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Obsidian or inXile

?

  • Obsidian

    Votes: 74 44.8%
  • Inxile

    Votes: 35 21.2%
  • bioware desu~~~~

    Votes: 28 17.0%
  • Both

    Votes: 28 17.0%

  • Total voters
    165

naossano

Cipher
Joined
Aug 26, 2014
Messages
1,232
Location
Marseilles, France
Not being much a combatfag on InXile/Obsidian, i won't compare them much on that area. Although, i think Obsidian provides more option, including the options to avoid fights.

About writting, i would put Obsidian much, much higher than InXile.

About atmosphere, it really depends on the games, their budget & schedule, but i would say both are able to create great atmosphere, but are rarelly able to sustain it all the way. There are alway several moments that feel a bit off compared with the rest. Also, too much combat/emptyness can ruin the momentum, like in FoNV.

About C&C, comparing Fo1/Fo2/FoNV/Pillars with WL1/WL2/Bard's Tale (2004), i also much prefer Obsidian take on it. For most i have played from InXile, the choices you make often seem dark about the possible consequences. Sometimes, you can guess them, but more often than not, you pick a side without much knowing where you put your shoes into. On the other hand, those situations still exist with Obsidian, but more often than not, you are given (if you try to look into it), enough informations to actually weight the pros and cons of your decisions, which make them more meaningfull, and allow you to take a break and actually think about it. It is not like entering a town and see a guy drowing, leading you to lose all hope of peace if you don't save him within your first few minutes in the city. Also, the number of choices and their scope are often higher with Obsidian.

Exploration. It is entirelly up to anyone to decide what they call exploration. If it is seeing miles of miles of landscapes, i won't comment on it. If it is exploring societies, how people live in these fictionnals settlements, i would say i prefer Obsidian, InXile isn't so bad. If it is about discovering non obvious hidden content that lead to unexpected results, i would give props to InXile, with the so many easy to miss contents that you could find in WL1-WL2. If you aren't into the mind of looking into every bit of dirt, every furniture, checking every wall for possible flaws/irregularity, you are likely to miss half the games content. It seems that this kind of exploration is more rewarded with InXile.

Other than than, Obsidian wins overall. They also have a much higher number of games to refer too. I am quite in the Dark about pre-Fallout Interplay era (without the future Obsidian members) and InXile didn't do much since it existed. On the other hand, Obsidian did a lot of game with that name, and i credit them most of the games from the Interplay (from Fo1 onward)/Black Isle/Troïka era, since most the develloppers joined Obsidian afterward.
 

Multi-headed Cow

Guest
Obsidian, although the only genuinely good game they've released is FNV. The rest are like even more malformed Troika games, where there's something good under a pile of sludge. Inexile hasn't even got that though. Not a particularly fair poll, putting a cripple against a corpse.
 

KK1001

Arbiter
Joined
Mar 30, 2015
Messages
621
I have faith that from a narrative and C&C perspective Torment will blow PoE away. The companions will probably be better written and more interesting, too, but who knows. The world of Numenera is pretty ill-defined and so you can just do whatever because ~mystery~.

Wasteland 2 had a lot of tedious combat and a disgusting art direction. If inExile is to be believed, Torment shouldn't have a lot of that.

The real question is how fast and how much can inExile improve as a company. Obsidian has been stuck making mediocre, half-finished products for a decade now and they seem pretty stuck in their ways.
 

cfisher2833

Learned
Joined
Jan 1, 2015
Messages
94
Overall I'd say PoE is the better game, but when it comes to the writing, I think they're somewhat equal. While PoE's has a great plot so far, the actual writing itself isn't all that great--it's incredibly apparent that Avellone wrote Grieving Mother and Durance, as the writing is far, far more evocative than the writing throughout the majority of the game, which to me, feels more like Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale calibre writing. Wasteland 2 at least had some cooky writing that was a bit more interesting at times. I think it'd be best to wait until Torment before making any pronouncements.
 

DragoFireheart

all caps, rainbow colors, SOMETHING.
Joined
Jun 16, 2007
Messages
23,731
Inxile because last I checked they have a spine.

Then again, doesn't InXile play nice with Obsidian?
 
Unwanted
Douchebag! Shitposter
Joined
Jan 19, 2014
Messages
3,059
He isn't the one with GG 4chan links in his sig and voting against a compagny for one removed backer fanfiction.
 

SoupNazi

Guest
I haven't managed to play Wasteland 2 after the first hour or so (probably even less), but thought it was just me. Now I see the opinion here is generally bad, but I'm a lazyfag and don't want to go through the 100+ pages of decline - can someone sum up what was wrong with it? I don't find it memorable at all and I don't even remember why I didn't like it, just that it didn't grip me at all.
 

Turjan

Arcane
Joined
Mar 31, 2008
Messages
5,047
It took Obsidian three games to make something worthwhile. Yes, Kotor 2 had decent writing for a Star Wars product but it was pretty terrible in all other aspects and NW2 was an all around bad experience. Only with Mask of the Betrayer did they managed something really good. At least in my opinion. InXile made a jump from Ipad shovelware to ambitious fully featured cRPGs with a small rookie team and they still delivered a complete game (still waiting for the mega patch and the end of my exams to play it). They only fair comparison would be between Kotor 2 and Wasteland 2 I think.
Yeah, about that...

 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,236
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
INow I see the opinion here is generally bad

http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=9721

12147.jpg
 

Owlish

Dumbfuck!
Dumbfuck Douchebag! Village Idiot Repressed Homosexual Possibly Retarded Edgy Shitposter
Joined
Sep 14, 2013
Messages
2,817
It took Obsidian three games to make something worthwhile. Yes, Kotor 2 had decent writing for a Star Wars product but it was pretty terrible in all other aspects and NW2 was an all around bad experience. Only with Mask of the Betrayer did they managed something really good. At least in my opinion. InXile made a jump from Ipad shovelware to ambitious fully featured cRPGs with a small rookie team and they still delivered a complete game (still waiting for the mega patch and the end of my exams to play it). They only fair comparison would be between Kotor 2 and Wasteland 2 I think.
Yeah, about that...


Anita Sarkesian just updated her .txt
 

Ovplain

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jul 23, 2009
Messages
1,890
Location
Down by the riverside
RPG Wokedex
inXile for me. Because I really loved Wasteland 2!

Couldn't force myself to finish NWN 2, gave up on Alpha Protocol after an hour or so, same with Fallout - New Vegas. I think Kotor 2 was the only Obsidian game I actually finished.:S Played 15 hours of Pillars of Eternity and can't be assed to play more ATM.:|
 

Mexi

Dumbfuck!
Dumbfuck
Joined
Jan 6, 2015
Messages
6,811

TheGreatOne

Arcane
Joined
Feb 15, 2014
Messages
1,214
If inXile survives long enough to release Bard's Tale 4, then you can try to make some kind of comparisions of the companies as whole. Even then it's a former mobile developer vs former Star Wars/South Park/Fallout 3 sequel developer, Obsidian is financially in way different league.
I don't know how much more money Obsidian got from their own fanbase/publishers, but just starting at the visuals, they used their 3,9 million kickstarer dollars way better than inXile used their 2,9, so PoE wins in that ratio hands down.
Yeah, I'm not sure how this game got good reviews here on this site. This site hates everything and Wasteland: 2 generally did suck.
Dragon Age Origins sez hi. Wait a few weeks untill the honeymoon period with PoE ends, happened to Shadowrun, D:OS and Wasteland 2 as well. Hell, there's already complaints about the ridicolous trash loot, item&character progression, encounter design&combat and even writing.
Snake oil salesman led amateur compagny who released a mediocre RPG game that did not follow on it's promise
vs

Snake oil salesman led professional company who released a slew of mediocre RPGs, a good one and one that did not follow on its promise
Ftfy. Talking about amateurs is ridicolous considering how notoriously buggy Obsidian games are :lol: Wasteland 2 is a second rate product, but it's more of an eye sore and stretched too thin than anything else. Trying to be one of the big boys and failing at it is worse than being an honest small time developer.
 
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Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
35,656
Both projects went over budget, but we know that inXile had to nearly double theirs. :P

The GOTY version may end up proving that you do in fact need nearly 3.5 years to properly make a full-scale RPG.
 

DeepOcean

Arcane
Joined
Nov 8, 2012
Messages
7,394
Pointless asking this now, wait for Torment. Torment seems to have designers that aren't over concerned with dumbfucks and "balance" and actually are trying to create a better Torment game instead of a watered down BG 2. Obviously, InXile could shit themselves really hard again like they did with Wasteland 2 but I still hope one single kickstarter RPG will actually produce something that isn't just good for what it is.
 

prodigydancer

Arcane
In My Safe Space
Joined
Feb 16, 2015
Messages
1,399
Obviously, InXile could shit themselves really hard again like they did with Wasteland 2 but I still hope one single kickstarter RPG will actually produce something that isn't just good for what it is.
Codex is for people who hate RPGs.
:codexisfor:
I know I'm not saying anything new but it's probably worth repeating. PoE hate cauldron is already bubbling and TToN will share the same fate - initial nerdgasm followed by a thousand pages worth of discussing how shitty the game and everything in it is.
 

Durante

Learned
Patron
Joined
Sep 17, 2013
Messages
140
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
It's a bit unfair to compare these 2 since Obsidian has 10+ years experience as a company in making rpgs while InXile was only recently capable of making anything other than a tablet game. Still, in terms of presentation PoE makes Wasteland 2 seem like amateur hour.
Not just in terms of presentation.
 

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