Obsidian will need to 're-examine the entire format' of Pillars of Eternity before making a third game

Sad news for people who like old people games, it looks like if a continuation were to happen it would be a Fallout 3 style FPS, Skyrim skid-mark, or something, sex'd up and dumbed down. Explosions, no reading, awesome button etc...

It's worth noting, while Pillars sequel floundered, Larian Studios Divinity: Original Sin 2 was a massive critical and commercial success.

Low Deadfire sales means Obsidian would have to "re-examine the entire format of the game" before committing to Pillars of Eternity 3

Says design chief.

Will there be a Pillars of Eternity 3? It sounds like the series' design chief wants to work out what went wrong with the last game before taking on another sequel.

Old-school role-playing game Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire was critically acclaimed but sold poorly compared to its predecessor and other, similar games. Obsidian's Josh Sawyer has said he wants to work out why before committing to making Pillars of Eternity 3.

"That is not something that I get to decide, but I do think that the relatively low sales of Deadfire mean that if we consider making another Pillars game in this style, we're going to have to re-examine the entire format of the game," Sawyer wrote on his Tumblr.

"It is difficult to know exactly why a sequel sells worse than its predecessor if both games review relatively well. Is it because the first game satisfied the existing need and the audience just wasn't interested in the second? Is it because awareness was lower for the sequel? Is it because despite the strong reviews and the strong sales for the first game, people didn't 'really' like it? Maybe it's a combination of all of these things.

"The problem is that without really understanding the reason(s), it's hard to know how to move forward. It would be easier in some ways if Deadfire were also a colossal critical failure and we could point to the massive screw-ups that we needed to address. Players did criticise the low difficulty at launch and the main plot, which I think are fair and reasonable, but those problems alone don't really explain the difference in sales. And while player reviews were weaker for Deadfire than for Pillars 1, professional criticism tended to say that Deadfire was an improvement over the first game in most areas.

"(Yes, Deadfire has an 88 Metacritic and Pillars 1 has an 89 Metacritic, but IMO Pillars 1′s review scores benefited from a nostalgia bump.)

"Players who hate RTwP (real-time with pause) combat will say that it's because Deadfire continued using RTwP combat, in contrast to the phenomenally better-selling (and better-reviewed) turn-based Divinity: OS2. Even if that's true, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, which generally had lower review scores than Deadfire, sold better than Deadfire and had RTwP combat.

"I'm sure some of the people reading this think they know precisely why Deadfire sold worse than Pillars 1. I don't have that confidence, which is one of several reasons why I am leery about trying to direct a sequel. I couldn't give our (Obsidian's) audience the game that they wanted and without understanding where I went wrong, I would be guessing at what the problems are and how to remedy them."

Sawyer added thoughts to the debate on Twitter, pointing to Deadfire's tough comparison with Pillars of Eternity 1, which benefited from the hype around early crowdfunded video games.

In the time since Obsidian launched Deadfire, Microsoft bought the studio and it released Fallout: New Vegas spiritual successor The Outer Worlds.

Where Deadfire clearly flopped, it sounds like The Outer Worlds has done the business for publisher Take-Two. This week the company called the RPG "a critical and commercial success", and said it was "exceeding our expectations". Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick added: "It's outperforming our expectations handily, got amazing reviews, we're super excited about it, but it's very, very early. So as we learn more, we will disclose more."

In many ways it feels like Obsidian has already moved on from Pillars of Eternity, and thoughts now turn to the studio's first Microsoft-exclusive game.

As for Pillars of Eternity 3, it sounds like Obsidian has a lot to work out about the series before it'll consider making it

If they actually get around to releasing the thing on Switch, I'm there. If not, I'll get it for PC like I did the first (and loved it) - but I've been holding off to have it on my little portable

Its a real shame that a game like Tyranny also got poor sales. I liked it better than pillars. Hope they would continue that franchise.

They haven't? That's surprising.

I think that's part of the problem, the old game was so rooted in old-school tradition, it didn't feel modern.

Divinity was decidedly old-school, but also felt like a modern interpretation.

And yes, before someone chimes in, I know Pillars has better writing.

Probably the reason why Obsidian got bought. Tbh this game escaped my radar, didnt even know the game has released until news about console ports the end of last year.

I thought Pillars 1 was a great game, and holds up well against the games it reimagined like Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale. I think the same thing of Torment: Tides of Numenera. Both are great RPG’s with good rulesets and great writing.

The Divinity series I just plan don’t like. The writing is poor, and the ruleset is simple and kind of boring IMO. More then anything else I just can’t get past the really poor writing and story of Divinity OS and 2.

I have a lot of misgivings about Baldur’s Gate 3 because of this.

I haven’t played Deadfire, but I do plan to purchase it when/if it is released on PS4.

I agree. Tyranny was absolutely amazing. I liked it better than both pillars.

All 3 games are very good. The real issue is that they are making time absorbing games for a target audience that is too old to have time to play them.

At 33 i hardly ever have time to play games, let alone such long games. Lately i only play things that have local multiplayers, so i can have fun with real people that i know in real life. Most of us dont have time for long single player or absorbing online multiplayer.

Having said so, As i am a huge fan of obsidian, i did buy and played their games. But it took me months to finish each. Almost a year i would say for the original pillars.

There is one issue that i did find lacking about the pillars games. I dont know if this caused the low sales. Maybe not, as many consumers dont agree with me. But they did feel too serious and long winded. Specially the religious parts. I went to religious school, and nothing makes me more sleepy than having people debate god or the gods or what ever.

I think that is the reason i found tyranny much much bettter. The store really got me and i really enjoyed it. But, that one didnt sell well either, so who knows?

That's a shame. I think there is a demand there, they just need to budget for it.

I don't think people that enjoy these games really care about high-production values. I mean don't get me wrong, I appreciate good voice acting and a decent game engine, but honestly all I care about is the gameplay, writing, and roleplaying elements.

With that said, I am open to them changing things up. I would enjoy an Elder Scrolls-style adventure in the Pillars or Tyrrany game world, especially if it incorporated some sort of turn-based-meets-real-time (a la VATS) combat mechanic.

Or hell, make it an action game, I really don't care as long as there are plenty of good story, dialogue, characters, and atmosphere.

What I'd really like to see is a Pillars game made in the style of KOTOR. Best of both worlds.

You don't have to make a classic old-school RPG to make a great RPG. Just make it RPG-action instead of action-RPG.

Yeah Tyranny deserved more love than it got. I loved the ambiguity of the choices, the morality; I felt like there was never a good choice, only a "less bad" choice (that was sometimes appealing! muahahahhaha).

I liked the combat system of both games. And at some point Pillars added a classic turn-based combat mode that was kind of fun.

I would probably buy a Switch if they did that haha. All three games.

I couldn't get into Pillars 1 but really dug pillars 2. I liked it more than Divinity 2 honestly

Shame it didn't sell