Company News Dungeon Siege 3 Announced

[Felix]

DA = generic fantasy setting like every other with more blood
ME = generic scifi setting with magic included with more boxes

fixed

 

[Shannow]

The DA-Setting is an absolute generic fantasy-setting. There is no risk. In fact it could have been just another FR-adventure.

Like NWN2+expansions and KotOR2. QED.
And besides, when Bio hypes it as all new thoroughly self-imagined setting, then the majority of people will believe them. There's still people who deny DA's similarities to Tolkien.

And Fallout was an established franchise and bethesda wanted an rpg with guns for a wider audience. That I´m sure.

So Beth going with "established" franchises but raping it so hard it's barely recognizable is playing it safe while Obsidian's going with the most established fantasy franchise there is in cRPGs is somehow risky?

And i really see no spytrend, maybe tendencies. I think even the zombie-hype was more successfull.

The trend is definately there. Trends don't eclipse each other.

An Alien-Rpg was never seen before, only shooter/action-games. Didn´t they even develop a Sonic-Rpg?

AlienRPG got cancelled and Bio did Sonic. So Obsidian doing Sonic would have been risky but Bio played it safe because it was an established franchise?

To make that clear; I´m no Obsidian fanboy.

Sorry, but you sure sound like one when you hold Obsidian to different standards than Beth or Bio.

I think there was no great game they developed but they were more refreshing and more focused on stats than other rpg-developers of today.

Good for you. I see them as copying all the trends I despise about the other companies. Those two opinions are surely not mutually exclusive.

And expansions can fail.

And here we're back to "every game can fail". Expansions are (like DLC) always safer bets because you have the engine, the assets, the experience and their usually a lot shorter. But I feel like I've said this before.

MotB was less risky because it was the first one released. If SoZ was the first one, there would have been no second expansion.

So the first one was more risky. The second one obviously only came because MotB sold well enough. I have the feeling you don't quite grasp the meaning of the word "risk". A game doesn't suddenly become less risky because it sells well or because it turns out that the customers don't like it... Risk is what profits you can expect from a game vs its production costs. That the reality later doesn't fit your expectations doesn't change the previous risk.

DA = generic fantasy setting like every other (and that is was the majority want)
ME = generic scifi setting with magic included. But yeah, they took some risk there (backed up with enough money that obsidian lack of)
Star Wars = generic scifi setting with magic included. No risk.
NWN2 = The most generic fantasy setting there is. No risk.

So what does this prove?

 

[Azrael the cat]

(a) whilst Obsidian are probably my favourite 'mainstream' gaming company at the moment, they aren't big risktakers. It would be crazy for them to do something that was massively risky - they are exactly the wrong size for that. As a small division of a large company, Black Isle could take risks - they could fly 'under the radar' and no-one would suspect them bringing Interplay down (I think the reverse occurred as I recall - ironically, Black Isle stayed profitable until the end). And they don't have the size of a mega-company to put out a new IP or a division devoted to experimental games, which can sink and be severed if things don't work out.

(b) Whoever mentioned Uwe Boll was right. Who the fuck makes a game that Uwe Boll has made a film of?

 

[humorguy]

Dungeon Siege - "It is an honour" - Fergus Urquhart

Who would have thought we'd have have these three things in one paragraph!

Fallout 1 and 2 are rolling in their grave now, alongside Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights at the sign of Jade Empire, Mass Effect and Dragon Age!

 

[Donkey Balls]

Dungeon Siege - "It is an honour" - Fergus Urquhart

Who would have thought we'd have have these three things in one paragraph!

He probably meant the "other" honor.

Fallout 1 and 2 are rolling in their grave now, alongside Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights at the sign of Jade Empire, Mass Effect and Dragon Age!

Wait, NWN>DA:O? You serious? You must have terrible taste in RPGs.

 

[humorguy]

DA:OP Enforced fast travel: Quest/City location - fast travel to possible countryside battle - fast travel to next quest.

While on quest, blockages behind you so you can only go forward, very linear quests where tunnels, blocked off streets etc force you in certain directions. Very little change of interaction when choosing a different race/profession.

Good story and characterization, like an adventure game, but no open world, no freedom of movement and basically mass Effect in disguise much more than anything resembling Baldur's Gate, which they said 'Origin's' meant.

Quite simply if we hadn't got Jade Empire and Mass Effect and DA:OP, we would not have got Alpha Protocol and Dungeon Siege 3

 

[Donkey Balls]

You're deluded if you think that NWN1 is any better.

What the fuck, man. Just WTF.

 

[humorguy]

Hey, your the one who's location is 'The World of Delusions' Donkey Balls........!

 

[Morkar Left]

So Beth going with "established" franchises but raping it so hard it's barely recognizable is playing it safe while Obsidian's going with the most established fantasy franchise there is in cRPGs is somehow risky?

Beth took their own fanbase plus the old fans from the fallout-franchise combined plus console-shooters. They know their business and we all know that Beth couldn´t develop are "true" fallout-sequel even when their lives would depend on. And yeah, a desperate fan will buy the game even if he has doubts about the quality of the game (the piratecrowd doesn´t count here). And even more so when "everybody" (retards and official reviews) say it´s an amazing game. Keep in mind that even haters play Fallout 3 just so they can talk about how shitty it is...

The trend is definately there. Trends don't eclipse each other.

I doubt this trend was big enough to really count on it. If the trend would have been that great, Obsidian wouldn´t have been the first company to produce one (I´m talking about the actual game-industry here, not the past).

AlienRPG got cancelled and Bio did Sonic. So Obsidian doing Sonic would have been risky but Bio played it safe because it was an established franchise?

It doesn´t matter if it got cancelled. I´m sure they wanted it to get published. Anything other would make no sense.
Sonic was Bio, my fault. But where did I say that bio plays it safe with developing the Sonic-rpg? And Sonic isn´t an established franchise for rpgs it´s a jump&run.

Sorry, but you sure sound like one when you hold Obsidian to different standards than Beth or Bio.

Where?

Good for you. I see them as copying all the trends I despise about the other companies. Those two opinions are surely not mutually exclusive.

Ok, opinions.

And here we're back to "every game can fail". Expansions are (like DLC) always safer bets because you have the engine, the assets, the experience and their usually a lot shorter. But I feel like I've said this before.

So the first one was more risky. The second one obviously only came because MotB sold well enough. I have the feeling you don't quite grasp the meaning of the word "risk". A game doesn't suddenly become less risky because it sells well or because it turns out that the customers don't like it... Risk is what profits you can expect from a game vs its production costs. That the reality later doesn't fit your expectations doesn't change the previous risk.

Expansions aren´t that safe anymore. Have you seen how many expansions got announced and later dropped or no expansions coming at all? DLC and sequels work obviously better for the industry.

Risk is what profits you can expect from a game vs its production costs you said and I agree. But if the general opinion of your first expansion is "it sucks" than you can forget fresh/risky ideas for the second sequel because you have to go the safe route to not alienate the majority of your customers even more and have losses instead of profit.
If not enough people buy your expansions the productioncosts are pretty high and it would have been better to dispose your employees on another project for speeding it up (opportunity costs).
SoZ was risk design (Boah, noooo romances and cutscenes and the story sucks and.... this sucks -> it was even mentioned before in the marketing campaign that it will be different and the crowd still complained) and MotB too (it´s not a generic fantasy story even if it´s D&D/VR like Planescape isn´t)

DA = generic fantasy setting like every other (and that is was the majority want)
ME = generic scifi setting with magic included. But yeah, they took some risk there (backed up with enough money that obsidian lack of)
Star Wars = generic scifi setting with magic included. No risk.
NWN2 = The most generic fantasy setting there is. No risk.

So what does this prove?

I never said that they took risks with the KotoR or NWN franchise. I only mentioned the NWN expansions because these were more risky in their concepts (see above) and never mentioned the maingame.

(a) whilst Obsidian are probably my favourite 'mainstream' gaming company at the moment, they aren't big risktakers. It would be crazy for them to do something that was massively risky - they are exactly the wrong size for that. As a small division of a large company, Black Isle could take risks - they could fly 'under the radar' and no-one would suspect them bringing Interplay down (I think the reverse occurred as I recall - ironically, Black Isle stayed profitable until the end). And they don't have the size of a mega-company to put out a new IP or a division devoted to experimental games, which can sink and be severed if things don't work out.

I never said they are suicidal and they need publishers too. They could take a safer route and streamline (dumping down) their games and would receive a wider audience but they are still experimenting with new gamedesigns (MotB - spirit-eater/story, SoZ - oldschool-mechanics, AP - dialogsys/spysetting, KotoR - kill the force and grey instead of black/white).

 

[Volourn]

"The DA-Setting is an absolute generic fantasy-setting. There is no risk."

So every fantasy setting succeeds? Bullshit.


"Have you seen how many expansions got announced and later dropped"

yeah. Hardly any. Your point?




"they are exactly the wrong size for that. As a small division of a large company, Black Isle could take risks - "

Fuckin' myth. Obsidian is not a small company. They have how many employees now? FFS

 

[Ausir]

Did I mention the Dungeon Siege Wiki already?

Do you ever get outside, Ausir?

What is this "outside" you speak of?

You're such a shameless pimp, Ausir.

Well, it's my job.

 

[Shannow]

Where?

In claiming Obsidian took higher risks than Beth or (especially) Bio and praising them for it.
Where, if at all, Bio's the company that tries new settings and new (at least for their player-base "new") gameplay mechanics. While recycling plots and npcs, but few people notice or care about that. And I still wouldn't call them "risky"...
In today's maket improving (copying) a game like ToEE would be risky, simply because nobody believes that that would sell. But it'd certainly be risky in a positive (from a codex point of view) way.
Or I once joked about how Obsidian first intended to make AP in a JA-like engine and then scrapped it when they saw "how awesome" MEh's gameplay was. Now AP with JA gameplay, that would have been a game where I would have understood if it had been considered risky. And it would have been a real reason for the average codexer to like Obsidian. But they didn't do that. They chose the gameplay that they considered to have the most mass-appeal --> not risky.

 

[Azrael the cat]

"they are exactly the wrong size for that. As a small division of a large company, Black Isle could take risks - "

Fuckin' myth. Obsidian is not a small company. They have how many employees now? FFS

I never said they were a 'small company'. Quite the opposite. Vogel can go making Geneforge games (the only current gaming series I can think of where you actually get the massive closure/opening of quest chains and whole new areas that the Codex demands as C+C) because he is a one-man show. Similarly, a small company has small and flexible overheads -there's good reason that in most markets they tend to outpace the larger companies in the niche and creative ends, despite having absolutely no market share in the larger middle market segments. I'm saying that Obsidian ISN'T small anymore - it's got serious payroll to make. But at the same time, it isn't large enough yet that it could wear, say, two consecutive flops without looking reallly shaky. Larger companies could simply devote a still sizeable (30-40 persons) division to a 'niche market' sub-studio, and wear the loss if it went under.

The worst place to be for risk-taking is to be the middle-sized fish in the big pond. You've reached the point of sizeable overheads, so you can't take radical experiments with the small startups. And you aren't large enough to seriously hedge against market failure, unlike those big sharks. Not to mention, that those big sharks are paying a lot more attention to you than those small startup minnows. If you sink half your profits into R+D for a radical design, and it actually works (and, like often occurs in gaming, isn't completely protectable under IP) you can bet those sharks will have their own games cranking out their own, more polished, versions of your innovation and eating your market share.

 

[humorguy]

Let get some facts going:

If you want a 'real' cRPG on PC you now have to look to Europe. If you want any genre PC only game with PC sensibilities, you have to look to Europe. If you want old school type PC games you have to look to Europe. The only way you get any of this through the U.S. is via indie titles.

While in the U.S. we get so-called cRPG's like Dungeon Siege, Jade Empire, Mass Effect, Dragon Age and Alpha Protocol, all produced with console at the forefront of their design.

In Europe we get Two Worlds 1 and 2, The Witcher 1 and 2, the Spellbound series, the Divinity series, the Gothic series, etc. When it comes to a PC only game developed with the 'intelligence' of a PC gamer taken into account, with no 'multiformat' dumbing down, (lhand-holding, etc) what is a better example than the STALKER series from the Ukraine?

As an aside, if you checked the web, you'd also see that all the above games have only managed review scores in the 80's. No European developed/published title has ever got 90%. At the same time, it seems major U.S. publishers can release weaker and weaker games and still score in the low 90's. It has got to the point where if a major title like Dead Space or Left for Dead, etc get the odd 89%, gamers complain, seeing that as a 'failing' score! Equally, if a European title got 89% conversely, because of this biased system, many would see that as a good score!

STALKER is an excellent example of review scoring. The first two games got review scores in the mid 80's with reviewers pointing out the games score was lowered because of bugs. We the get STALKER: Call of Pripyat, which had no bugs, which the reviewers pointed out in their reviews, and it STILL got scores in the mid 80's! European titles never get 90's, that reserved for the 'friends' of the media.