Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity [BETA RELEASED, GO TO THE NEW THREAD]

Some of us are not entertained by the latest "pull-my-finger" RPGs. Obsidian (at the moment) is king of RPGs.

 

Not really. Their troubles with publishers have most likely to do with lack of any IP ownership, which does not put them in a good position to bargain. They also try to make relatively ambitious games that result in a lot of bugs, which you can consider "bad" management or planning, but that would mean "good" management and planning, working under a publisher, will likely get you polished yet shallow games. There is bad management also, as was revealed in that Kotaku article, but that's not the only one reason.

 

Obsidian kind of has the same problem that Troika had, along with some Eastern European developers. They usually make pretty ambitious games that try to push the genre forward in some way (the faction mechanics and C&C of New Vegas, the C&C and overall structure of Alpha Protocol, the storytelling of KotOR2), but they occasionally fail and almost always seem to leave some really basic elements underdeveloped or broken (like combat in pretty much all of their games). Still, almost all of their games are enjoyable despite the broken stuff, simply because they at least try to do things differently and achieve something better than being just pretty good games. BioWare's games may be less buggy and more "professional", but there's absolutely nothing interesting or ambitious about them. They've been doing the exact same shit at least since KotOR, and every "innovation" they've come up with has been a change for the worse. Bethesda keep simplifying their games all the time and are at their best when they somehow manage to imitate their older, much better games. Obsidian stumble around a lot and sometimes shoot themselves in the foot, but they've got people with vision and ideas, and even though they don't seem to be able to execute them as well as they should, and even though I don't always agree with people like Sawyer, every single one of their games is infinitely more interesting than anything that BioWare, Bethesda or any AAA developer puts out nowadays.

 

How do you know they wouldn't perform better? How do you know they wouldn't negotiate a better deal? How do you know they wouldn't implement better development models, such as those used in Bethesda and Blizzard (V model and Agile variants)? It's all guesswork, except for one thing I know what I see, and what I is subpar quality of games, both as entertainment platforms and as products. In other words, what I see does not please me.

You know, such comparisons only detract us from the actual issue. To be honest I don't care about Bioware at this point. The only reason I mention them is that they are almost universally hated here, whereas Obsidian, which does not have that great track record and whose games leave a lot to be desired somehow should be given free reign... because. I find that curious, to say the least.

I also cannot help but notice that by stating that Obsidian should feel excused because Bioware makes mistakes as well, you appear to inadverently recognise the superiority of the latter studio. Even I wouldn't go that far.

 

Why not? Last time I checked "ambitious" and "innovative" does not go well with "broken mess". It only means you need to be twice as much creative and responsible.

Why? I don't think that the actual innovative features in Obsidian games were to be axed for some reason. I fail to see relation between having a polished game and having a shallow game.

Yes there is. Especially when working for a client who has just a hazy notion of the product you are offering. He has the right to be doubtful - it's his money at the stake. All the more reasons to make a better management withing your own organisation and make your work more transparent.

 

Yeah metalheads by a rule don't have the greatest sense when it comes to games. They don't handle rough mechanics very well, being purely artfag and all.

 

Obsidian is given a pass because at least they're trying to incline the genre instead of constantly dumbing down their shit for the wider and wider audience.

 

I couldn't care any less if Obsidian fails or not, but I think that Obsidian gets much more flak about its games than many other companies. A lot of games made by other companies are buggy too, but people simply handwave these issues away. I think this has several reasons:

1- The people who rile against companies like Obsidian actually have an issue with their fans and really want to bash the players. They know that by bashing a company which many "classy" players hold in high regard, they can troll the players. Case in point, xRazorFistx's vlog. His issue isn't really Obsidian. His issue is that he can't handle the fans of Obsidian/people who hold Obsidian in high regard considering themselves "the Master race." Maybe he's been on the Codex and has been told to GTFO. Most of the people who are fans of other companies usually content themselves with the derpiness of romances and argue about which alien would best fulfill their fantasies, whereas most fans of Obsidian games sit around and talk about the story and things that could have been done better (or in the Codex's case, just fume and hate). Thus, you have reaction formations against Obsidian because these other gamers want to be considered "cool" and "classy." How do they do this? Not by holding their favored companies to the same standard as Obsidian, no. They just bash Obsidian and its fans.

2- Obsidian's games probably are a little more buggy, but only slightly so. But it is held to a higher standard because, secretly, everyone expects more from Obsidian than the other companies. Obsidian is like that sibling in a group of black sheep that the parents have the highest expectations out of. The parents know the rest of the kids are derpballs, and just want Obsidian to succeed and over-exaggerate their disappointment because they are pretty much all that's left.

 

No! It's you who is underinformed. Those companies work on tight budgets and each penny is documented - where it comes from, how it is going to be spent, and what are actual benefits of its investement for the larger scale of things (yes, even estimating $$$ brought by Auction House and Horse Armour DLC). That's what differentiates them from underdogs.

I base my "assertions" on what I saw - subpar games with a spark ingenious thought. I think that after 5 projects by Obsidian we can start pointing at common denominators ignoring "too many variables" that are irrelevant to the issue at hand.

 

Mrowak, if you don't trust Obsidian to make a good game, can I ask why you donated to their kickstarter? Genuinely interested in knowing your reasoning.

 

His review of the Thief games was pretty good so i'm not sure what's up with this guy. Perhaps his crappy vblog actually makes him money and he feels like he has to suck up to mainstream opinions to get the checks flowing in.

 

Nice assumption.

Yes, unimformed since that does not count for Blizzard if you actually follow their development. Especially on D3.

 

I want to beta-test it to bitch about it incessantly give my honest and unbiased feedback.

 

I don't claim this is exactly what happened in case of Obsidian games, but when you don't have any IP ownership, working under publisher terms, with the limited resources (that may be cut in the middle of the development, if the publisher wishes) you can create a lot of rich content, or polish and shine a limited amount of content, or strike some balance between those two extremes. Obsidian, from the looks of things, choose more towards creating content than polishing content. It's kinda unrealistic to have all the quality content and have it polished when you face many constraints, some of which, I agree, are their own doing.

 

Oh I am fully aware that in the course of development the budget was raised a number of times reaching astronomical level. Do you honestly think Kotick would allow checks with 8-digit figures if he didn't account for basic risk management strategies? Seems to me he had grounds for it, and from purely marketing standpoint it was money well-spent.

 

Wait so you paid good money to only beta-test the game? Did you not buy the game as well? What's the point of beta-testing a game from a company which you believe is obviously not going to deliver? For the lulz?

 

Also I think that you're giving too much credit to publishers when it comes to "risk management" and "professionalism." Don't forget that many of these publishers fail themselves. THQ is one recent example.

 

Infinitron

I paid $1.

Does this make me a Jew?

 

Sure, but reputation merits reward. If Obsidian did well it owuld get as much leaway. But that's beside the point. It's hypothesizing :if Obsidian got the money and time they would make the bestest game on Earth. We cannot know that, but judging from their past works, there are little grounds for that.

Brian Fargo can tell you what differentiates them: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...thout-corporate-interruption-were-kicking-ass

"The best creative work we're seeing is from creative people who have the power, or the financing, to control their destinies... They can keep the craziness at bay"

Life is never as simple as "one single cause".[/quote]

Never say never. All too often root of the problems is the same. Remove the root and most problems will disappear.

Ironically, in spite of what you are stating Obisdian's fanboys keep calling same names: "they didn't have time and money". It's exactly what you did in your previous post. You want to know how to save time and money: managing your projects well. Ok, I would be willing to believe Obsidian couldn't realistically do what their producer told them (although it was them who negotiated contracts, right?) for the money/time they were given and they couldn't work around it even with the bestest preparations... once or twice. Five times in a row is calling it. And fucking around in that Kickstarter campaign was an eye-opener for me. My trust is at its limits and only amassed years of experience of each individual developer/designer in the team hold it in one piece.

You'd better deliver Obsidian. Because this time there will be no excuses.

 

Only skimmed the last two pages really fast, but: yes, I think it's very reasonable to judge Obsidian by the commonality of their 5 projects. And the most important commonality is that they all (except DS3) were ingenious and memorable in some way, and I enjoyed them. (Edit: And, as Infinitron says, 5 projects' commonality was also they were not polished enough or slam dunky enough, but the specifics always differed.)

I would like to see them produce more polished stuff, though I won't pretend to know what are the causes, and at least the bugginess seems gone in Onyx (we'll see with South Park), but hell, even if they remain at this level, I'll be more than happy. If PB were churning out Gothics 4, 5, 6 with similar quality and similar problems we might all be complaining, but we know now it's hell of a lot better than the current situation.

 

Look Obsidian would be in a much better place right now if it had all the IPs that it owned under Black Isle. These game companies like Blizzard are where they are because of their successes in the era before multi-million dollar publisher slaveowning. Blizzard does well now because of Diablo and Starcraft (which it sold millions of copies of in the 90's.) If Obsidian had that kind of freedom, they wouldn't be the black sheep that they are now.