People News SHOCKER: Chris Avellone leaves Obsidian Entertainment

He's talking about characters, not players. Multiplayer wasn't ever planned for Van Buren.

 

People leave firms all the time for a variety of reasons. I won't pretend to know why MCA left Obsidian, but my impression is that he's highly esteemed around the industry for his writing talents, as so I have little doubt he'll be able to write his own ticket and do whatever suits him.

Maybe being an executive left him feeling too far removed from the actual creative process and now he aims to correct that.

Bon chance, I guess?

 

You could put it inside the Wasteland universe, there are a few overlaps, such as Citadel Starstation and BOMB from Van Buren.

 

A co-owner of the company that burns cash like coal and almost closed its doors 2 years ago.

In the end it comes to doing what you love. inXile IS having fun, while Obsidian is forced to take anything that comes their way to pay the bills. ASSUMING it's VB, would Avellone rather work on it or Stick of Truth 2?

What partners? What did Fargo get from these 'partners' after leaving Interplay? He's doing better than ever and he owes it all to himself - is there a better position to be at? He doesn't cannibalize sales because Steam takes 30% not 10% like KS; besides it's still a better deal than being funded by a publisher.

Again, look at Obsidian. They played it safe, kept the contacts, kissed the hands that fed them. How many cancelled projects? How many layoffs? Where is Obsidian's dream fucking RPG? Which original IP did they pitch and produce? Where is their Arcanum? Now look at inXile. A few years being back from the dead and they announce a third TB game. Woo-Fucking-Hoo!

 

You guys, what if it turns out there's a 10-year non-competition clause that forbids Avellone from working at another RPG studio?

 

Van Buren as an ip is just a name, it has no associated lore, game world, characters, game systems, anything that constitutes a game.

It was a code name for Fallout 3, and not the Fallout 3 that actually was released and became a classic in the eyes of mainstream gaming.

I think it's a ridiculous move to trademark a name with no mass market, or even significant niche market appeal, but then again I'm not a game developer, I build shit for a living and have no experience with the reasoning behind the Fargo thought process.

 

Then he'll make another shooter like Alpha Brotocol

 

He calls it Fargo's Amazing Post-Apoc Game! and nobody will care. He calls it Van Buren: an awesome RPG saved by Brian Fargo and the media will be all over it.

 

Fargo bought the VB Trademark!?

 

Fargo's thought process is to appeal to those who know what Van Buren is in the first place. That's his business plan and has been for a while.

 

A bunch of whiny retards on some ancient looking forum are not a fucking majority. I could just as well paste some random Codex discussion to prove that in fact majority of players think tha Fallout 3 fucking sucked. If people bought NV because of F3 and then got burned the game could outsell the game in the opening week, but it wouldn't outsell it in total.

 

Not really. It gets your target audience talking/generates a buzz. The only people who the name VanBuren holds any meaning for are the people who would be the most interested in an inXile game in the first place. So it does make sense.

 

Because everyone knows it and because it's never been released (unlike PoE), everyone is convinced it would have been awesome. It's a name with a lot of history.

 

All five of us?

 

Yeah that's the most likely interpretation, especially since neither inXile nor Obsidian have any experience in mutliplayer games.

 

I like Obsidian, and I really liked Pillars of Eternity but I concede you have a point here. I don't think Obsidian have a game they could point at as being an all-time classic. Mask of the Betrayer was an expansion pack, not a full game in its own right. Fallout: New Vegas had a bad engine and bad systems. KOTOR 2 had bad systems, obvious cut content and a bad ending. Pillars of Eternity was better, but could have had a better story and reactivity.

inXile are a smaller studio, have absolutely no big releases to their name, yet Torment: Tides of Numenera has every chance of being one of the greatest RPGs OF ALL TIME YO (judging solely by the outstanding talent working on it, and the objectives they have set out).

 

Even he doesn't compare to the true master:

 

These internet expeculatings, it's everything between inxile and bethesda, with going to the himalaias in the middle.

 

While it could certainly have something to do with Avellone's departure, I think it's because they don't have enough manpower (funnily enough). The PoE team is pretty small and they're working on the expansions now.