knee jerk reactions to changes from Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, but Pillars was still experimental and Josh was not a genius developer who could outpace all the playtesting involved with original tabletop gaming just like that. The first game was a success (arguably on the back of kickstarter and the general CRPG renaissance) while Deadfire otoh was a demoralizing flop at release (arguably on the back of terrible marketing combined with a less familiar setting). Deadfire got a long tail, with good sales after the fact. But it still didn't justify the work and finance put behind it. That's why Sawyer thinks he doesn't have the pulse of the CRPG audience. At least not any more.
The tragedy with Josh, I think, is that he and Obsidian became lost on the growing pains of creating a new ruleset for a CRPG and don't realize how unfocused these games were. Pillars of Eternity 1 was trying to be Baldur's Gate 1/2, Planescape Torment and also Icewind Dale. All into one. Deadfire was no better with a story that also didn't know wether it wanted to do Big Metaphysical Stuff or delve into the issues surrounding colonial warfare and settlement. Sawyer in particular is a good lead when you have a deadline to finish and want to deliver a mostly bug-less product. But he's old, experienced and unlikely to take risks. Compare that to the Pathfinder developers who deliver insane projects that are more bugs than code. Hell, compare that to Sawyer's attempts to improve on what was a disastrous game under him: the spirit meter from the Mask of the Betrayer DLC was pretty much universally well received. Sawyer himself said he wouldn't have implemented it today.
More successful developers like Larian and Owlcat Games simply adapted 5e and Pathfinder, while focusing on their own strengths. Sawyer was fully occupied creating a whole ruleset for Pillars, only to see mixed to negative reactions from anything but a core audience. All the while forgetting that Obsidian's real strength is writing these little stories self contained stories. You see that in New Vegas, as well as in Pillars' DLCs. You're unlikely to see it in Avowed, just as you had to strain your eyes to see it in the main storylines of Deadfire and so on.
That's too bad. Poor guy.
Writing RPG systems is very hard, and then translating them to CRPGs where you can't have the DM interpret things and handwave corner cases is even harder.
Just to be clear, he was writing a CRPG system from the start. It's just that what with Pillars of Eternity being an unfocused mess that promised to be 4 games at once, Sawyer was also juggling design philosophies that were diametrically opposed. The most innocuous Pillars of Eternity design row went like this:
- Sawyer wants to use milestone levelling instead of monster kills for granting experience points. After all, that gives the player the option to pick their battles in a game where some spellcasters have limited resources.
- Some players complain, after all they are used to the gameplay loop of getting experience points for every monster. Sounds petty, but they are kinda right. If you remove a skinner box mechanic don't want to leave a void in its place.
- A compromise is reached: kill enough of this monster to unlock their beastiary entry for extra experience points.
Neither Larian nor Owlcat had to waste effort here because this was never up for discussion.
One of the real prickly issues was
- Do you want to go with the 3E/Pathfinder design philosophy of build diversity by giving players a bunch of classes and subclasses, some of which are straight up useless? Or do you want to go the 2E/5E route of disincentivizing absurd multi-classing and making sure classes are great at their jobs out of the box?
- Neither. Sawyer is designing a computer game and doesn't need to sell splatbooks. So he wants to maximize build diversity by making stats more abstract. Instead of strength you have might. Might increases all damage dealt, so it's useful for wizards and fighters. Intelligence increases all areas of effect, as well as ability duration. So it's also useful for fighters who use area of effect abilities and self buffs, while the intelligence wizard is different from the might wizard.
While Larian and Owlcat had their design philosophies outright chosen by their ruleset, Sawyer turned his game into an acquired taste with no installed fanbase. It's easy to sell Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous and Baldur's Gate 3 to the same person today. But Pillars of Eternity came out in 2012. It's promise was to be part of the CRPG renaissance. And the fans of that sort of thing were used to specific design philosophies when it comes to character building. Pillars did away with that by choice.
Nowadays of course there's fans of Pillars. And I'm sure there's people trying those games out after trying out Pathfinder or Baldur's Gate 3. But Deadfire came out in 2018 with an unconventional setting. It wasn't the time to try something new, but to bring back something that was dead.
That was one of the hardest things about Pillars for me. I went in to the old Infinity Engine D&D games knowing how AD&D2E worked, so I was already in an environment I understood. With POE I didn't have knowledge of the system goinmg in an d that made it very hard for me to make decisions.
I found a YouTube link in your post. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
