Why are their fantasy games so devoid of joy, interesting characters, good exploration or inspiring setpieces...

Why are their fantasy games so devoid of joy, interesting characters, good exploration or inspiring setpieces, why are their towns such generic hovels, why do they make Gygax look like Tolkien, why are their campaigns so cookie cut and soulless?

Pic unrelated I guess?

Why hello there

Sounds like you're describing the entire WRPG genre desu.

It's not like JRPG's are any better.

Not really, Troika made some good stuff, Ion Storm as well, Looking Glass etc. Nowadays you got Underrail and Age of Decadence. Shame that good dungeon crawlers are a thing of the past.

At least JRPGs don't ignore the modern era.

come on user, you can put in more buzzwords than that
3/10 for trying

Anyone else think Pillars of Eternity didn't really feel like an Obsidian game?

>Troika made some good stuff,

I find it funny Troika made three games and all three are underrated classics in their own right, albeit flawed. Also, I can't help but respect their leadership for opting to close down and actually pay proper employee severances and medical insurances when it became obvious no projects were getting greenlit. It's a shame there was no way to gather fund externally back then without a publisher.

It did, it's just that Bioware and Bethesda weren't there to lend them engine and assets.

You forget that all three games, except to some extent Arcanum, were nearly unplayable at launch and extreme examples of front-loaded games even after decades of patching. All their games fall apart in the second half. Shit developer.

This

PoE's biggest problem was they literally used the first draft of the script because there was no time to revise it. Give shit to Josh "Balance Man" Sawyer all you want, but 3.0+ version of the game is much better.

>Why are their fantasy games so devoid of joy, interesting characters, good exploration or inspiring setpieces, why are their towns such generic hovels, why do they make Gygax look like Tolkien, why are their campaigns so cookie cut and soulless?
Your opinion is very important to the RPG playerbase. Please, keep us informed.

JRPGs have their own separate problem in a sense they have no identity beyond "kitchen sink fantasy, anything goes" mentality.

J E Y N E

K A S S Y N D E R

>dat feel when you'll never SMASH the fire sisters

Don't get what you mean, JRPGs are thematically very diverse and coherent. Their main problem is the writing and the padding.

Their most polished games were DS3 and South Park one because they were smaller in scope and made with proprietary tech.

>develop their own engine
>never again use after those games because middleware costs too much

Obsidian is still laying the foundation for independent projects. I wonder what their secret big game is.

I don't know, I didn't enjoy PoE back when it released, then started playing it again a week ago and I'm pretty hooked now.
The start is really slow and uneventful but it only gets better. Shame I'm almost done.

The combat is consistently shit and the art direction is really bad.

They should look to Dungeon Rats to see how good combat works.

Pillars of Eternity is a lot of fun