Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Interview Feargus Urquhart talks about Tyranny, Bloodlines 2 and Obsidian's Future at Gamepressure

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,235
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
Tags: Defiance; Feargus Urquhart; Obsidian Entertainment; Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire; Stormlands; Tyranny; Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

Gamepressure.com have posted a full transcript of their interview with Feargus Urquhart at the Digital Dragons conference. They already revealed its major highlights earlier this week, but there are also some revealing details about Obsidian's future plans and general strategy here. Feargus confirms in no uncertain terms my long-standing theory that the company's objective is to eventually develop their own New Vegas-style game - in fact, he announces that they will never make another AAA RPG if they can't retain ownership of the IP. In addition, the interview has some information about Tyranny and its history, and a question about making a Bloodlines 2, the answer to which makes it sound like it's probably not what Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky are working on. Here's an excerpt:

You had some tough times with publishers – Sega and Aliens: Crucible, Microsoft and Stormlands. What was the most difficult thing about this? Why did you get so dismissive of publishers, at least for some time?

I’m not dismissive of publishers, but it’s a good way to look at it. It has to do more with the way I think – that doing big games with publishers as an independent developer is really challenging. We want to make the games that we want to make, and you have to acknowledge that. And if I’m to work with a publisher, it’s all about figuring out how to have that relationship in a way that allows us to make our game, but allows them to be involved, because they’re going to be paying, right? So how do you do that? And with the BIG games, when they have a budget of 20–30–40–50–60 million dollar, it’s hard, because the money is so big that people get worried.

So what I haven’t figured out necessarily is how do we deal with that worry of a publisher. Because the minute something goes wrong, they get very worried – which I can understand – but things going wrong… well, they go wrong all the time, you know? And how do we solve that problem? If there’s one thing I have a problem with when it comes to publishers is that we’ve been making games for a really long time and we want to own our IP. When we make something, we want to own it.

I totally understand the risk – publishers give me a lot of money, and they want to make a lot of money back. But I can put a team together that in total has like 500 years of game development experience – how do you value that? It has to be valued more than just by a small royalty stream when the game is super successful. Not just successful, but super successful. So that’s my other thing. And I do think that publishers are getting into a place where they are okay with that now. They’re getting into a place where there can be more conversations about us continuing to own the IP, which is great.

How do you think, what makes the publishers change their attitude? Is it because independent studios have much more to say these days?

Well, there’s not a lot of us. There’s like 10 of us, those bigger independent studios of 200–300 people. I actually don’t know how many exactly, but let’s say there’s 10. And if we’re all saying “no” and they need games, then it’s just market. If you want to make a big role-playing game right now, there’s not many people to go to. What we say nowadays is: “We’re going to make a game with this IP”. We would love to make a Fallout: New Vegas-style game or something like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, or The Witcher; we’d love to make a game like that. But if we can’t own the IP, we will make it Eternity-style, because we can usually find the money for that. And we’re not mean about it, we’re not discrespectful. If we’re going to go through the pain of making a huge game, then there has to be a reward for it.

I’ve read that Tyranny came out of the idea of Stormlands. What’s the actual origin story ofTyranny?

It goes WAY back. So we had a game idea that was pitched, it was called Defiance and it was around 2008, maybe 2007. It started with that idea: “What if evil won?”. So we were pitching Defiance about the same time we were doing Dungeon Siege III. There was this idea for it and it morphed into Stormlands. So it was not Stormlands itself, but ideas taken from it. And there’s also an idea from Defiance that was not in Stormlands. When Josh Sawyer took over Stormlands, he said something like: “Now, let’s really flesh it out”, and lots of things changed about it. Then Tyranny came about, and it was really about ideas from Stormlands and ideas from Defiance, all mushed together under the umbrella of that concept of what it would feel like to have adventures in a world where evil had already won. That, I guess, is the origin story – lots of things getting mushed together. But there are ideas of characters that are in Tyranny that are from Defiance and that were not in Stormlands.

White Wolf Publishing registered Vampire Bloodlines. Would you like to work on that?

I think Vampire would be really cool, but that’s the tough bit – there are so many cool things, there are so many awesome things out there. I know Tim and Leonard both loved working on it. We flirted with White Wolf long ago, right before CCP actually bought White Wolf. Mike Tinney was the president of White Wolf, and we got to know each other. What we were trying to figure out back then was whether we could take the Neverwinter 2 engine and do a Vampire or a World of Darkness game. It would be cool, not only as just a game, but also from the standpoint of people who love World of Darkness, who would then be able to go and make more World of Darkness modules and things like that. It would be cool, I’ve always loved Vampire, I read the books, read the novels, all kinds of that stuff.

What I’ve noticed is that contrary to other developers, you talk quite openly about any issues you have. How come that happens?

I don’t know, I think it’s our style. I’m all about acknowledging mistakes and moving on from them. I think that sometimes we maybe share too much. Some people have come to me and said: “Well, you’re making a lot of excuses for everything” and I’m like: “What do you mean? I don’t make excuses. I screwed this up, I screwed that up, we screwed up a lot of stuff”. But they say that it sounds like we’re excusing it all, like we did all of these mistakes but we don’t care. No, that’s not our intention, that’s not what we mean. So sometimes I wonder if maybe we share a little too much. I see other studios making a really good job of just not sharing anything, and sometimes I think that helps them… so I don’t know. But I prefer it that we acknowledge these things and move on from them. And if there are things I can share that will prevent people from making the same mistake, then it’s cool too.
A very Feargus interview. It sounds like what Tim and Leonard are working on hasn't exactly been determined yet. But maybe he's just being evasive.
 

Bester

⚰️☠️⚱️
Patron
Vatnik
Joined
Sep 28, 2014
Messages
11,003
Location
USSR
What we were trying to figure out back then was whether we could take the Neverwinter 2 engine and do a Vampire or a World of Darkness game.
Jesus Christ. They're not right in the head. Keep them away from all good franchises.
 

Gremius

Augur
Joined
Apr 17, 2014
Messages
104
Jesus Christ. They're not right in the head. Keep them away from all good franchises.
You are right, this
We would love to make a Fallout: New Vegas-style game or something like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, or The Witcher; we’d love to make a game like that.
is definitely less harmful than NWN2 engine :M
 

Goral

Arcane
Patron
The Real Fanboy
Joined
May 4, 2008
Messages
3,552
Location
Poland
So if you make a game the size of Fallout: New Vegas, let’s say that Fallout: New Vegas 2 is our example, it would be awesome to be able to do crowdfunding in that case.
We would love to make a Fallout: New Vegas-style game
Nice try Faergus but I doubt Bethesda will work with you again considering that FNV made Fallout 3 look like shit even to popamolers.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,235
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
So if you make a game the size of Fallout: New Vegas, let’s say that Fallout: New Vegas 2 is our example, it would be awesome to be able to do crowdfunding in that case.
We would love to make a Fallout: New Vegas-style game
Nice try Faergus but I doubt Bethesda will work with you again considering that FNV made Fallout 3 look like shit even to popamolers.

He's not talking about an actual Fallout game, just a game of that style, sold as "the spiritual successor from the people who made Fallout: New Vegas!"

A lot of people were disappointed with FO4. I think there's an opening for a new game like that now, in the same way that Kickstarter was kind of riding on people's disappointment with Bioware back in 2012.
 

Goral

Arcane
Patron
The Real Fanboy
Joined
May 4, 2008
Messages
3,552
Location
Poland
I know what he's saying, I'm reading between the lines. This FNV name dropping is too forceful IMO. He also mentioned indirectly that they were conned by Bethesda and got way less money than they deserved.

But I can put a team together that in total has like 500 years of game development experience – how do you value that? It has to be valued more than just by a small royalty stream when the game is super successful. Not just successful, but super successful.
 

Semper

Cipher
Joined
Jan 12, 2012
Messages
747
MCA Project: Eternity
What we were trying to figure out back then was whether we could take the Neverwinter 2 engine and do a Vampire or a World of Darkness game.
Jesus Christ. They're not right in the head. Keep them away from all good franchises.
It would be cool, not only as just a game, but also from the standpoint of people who love World of Darkness, who would then be able to go and make more World of Darkness modules and things like that.
feargus' main concern were the easy modding capabilities, flexible gui and the robust dialogue editor the electron engine has. nothing wrong with that.
inb4 everything is wrong with that engine...
 
Joined
May 5, 2014
Messages
1,677
What we were trying to figure out back then was whether we could take the Neverwinter 2 engine and do a Vampire or a World of Darkness game.
Jesus Christ. They're not right in the head. Keep them away from all good franchises.

However that would have turned out you can't fault them for trying to go in with good intentions and who knows it could have raked in the cash.
In an hypothetical world a decent writer like Avellone could have done a decent campaign followed up with a Ziets directed expansion.
Hell the game could have had the Dark Ages setting and the Modern setting all in one like Redemption due to how flexible the engine was.
The sort of community around modding it could grown might have been huge and active till this day.

Also what are the chances that the Cain/Boyarksy game is not a Vampire sequel but a new twist on Post-Apocalypse.
 

jungl

Augur
Joined
Mar 30, 2016
Messages
1,420
White wolf should allow random developers to make games out their stuff like game workshop does. Tons of people know what warhammer is but not world of darkness because of this.
 

undecaf

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jun 4, 2010
Messages
3,517
Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2
White wolf should allow random developers to make games out their stuff like game workshop does.

Agreed in principle... but then, there'd probably also be a ton of shit out there cheapening the franchises overall image. Probably better to keep the "wanted" status and give chances to more promising efforts on it.
 
Joined
Dec 12, 2013
Messages
4,229
We flirted with White Wolf long ago, right before CCP actually bought White Wolf. Mike Tinney was the president of White Wolf, and we got to know each other. What we were trying to figure out back then was whether we could take the Neverwinter 2 engine and do a Vampire or a World of Darkness gam

Here goes another of my exclusives :)
 
Joined
Sep 7, 2013
Messages
6,165
PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Serpent in the Staglands Bubbles In Memoria A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
A very Feargus interview. It sounds like what Tim and Leonard are working on hasn't exactly been determined yet. But maybe he's just being evasive.

"Bloodlines 2" might be getting made Pillars style.

To be honest I doubt they would call it Bloodlines in that case. Not without some serious balls.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
35,654
Remember about ten years ago or so when a bunch of people on the Codex had the mistaken impression that Obsidian wanted to make Black Isle style games and were reluctantly accepting all those console action contracts because they were the only things being offered.

I'm glad Pillars of Eternity and this interview have firmly driven a stake into that idea. :cool:
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,235
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
Remember about ten years ago or so when a bunch of people on the Codex had the mistaken impression that Obsidian wanted to make Black Isle style games and were reluctantly accepting all those console action contracts because they were the only things being offered.

I'm glad Pillars of Eternity and this interview have firmly driven a stake into that idea. :cool:

Happily, in the meantime a large percentage of Codexers have accepted Fallout: New Vegas-style games as an equally desirable form of RPG. :cool:
 
Self-Ejected

Lurker King

Self-Ejected
The Real Fanboy
Joined
Jan 21, 2015
Messages
1,865,419
"It’s still fun to take money from deluded gamers" – Feargus Urquhart on game development, Pillars of Eternity II and the future of Obsidian
 

Trashos

Arcane
Joined
Dec 28, 2015
Messages
3,413
If I had Cain&Boyarsky working for me, I 'd ask them to create something that looks good with a "From the creators of the Fallout franchise" sticker on it.
 

Latro

Arcane
Joined
Jun 5, 2013
Messages
7,345
Location
Vita umbratilis
If I had C & B working for me, they'd make sandwiches for me with "From the creators of the Fallout franchise" sticker on it
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
Guess this thread got cut and pasted from some other OP that had nothing to do with the newspost
 

Mastermind

Cognito Elite Material
Patron
Bethestard
Joined
Apr 15, 2010
Messages
21,144
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
A lot of people were disappointed with FO4. I think there's an opening for a new game like that now, in the same way that Kickstarter was kind of riding on people's disappointment with Bioware back in 2012.

Fallout 4 shits all over FO3 and NV. I unistalled both of the latter (after having them perpetually on my hd pretty much since their release). They are worse at everything except for the dialogue system and if I'm looking for storyfaggotry I'm not interested in playing a Fallout game anyway.
 

Kz3r0

Arcane
Joined
May 28, 2008
Messages
27,012
But I can put a team together that in total has like 500 years of game development experience – how do you value that? It has to be valued more than just by a small royalty stream when the game is super successful. Not just successful, but super successful.
Fuck Bethesda.
So it was not Stormlands itself, but ideas taken from it. And there’s also an idea from Defiance that was not in Stormlands. When Josh Sawyer took over Stormlands, he said something like: “Now, let’s really flesh it out”
:rage:
 

Sensuki

Arcane
Joined
Oct 26, 2012
Messages
9,799
Location
New North Korea
Codex 2014 Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong A Beautifully Desolate Campaign
Kz3r0 didn't I win the removal of your dumbfuck tag in one of the UT99 comps? How are you get it again :lol:
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom