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Yeah, it's relatively easy for small companies to work from home and synchronize but there's a threshold. I saw that with all the communication channels, all the groups that were forming, it's not easy to follow and to get organized past a number of employees.

From a company like BioWare, that must be difficult.

Why would there be a threshold, @Redglyph? The company has to be set up to take the bandwidth needed for Zoom/Teams/Whatever meetings and far more people working online, and you really should have at least a cheap microphone for everyone to use. Once that's set up, though, you're good to go for development work, aren't you? Well, mo-cap needs a studio and sound recording might, but what else?

There's other business work that needs people in person (signing where electronic signatures can't be used, receipt handling, maybe repairing equipment), but it seems like the lion's share of development work can be done from home.

Because in large companies you are usually involved in more different groups, which tend to have their own, individual preferences and practices. In person, it's not a problem, I used to go and visit them and informally exchange information. Remotely, I just can't imagine to make it work (I had left a big company to join a small one long before this sad COVID affair). And that's without counting execs that have the bright idea to impose a methodology after a while, with good intention but without understanding the needs of individual groups.

In smaller companies, people tend to align naturally to fewer communication channels and to know the habits of everyone else. At least that's my experience. Although at the beginning there was a lot of experimentations with different tools, but after a few months it settled down.

Of course the impact is less obvious if you're only involved in your own group and rarely with others.

And at the base, which I forgot to mention, because you lose the "informal discussions" you had at the coffee machine when you work remotely, so you have to replace that with more online discussions. That's where the habits of everyone is important to know. :)

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Wish? They can make that happen if they "wish!" ;)

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In my case, it's so easy : The beginning of Pillars 1 way so incredibly dark and gruesome it really turned me off, making me not want to play the sequel.
Especially since I decided to play the sequel ONLY after having played the first game, and since I don't like the first game …

Others might very well like that. I know of enough people from forums who like it especially dark and gruesome.

I also tried to finish PoE 1 and did not manage. My problem was not that the story was dark or gruesome, rather that the world they had created never sucked me in. I don't know why. Perhaps because of the classes or something. I believe that had it been old DnD, I would have felt differently.

Then came the Pathfinder, which I found much better than PoE 1. After that, someone made a turn-based mode for the Pathfinder and now I cannot even think of returning to PoE games.

I do like horror, but in this case the hollowborn scenario was original, mysterious, and thought provoking. It could have used a better tutorial, but other than that I had no issues with the game.
I haven't seen Silicon Valley, but Captain Marvel was a turd. Doesn't inspire hope for this one.

Yeah, I didn't like PoE1's atmosphere myself, especially in the beginning. (I still finished it.)

You should definitely try PoE2. It's a lot more light-hearted and generally a good game.

I might have to try POE2. I enjoyed the first bit of POE but lost interest when the party received a castle. It was dreadful compared to winning a castle in NWN2. I really liked that aspect with all the crafting and such.

Thanks for the posts, @Couchpotato

I believe graphics should be supporting of the story - if the story is dark, so should the graphic, because it is hard for me to be immersed in a setting which doesn't fit with the graphics. So the writing of Pillars of Eternity was dark too, but that wasn't a problem for you - only the graphics?

I agree with all of this. Both Pathfinder games are much better and POE would have been a much better game using DnD rules instead of the custom ones they made.

I agree too, a D&D / Pathfinder would have gone a long way to motivate me more. It's a fine game but I can't get into the mechanics. In PoE2, there's also a lot of lore constantly thrown at the player, which makes the potential barrier even higher.

Pillars having its own system and setting was about 75% of its appeal to me.

This. D&D is better, but I don't get people wanting every game to have the same system. Plus I prefer the art style in PoE to Pathfinder's.

I'm ashamed to say I still haven't played PoE II yet.

When I bought the game, I wasn't aware that the story would be so dark. If I knew, I wouldn't have bought it in the first place.

I don't remember any advertisements or previews stating that it had a very dark story.

On the other hand, cynically put, nobody would buy RPGs with "light" stories, so to say, at least not "western style " RPGs. I don't even remember any of that type from within the last 10 years.
Edit : With The Dungeons Of Naheulbeuk probably being the only outlier to that.

Thanks for your answer :) I get it that dark moods doesn't have to be for everyone. I don't watch/play horrors because my subconsciousness would take it an replay it. I like those games/movies as immersive art pieces, and I know a lot of people who prefer them as something extraordinary, just I stay away from them.
But Pillars were more too slow for me, maybe one day I will get the right mood and finish it.

I do find that almost incredible to believe, JDR. You simply must play the second game at some point, I'd be curious to hear what you think of it on its' own and compared to the first game.

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I've come to the thought that maybe the second game just wasn't played / bought that much [i]because8/i] it had a lighter theme, and that people preferred the first one because of that.

If that is true, then my own taste in RPGs is rather a statistical fluke, an statistical outlier, so to say, or, "the odd man out".

I believe that this is rather the case, because I see so many dark games within the last years, and people happily buy and play them.
Except me, so this means to me, that my taste is nothing important here.

Haha, if you hadn't mentioned it here.. I had completely forgotten about it.

Yeah, shocking news about Dragon Age 4 :lol:

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