Nope

Mike D deadfire is hardly a gem. It‘s an okay BG clone on its own but an absolute blunder considering what they wanted it to be. It sold exactly as much as it deserved.

@@Galmion Agreed. It's a mediocre RPG, a far cry from Baldur's Gate 2.

@@Galmion Respectfully disagree. Have played all of them and thought this one was excellent.

@@Galmion Deadfire is easily in the top 3 best CRPG ever. It has a great story and an amazing setting and it should have sold way more than it did. Divinity Original Sin 2 sold a shit ton and that game stinks.

@@miked5562 People love to complain especially on the internet. It’s not like there’s a dozen of these games nowadays so can we at least cherish the few ones that come out especially when they’re appealing graphically and content-wise?

@xmeany Fallout 1-2 sales combined didnt even reach the sales of FO3 but most people consider them as one of the best in the series. See the point?

@xmeany Sales hardly mean anything. Call of Duty is the best sold game every year, is it the best game every year? Not even close.

@@dzikripratama3776 Agreed, but that goes for most things. Fallout 3 is a first person shooter/action adventure game with some roleplaying elements and a lazy story, of course people loved it

I'm with you. PoE2 was such an amazing game and really didn't perform as well as it should have based on its merits. Sometimes the timing of a game is just off and it doesn't quite light the fire it should.

@@Merknilash "PoE2 was such an amazing game " The story was quite poor. And so was the story for PoE1. PoE2 ended with virtually zero player agency and compelling villains. Just go and ask Eothas and have him decide the fate of the world. The remainder of the story was basically a tack-on and separate from the supposed antagonist. It's really just terrible. Who thought that would make an exciting ending? Most people who bought PoE1 did not buy PoE2 and that should have been a sign of problems with both games.

@@BrunoAnton Hard disagree, it's one of the best story I have experienced in both case.

I played PoE1 and was excited to play PoE2. PoE2 was a much better game, mechanically. I really enjoyed it and put in about 180 hours on it. I played the turn-based conversion as well, and though that version had balance issues, I preferred it to RTwP. The world building is excellent, and I'm pleased that Obsidian is making a new game set in the world of Eora.

@@BrunoAnton youre a looney

Schizm1 PoE 1&2 certainly weren’t absolute stinkers on their own, but they definitely were massive failures considering what they set out to do. They messed up, plain and simple. The games were okay at the end of the day, but maaan imagine what they could have delivered if the had the budget / freedom / will to make a true spiritual successor to BG - not just a bland and subpar copy of it. Oh what could have been

What about Divinity Original Sin 2 (Definitive edition)?

Pathfinder: Kingmaker is actually, in my opinion, the best late-201X Baldur's Gate clone, both because the mechanics are (obviously) even more similar given the shared ruleset ancestry, and the people that join your party are less subtle in the first Baldur's Gate and Pathfinder: Kingmaker than in Pillars of Eternity (in good and bad ways). That said, I prefer the Pillars of Eternity games, specifically because they made sure to have their own feel despite the obvious inspiration.

@@unh0lys0da16 Divinity games are a thing of their own

@@1cspr1 In the sense that they blow away all competition?

Actually it sound rather ridicules, he tried to convince as that text mini game with shallow rules was the most expensive. That's level of solo student. Pure waste of resources.

@@denyspysmenniy4298 he didn't try to convince anyone of anything - the functionality ended up being quicksand and taking way too much time to get all the kinks out of and get functional and nobody even liked it.

I think if it stayed cut, they would have just kept the ship boarding. That may have freed up resources for other parts of the game.

I feel exactly the same. I actually like it a lot; But then again, I'm a very boardgamey kind of guy. But I'd also have given up to have all those resources put into more companions, quests, etc.

I didn't like it at all and boarded all the ships I could. And the fact that it cost them so much money for something so needless and simple is very surprising. Wish that money would have been put into the garbage that's called console port of Deadfire.

I absolutely loved these games as well. We are probably the fringe psycho gamers he mentions though. Our nostalgia goggles are strapped on so tight they are cutting off the circulation to our brains.

Post mortem is not a negative term. It just means to analyse something after the fact. What does dead mean here? They have to stop working on it at some point.

PoE2 sold poorly and was a commercial failure. That's why it's post mortem.

@@MetalGearyaTV The actual answer was already posted baby

@@alphasword5541 gthoh, u little n00b

I loved the ship battles

@@KatalistProductionsKozzySasha Some people did, but it still probably wasn´t worth the resources. I for one always just rammed or boarded asap to be over with it.

@ Ya I am not surprised most didn't like it, I was not sure if I would before I played the game, but I ended up looking forward to the ship and my companions and the roles they played during battles. Also all the upgrades I bought for the ship, it all felt much more personal to me than the stronghold in the 1st game. Shame most didn't like it and I can def see it taking a decent amount of resources.

@@KatalistProductionsKozzySasha I definitely liked my ship much better then stronghold.. It was just those fights which turned me off. But hey - if I can just ramm and board, I am basically super happy, its just shame for those resources that could have been spent elsewhere

Once I finally felt like my ship would not be completely annihilated in combat I started to get into the ship battles...but that was also like the last 5% of the game. Will definitely check it out more on my second playthrough coming up soon, though. I think this is the kind of game that is going to be appreciated as a modestly overlooked classic forever.

Late to being late, but just wanted to say, excellent write up! For some reason, my experience with POE1 vs POE2 was the exact opposite of yours. I actually bounced off of POE1's story pretty hard, whereas I really, really like POE2's story. Though I'm currently on a second playthrough of POE1 and I AM appreciating it more this time. But I think the reason why I prefer POE2's story is that I actually loved the different factions, the moral gray that comes with all of them, their lore/backgrounds, etc. I was so engaged in the "squabbling" of these kith powers, richly inspired by real history and culture, that I couldn't fathom NOT siding with one of them. I loved agonizing over which one to side with, given that they all have their own flaws. And this made POE2 so compelling to me, in a way that was reminiscent of Fallout New Vegas. I just love that stuff and I can't get enough of it. I also very much prefer the ending for POE2 to POE1. *SPOILERS in case anyone reads who hasn't played the game* I remember dreading a boss fight with Eothas at the end of the game and was relieved/impressed that Josh and Team were basically like, "No, you can't stab the God possessed, skyscraper sized statue to death. Nor can you make a fancy attribute check to talk him down. You can influence him a bit, but one way or another, that Wheel is coming down." Some people complain that this ending results in a "lack of player agency," but as someone who has played lots, and lots of cRPGs, this kind of subversion was very refreshing to me. But both POE games are great, and I'm a huge fan of the POE franchise in general. They're my favorite cRPG games, besides maybe the BG series. However, I think objectively that the Pillars series is better, and I've just got rose tinted glasses for the BG series. But who knows. I've not played the Pathfinder games yet, can't wait, as they are next on my list!

specially because despite the success of BG3, everyone on the WotC side were all still fired. which makes me think we have to look at these issues of "industry pressure" from a wider, socioeconomical angle.

@@voltcorp I don't understand, who was fired? Larian hasn't had a layoff this year I believe

@@aviannte Everyone inside WotC (Hasbro) who was involved together with Larian was in the Hasbro layoffs. I edited to make it more clear, thanks.

@@voltcorp thanks for clearing up! As far as I understand, the WotC wasn't directly involved in the development, so the fact that the team that consulted Larian was laid off has little to do with the success of the game. Just another corpa cutting corners just because. BUT your comment made me remember the Bioware layoffs that literally followed the release of BG3, and I remember thinking like, how in the world the managers expect Bioware to come close to the success of BG3 if they fire the talent that made BG2. So yeah, the DA4 now has to perform not only extremely well while being developed by a smaller team but also do so with the bar set at BG3

@@aviannte Larian people have said explicitly that WotC folk were pivotal for the game's success, and for getting Larian enough time and creative freedom. Reminds me of the Lost series, which was a craze and started a whole new era of cinematic series, but producers were fired for greenlighting something so expensive.

Well said!

This

PoE 2 is a better game overall imo.

@@calebjanus2000 The game is like objectively boring and bland, they literally balanced it to death, the combat is slow. The story is stupid, they throw a bunch of flavor text at you to build up this idea of world building meanwhile they already had a world to build upon from before (POE), and then rely heavily on tropes for characters to get you interested in, it has all the tropes of a regular RPG except this time you get to do fetch quests with dull content and slow combat. It's like nothing like the one before, the voice acting is bad (Which is something you could say of the first one but there really wasn't much voice acting to criticize.). And there's so much more overall to complain about, like I never NEVER expected the POE 2 to be exactly the same or even similar to the first one, but I expected an improved version of the first one in terms of the gameplay and story mechanics (the story of the first one was okay, the white marsh DLC was the best imo.) On top of that you're literally just moving around a blank map with nothing to do most of the time. Like at least give me some items to collect or some random encounters that give me items or something, nope. The grandaddy of all these games IMO is fallout, fallout 1 is still my favorite RPG, and two is a close second, but it allows for an actual open world instead of this bastardized open world RPG on rails nonsense. If you give me freedom, give me all freedom, if you want me to play your story, make me want to play your story, make me want to recruit your characters, do side quests. Hell Fallout: New Vegas had an absolutely compelling story, and you didn't even have to do most of the side quests, you wanted to do the side quests! even after you'd basically maxed out your equipment and skills, the world should compel me to act so I can make a difference on it and enact my will, that's good writing, not Adair in his shitty fake southern accent making a pun about pigs and cousin fucking while we're fighting fish people. To me it's what happens when you have designers who smell their own farts pontificating on the design implementation of video games meanwhile all they ever really wanted to do was write fiction, so all they can ever think of is world building when making their video games which is like NOT AT ALL what you want to do to even write a story but it's the only practical way to justify not focusing on gameplay mechanics and player experience which then turns into them trying to make a movie into a video game, which just completely ruins the pacing on the video game and makes a dismal experience for the player.

@@cartoonhanks1708 wrong.

@xmeany so I'm told. Frankly I never understood the hype about OS. I tried to play several times but was bored out of my mind, despite the gushing reviews. Regardless, I still don't see how full VO is really necessary.

I don't like full VO either. It changes the developers ability to change it later if need be, there is generally less dialogue to begin with, and I read much faster than people speak, so I end up skipping most of the VO anyway. I kind of liked how only some sentences of pillars 1 were voiced. It gave me an idea of how they wanted the characters to sound, but it didn't waste resources on voicing every line.

Exactly my problem.

@@terbentur2943 I know that... I sometimes solve it by creating mercenaries mid campaing and treating them like main character until I am satisfied with my new build :D (seeing that it works is usually all I really need to be happy)

We shouldn't have to decide

Feargus has been mentioned in many interviews over the decades as someone who decides he has an idea or likes one that someone proposes and then the designers have to figure out how to put that in or expand on it/fit it in their game.

no, speak for yourself. Full VO is a must for modern games, it also makes sure there is not bloat of boring text like in POE1.

In my opinion a game should either have full VO or nothing at all.

Agreed, it's really overblown by some with respect to text in CRPGs. If you can't be bothered to read up on dialogue, you're even less likely to spend time reading about the different skills and mechanics that make the game work. At which point, you should really be playing something else. Full VO should never have a higher priority over areas like optimization, story or gameplay mechanics. A game can do well without full VO, it cannot do well without the others.

​@@robosergTV Imagine VOing all BG I and BG II conversations the sheer scope of it would prevent them to ever be released, nobody cares what somebody says is "a must for modern games" amazing games don't rely on VO.

@@Fredjo then dont write so much text in the game, go read a book. Games should have VO, end of the story. You dont read subtitles when watching a movie

On a side note, not sure who managed the setting of this talk, but 1) please no brightly-colored ads just next to a screen that must show dark scenes! and 2) avoid distracting people with a troll and his camera (what does this guy think he's doing anyway?).

Great point!

Some funny thing about this is this probably happened in real life, where some artillery dude or archer probably miscalculated their aim and hit his own allies. Thing is, in TB, it is assumed that every round consists of 6 seconds right, at least by PnP, then translating that into 'real time' is difficult because 6 seconds is a very long time for a warrior to just stand by while waiting for the wizard to cast and calculate the trajectory of the fireball aimed at a charging enemy. I mean, what if the enemy is right at your allies' noses and your wiz/sorc aimed that fireball at the enemy's face? That's my take on the whole RTWP vs TB debate.

B but ITSH FOR BALUNCE /sarcasm

It's so weird that that is an expectation. I recently played Disco Elysium FC, and while I loved it, I was a bit put off by the constant VO, I can read the less important parts you know.

​@@fafofafin that was added in the like later edition iirc because of the popular demand

Voice over work can theoretically be affordable, surely there are affordable vo studios out of the states.

​@xmeany And I hate people like you who are more interested having somebody read you the story and limiting your dialog to stupid yes, no(yes), maybe (yes) choices. The video told you exactly why VO is bad, but you ignore it. You attack this as being stuck in time, with that logic then you must love modern elements like microtransactions, loot boxes, and play to win games now since that is modern trash. I want to PLAY games, not watch them like a movie.

Vampire the masquerade bloodlines had full VO, great voice acting, fantastic writing and dialogues. The game had other issues but writing and VA wasnt it. If you manage your project right you can reap the benefits.

Bloodlines had much less overall dialog and much fewer dialogue trees to go through. Characters like Therese and Mercurio had large trees but the main shopkeeper selling koala ears basically has like ten lines. In Deadfire there's at least ten shopkeepers and they all have large trees.

It depends on the game and how it's done. You sound like someone that has a very fixed idea on the matter, in a bad way. Like how you think full VO automatically has to lead to the Fallout 4 dialogue system. You can add a lot to a game with VO. Baldurs Gate 2 wouldn't be the same game without VO. Imagine Irenicus without any VO? The challenge lies in when and how to do it. Also, on the other end of the sprectrum tons of answers isn't always a good thing. Because if most of them are just pointless fluff that don't really influence anything then what's the point? You have to factor in a lot of things. This extreme idea of a lot of VO for an RPG is bad is far too simple.

That's a strange critique, the item variability is not low at all in PoE2, it actually gets kind of ridiculous and out of control the items that have a number of spells and unique effects attached to them, and the item upgrade paths are quite varied.

@@mediumvillain Yeah that is a weird critique considering the gear I have.

Because games evolve. I don't mind reading but I do prefer Full VO, its more immersive and gives characters to feel more like people.

@@wofuljac "Because game evolve" is the stupidest answer. "Why is this console spewing acid in my face randomly?" "because games evolve!" The rest of your answer makes more sense, but it is still a very high price to pay, especially for indie/mid-range devs.

@@gargamellenoir8460 Games do evolve like all art. People these days are used to Full VO from other modern rpg games like Final Fantasy, Witcher, Elder Scrolls. This isn't the days of Baldur's Gate 1 where few lines are spoken. It's like a modern movie will go back to the 1920s of silent films, most people would be like "what the heck?".

@@wofuljac that's like saying games should always be 3d because games evolve. Very stupid argument. I've enjoyed the story more of games with no VO compared to VO games. I dont care much for having to wait through a long VO line anyways when I have a ton of things i need to read to process info.

@@ChamplooMusashi Nope, cause 2D also evolve. Compare Rayman Legends to the first Mario Bros.. Keep in mind I'm just saying that most people don't like dated things, I don't mind reading. I like Old School Boulder gate games or Final Fantasy 6 or Fire Emblem on 3DS.

I agree that full VO is a waste of money -- but I have the feeling that my opinion is a product of my age, and maybe not relevant to the younger audience. I grew up playing the gold-box games, so I guess I'm kind of old-school -- but these raised expectations of VO (and graphics, etc.) are how games advance over time. I'd be happy without VO, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out the majority of gamers don't share that opinion.

@@JHiggins67 Yeah and the majority of gamers didn't buy Deadfire, either

@@yosharian That's a reasonable. point -- but I guess it always comes down to the possibility of more money. Selling your game to investors as intentionally not appealing to a wider audience makes a difficult job even more difficult. I get it what you're saying, though. I prefer smaller, more niche products -- but in the end, most game studios are a business first, which means keeping up with buyer expectations and hoping for the best. There will always be the odd game that goes its own way and become a long-term cult success, but most businesses don't like to bank on those odds.

I would be really glad if cRPG devs could finally embrace the concept of "Show, don´t tell". All these cRPG are SO text heavy that my eyes seriously hurt from all the reading. And sometimes I just sit down for evening 2 hour play session, and all I do is "read the fucking text" with all these barely relevevant descriptions, lore dumps etc. (latest Torment and Tyranny being the biggest offenders, they were litteraly filled with text vomit). Of course your VO will be hard when you place all the information in text instead of game world. Just reduce lore dumps, place the not neccessary info into gameworld instead of conversations and make conversations more interesting by adding more choices instead of text dumps.

@ this is just a case of bad writers being hired by people who don't know any better.

I think he covered it in this speech: RTS use to a much more popular genre meaning a larger proportion of the gaming population understood that sort of system. These days there's more players out there who aren't use to that (for a party-based game) and much more use to that in turn based games. Plus each character in PoE on average can do more in each fight then they did back in BG. So there's kinda more to do with 4 characters in PoE then there was with 6 characters in BG (spellcasters would get all the management, other characters you'd just position and let fight). Having said that I much prefer the way RtwP feels in this games as well, so I'm a huge fan of there still being series like PoE and Pathfinder doing it. I'm extremely sad BG3 won't be RtwP.

There is no spoilers and the presentation is awesome. Definitely watch it )

@@xXneorlinXx Awesome man, will get on this immediately! Thanks!

@@xXneorlinXx o7

Nah. It's pretty mediocre, way to many issues. Divinity 2 and pathfinder kingmaker are actually good.

@@johnathanera5863 Pathfinder kingmaker is garbage and divinity 2 is overrated. Yes, my opinions are valid and yours are not.

Deadfire was good, but it bombed financially. Part of the reason why there is no POE3 yet despite that players wanted one is that Obsidian is quite unsure if it would have the same great review/worse sales than Deadfire. Also to ​ @Johnathan Era , I never really liked DOS and DOS2, especially the latter with its overreliance or obsession with surface effects AND the way that the game throws too many trash mobs at you that makes you turn off the game because TB + too many mobs = a nightmare waste of time. Pathfinder Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous is actually good if not for their kingdom/crusade mechanics, while Baldur's Gate 3 is buckling under the weight of Larian trying to implement 5e rules with their homebrew DOS/2 rules. They already made blunders during BG3's early access, like loaded dice, again the obsession with surface effects, and weird things like having jump, evade, disengage, hide as BONUS actions instead of being a specific feat for specific classes. Larian advertised BG3 as a modern way to implement 5e in a CRPG, but it seems like all they want is to make a DOS2 clone.

@@johnathanera5863 Kingmaker is not good whatsoever. If anything it's pretty bad. From the horrible late game, to the atrocious kingdom management, to the boring quest design, I'd hardly even call it mediocre.

@@johnathanera5863 Divinity 2 is overrated garbage and Kingmaker is generic garbage. In any case, both of them are garbage compared to POE

Just out of curiosity what did you dislike about the setting? Because I really loved it

@@terbentur2943 stupid pirates / Hawai adventure clown fiesta for kids.

@@robosergTV fair enough I really enjoyed the setting though but that's a matter of taste

@@terbentur2943 Don't get me wrong, I am playing POE 2 for the first time now with all the DLCs on the hardest difficulty and I enjoy it. But you can't deny the overall theme with pirates is childish at times.

@@robosergTV Again it just boils down to taste. Pirate themes can be done pretty serious I think it does not really have to do with the setting. You can totally argue that the story and presentation was more on the light side and I would not disagree. I personally just enjoy pirate settings since they are something else in fantasy unlike the 999th iteration of medieval fairy tail land.

I started PoE recently and I wish I had half of these quality of life little things when I was playing BG or IWD. I mean, fast/slow/normal speed? come on! What a joy it is to explore and run around in this game.

@@fafofafin Same here. It should be s standard feature.

"Congratulations Codex, you've beaten him!" Huh?

@@yosharian OP is quoting a post on the RPG Codex forum, introducing this video. The RPG Codex was especially divided about Deadfire and there's a lot of people in there expressing very vocally why they find the game to be trash. Also most of it is blamed on Josh Sawyer's views on games and RPG systems, hence the "you've beaten him", amongst other things.

@@Kabouka Oh ok. Yes, I know all about the Codex. I just didn't understand that it was a quote from the Codex itself.

calling a game that was at 89 on metacritic on release 'trash' is very weird

@@manwhat7590 RPGCodex is full of literal Nazis so you should not take their opinions very seriously. And no, this is not trolling. Read any thread anywhere on the forum.

Couldn't agree more. Somehow almost everything in Pillars 2 is either good or even awesome, it's the main story that is really disappointing. It's a true shame that so many good elements "only" end up serving such a disappointing story.

Eothas was super interesting to me so I don't get this thinking at all The part where you finally meet up with him and the music matches the mood perfectly was one of the best moments in any RPG I've played since FF6 and BG2.

@@Merknilash No epic boss fight and my watcher can't do anything just watch this asshole destroy the wheel, even I can call Wael stop him, he still destroy the wheel.

@@Merknilash I agree that Eothas is interesting, but the main story by itself still wasn't thrilling. I was much more interested in what the council of arch-mages was up to for example and seriously wished the game/main story would have been about them. Other aspects like this seemed to have more potential somehow.

Obsidian have done this a few times. PoE1's story is really short, almost everything you do has nothing to do with the main story other than sharing themes (souls, mainly) and the late-game revelations are really things that should be in the first quarter of the game that set up the story, not the conclusions. It's also the same in The Outer Worlds in which, again, the core plot has about 4-5 chunks spread out through loads and loads of things that aren't focused on the same narrative but instead tell smaller, separate stories - and then it just ends when you think it's actually finally getting going. New Vegas did a much better job, to be fair. It does seem to be a general WRPG issue where the narrative goes like "intro/premise -----loads of unrelated stuff----> main plot pick-up ------loads of unrelated stuff---> revelation about "what's really going on" -> end. Pretty much every Bioware game has this thing where it sets up the end of the game at the start (e.g. find Sarevok, stop Loghain, stop Saren) then all the middle of the game is simpy getting into position to do that, then you do it. The end. You don't get an ongoing plot with waves of revelations and new developments. I wonder if it's because LotR is so pivotal in the Fantasy world and that's the epitome of that; we need to destroy the ring and stop Sauron, so they do. The rest of the plot is just speed bumps along the way to realising that goal - the goal doesn't change or develop and the middle is just basically a loading screen between "aim" and "execution".

Never happening. Josh has said the last couple years Pillars 2 was a big flop for him and the company has entirely changed losing/gaining employees. Now he seems happier taking the advisor role more. Avowed is the current year PoE3 for better or worse..

"Too much balance" is the crux of the larger role-playing argument between Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder; people who loved warriors being powerful at first and wizards being powerful later flocked to Pathfinder when Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition tried to make everyone equally viable. And to some people, the idea that all classes were not equally viable was such an obvious oversight that it had to be fixed. Different strokes, as they say.

I agree, Pentiment is a great game.

Josh seems happy in a more advisor type of role now; Obsidian has shed many of their older developers so it will be interesting to see how the company plays out this next decade

I really don´t think that Larians will be making games without VO anymore... it would be step down, and they don´t tend to do that :D And now when they are rich they don´t have any reason tho. But I am really curious if it will be turn based :) I would absolutely love TB dnd 5e game, but if its rtwp I am fine with that.

@ plenty of reason to not do full vo

They're a company. These are not really passion products, they're being made with backers and other investors and done under a corporate structure. Yes, lots of people like PoE. There's people who also really love the changes to PoE2. And there's a LOT of people who provided some very commonly occurring feedback, as he described in this video.

They were trying to please a general audience but also address the complaints of the type of people who play betas/patches and give feedback. Made it into a hodge-podge of a game. Lots of good, lots of bad. Josh is happy being a less hands-on advisor and the company has changed most employees. Avowed is basically PoE3, and the type of game Obsidian makes now for better or worse.

They just announced Avowed will be at most the size of Outer Worlds, so no not happening. People thinking Microsoft was just going to give studios they own unlimited money dont understand the industry

They never made Planescape, what are you talking about?

Tides of numeria was inexile

@@plaidchuck Yea, I forgot.

Have you ever played an Obsidan rpg ? Because they're the ones that continually tries to get closer and closer to it. Really, you absolutely can't even remotely compare these studios approach, and that's coing from someone who played most of there games. Obsidian is a studio who's design philosophy is deeply rooted in tabletop rpgs, and you could say they're the best example of a studio trying to replicate their scope. They not only aim to give you a large choice of approach, to recognize most of the ideas you could have about resolving a situation, to give you maximum agency in the way you influence the story and every quests, they also put an emphasis on letting you choose what kind of personnality your character have, what kind of background, and how does all of that influence how other characters react to you and how it locks or unlocks certains possibilities. They're proving, with their hard work, with almost each subsequent game, that making and actual rpg in a video game is absolutely possible, and that's it's more a matter of design and narative philosophy, and hard work, than actual computer constraints. In fact, I would argue that Roleplay in a lot of their game is almost entirely possible given you're willing to have a little imagination and make some concessions about what makes sense or not within the game setting.

@@Harlandgg There is nothing progressive about the systems that they have repeatedly employed for well over decade. Writing polarised plotlines that run in tandem is a long way from a sentient being applying a character other than their own to influence an outcome. Tabletop role-playing HAS the human ingredient. Outside of human interaction, the rest is purely statistical systems borrowed from tabletop wargames. I played a lot tabletop role-playing games during the eighties. They fail to fully replicate real life and video game RPG's are a million miles from replicating tabletop because we cannot presently code character. Doesn't matter many hours Obsidian staff play tabletop, they cannot yet apply the most vital ingredient on both sides of any situation. I'm fairly certain Bethesda realised how far from achieving a representation of the human character this industry is and stepped away from the present futility and lack of progressive potential. However much you imagine character to be applicable, it just isn't a factor beyond how I previously stated in polarised plotlines. You sound like someone who either doesn't comprehend the actual definition role-playing and character or has only experienced the coded misnomer.

@@ZombieATAT indeed, I played a large variety of video game rpg, and experience repeatedly their various limits, and I have less experience in tabletop rpg. However, I'm well acquainted with real life, since you brought it up, and the concept of character. There is a large list of thing that can define what makes a character, I can think of a few right now: -their origins -their past -their affiliations -their motivation(s) -the way they act (or don't act) -their personnality -the way they conduct themselves in conversations -their beliefs or absence of belief -their skills and knowledge -their personal growth and realisations Their's many more caracteristics but they are the one that comes to mind right now. All of this can be taken into account in a game system. With all of this, you can already create a whole variety of completely different characters. What matters and makes a great video game rpg is the execution. The game must be there to provide a context and ruleset that restains or open what a character can or cannot do, in regards to the setting, the plot (wich can be generalized as the context), and the aforementioned caracteristics defining a character, exactly like a very rigorous and conscious gm in a tabletop rpg. Again, you might argue that it's impossible for a game to allow for an infinite panel of behavior and actions, but first, that doesn't mean that a video game system is forever doomed to be insufficient to actually allow roleplaying, I find this to be a ridiculous assumption, and second, so is the case in real life. If you're talking about being able to roleplay as a large pool of different characters, with specific caracteristics, then I don't see how it's unreasonable to think that a well thought out and crafted video game system could achieve that. Obsidian are certainly among the best positioned to accomplish that.

@@Harlandgg It's interesting how people have put Obsidian on a pedestal over the last decade. It started with disgruntled fans of a cult game that went bankrupt, who were ultimately unhappy at the thought of anyone else running the franchise into the ground a second time. Yet, time and again people who later jumped onto the undeserved hype train, will go out if their way to defend a barely mediocre development studio. You feel that enormous deficit of character dictated role-playing can be filled by imagination. You realise your admitting the truth? If anyone points out that beyond a handful of interesting companions, almost every aspect of their game's is either sub par or awful. People also frequently attempt to defend the company by citing the production time for New Vegas. In reality; most of the plot was already written for Van Burren, the engine had been finalised and the creation kit functioned perfectly well. Furthermore, they had previously accepted and completed Star Wars the Old Republic within 15 months and accepted the New Vegas contract whilst already working on Alpha Protocol. Nobody put a gun to their head, they bit off more than they could chew and consequently released a poor quality title that reviewers were actually overly generous with. That is Obsidian in a nutshell. Also, they favor the faction system but it's more flawed than the karma system, which only failed because of ineptitude on behalf of the player, not the system. Pathfinder does a decent job of addressing alignment. The faction system can be severely abused through faction armour. Without an adequate/progressive development of character application, the average player will continue to play themselves, consider image is character and generally fail to comprehend that open-world adventure games do not offer role-playing experiences. You want a progressive role-playing experience, play Disco Elysium. I haven't read your other reply. I'm eating a sandwich, writing this and playing POE2.

@@Harlandgg You're still viewing this from the perspective of the misnomer. The fact that writing "RPG" on the box doesn't mean there's any "RP" in the "G". The genre sells, that's why Cyberpunk '76 was pitched as a role-playing experience but in reality it's actually an open-world adventure game. Just like the vacuous fantasy romance that is Witcher 3. Neither say RPG on the box but people still think they are because they have no concept of the truth, that role-playing cannot yet be sold in this industry. Rather than try to justify the video game falsehoods,, do yourself a big favor and Google the dictionary definition of the following words "character" and "role-playing". Please.