Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire sold poorly, as reported by DSO Gaming. The game’s poor sales across the board has actually put the development of Pillars of Eternity 3 in jeopardy. In fact, it seems unlikely that we’ll see a third game anytime soon. One of the designers on the game posed quizzical reasons behind the failure of Pillars of Eternity 2, but summed it up to not being sure why it failed… but it was pretty obvious that Pillars of Eternity 2 got woke and went broke.
The information comes from the tumblr page of designer Josh Sawyer, who responded to a fan question about the possibility of Pillars of Eternity 3 being made, with Sawyer writing…
“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.
“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.”
Oh people are definitely interested in CRPGs, the sales of games like Divinity seem to prove as much.
Divinity: Original Sin 2 sold more than 1 million copies over the course of two months, as reported by PCGamesN. The game went on to generate close to $100 million in revenue for Larian Studios in 2017 alone, as reported by WCCF Tech.
So the excuse that people don’t crave classic, isometric, story-driven CRPGs is completely out of the equation.
What has Sawyer hung up on Pillars of Eternity 2’s failure is that he keeps drawing back to the critics’ review scores, claiming that they were high, writing…
“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 criticize 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.”
Except professional criticism is about as useful to gamers (and sales) as discarded bile ducts from a sea lampery is to a pastry chef.
Hedging any sort of high-sales expectations on a game based on what the Kotakus and Polygons are saying is equivalent to high street traders basing computer manufacturing investments on the advice of children.
Outlets praising Pillars of Eternity 2 for its “variety” and relationships did nothing to sate the desires of actual fans and real gamers.
After playing through the title it became obvious to most hardcore CRPG aficionados with a critical eye that something was amiss. Daily Stormer summed it up with the following paragraph…
“The few male leaders in the game tend to be incompetent and, in at least one instance, end up being replaced by stronger female leaders depending on the choices you’ve made up to that point.
“But that’s not all…
“There’s also a huge amount of homosexual propaganda in Pillars II. All of the romanceable NPCs in the game are bisexual, and there are also scripted encounters at sea where members of your ship’s crew – usually men – enter your living quarters hoping for a cheeky backdoor romp.”
Most might dismiss the Daily Stormer’s opinion as “racist” without bothering to read what they have to say, but they weren’t the only ones who came away distraught, disenchanted, and ultimately disappointed.
The Steam forums are rife with questions, comments, statements, and opinions about Pillars of Eternity 2 being filled with Progressive Liberal propaganda.
One user, going by the handle of Lock, sums up the game with eerily similar criticisms to that of the Daily Stormer, picking apart and pointing out the issues with the writing and content in Pillars of Eternity 2, saying…
“There isn’t really an SJW problem with this game, but the mediocre writing and downright terrible character development, makes it seem there is. It’s clear the narrative department wanted to be progressive, which is okay and actually fits the world the game takes place in, but the problem is that the quality is so below average that it comes off as pandering.
“This is why most, if not every single one, of the leaders you meet are strong, independent women. If they’re men, be sure you can overthrow and replace them with a strong, independent woman. It’s a video game trope that has repeated itself so many times now, that it’s become a parody. Character development is even worse, since most of your companions are bisexual and immediately notify you of this, instead of slowly developing a relationship over time. Like most things in PoE2, there’s no nuance.
“Most of the time it feels like you’re playing a fan fiction version of a cRPG, which is probably why so many people seem to think it has an SJW problem. It doesn’t, but that doesn’t excuse the supbar writing and especially the lackluster character/companion narratives.”
This is probably the most egregious kind of failure that Obsidian could have made: they managed to make a game that wasn’t even appealing enough to the people who agree with Progressive Liberal viewpoints.
Now a lot of Centrists will say “The game didn’t get woke! There is no SJWism! You’re just as bad as the Regressive Left!” while completely missing the forest for the trees.
Pillars of Eternity 2 didn’t need any overt, poorly implemented, obvious signs of agitprop. It was the more subtle inclusion of talking points and virtue signaling that did it in. It’s playing it safe to accommodate the kind of crowd that doesn’t play games. In turn, the people who do play games noticed the poor writing, the half-hearted attempts at conflict, and the general tone of the game being dumbed down for an audience that almost never picks up a controller, nor uses a high DPI mouse for headshots in a competitive FPS.
This is how Pillars of Eternity 2 got woke. It didn’t push forward; it didn’t challenge its audience with a darker or more gripping story. It didn’t include characters that the core demographic could undeniably love or hate with enough passion to make them want more.
Reducing or removing the fan-service, making the women butch and masculine, and trying to orient gender depictions to accommodate feminist identitarians was a surefire way of turning off the fans, and establishing a negative word of mouth post-release.
The slow build-up of small kowtowing to the outrage artists and keeping the story and characters so safe that no one had a reason to care was an instant recipe for killing hype for the game, especially as far as long-term sales were concerned.
Retrospectively, if the marketing team goes back and looks over how the game was pitched to the core demographic… what was the hook? “More of the Same: The Sequel”? “Safe For Liberals: The Game”? “Nothing Problematic: The CRPG”? Why would you expect that to sell millions?
That’s not to mention that their previous kneeling to the outrage brigade by removing a backer’s limerick from the original Pillars of Eternity certainly didn’t sit well with most pro-freedom advocates in the gaming realm, so they had that going against them as well.
If you combine this with the fact that the game wasn’t really nudging any boundaries anywhere, and didn’t generate enough grassroots buzz like Divinity, Underrail or Ion Fury (despite the latter’s censorship kerfuffle), it was easy to see why it flopped on release.
Playing it safe and trying to constantly cater these padded fictional worlds to the Twitter mobs, tumblr fanatics, and Cancel Culture cultists was always going to backfire. Maybe Obsidian will finally learn and go back to offering gamers the dark, sexy, uncompromising stories that helped make them famous in the first place without constantly undermining their own efforts by cutting off their creative juices at the knees to appease the perpetually offended.
(Thanks for the news tip Ace)
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