People News SHOCKER: Chris Avellone leaves Obsidian Entertainment

I've heard he was convinced to join a little known firm named Stygian Software where he will be the lead writer for something called Underrail 2.

 

... interesting thought, but would Fargo really want to antagonize big brother Obsidian Entertainment by employing a designer who is in disfavor?

 

Nah. Best news in a long time. This might get us another creative endeavor by MCA.

 

Lol? Obsidian is on their way out. Some big publisher will buy them up and their name will mean as much as Interplay or Maxis or Sierra.

 

They still have Armored Warfare and the royalties from the PoE card game.

 

Antagonize?

Fargo has his hands clean. Obsidian/Feargus antagonized their own talent.

Also Obsidian licks so much ass that even if you'd antagonize them, they'd still play nice. See the Bethesda and New Vegas thing.

 

Armored Warfare will kill WoW WoT.

 

They just made like $5,000,000 off of Pillars of Eternity (or should have). They've got the Pathfinder thing (probably, unless that was the cancelled project), they managed to squeeze several additional years of employment out of two separate publishers for South Park: Stick of Truth, they've got the Russian MMO, etc.

Don't see they can be on their way out.

 

PoE has fewer Steam copies than WL2 so far and probably cost a bit more to make. inXile looks like the company with the better financial future right now.

 

On their way out of being relevant to storyfag interests, anyways.

 

I know that its business first and all that but the guy licensed the Pillars of Eternity engine from Obsidian Entertainment. Plus they've cooperated on other initiatives.

Not sure Fargo will think one designer whose abilities he may or may not appreciate is worth antagonizing a working relationship with a big organization like Obsidian.

 

PoE the game released on March 26th 2015 has sold less than WL2 the game released on September 19th 2014? I'm not entirely surprised, though i did expect it to sell more than it has.

According to the obsidian Devs, PoE cost roughly the same as Wasteland 2 to make, maybe a bit cheaper, 5m for PoE compared to whatever WL2 cost which i think was closer to 6m.

 

They both cost about 5 million and Pillars has been selling faster than Wasteland 2 did.

 

Aside from the one KS they do nothing but contract work. Bad contract work at that. They exist in name only.

 

Alpha Protocol.

 

...is garbage.

I love New Vegas though.

 

Mask of the Betrayer is one of the best RPGs i,ve ever played and that was 'contract work'. Praise be to Ziets.

 

The title was apt, then.

 

Athelas wasn't kidding about them winning a Best Story award.

 

That made me crack up. Good one!

 

How many years ago was that?

 

That was Sawyer's version of VanBuren which focused on Caesar's Legion and the Dr Presper plot.

Avellone's VanBuren involved a rival party of NPCs which would function as a darker foil to the player character and the party they were building up and would be similarly reactive to the world and various towns. It was going to be based on PnP sessions that Avellone was running where he had groups of players doing sessions simultaneously hearing about a rival faction without realising they were actually player characters. This was what Avellone told me about it when i asked him years ago (during WL2 Kickstarter):

It's a real shame Avellone left Obsidian. With him, Gonzalez and Ziets all gone I'm struggling to think of a writer there I like. I would've said Fenstermaker for his work on Vault 11 but PoE wasn't as good as I'd hoped storywise even if I still liked it overall.

 

Brofisted for the first few parts. MCA leaving Obsidian is fine. They're dead, anyway. Best to get all the good talent into one studio.