Creative freedom is all well and good as neat words on paper a giant corporation puts out. If I had a cent for every time that was said by a major games publisher ...
But seriously if people think that a Microsoft owned studio will not be developing their next game with Xbox heavily in mind that's just ... come on. It's just not sound business. It's the whole point of MS is making these acquisitions in the fist place. And by their vary nature isometric, systems heavy, classic CRPGs with a huge amount of text dialogue are not what is going to be happening on an Xbox. Their priorities and design directions will inevitably shift. (and no before people mention it dragonage is not the same thing, even the first game compromised heavily and did not break any major ground on consoles) They have to by the very nature of even basic things like UI design and accommodating a control scheme, which trickles down to overall game design. Even if Microsoft is a corporate overlord saint and is as hands off as possible, if you are owned by a bigger company you will inevitably course adjust your priorities to be mindful and inclusive of their business.
That's fine for all the people who don't care about classic CRPGs. But for those of us who do, keep in mind CRPGs have been effectively a dead genre for a decade. For a decade people who love those classic CRPGs got basically dick, while everybody was off chasing mmos, mobas or Bethesdas rpgs or Cod or whatever. It was only with the introduction of kickstarter that all the little nerd grognards (including myself in that camp) now grown up had an opportunity to put their new found money into something they loved as kids. Pillars of Eternity was one of the first few very successful kickstarters. It was also concurrently followed by Larian Studios and InXile also making games in similar veins, to where we have a market, an honest to goodness revival of a dead genre! We finally have games coming out in this very underserved and still a for all intents and purposes a hyper niche genre! I'm sorry for being selfish but no, I don't want to loose that all over again. Obsidian's PoE games are also the ones that are most closely adhering to those classic crpg formulas. Which is why their exit from this space would be so significant. Divinity games are still very much doing their own thing with their own brand of goofy narratives. And inXile's output has been very haphazard. Only recently did we get Pathfinder: Kingmaker as a new contender and oh boy, let me tell you if people think Obsidian's games are buggy (even if they have actually not been any more buggy recently then most every major game under the sun coming out these days, if not better), these Kingmaker guys are on a whole other tier of bugs, I think i found 20+ in character creation alone.
At the end of the day, lets be real under Microsoft Obsidian would not be putting out games in the template of Pillars. And you are either fine with that or not. It's just for me personally sad to see my favorite only recently resurgent favorite genre get cannibalized already. If you want some empathetic perspective, imagine no games coming out for your favorite geanre for 10+ odd years, fun times let me tell you.
Thankfully like I've mentioned above there are now more developers and players in the market so Obsidian exiting it will not necessarily spell doom or anything, but it will still be very significant, Obsidian and Larian were basically the two main dogs pushing that sleigh.
Now don't get me wrong I actually would totally not mind Obsidian branching out of classic CRPGs and doing something in the vein of FNV or Alpha Protocol or KOTOR2. Like other people have said they made some fucking stellar games in those other spaces. More of those too? Yes sure, please! Hell I was probably the biggest AP evangelist and apologist on these boards years back; and pushed FNV as the by far the superior non isometric Fallout way before it was all cool on youtube and cemented as the now "popular" opinion.
It's just with them being independent the opportunity to choose your direction and go and make that one more classic CRPG is always there on the table. This is just not going to be the case under Microsoft developing with a console in mind too. At the very least even if they went back into that classic isometric space, in those conditions the design of such games would significantly change, away from what I crave, very unabashedly selfishly.
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As far as pining for Obsidians brand of good writing. A word of caution.
Their most recent output of PoE2 has been very lackluster in that department specifically. And there has been some upheaval in Obsidian regarding that too, with one of their most recognized writers/management/owners/designer figures Chris Avellone leaving on bad terms. And you could feel the effects of that on the final product very clearly in retrospect.
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