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Obsidian...what happened?

Flou

Arbiter
Joined
Mar 23, 2016
Messages
869
Location
Hellsinki
That's an oversimplification. Writers like George Ziets and John Gonzalez had to be hired, you know. What happened is that Obsidian's hiring procedure and the company culture changed.

It's not that simple. 10-15 years ago narrative designers were a rare breed. If you wanted to write for games, you would apply to a handful of studios with Obsidian being one of the most respected studios when it comes to narrative design.

Look at games industry now and every bigger budget game has a narrative design team working on it. The people applying to jobs are not just trying to get into those handful of studios, they now have a ton of studios to choose from.

At the same time, Obsidian got demoted from a company that made AAA games to someone that made only AA games. Now, would you rather apply to say one of the Sony studios and write for their AAA games with better salary than come and join a ragtag bunch of devs at Obsidian?
 

Flou

Arbiter
Joined
Mar 23, 2016
Messages
869
Location
Hellsinki
It's kind of pathetic then that most of them are garbage. The fact that this is coming from me makes it extra ironic.

Well, there aren't even enough talented writers in Hollywood. Talented hacks are getting paid to write movies and series.
 

Ontopoly

Disco Hitler
Joined
Jan 28, 2020
Messages
2,993
Location
Fairy land
I agree,most people think that torment is filled with writing,but in reality nearly all of the dialogue is short and to the point. It felt like real people talking,nobody in real life talks in laws of text lol. Numanuma had boring flowery overdone writing,but also lacked anything in between to refresh people concentration. Thus it ends up as long boring manual.

Story telling has never tried to recreate how people actually talk. That would play out like shit. Books, movies, video games, it's never been the goal. Real people stutter, mispeak, have pauses while they think and unless it's for a specific purpose these things are usually left out. I haven't seen many stories, and no good stories, that try to recreate how people talk in real life. It's not necessarily a sign of bad writing, although numanuma (and spellforce 3) do have bad, uninteresting writing. Video games have never been the place to seriously explore story and themes. One of the greatest aspects of games though are their ability to create atmosphere. Made a blog post about atmosphere in video games btw.

Since Ontopoly is already taken, I guess the answer is: no.

I'm not already taken, just unobtainable for you. What has User0001 been telling you?

Well, there aren't even enough talented writers in Hollywood. Talented hacks are getting paid to write movies and series

It's no surprise when most games don't bother to higher a dedicated team of writers. The team lead or lead developer would rather do it themselves because they either thinks it's easy, unimportant, or they think they're a much better writer and creative thinker then they actually are. Look for a good story else where, such as books.
 

new fucking guy

Scholar
Patron
Joined
Oct 22, 2017
Messages
180
Pathfinder: Wrath
Story telling has never tried to recreate how people actually talk. That would play out like shit. Books, movies, video games, it's never been the goal. Real people stutter, mispeak, have pauses while they think and unless it's for a specific purpose these things are usually left out. I haven't seen many stories, and no good stories, that try to recreate how people talk in real life.
but the big lebowski
 

Tyranicon

A Memory of Eternity
Developer
Joined
Oct 7, 2019
Messages
6,091
So is Obsidian good again yet?
Yes,the have got in the rails with their new survival game for kids.

Judging by the apparent popularity of Grounded, it is not unthinkable for Obsidian to change gears entirely and start catering to a much younger, much more casual audience a la Fortnite.

In dev, as in real life, nothing else matters but money.
 
Joined
May 26, 2020
Messages
409
So is Obsidian good again yet?
Yes,the have got in the rails with their new survival game for kids.

Judging by the apparent popularity of Grounded, it is not unthinkable for Obsidian to change gears entirely and start catering to a much younger, much more casual audience a la Fortnite.

In dev, as in real life, nothing else matters but money.

I know for a fact that some die hard Obsidian fanboys who are probably in their 30's will proclaim undying love for this new game, so it's not just the "younger" audiences.
 

fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
Joined
Jun 2, 2017
Messages
37,180
Location
Bulgaria
So is Obsidian good again yet?
Yes,the have got in the rails with their new survival game for kids.

Judging by the apparent popularity of Grounded, it is not unthinkable for Obsidian to change gears entirely and start catering to a much younger, much more casual audience a la Fortnite.

In dev, as in real life, nothing else matters but money.

I know for a fact that some die hard Obsidian fanboys who are probably in their 30's will proclaim undying love for this new game, so it's not just the "younger" audiences.
We do have a lot of garbage on the codex,sadly.
 

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