Obsidian wants to make a game for you

[SuicideBunny]

tempting....

 

[Admiral jimbob]

I think my favourite thing about Mastermind is his screeching insistence that he is definitely not one of those faggot Codexers man I hate those guys despite his daily visits and posting. It's kind of adorable.

 

[sea]

If Obsidian made a game all of us liked they'd go out of business, like Troika.

True story.

Not necessarily. I'm a firm believer that most games are sold in the initial 5-15 minutes of player exposure - that is, what they see right up front is what sells it for them. Ever wonder why so many action games these days open with an action scene (God of War), or why other titles seem to pour their development dollars into a really awe-inspiring intro and then end up being kind of banal and stupid for the remainder (BioShock)? It's all about getting the player hooked in that initial few minutes. You need to give the player a reason to care about your game the instant it starts up, whether that's a cool intro, nice/unique aesthetic or good gameplay. If an RPG, even the most hardcore CRPG (provided it had a usable/modern interface) managed to do that, I can almost guarantee it'd sell well; it wouldn't even matter what it did beyond that point (assuming it was, you know, good), because most gamers and critics will have already been sold.

 

[serch]

Obsidian has a new engine which they can use withou paying royalties. They have built it in house and they know it pretty well, therefore the building processs should be smoother. Besides, the target market for those kind of games (it means us) wouldn't ask for much gfx and whistles and wouldn't care for recycled art. Still, given the new lay-offs, I don't think Obsidian is rich enough to dedicate ten good workers for a year to a low key project like this, expecting to recover the costs later. No publisher is going to give them a penny for a game like this. They have their hearts in the right place, though.

 

[thesisko]

No publisher is going to give them a penny for a game like this. They have their hearts in the right place, though.

Which is kinda sad because such a project is likely a pretty safe bet financially (if it stays within budget). NWN2 still sells well on Steam whenever it's discounted.

 

[villain of the story]

Right. NV is the exact same game as 3, VATS and all. They just dressed it up with nice writing and C&C, so that storyfags who have no clue about what makes games good would buy it. It worked spectacularly.

Some people try their best with the cards they are dealt with. And Some people... wait forever for the perfect hand to be dealt. There are no other options.

But it's so great that we have Game Specialists here on board who knows what makes games good.

 

[Demnogonis Saastuttaja]

NV was a pretty good game crippled by a shitty engine. Obsidian doing an actual old-school RPG? That could be fucking awesome.

Riddled with bugs and broken mechanics as usual.

 

[J_C]

NV was a pretty good game crippled by a shitty engine. Obsidian doing an actual old-school RPG? That could be fucking awesome.

Riddled with bugs and broken mechanics as usual.

And even that would be much better than the mainstream RPGs we get nowadays.

 

[serch]

DS3 will be the first game really coded by Obsidian. All the rest were the work of a seamstress trying figure out a dress out of old and stained handkerchiefs. Let's see how the bug thing goes for them now that they don't have any excuses. Are yo still ther, Davis? Be careful not to reveal your alt if you answer.

 

[villain of the story]

First game? Oh, I forget; Alpha Protocol isn't really a game

 

[serch]

UNREAL SHISTAINGINE POPAMOLE CONSOLEFAG EDITION, BRO

 

[Mastermind]

I think my favourite thing about Mastermind is his screeching insistence that he is definitely not one of those faggot Codexers man I hate those guys despite his daily visits and posting. It's kind of adorable.

I have nowhere else to go, bioware/bethesda fags can't even read simple sentences. That's about as much of a compliment I can give the codex.

 

[Azrael the cat]

I'm sure they want to. I'm sure they'd also like to give all their fans a free car. Doesn't really mean shit.

Agreed. With the current Publisher/Developer model Obsidian is stuck too, it's never going to happen.

There is NO Publisher on earth that is going to approach or that Obsidian can approach and would even consider a "Old School cRPG Game". None.

I suspect that has been the main stumbling block. If I had to pick a difference in the mentality between Obsidian and Bioware, it's that whilst they both make games for the casual-rpg market, Obsidian seems to have a better sense of where that fits in relation to the oldschool crpgers (as in: more than just deriding us at every opportunity as luddites who won't get with the times). Unlike, say, Gaider with DA2, I don't see them going 'how could you not like our action-game with simplified rpg elements!!!' They know stuff like DS3 and AP, and even NV, isn't really what the hardcore market is after (despite many of us liking those games in themselves) and I haven't yet seen one of their significant developers (or any, actually) bitch about folks complaining about the decline.

I suspect that if it was possible to get a publisher for it, they'd have a go at a mid-budget tactical crpg, but it's hard to see a bricks-n-mortar publisher going for it, given that they'd still have to cough up marketing and distribution costs. They could always go a steam-only route, but that would probably also mean going very low-budget, if nothing else because you wouldn't want to take a double risk on both game style and distribution at the same time. But whilst that might be financially feasible, they'd have the risk of folks in their wider market bitching about the low-budget graphics/bugs and having publishers think of them as a low-budget company rather than an AAA developer.

 

[Shannow]

If Obsidian made a game all of us liked they'd go out of business, like Troika.

True story.

Are you saying Troika made a game that all of us liked?

 

[The King of Comedy]

He must be telling the truth! Clearly Video Game developers are the most honest and trustworthy people, right?

 

[IronicNeurotic]

AG: On that topic, Obsidian would probably be the best guys to ask about this, but do you think the days of turn-based RPGs are done? Are we just gonna get some mix of action and RPG from here on out?

RT: I think it's still doable. Dragon Age was quite successful. It wasn't necessarily turn-based, but it was very much pause-and-play, especially if you kicked the difficulty up.

Why do I like these guys again? The idiocy of this statement hurts physically.

They kinda did that with New Vegas. They made a good game and dressed it up in shitty brown next-gen clothes in order to lure in the sheeple.

Right. NV is the exact same game as 3, VATS and all. They just dressed it up with nice writing and C&C, so that storyfags who have no clue about what makes games good would buy it. It worked spectacularly.

KalosKagathos cannot into sarcasm

RT: I think it's still doable. Dragon Age was quite successful. It wasn't necessarily turn-based, but it was very much pause-and-play, especially if you kicked the difficulty up. It was very challenging if you did not play is it as a tactical RPG. I thought that was a fantastic game, and I thoroughly enjoyed it

(Emphasis on tactical)

Are you really that dense? Also in another question he mocks Oblivion. Hes nearly a codexer for fucks sake.

RT: We have some ideas, and we talk about them, and exploring ways to make that possible. You have to figure out, what would be the market for it, what's a way we could release that and actually have it be viable. There are a lot of things we have to solve for. We talk about it. A lot.

AG: Oblivion was a controversial game, especially in the RPG crowd. It was often seen as "Baby's First RPG". But, it made a lot of new RPG fans, and even though Bethesda went from fantasy to post-apocalyptic with guns, they were able to take the fanbase from Morrowind and Oblivion and apply it to Fallout, which was not Baby's First RPG anymore -

 

[thesisko]

I suspect that if it was possible to get a publisher for it, they'd have a go at a mid-budget tactical crpg, but it's hard to see a bricks-n-mortar publisher going for it, given that they'd still have to cough up marketing and distribution costs. They could always go a steam-only route, but that would probably also mean going very low-budget, if nothing else because you wouldn't want to take a double risk on both game style and distribution at the same time. But whilst that might be financially feasible, they'd have the risk of folks in their wider market bitching about the low-budget graphics/bugs and having publishers think of them as a low-budget company rather than an AAA developer.

They could just pitch it as something similar to Dragon Age. Doesn't seem impossible to sell that idea to a publisher given the sales numbers of Dragon Age and Obsidian's experience from the NWN2 franchise.

The difference would be that Obsidian would likely actually try to balance the harder difficulties to produce some kind of tactical challenge. On normal difficulty it would play like Dragon Age but with better writing and less filler combat.

 

[Twinkle]

It's still not similar to TB because of simultaneous movement.

I'm still surprised they some fail to see the difference between TB and round-based combat. Pseudo real-time round-based game where you have to mash pause button regularly to have reliable control over party members will never be an equal substitute to a proper turn-based system.

DA combat has more in common with DOW 2 singleplayer rather than anything turn-based.

 

[Achilles]

Right. NV is the exact same game as 3, VATS and all. They just dressed it up with nice writing and C&C, so that storyfags who have no clue about what makes games good would buy it. It worked spectacularly.

I was getting ready to dispute that, but then I thought about it and... yeah, that's pretty much spot-on.

 

[turn_based_fanboy]

It's still not similar to TB because of simultaneous movement.

I'm still surprised they some fail to see the difference between TB and round-based combat. Pseudo real-time round-based game where you have to mash pause button regularly to have reliable control over party members will never be an equal substitute to a proper turn-based system.

DA combat has more in common with DOW 2 singleplayer rather than anything turn-based.

More like MMO without multiplayer and online

 

[villain of the story]

Also in another question he mocks Oblivion. Hes nearly a codexer for fucks sake.

RT: We have some ideas, and we talk about them, and exploring ways to make that possible. You have to figure out, what would be the market for it, what's a way we could release that and actually have it be viable. There are a lot of things we have to solve for. We talk about it. A lot.

AG: Oblivion was a controversial game, especially in the RPG crowd. It was often seen as "Baby's First RPG". But, it made a lot of new RPG fans, and even though Bethesda went from fantasy to post-apocalyptic with guns, they were able to take the fanbase from Morrowind and Oblivion and apply it to Fallout, which was not Baby's First RPG anymore -

Wow, I don't remember ever reading any dev say anything of the calibre. That's a very gentle and a politically correct way of saying Oblivion was a dumbed down pos.

 

[Roguey]

(Emphasis on tactical)

I'm not sure if that was intentional or not, it's funny either way.

Also in another question he mocks Oblivion. Hes nearly a codexer for fucks sake.

RT: We have some ideas, and we talk about them, and exploring ways to make that possible. You have to figure out, what would be the market for it, what's a way we could release that and actually have it be viable. There are a lot of things we have to solve for. We talk about it. A lot.

AG: Oblivion was a controversial game, especially in the RPG crowd. It was often seen as "Baby's First RPG". But, it made a lot of new RPG fans, and even though Bethesda went from fantasy to post-apocalyptic with guns, they were able to take the fanbase from Morrowind and Oblivion and apply it to Fallout, which was not Baby's First RPG anymore -

That's the interviewer who calls it baby's first rpg, not Taylor. Doesn't strike me as particularly 'dexy. For example:

It's approachable, it should feel like a console game, but it should hearken back to PC RPG mechanics: the loot, the complexity of the items, they're kinda complicated, they have a lot of stats, but at the same time we try to present it in a way that, even if you really don't care about the stats, if you see a lot of green arrows, it's probably a good idea and you can go ahead and put it on. If you see a lot of red, probably don't want to put it on. It's trying to balance the needs of both of those potential audiences for Dungeon Siege 3.
...
So there's that RPG side of it, should feel like you're very used to managing resources in an RPG, but then there's also the console side where you push a button and see an immediate reaction. The attack doesn't go into an attack queue and wait until the round comes around to fire. I worked on those games, too, and I love them, but that's not usually what you're looking for on a console experience.

PC RPG mechanics are items with a lot of stats? Items with more stars more green arrows are better than not? Push a button and something awesome happens "see an immediate reaction"? This is like that thing Laidlaw was talking about, except not quite as condescending.

 

[sea]

First game? Oh, I forget; Alpha Protocol isn't really a game

My understanding of Alpha Protocol is that nearly all of its issues were due to a really, really protracted development cycle headed largely by a producer who kept changing his mind every few months about what he wanted the game to be. They outright restarted development at at least one point and it's pretty clear from the cobbled-together nature and general mediocrity of the finished product that it was less an issue of Obsidian's abilities as game developers and more an issue of management and production.

 

[Jaesun]

issue of management and production.

That has always been Obsidian's Achilles' heel....

 

[Surf Solar]

I'm sure you could show them a trick or two, Prosper.