The Future of the Pillars of Eternity Series Looks Bleak

[00:08] This time bringing you a slightly less joyous video talking about the future of honestly looking a little bit bleak these days. Though, this is a subject I've had a few people ask me about since all of the recent news. But I actually

[00:23] bit before I talked about it too much, and that was mostly to just kind of see course, bears a little bit of explanations. As many people by now are certainly aware, Microsoft laid off a bunch of employees, about 1,600 in one

[00:38] go. Another planned 1,600 to come over the next several months. And in those initial cuts, Obsidian in particular, got about 25ish% of its staff laid off from what I understand. Now, around that same time, it was also mentioned that

[00:54] the work they had done on a potential sequel to Avowed was also cancelled, and we'll touch more on that in just a moment because very recently, just a properly that Obsidian will be working on a Fallout game going forward, which

[01:08] is all well and good, and I'll even talk about that in a moment. But with that reduction in staff, a focus on this new Fallout title, which is certainly going let's all be honest here, and the fact that they've still got a team working on

[01:21] Grounded 2 and early access, you then have to ask yourself, how much like resources do they actually have to spread around here? And if you're me at the very least, whose favorite thing Obsidian has ever done is actually the

[01:33] Pillars of Eternity franchise? And the obvious answer there is, uh, well, it's not looking good. So, let me start by saying uh Obsidian working on another Fallout title is probably the right business decision by far and away. In

[01:47] point out that for a couple of years after Microsoft bought Bethesda and with it the Fallout IP, I actually made a couple videos where I was like, surely spin-off game or something with the Fallout franchise because why wouldn't

[02:02] they? It's a franchise that they have a ton of people who have worked on it previously, the people who have created it even at the various studios. It's a you know, being worked on by other teams. It just makes a ton of sense to

[02:16] and especially Obsidian who has literally done it before. And so, just like purely from a business decision, I think it makes perfect sense to do that. surprising it took this long, but to be fair, we don't know how long they've

[02:29] relatively recent announcement, but usually and even in this case, I don't actually been working on this for a while, even if it wasn't necessarily you know, being in the know and working there, nobody can really say that for

[02:44] sure, which is probably as good a point as any to point out that basically the rest of this video is my own thoughts and speculation based on available information. So, first up, let's talk about that avowed to cancellation

[02:56] because even that is slightly more complicated than it might initially seem as it was mentioned that this was cancelled and there was some follow-up saying that actually Obsidian still has a few people working on it while they

[03:09] are waiting to be reassigned to something else. Now, honestly, this obviously don't want devs sitting around doing nothing because then you're paying them not to do anything. That would be very silly. So, I would guess from the

[03:22] waiting on various team assignments, they might still have a few people working on whatever it is they had accomplished already and then some of that reporting mentioned that this was in hopes of sort of getting it across

[03:34] whatever line exists in somebody's thought process to, you know, go ahead and let them release it. Now, that may or may not be true. That is all unconfirmed stuff again from various outlets and the like, but again, more of

[03:46] a rumor than anything confirmed. And I also realized that Avow didn't exactly basically every time I've ever mentioned it that would I prefer Pillars of Eternity 3. Yes, obviously. But I love the universe and Avou was interesting in

[04:01] that regard to myself. But the other part of it is Avowed was meant to be the sort of more palatable version of that franchise as opposed to the isometric CRPGs that the Pillars one and two games are. So, I just want to point out that

[04:15] them cancelling this version of it doesn't exactly bode well for the less popular genre version of it. And that's even in the wake of Balders's Gate 3, which while you would hope stirred some uh, you know, interest in the genre, so

[04:30] to be the case. I think if anything, Larry's presentation is really what makes something like Balders's Gate 3 really tick for a lot of people. And I something like that, it would require a budget that Microsoft, especially in the

[04:44] wake of all these business decisions they are making, doesn't seem inclined to give. Which brings me pretty squarely to, of course, Pillars of Eternity 3. This has long been one of those games that I desperately want that a lot of

[04:57] other people, uh, you know, simply are neutral about at best. It's a franchise that's very important to me and yet does not obviously have that sort of broader appeal, which is why I think they tried to do something like Avowed to begin

[05:10] with in order to continue that universe. And with that project obviously not garnering the interest they were hoping for, even if they did put out a sequel weaknesses of Avowed. And I've even made a video talking about what I think those

[05:23] of this video. But it occurs to me that from the outside looking in, it really looks like Microsoft and Xbox are really just after big money-making blockbusters concerned with smaller projects unless

[05:38] actually going to turn out well. And you start adding up those things together, and again, it just doesn't look good. Pillars 2 notoriously underperformed at game to make a profit. and Molly eventually got there. I have to assume

[05:52] that that would of course factored into their decision-m to make a vowed and hoped. Though I will say the exact numbers on that seem a little shaky in terms of actual sales numbers etc. what a success even was supposed to look like

[06:06] there which I mention because it really doesn't look like it was a flop so much that it was just fine which in some ways is arguably worse. you have both of those things working in tandem. And then if you try to of course get something

[06:19] like A Pillars of Eternity 3 green lit and you have all of that prior information of underperformance to lean on, is that really then a project you make it the game that people would actually want to pick up and play?

[06:34] Beyond of course the genre dieards like myself. And I just have to assume the answer is probably not. Like if I'm the one making that money decision, even as the guy who desperately wants Pillars 3, I'm probably not greenlighting that. I

[06:47] always try to make it clear in my videos that while I may love games that other people hate or games that didn't do particularly well, I am always very much on the side of things that it has to make money. It has to be profitable.

[07:00] Financially, it has to make sense or it simply will not get made. And I might enjoy something that did terribly in terms of its actual sales or whatever. and that's great, but you know, it's not going to get another one as a result.

[07:13] And that seems to be where we are with Pillars, unfortunately. As much as I love that series, as much as I have committed time to it, along with many other people, from everything I've seen so far, it really just doesn't seem like

[07:25] the interest is there, both in terms of Microsoft and Xbox, of course, greenlighting it, or it growing to be big enough to be of interest to them. And while I do think you have studios like Alcat Games thriving in that double

[07:39] A space on the Pillar side of things, it just doesn't seem to be working out quite as well, it does really seem like the Pillars series has struggled to make the math work on the business side of things. And so to sort of just start

[07:51] wrapping up this video before I start rambling on too much, I will simply say that I obviously really love the series. I hope that it manages to come back in some form or another, but I think at this point I'm just going to have to

[08:05] kind of put my hopes on a shelf for this one. And who knows, maybe some years excited about a surprise announcement for the series or something. But in the meantime, I think I'm just going to be forced to turn my attention to other

[08:19] enjoy. There's plenty of awesome stuff on the horizon. At the very least, I would honestly say the upcoming Divinity game from Larion is my most anticipated title at this point. But as far as the Pillar series goes, I mean, unless we

[08:32] get like a surprise shock announcement or something changes drastically, I just don't really see how this works out in the foreseeable future. But that said, have come back from the brink of oblivion, and there have been stranger

[08:47] things than Apillars 3 suddenly appearing out of the blue. But as of right now, I think I just kind of have to accept that this is what it is. And I'm still looking forward to seeing what Obsidian gets up to one way or the other

[08:59] in the future. And so I am going to prefer to leave this on a bit more of a hopeful note in that way. So that's pretty much all I've got to say on this own, certainly feel free to share them down in the comments section below. I'd

[09:12] or your favorite moments from the series or any other series that miraculously too. Or anything else you want to share. I guess which naturally means to like, comment, subscribe, all that YouTube jazz. But regardless of any of that,

[09:27] watching. I really do appreciate it. May you wander in wisdom and have an amazing you wander in wisdom and have an amazing day.