I think his general criticism (that Pillars of Eternity is too wordy) is correct and it’s one that both I and Eric Fenstermaker (I feel comfortable speaking for him in this respect) noted internally before the game was released. We didn’t really have time to do serious editing passes on anything outside of a few major dialogues. Both at Black Isle and Obsidian, the designers have had a tendency to overwrite. Overwriting in itself is not bad, but only if editing is a normal part of the development process that follows the overwriting. Not enough time was allocated to editing on Pillars of Eternity.

More time has been allocated to review and editing on Deadfire and we’re devoting more of our tool development time to making the editing process easier for everyone involved in the future. In the context of dialogue, a lot of my review comments focus on development of the character, their voice, and their conflict(s); the use of prose to convey meaningful action and details that are not visible to the player’s eye; and giving the player a range of responses that seems appropriate to the moment, builds off of the player’s choices, and leads to entertaining outcomes.

Where I disagree with his criticism is in many of the specifics, mostly because of the needs of Pillars as a game that is trying to capture the spirit of tabletop AD&D rules and settings like the Forgotten Realms. For example, the criticism of the first choice the player makes: what sex do you want your character to be? You could say it’s mechanically irrelevant, but when it comes to conceiving of characters in different role-playing contexts, it’s not. I think the way Jeff describes creating a character is totally reasonable, but I also think a lot of tabletop gamers and BG/IWD/Pillars players conceive characters as individuals born into specific societies and specific roles who continue to develop through the course of play. I.e., many players enjoy both telling the GM/players/themselves about how they are and then showing them who they become through play.

I think a lot of players have experiences like mine as a 10 year-old lifting the lid off of the World of Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms boxed sets and opening the Cyclopedia of the Realms to pore over every entry or memorizing the heraldry of every kingdom in Oerth. I’d store and sort all of that lore in my head and dream up characters born out of that mix. Certainly not everyone had that experience, but these games also aren’t made for everyone.

In the comments section, Jeff posted, “You like this stuff, and I’m glad you like it. But a lot of people really don’t. Both sides can be made happy. So why not do that?”

I think editing our menu text, lore text, and dialogue as well as adjusting how information is presented would almost certainly be good changes for the majority of players, but I think a lot of the suggestions connected to high-level design decisions (e.g. getting rid of sub-races) would seriously annoy a big chunk of our core audience. The audience’s desires are a big part of our constraints that we design for. We have to be careful not to pare down or bury so much that we lose sight of why people loved these games – and love playing the A/D&D campaigns that inspired us – in the first place. In the pursuit of making everyone happy, we could very easily leave everyone dissatisfied.