Why I don't consider Obsidian to be special.

[Darth Roxor]

If there is one thing that every Obsidian game has in common (besides bugs) its shitty combat encounters.

Storm of Zehir slaps you in the face.

MotB at times, too.

 

[villain of the story]

And NV pops the mole in your ass.

 

[Marobug]

(...)

Jade Empire (1/10):
Shitty console shit, didn't play.

(...)

Oblivion (2/10):
Didn't play, but I read about shitty level-scaling, VOs and consolishness.

(...)

ME2 (2/10):
didn't play, but don't expect it to be better.

(...)

AP (1/10):
Didn't play, but looks like an especially buggy poor man's ME.

(...)

DA2 (2/10):
Didn't play, sounded like a royal fuck-up.

(...)

Do you work for gamespot ?

 

[circ]

OBSIDIAN IS THE LAST RPG MAKER LEFT. IT'S LIKE 1990 STILL FOR OBSIDIAN. WITH NO OBSIDIAN THERE'S GOING TO BE NO CODEX EITHER. WAIT.

Fuck Obsidian.

 

[Jaesun]

If they did get the licence to do an Icewind Dale III I might get excited.

Sadly, my love affair with Obsidian is basically over...

 

[ghostdog]

"I didn't play this game, hence it was terrible." Even intelligent posters like ghostdog pull this nonsense sometimes, so I don't know why.

[Intelligence] Hey, when did I say this ?

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

If there is one thing that every Obsidian game has in common (besides bugs) its shitty combat encounters.

Storm of Zehir slaps you in the face.

MotB at times, too.

Yea, I'd say the final boss in SoZ is better than the best Infinity Engine games had.

 

[mondblut]

Jade Empire (1/10):
didn't play.

Oblivion (2/10):
Didn't play,

ME2 (2/10):
didn't play

AP (1/10):
Didn't play

DA2 (2/10):
Didn't play

Admitting on having playing them is an equivalent of admitting a love for horse cock up your butt.

A competent and prestigious individual is well able at judging games without lowering himself to play them.

 

[Multiple Sarcasm]

The "didn't play, but it sucks" argument is pretty out there, but the "scores" aren't that far off the mark.
Except for AP, which I had no interest in playing, so I don't know much about it myself.
And, perhaps, ME2, as it's a clearly 3/10 game, due to all the funny retardation, in which you can bask and rage. Its combat seemed noticeably worse to me than ME1's, though, so I'm not sure which is summarily worse on the "play yourself vs watch LP" axis.

Bah, anyway. OP's argument trolling, as I see it, basically comes down to "playable vs interesting" dilemma, which isn't as easy to answer for me as it once was.
Obviously, I'd pick "interesting", but dealing with the devs' fuck-ups along the way? I don't think I have the patience for it, anymore. Meaning, I can't tolerate failures in either area, for long.
So, yeah, the kicker is: Bio may make derp games for intellectually challenged, but as a developer, they are a much more functional mechanism than Obsidian.
Bethesda is a mystery, though: their execution is worse than Obsidian's, their writing/design - dumber than Bios, yet - somehow - they still manage to thrive and have a considerable fanbase. Kinda depressing to think about why, so fuck it, I'm tired and want to sleep...

 

[markec]

I admit that there are some good combat encounters in Obsidian games but they are 90% boss fights which dont constitute majority of game.

 

[torpid]

If the Codex considers Obsidian special, rightly or wrongly, it's mostly because of Chris Avellone and the hope that he'll one day deliver on all the sweet talk and make something brilliant. But I do think that -- up till recently at least -- Obsidian tries to do things that Bethesda and Bioware have abandoned a long time ago, mostly in the C&C department. The problem is that there games often have a host of other issues, or whatever interesting things they're trying to do are a small part of an overall shitty package (AP).

And it remains to be seen if there's even a pay off for them for trying to be the "smarter" developer, or if they wouldn't be better served by falling in line with the Bethesda/Bioware model and focus on polishing instead of slightly more interesting ideas and mechanics. Has the studio actually carved out a niche for itself, a position which would be threatened if it became indistinguishable from Bioware, or would it be more successful if it sold out (more)?

 

[J_C]

The sequels they make are better than the originals, so they deserve a credit for that in my book.

As for the rating of the games in the original post, it is totally subjective therefor totally shit.

 

[Marobug]

They just need better coders and QA.

So they need to be a better developer and better at making games? That's basically what you're saying.

This is like looking at Uwe Boll movie and saying, "It just needs better cinematography and screenplay."

Hum dude, a development team is a lot more than just programmers and testers. Without designers, sfx engineers, musicians, artists, modelers, writers, producers, etc.. there's no game. Unless you assume the programmers do everything else in addition to what they are supposed to but that only works (occasionally) with small indie games, not with AAA games.

 

[Excidium]

The sequels they make are better than the originals, so they deserve a credit for that in my book.

As for the rating of the games in the original post, it is totally subjective therefor totally shit.

Yeah making better RPGs than Bioware or Bethesda, they deserve all the praise in the world.

 

[Grunker]

Sorry to say this Shannow, as I have a reasonable amount of respect for you, but:

Thread sucks, and OP is a massive faggot.

I don't think Obsidian are special. I've liked KotOR2, Fallout NV I liked a lot. Mask of the Betrayer too. But they're not anything near Troika or any really golden games.

But the reasons you give and your arbitrary scores suck ass.

 

[J_C]

The sequels they make are better than the originals, so they deserve a credit for that in my book.

As for the rating of the games in the original post, it is totally subjective therefor totally shit.

Yeah making better RPGs than Bioware or Bethesda, they deserve all the praise in the world.

I didn't say that they deserve all the praise in the world, but they deserve credit for improving on the original games quite a lot. And they don't receive that credit. Just visit any mainstream site, most gamers don't hold them in high regard, just because their games are buggy. Inspite their games having lots of good ideas and gameplay elements.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

...you guys do realize that the "1/10, 2/10" ratings for the games he didn't play were meant as a joke, right?

Spoiler

still the biggest faggot since Jaesun started moderating, though

And they don't receive that credit. Just visit any mainstream site, most gamers don't hold them in high regard, just because their games are buggy. Inspite their games having lots of good ideas and gameplay elements.

The funny thing is that Beth's games are just as buggy but reviewers don't care, for $ome rea$on.

 

[Micormic]

Obsidian is certainly a special company, but not exactly in a good way. They're the only crew with such a wealth of talent and such a role-playing pedigree that has delivered so many games with huge hurdles to general enjoyment. I couldn't recommend any one of their games (that I've played) without serious reservations, and that isn't exactly the mark of a great studio. I guess lists are the "in-thing" here, so I'll give my go.

KOTOR2---Decent writing, fun story, and it's nice to see a different perspective on the force other than it being seen as the best thing ever to happen to the universe. Unfortunately, it's filled with a ton of combat, all of which is pretty much trash filler. I can't recall a single interesting fight (though I can recall laughably bad ones) and that's not a good thing for a game with so much combat.

NWN2---Honestly, looking back, I didn't mind the engine that much. Sure, it was a pain at times, but if you've played games for awhile, you've learned to cope...not that it excuses poor design, of course. What set me off was everything else. Loads of trash combat, "fake" choices, and writing/characters not up to snuff with Black Isle/Obsidian pedigree. When I say there were loads of trash combat...I mean it in a different way than normal. Sure, there were some encounters, design wise, that were interesting. The problem is, they didn't turn out to play well. It felt like the entire game was far too easy, and this is really driven home when you can easily vanquish two dragons at once, a feat only marginally less derp than soloing two dragons with ease in the original Neverwinter Nights. As for fake choices, I'm mostly talking about the trial where all roads led to fighting some dumbass. Joy. And the characters, while none were as potentially annoying as someone like Minsc, they also had this bad trait of not being optional, unlike Minsc. I don't want a feisty tiefling/hippie tree hugger/brooding anti-hero in my group? Too bad. At least it was my fault if I picked up a ranger with a rodent for my party. Poor game altogether...which is why I eBayed posthaste, and recouped a decent amount of funds.

Alpha Brotocol---I loved the characters, and I could dig the cheesy spy stuff. I liked the character system for certain ways it was designed, even if the application left a lot to desire. The dialogue wheel was totally derptastic, but they certainly did at least try to make dialogues more "active" in a way (gelato man being the best example off the top of my head). Hell, I can even understand where they were coming from with a lot of the designs in combat, even the bosses. Unfortunately, Obsidian, in the Codex parlance, cannot into action games, and Alpha Protocol was a mess like no other. It was fun at times, but really had some serious flaws that are impossible to avoid/overlook and make enjoying the game harder than it should be.

Fallout: New Faggot---I've played this for maybe 7 hours. So far it feels like a much less retarded Fallout 3. Unfortunately, extreme retardation (note: extreme, not EXTREME) wasn't what sank Fallout 3, it was the awful, awful gameplay. New Vegas keeps the shitastic combat that made Fallout 3 stink like milk left in the sun for a week, but seems to throw somewhat less at you...and has so far refrained from the Elder Scrolls style of "exploring", which involves tons of dungeons filed with monsters. Not sure if I want to keep this one going, or just ship it back and yell at Gamefly for sending me this game while Devil Summoner has been at the top of my queue for two months and has been listed as High Availability for a bit now. Goddamn teases...

I guess I agree with Shannow in that, when you really look at it, Obsidian doesn't seem to stand out in any meaningful way to deserve their special status here; the treatment they receive over Bioware/Bethesda. They've never really made anything spectacular, and their games are, generally, not much better overall than Bio/Beth titles. It makes more sense to treat them the same way, and not expect too much, because you probably won't get much.

your f3 review was shit lol

 

[Roguey]

Yea, I'd say the final boss in SoZ is better than the best Infinity Engine games had.

I'm not an IE superfan and I thought SoZ was okay, but no way. Sure, it took me multiple tries to beat it on my first playthrough, but on the second, I steamrolled that thing in one try on very difficult just by pre-buffing, then tanking and spanking with a barb/fb, ranger/rogue/fighter and a favored soul who only had to cast greater restoration thrice (plus true sight to fix some blindness). I also had a mage in the back doing absolutely nothing after the buffing, I suppose I could have sped up the process even further had I used it. I blame the complete lack of challenge mostly on a) only using 4 characters as opposed to the first time when I had two experience sponges acting as dead weight and b) the trading and crafting system. I started on them much earlier than before so I had all my characters dressed to the nines with the finest gear and all the best unbalanced-as-shit enchantments (the ability to put a +4 AC bonus on every piece of equipment was either an oversight or just plain dumb since it makes a bunch of other, more expensive enchantments completely worthless).

Anyway, I'm moderately positive (I could be wrong) the best IE bosses couldn't be defeated with an every day Dragon Age tactic on the highest difficult setting using similar character building techniques. Absurdian bungled again.

 

[oneself]

2/10

Should put more effort into a trolling attempt.

 

[Jaesun]

What other project are they working on anyways? I vaguely remember:

MCA's XBox360 game (lol)

They were approached by some publisher to do something on a name brand Fantasy Setting, but the publisher still din't have any money yet (at the time).

Fergus' vague hint they bought some old licence... (the assumed IWD III Rumor)

 

[Roguey]

Wheel of Time (maybe), 2D XBLA arcade game (Avellone's not involved as far as I know), and The License Feargus Urquhart Couldn't Turn Down (which wasn't ID3). Unless I've misinterpreted this tweet one of their upcoming games is taking place in Vegas again. As unlikely as it'd be, if it turns out to be Wasteland I'm going to laugh so much. There also might be something going on with Eidos Montreal, Urquhart and Sawyer both took a trip there back in May.

 

[Sannom]

Anyway, I'm moderately positive (I could be wrong) the best IE bosses couldn't be defeated with an every day Dragon Age tactic on the highest difficult setting using similar character building techniques. Absurdian bungled again.

BG2 had pretty much the same problem with lone big monsters, buffing and summoning before going in made them a piece of cake. So much that Bioware made the dragons in the extension extremely sensitive to buffing. Going in their den while covered in buffs made them attack the party on sight.

 

[Wyrmlord]

"I didn't play this game, hence it was terrible." Even intelligent posters like ghostdog pull this nonsense sometimes, so I don't know why.

[Intelligence] Hey, when did I say this ?

Well, it was years ago, when you said, "I saw Cryshit at my friend's place, and it was probably just a promotion of a fancy engine and no real game."

Man, that was typical - saying the usual cliche about the game without having played it, but confirming one's own biases by seeing few minutes of gameplay at a friend's place. For a game where one could plant explosives on vehicles, drive it away, park it, blow it up, and destroy an entire driving patrol, it seems like somebody is just prematurely saying "It's just a graphics whore's game" under very bad judgment.

But I only remember, because the whole Codex was in an unusually whiny mode back in late 2007. Around November, I thought, "This place sucks". I changed my mind and registered five or six months later, but I don't remember why.

 

[Radisshu]

Your opinions are worthwhile to me, my friend

Yeah so -

HotU 8/10:
Despite all NWN's shortcoming fun dungeoncrawling and character-building.

Anyone care to elaborate on that? I never really touched this crap, but I've heard so many people say good things about it. What's up with that? Isn't it just more Bioware click-and-wait gameplay? Wtf guys?

There's a bunch of weird ideas executed in this game. It has been 6 years since I played it, so I might not remember a single thing clearly. However:

1. You can find out people's "True Names", and blackmail them for anything with them. Knowing their names gives you power over them - including demigods and planar superdemons. I wondered, "Can I actually gain some out-of-this-world cosmic powers with them?" Turned out I could.

... Yeah, but the method of finding True Names was just paying large amounts of money to "the Knower of Names/Secrets" or whatever its name was.

EDIT: HotU was decent compared to the other NWN games, but after Torment its interpretation of the Planes felt mediocre.