.

[Fedora Master]

This worship of old name studios and developers needs to stop.

It's not worship. We're praying studios, developers get better and games don't turn to fool's gold.

And how's that working out for you?

 

[Nifft Batuff]

I would like a Tyranny 2.

 

[VHS9000]

I didn't think it was technically possible, but ultimately you're suggesting to make BG3 more gay.

 

[luj1]

You're not allowed to just re-name things in FR like calling a goblin a Fw'llepweillian and shit.

Josh's worldbuilding in a nutshell

 

[HeatEXTEND]

it's one of the major titles of 2023 together with Starfield and Phantom Liberty

huh?
*google*
oh...

 

[luj1]

Since Pentiment was a critical hit

lol

 

[Reinhardt]

I didn't think it was technically possible, but ultimately you're suggesting to make BG3 more gay.

and boring.

 

[Cryomancer]

IMO we need more adaptations from retroclones and less from dandino(D&D in name only) games.But Sawyer would love 4e.

 

[Mebrilia the Viera Queen]

Now that is a cute joke. Obsidian... lol.

 

[Reinhardt]

no, seriously, niggers... just stop. do you REALLY want obsidian to make another game about GODS? like, REALLY-REALLY?

 

[Alex]

Reminder that the best things fagsidian ever did was literally a Fallout 3 mod and a buggy(but very well-writtren) Kotor mod.

Screw Soyer and the rest of 'dem despicable faggots.

It was a good Fallout 3 mod though. I wouldn't say the kotor mod is that well written, though. All the silliness about kreia made it seem like it doesn't fit in the Star Wars universe.

 

[just]

the grounded devs?
maybe, i dont know how much experience they have with RPGs

 

[Goldschmidt]

I would like a Tyranny 2.

I am already so conditioned by the dex, that my brain spontaneously read this as Tranny 2.

Obsidian are now slave to Microsoft. Dont even expect Tyranny 2 or POE 3, let alone a Baldur's Gate sequel.

 

[Reinhardt]

Dont even expect Tyranny 2 or POE 3

gud

 

[JarlFrank]

Obsidian was known to make cool sequels to the games.

Obsidian only ever made mediocre sequels to games. They were always painfully middling. New Vegas is the only exception, that one is actually good - still a flawed gem, but with more gem than flaw. All their other games are more flaw than gem.

NWN2: The biggest complaint about NWN1 was its boring main campaign so... they made a campaign that was just as boring for NWN2. Wow. They also made the genius decision of deliberately making mod tools harder to use than NWN1's in a misguided effort to raise the overall mod quality, thinking that people would spend more time learning the tools before publishing mods if they were harder to use. The real result was that fewer people make modules. Well played, Obsidian. Mask of the Betrayer had a great story and C&C, but its encounter design was just as mediocre as the OC's. And then they made Storm of Zehir as a more combat-centric expansion, which pretty much fell flat.
All we got out of NWN2 was one good expansion campaign, but even that is marred by tedious encounter design.

KotoR2: Like Mask of the Betrayer, this game has a pretty good story, but it's marred by bad encounter design and some areas that just feel like a slog to go through. On top of that, the ending feels rushed and unfinished. There are a few gems to be found here (great writing and characters thanks to MCA) but overall the game is a mess. It's more interesting than its predecessor, but KotoR1 is more pleasant to play since it doesn't have as much filler slog and is actually finished.

Alpha Protocol: This one is actually pretty good, but the stealth shooter gameplay feels half-assed. One of the few Obsidian games I consider worth playing, but it's no longer commercially available due to some silly licensing issues lol.

New Vegas: Their best game, with this one it feels like they actually cared about making it. Suffers from bugs as is usual for Obsidian, but that can be blamed on the short development cycle enforced by Bethesda.

Dungeon Siege 3: Nobody even asked for this. There are people who enjoyed Dungeon Siege 1 and 2, and DS3 is so different from its predecessors that the fans of the series reviewed it negatively. Meanwhile it does little to attract new players. The gameplay can only be described as odd. Every single design choice about this game is weird, feels somehow off. A sign of what's to come with Obsidian's future titles.

South Park: The Stick of Truth: I haven't played it so I can't comment on it, but apparently it's one of their good games.

Pillars of Eternity: The very definition of bland. I never finished it because I got bored after a couple of hours. A friend of mine recently started it, had a positive first impression, but then the game kept dumping lengthy exposition text dumps on him, he realized it's filled with trash mobs you have to fight but get no XP for, and many other terrible decisions that make it not fun to play. Honestly, PoE is the most offensively mediocre RPG ever made. It doesn't have anything excellent in it, nor anything so bad you can laugh about it. Horrible slavjank games are more fun than PoE because at least you can laugh at the jankiness. BG3's cringe sex scenes are more fun than any of PoE's writing because at least they're so awkward it's kinda funny. Nothing about PoE evokes any kind of reaction, because it has been balanced to the point of having no identity at all. For all the talk about souls in its lore, it certainly lacks one itself.

Tyranny: Great idea, bad execution. Too short, feels rushed in places, the DLC barely adds any content, it feels like a side project they did while working on Pillars. It's a shame because it's a much better game than Pillars, but it received too little attention to make its strengths stand out. As is, it's yet another good idea ruined by aggressively mediocre game design. I swear, Obsidian's system and encounter designers are purposely trying to make their stuff middling and unexciting.

Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire: Theoretically I should like this game. I tried very hard to like it. It has an exotic setting, which I love (it also has plenty of barefoot women ), it has ship-to-ship combat... but all of that is ruined by utterly baffling design decision. Like turning the ship combat into a stupid text adventure nobody liked. And making the main storyline about some high tier god shit nobody cares about. The story and writing are completely schizophrenic, it's like one writer wants to do one thing while the others do completely different things... oh hey that's what happened, Feargus demanded a high stakes high fantasy main plot which is why that was crammed into the game. Obsidian had their chance to make their Baldur's Gate 2, and blew it. They just fucking keep blowing their chances lmao.

The Outer Worlds: They advertised it as a successor to New Vegas, but its theme was too one-tracked (gabidalism bad!!) and lacked any nuance, and the gameplay felt way too restricted, lacking the feeling of a freely explorable open world that New Vegas had. And the writing, especially for the companion characters, was completely cringe. This game is New Vegas, but if you stripped off everything that made New Vegas great. They can't even do worthy sequels to their own games anymore.

The history of Obsidian is the history of a company that had many chances to make a true classic, but blowing it every single time.
When I think of Obsidian, the first thing that comes to my mind is "wasted potential".

 

[HeatEXTEND]

South Park: The Stick of Truth

If you really like SP it's really good; If you don't it's probably trash.

 

[Catacombs]

it has ship-to-ship combat... but all of that is ruined by utterly baffling design decision. Like turning the ship combat into a stupid text adventure nobody liked.

Agreed. At some point, "boarding" is the only option when faced with a ship-versus-ship encounter.

 

[Gargaune]

They also made the genius decision of deliberately making mod tools harder to use than NWN1's in a misguided effort to raise the overall mod quality, thinking that people would spend more time learning the tools before publishing mods if they were harder to use. The real result was that fewer people make modules. Well played, Obsidian.

Don't fall for that spin, Electron came out the way it did because it was a desperate hack job to meet new fidelity standards, addressing the needs of the solo hobbyists wasn't even an afterthought. While higher visual fidelity inherently results in greater labour requirements, NWN2's toolset comes with an outsized cost because it's riddled with poor ergonomics and brittle implementations that would've hampered Obsidian's own development efforts. Basically, its state wasn't a case of "we'll demand more commitment from modders to foster higher quality", but merely "I don't care, just make the fucking thing work, we ship next Friday!"

And this was sort of a tradition for "old" Obsidian - New Vegas, KotOR2, NWN2, whatever they achieved in art direction and writing was held back by poor software craftsmanship, it's just most evident in the Electron Toolset because, put simply, poor software and UI flows will make even more of an impact on building games than playing them.

 

[Baldanders]

I think most people who would be in the market for this either aren't after POE 1 and 2, or have embraced BG3.

And Obsidian is in the Game Pass business right now - IP that they wholly own.

 

[Dishonoredbr]

Owlcat clears Obsidian nowdays, i'm afraid.

 

[Goldschmidt]

Obsidian was known to make cool sequels to the games.

.

Pillars of Eternity: The very definition of bland. I never finished it because I got bored after a couple of hours. A friend of mine recently started it, had a positive first impression, but then the game kept dumping lengthy exposition text dumps on him, he realized it's filled with trash mobs you have to fight but get no XP for, and many other terrible decisions that make it not fun to play. Honestly, PoE is the most offensively mediocre RPG ever made. It doesn't have anything excellent in it, nor anything so bad you can laugh about it. Horrible slavjank games are more fun than PoE because at least you can laugh at the jankiness. BG3's cringe sex scenes are more fun than any of PoE's writing because at least they're so awkward it's kinda funny. Nothing about PoE evokes any kind of reaction, because it has been balanced to the point of having no identity at all. For all the talk about souls in its lore, it certainly lacks one itself.

Tyranny: Great idea, bad execution. Too short, feels rushed in places, the DLC barely adds any content, it feels like a side project they did while working on Pillars. It's a shame because it's a much better game than Pillars, but it received too little attention to make its strengths stand out. As is, it's yet another good idea ruined by aggressively mediocre game design. I swear, Obsidian's system and encounter designers are purposely trying to make their stuff middling and unexciting.

Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire: Theoretically I should like this game. I tried very hard to like it. It has an exotic setting, which I love (it also has plenty of barefoot women ), it has ship-to-ship combat... but all of that is ruined by utterly baffling design decision. Like turning the ship combat into a stupid text adventure nobody liked. And making the main storyline about some high tier god shit nobody cares about. The story and writing are completely schizophrenic, it's like one writer wants to do one thing while the others do completely different things... oh hey that's what happened, Feargus demanded a high stakes high fantasy main plot which is why that was crammed into the game. Obsidian had their chance to make their Baldur's Gate 2, and blew it. They just fucking keep blowing their chances lmao.

I love the POE setting because it is coherent and offers something fresh. It is in no way worse than the Forgotten Realms setting of Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. If you liked the setting there, you should in theory like POE 1+2. Putting Baldur's Gate 3 above POE because it has cringeworthy sex scenes is equivalent to loving LOTR more if it had goblin, gay and tranny sex in it. It completely ruins the immersion of a fantasy adventure. It actually smears on it and devalues the entire product. I am looking for an adventure. You are looking for an emotional reaction to a game which is a strange thing to look for in such a medium.

I think the take on religion can not be stomached by the typical American who sees modern day politics popping up in all of their games. It is just a fantasy story, similar to those you read in books, with an interesting take on Gods. Nothing that was presented there was actually brand new if you read the Belgian Thorgal series. I found it interesting, you find it boring. Well I find New Vegas boring. You didn't care about the story. Well I did. It is all subjective in the end.

But there is no denying that POE, after ironing out most bugs, is a quality product wich was designed solely for PC.

 

[JarlFrank]

I didn't see any interesting takes in PoE. I saw bland expositionary walls of text about shit I didn't care about.

You know what kind of fantasy gives you an adventure? Classic pulp, the works of Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Borroughs, etc. Those are good fantasy writers because they don't dwell on pages upon pages of dry worldbuilding, but have their protagonists go on high adventure with great action and deep mystery!

PoE's main fault, however, was not the boring setting (BG1 is also extremely boring, but at least it has D&D rules) but the bland over-balanced ruleset that made combat feel like a chore rather than fun.

 

[Shaki]

Lmao, no. With all the bad things I have to say about BG3 and Larian, I'm 100% convinced it's still a 10x better game than anything fagsidian could ever make.

 

[Crispy]

Just popping my head in here,

BG3's combat is legitimately sophisticated, polished, and eminently enjoyable (setting aside its 5e aspects for sake of argument). I'm inching closer and closer the more I play the game to judging its combat as being on-par even with ToEE's!

If PoE's and PoE 2's combat were half as good, they would have been more than decent RPGs. I think I actually fell asleep while playing PoE once.

My two cents.

 

[Butter]

Nobody has fallen asleep playing BG3 since the first time a Larian tester woke up with a prolapsed anus.