Interview Feargus interview at Game Informer reveals Obsidian's secret project is Stormlands reincarnation

[Roguey]

I have always thought Fergus is simply such a liability; maybe he is a good eye for talent but whenever he is on interview he comes across as the fat kid at highschook who everybody treated like the school pet and laughed when they dared him to eat a sandwich off the floor or show his man titties
Dont known how or why publishers would trust him with their money, at least Sawyer comes across as the new age computer cool guy hipster who can show you his tattoes and shit

He's good at managing it. Kept Obsidian alive for over a decade. Black Isle was also the only profitable part of Interplay when it shut down.

 

[Sannom]

I have always thought Fergus is simply such a liability; maybe he is a good eye for talent but whenever he is on interview he comes across as the fat kid at highschook who everybody treated like the school pet and laughed when they dared him to eat a sandwich off the floor or show his man titties

I guess looks can be deceiving. Or he's so good at compartmentalizing that he comes off as completely serious and professional in front of the professionals but completely sheds everything associated with that when he interacts with people who aren't as demanding.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

I don't think you realize just how hard it is for large independent developer to even survive. There's a reason why there's only few of them left. Feargus, for all his flaws, is doing amazing job keeping the dream alive.

 

[J_C]

Dont known how or why publishers would trust him with their money, at least Sawyer comes across as the new age computer cool guy hipster who can show you his tattoes and shit

Maybe publishers care about how you actually do your work , instead of how you do interviews. And seeing obsidian alive and independent in this market, Fergus knows his stuff.
Just like the fat kid is always the smartest.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Maybe publishers care about how you actually do your work , instead of how you do interviews. And seeing obsidian alive and independent in this market, Fergus knows his stuff.
Just like the fat kid is always the smartest.

Can confirm.

 

[Jedi Exile]

FNV was great but it heavily relied on good writing

I think it is an old misconception about Fallout: New Vegas and Obsidian games in general, that they are great only because of their writing. New Vegas was good because of its quest design, which, as it was in original Fallouts, allowed you to use different skills to achieve the same goal. This is where this game really shines.

 

[Invictus]

I didnt say the man is an idiot, abd yeah his achivements speak for themselves it is just that you look at Fargo or Sven and they are the driving force in their companies while you always think on somebody else in Osidian beign "the guy" from Avellone to Sawyer to Zeits but at least I dont think "Fergus is on the mutherfucker" and relax

 

[Fairfax]

He is probably a good manager, but they seem to run the company like there's no tomorrow. They went from 75 people in their lowest point to 200 now, less than 3 years later, and they still have 20 or so job openings at the moment. The company's financial health shouldn't hang by a thread all the time. They also need better internal testing so they can pitch games and have a higher success rate.
Sure, I've never seen the cancelled projects, but it's very clear that they have far too many cancelled projects for a 10yo company. Aliens, Dwarves, Stormlands, Backspace, Prey 2 (this one inevitable, I presume), probably MCA's project, and probably more.

Feargus gets the short of the end of the stick and has to sell the idea to publishers, but nobody (or almost nobody) can do that if the product's not good enough. I have no doubt there was something very odd about Stormlands that turned publishers off. I mean, if you look at Microsoft, they still don't have an exclusive RPG. They definitely wanted one, probably still do, but whatever they saw didn't convince them, and we're talking about a company that paid for exclusives like Ryse: Son of Rome, Dead Rising 3 and Sunset Overdrive.

As mentioned in the other thread Brian Heins project is still ongoing and he did mention they're currently on 4 projects, so it pretty much has to be the one by process of elimination alone.

Ofc, all depends on what Feargus considers to be *working on something*

Also ofc, Obsidian had secret project rumors going on for years now. They p. much all panned out with the Original Stormlands and Armored Warfare. Every project is going to be *secret* at first.

Yeah, should be Brian's project. Makes the UE4 prototype thing interesting. I'm hoping it'll be used for PoE 2 instead of Unity.

 

[Crooked Bee]

they have far too many cancelled projects for a 10yo company.

How do you know? How many other comparably sized 10+ year old US RPG companies are there?

Right.

I would disagree with "The company's financial health shouldn't hang by a thread all the time", too. There are no other mid-sized RPG companies like Obsidian left precisely because their fate is always hanging by a thread in this industry. The fact that Feargus has been able to keep one afloat for that long is a miracle in itself. It comes as no surprise that he had to sign on side projects like AW to be able to do that, too.

 

[Fairfax]

How do you know? How many other comparably sized 10+ year US RPG companies are there?

Right.

I would disagree with "The company's financial health shouldn't hang by a thread all the time", too. There are no other mid-sized RPG companies like Obsidian left precisely because their fate is always hanging by the thread in this industry. The fact that Feargus has been able to keep one afloat for that long is a miracle in itself. It comes as no surprise that he had to sign on side projects like AW to be able to do that, too.

BioWare, Bethesda, CDP, Arkane (not RPGs anymore, but still), Blizzard, and so on. Then you have others that don't make RPGs like Avalanche Studios, Monolith, etc. These were all as large as Obsidian is at some point, but they were more successful, and if you look at their record, they had 1, 2 cancelled projects tops. The original BioWare in Edmonton doesn't have a single cancelled project in 20 years, for example.
Sure, only CDP is independent out of the ones I mentioned, but BioWare was very successful and healthy enough to stay as an independent studio before the acquisiton. It was their choice and we all know how it ends, but regardless of what their games are/were, the doctors did a great job running the company.

Keeping a mid-sized RPG company (actually I'd say the genre doesn't matter all that much in this case, it's now one of the most successful ones) is definitely difficult, but tripling its size in 3 years doesn't help. This will lead to another moment of instability if a major project is cancelled, and then they're gonna lose talent all over again. Obsidian still has talent, but they've been struggling to sell it to publishers, for whatever reason.
Just look at Aliens: Colonial Marines. That one was funded and released, their RPG was cancelled. I'm sure the Aliens RPG was objectively better than that shit, but somehow it got canned.

Then there's also decisions like the Pathfinder deal. Why not crowdfund another game, instead of using the most generic high fantasy IP possible? One that will also be damaged by the bomb Pathfinder Online is going to be, and that it's way too close to what they're doing with PoE? I don't get it.

 

[Infinitron]

Bioware Edmonton definitely has cancelled projects. They just don't want to talk about them.

 

[Fairfax]

Bioware Edmonton definitely has cancelled projects. They just don't want to talk about them.

As an independent studio, perhaps. As part of EA, they would've had to disclose that. But in their independent era I really don't see many gaps. They started to work on both Jade Empire and Mass Effect right after KOTOR, while Dragon Age was right after NWN. If they do have cancelled projects, I really doubt it adds up to 6 or 7.

 

[Roguey]

Jade Empire 2 was canceled, as was Project: Revolver, a Laidlaw/Weekes collaboration.

I think they were different projects, but they might have been the same.

 

[Infinitron]

Jade Empire 2 was canceled, as was Project: Revolver, a Laidlaw/Weekes collaboration.

I think they were different projects, but they might have been the same.

Don't forget this: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...ares-spy-rpg-that-didnt-survive-the-recession

 

[Fairfax]

Jade Empire 2 was canceled, as was Project: Revolver, a Laidlaw/Weekes collaboration.

I think they were different projects, but they might have been the same.

Jade Empire 2 was just a concept. Don't know about the other one.

 

[Invictus]

And for canceled projects dont think that they had working prototypes or were ready to hit Early Release; most of those probably died in the planning stages were yes there might be a whole lot of work done, designs and scenarios and honestly a whole lot of projects get cancelled there in all developers, even on internal pitches let alone pitching to a publisher

 

[Roguey]

Jade Empire 2 was just a concept. Don't know about the other one.

Weekes deleted his livejournal in a fit of cowardice, fortunately someone saved most of the relevant posts http://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/158267/some-neat-info-on-project-revolver-edit-what-could-it-be

We're doing... things... with plot hand-ins. The short and legal version is that we're looking at ways to speed up the roleplaying process, or at least the parts of the roleplaying process that need speeding up. As I've said before, I don't think that going through eight nodes about finding a magical acorn for somebody is valuable roleplaying. The guy or gal who needs a magic acorn might be written well, but at this point, it's not necessary to tell somebody to pick up the plot item he finds lying around in the nearby dungeon, and if those words can be better used elsewhere -- like in a romance, or a complex plot that actually needs some explanation, then the words should be cut. Same deal for plot hand-ins. Giving the acorn to somebody and then saying "You're welcome" or "Arrrr, pay me more" isn't roleplaying these days.

Laidlaw finally got to implement this in Dragon Age II.

 

[Fairfax]

And for canceled projects dont think that they had working prototypes or were ready to hit Early Release; most of those probably died in the planning stages were yes there might be a whole lot of work done, designs and scenarios and honestly a whole lot of projects get cancelled there in all developers, even on internal pitches let alone pitching to a publisher

Aliens and Stormlands were not cancelled internally, however, and both were cancelled while the same publisher was funding terrible games at the same time. I've mentioned the MS games and Colonial Marines, but there's also Backspace, which was cancelled while Bethesda published Hunted: Demon's Forge and Brink.
As Feargus says in the interview, nobody knows if there was something they/he could've done to save a project, but the way I see it, their number of cancelled games is way above the average, and the context in which these games were cancelled makes it worse, really. There's a good chance it wasn't Feargus' fault and the prototypes were too rough around the edges or the concepts were too weird in the first place (I've seen rumors in that sense regarding the Stormlands original concept).

Even with MCA, George Ziets, John Gonzales, Travis Stout and Kevin Saunders gone, they still have enough talent to make a big hit. That will take them to a level of stability to make their own big project with their own IP and reach BioWare's status from the 2005-2009 era.

Weekes deleted his livejournal in a fit of cowardice, fortunately someone saved most of the relevant posts http://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/158267/some-neat-info-on-project-revolver-edit-what-could-it-be



Laidlaw finally got to implement this in Dragon Age II.

Never played it.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

So basically, out of the list of 5 "Other US RPG companies", 3 are not independent, one doesn't make RPGs anymore, and one is Polish.

In other words, Obsidian is one of the kind, but they're doing shit. That totally make sense brah.

 

[StrongBelwas]

Aliens and Stormlands were not cancelled internally, however, and both were cancelled while the same publisher was funding terrible games at the same time. I've mentioned the MS games and Colonial Marines, but there's also Backspace, which was cancelled while Bethesda published Hunted: Demon's Forge and Brink.

You're assuming those games looked terrible to the suits at the time they decided to can the Obsidian games. At the very least they probably thought they were going to be moneymakers.

 

[Fairfax]

So basically, out of the list of 5 "Other US RPG companies", 3 are not independent, one doesn't make RPGs anymore, and one is Polish.

In other words, Obsidian is one of the kind, but they're doing shit. That totally make sense brah.

If only you were able to read the rest:

These were all as large as Obsidian is at some point, but they were more successful

You're assuming those games looked terrible to the suits at the time they decided to can the Obsidian games. At the very least they probably thought they were going to be moneymakers.

Assuming Obsidian's games were not going to be shit (I know most of the Codex thinks PoE is shit, but I disagree), then it should've been even easier to sell them, no? RPGs have never been more successful. Fargo managed to get Hunted: Demon's Forge funded by Bethesda.

 

[l3loodAngel]

Sounds cool, but unfortunately modern Obsidian seems to play as safe and streamlined as possible... not to mention BALANCED and Chris Avellone-free.

Yeah balanced... Never thought that so much fun in RPG's came from forgoing balance in favour of player options.

 

[GloomFrost]

Hmmm I wonder if Stormlands have anything to do with the Stormlight archive books. IF so Also Obsidian is STILL one of the best RPG companies on the market. I have faith in them.

 

[Stinger]

There were other writers who did excellent work on NV. Travis Stout wrote Mr. House, one of the best characters I've ever seen in an RPG. But yeah, Gonzalez was main guy.

Obsidian also nailed the Brotherhood of Steel, just like they understood the rest of Fallout lore. Why Bethesda can't is a mystery.

Man Travis Stout doesn't work at Obsidian either from looking it up.

Seems his last project was lead writer on Assassin's Creed Unity.

Seriously who is actually left?

 

[Fairfax]

Man Travis Stout doesn't work at Obsidian either from looking it up.

Seems his last project was lead writer on Assassin's Creed Unity.

Seriously who is actually left?

Out of the main writers? Only Eric Fenstermaker.