Has your opinion of Obsidian changed after Avellone’s revelations and Deadfire?

[Strange Fellow]

Crowd-funding has helped though. Getting away from publishers means that the decisions are made by the people who know how to make games, rather than being managed as a financial investment.

 

[Mangoose]

Nano, are you from the U.S.? Because that's how the legal system works here, and I'm not saying I like it or not.

 

[Mangoose]

Crowd-funding has helped though. Getting away from publishers means that the decisions are made by the people who know how to make games, rather than being managed as a financial investment.

LOOK THERE ARE EXCEPTIONS OK

 

[Lyric Suite]

Please make it stop!!!!!!

It's a gif, it can't stop. It's on a loop.

 

[Jacob]

I wish you are dead. That really hurt you? Really?

You. Fucking. CUCK! Go to your safespace and die there of starvation, you millenial, SJW, professional offense taking shiteater.

You clearly are disrespectful to me. Thus proving my point right.

 

[DragoFireheart]

I wish you are dead. That really hurt you? Really?

You. Fucking. CUCK! Go to your safespace and die there of starvation, you millenial, SJW, professional offense taking shiteater.

You clearly are disrespectful to me. Thus proving my point right.

baby

if you aren't being disrespected you aint gettin the real RPG Codex experience

now back to the kitchen and fetch me a proper sandwich.

 

[Lacrymas]

The difference is, Cael put real spite and emotion into those insults. He has so much baggage and bias, it's clouding his judgement and he comes off as genuinely malicious. Being casually insulted is par for the course, there's nothing personal there, but there's more to it than that in this specific case.

 

[Flou]

I don't "seriously think", I'm just giving into my trust issues and questioning everything. Which admittedly is pointless, because from a reasonable standpoint, all of this is hearsay and I shouldn't be making conclusions unless hard evidence is shown and evaluated, which will only happen in court.

ANYWAYS, while your evidence is valid, there are also other "facts" that make me question things:

5) Obsidian did not simply work on Aliens at the same time as Alpha Brotocol. They were also working on New Vegas during that time. New Vegas was released in 2010. So did AP.
6) In 2010, Obsidian was planning to also start working on a Wheel of Time game. In February 2010, that is. Alpha Protocol was released in June 2010. New Vegas was released in October 2010.

6a) That actually makes me question if buggy Obsidian games was due to the QA team or do to too many projects and too little time.​

5) Obsidian got the deal to make FNV after Aliens was cancelled. One could say in some ways due to that cancellation, since they had to sign an another project.

6) Wheel of Time game never went anywhere. The company that owned the license never did anything with it, except a bad 15 minutes pilot they aired at 2am on FX channel. If no money was involved, I fucking doubt Obsidian put much effort or any to such a project.
Work on Alpha Protocol was finished in Fall 2009. Sega just had the game on hold for a while.

Your facts are flawed.

 

[Mangoose]

Obsidian showed a fully featured demo of Alpha Protocol in early 2008 which looked a lot like the final game.

A document leaked from Sega contained criticism that Alpha Protocol felt like it didn’t have enough RPG elements. Does the team have any plans for tweaking the RPG elements between now and spring? Or do you find the concern inaccurate?

It should be noted that the document being referred to contained criticisms on a demo that was quite old at the time - and that was some time ago. We refined our systems and the RPG feel a lot over the spring and summer of 2009, so when that came out both the Sega production group and Obsidian didn't feel the criticisms remained valid. The build they were from was just too different from what the game had grown into.

Before the big meeting, there was parkour. "We did all these really specific parkour elements," Parker says. "I don't know how the player was supposed to know this - again, why this was cut - but there was a path where you can go around to shoot some guys, or, if you walk over to this crack in the wall and hit A, Mike would do this fancy spider-climb up through the middle of it, which did look super-cool. It was kind of neat but are we going to go through and make levels that are just filled with exceptions? The pay-off just really wasn't there."

Before the big meeting, there was environmental interaction. "You're running through this airplane graveyard and we've conveniently placed enemies underneath the props of these airplanes," Parker says, "and if you shot the middle of the props then the props would fall down and kill the enemies. It was like, 'Ohh this is great!'

"It wasn't great," he adds, "it was a lot of work and it didn't have a whole lot of pay-off. People found it just as much fun to get in a straight out firefight over figuring out where we game-designed-in some cool environmental interactions, so we scrapped that."

Before the big meeting, there were on-rails motorbike and yacht chase sequences - hence the motorbike in Alpha Protocol, and the yacht ("but there is no chase to get to the yacht - we spared you that part," MacLean says).

"We were always going to have chase sequences," Parker says, "that was how the parachute [in the scrapped demo sequence] came to be. When we refactored the game we just said, again, 'that seems like a whole lot of work for not a lot of pay-off' and outside of the core of what we wanted to do."

Before the meeting there was also another major female character called Uli Booi. So much work was done on her that her picture hangs alongside the other notable Alpha Protocol characters on the wall in front of me (pictured above)

By the time the big meeting was over, Obsidian had a solid vision for Alpha Protocol at last - a kind of Jason Bourne adventure with baddies as zany as in Kill Bill, Chris Avellone would later say. The game would take longer to make and cost more money than originally budgeted but Sega's confidence was restored, and so was the team's. "The direction we were going wasn't something everyone was completely happy with so changing that around ... it really revitalised a lot of the team," says Tyson Christensen, lead level designer on the game.

What lay ahead was simply months of hard work. And, inevitably, as push came to shove, there were sacrifices. Good artificial intelligence was one of them. "One of the big complaints after the game came out was the AI was not good enough and too stupid, and that was a factor of time," Parker says.

"We put together a really cool AI system but it sucked up too much performance and it was eating frames from the game and we had to get performance up. We wound up making our guys stupider late in development because there wasn't a good way to go back and change it at that point. If we could have gone back in time we could have come up with a better overall system but it was too late to do that."

Q: For me, you were doing really interesting work in that period, on Fallout: New Vegas and Alpha Protocol in particular. Nevertheless, and I'm sure you're aware of this, Obsidian ended up with a reputation for bugs and technical issues. Is that a necessary consequence of towing the line, and working to imposed budgets and time-scales? These aren't simple games you're making.

FU: So, with Alpha Protocol, the challenge was that we weren't even totally sure what we wanted to make until, like, way into the game - and that's bad. You can do that with your own money; when you're doing that with someone else's money they're just getting mad, they're getting mad at you more and more and more. The story's bigger than that, but I think I'd go back to what I was just saying: you've gotta cut it early. For that reason, as a developer, you have to take it on yourself to prove your ideas quickly. You need to show yourself that you can make the game, that you understand the game.

It's too easy to not be critical. To not say, 'Okay, that all sounds wonderful, but what's the plan? Like, really, what is the plan?' That's where we've made big mistakes in the past: not holding to our plans. That doesn't sound like sexy development, right? But if we haven't proven it, let's know that now. Let's look at it and go, 'Oh, it's like an ugly little child. That's not good. So what do we do with it?' And it's too easy at that point to add just a little bit more here, and it'll be good, and everything will be fine. No. 'Should we cut it?'

I think publishers should kill way more games way earlier, but if we do that ourselves it makes us more reasonable about what we can actually accomplish early on. We weren't doing that, and that put pressure on our publishers.

Q: Isn't that the publisher's call anyway? You say more games should be killed earlier, but surely Obsidian wouldn't decide that.

FU: No, it wouldn't be my call, but we always should look at the fact of, 'Would we kill this game?' It's nice if the publisher keeps on paying us for another year, but if we would kill it then it really should be killed. So back up from that: what are we doing today to make sure we can do what we want and have the game not be killed? We're now doing that on day 2, and not day 430.

That's what we did too much of before. We just kept on going, sweeping this and that problem under the rug - sweep, sweep, sweep, it's all fine. And you get to a point and it's screwed.

The game titled Alpha Protocol did not have a smooth development cycle. Lack of knowledge of unreal engine, clashing design vision between the publisher and the developer, numerous delays and identity crisis plagued Alpha Protocol. Sega wanted a realistic rpg experience while Obsidian favored a more Tarantino vibe.

Initial story drafts for Alpha Protocol were done by Mitsoda. He decided which locations would appear in the game and also created all of the story characters, along with Carlson. However, the narrative in the released game was primarily written by Avellone, who took over the main creative role on the project two years after development began. This resulted in a substantial rewriting and repurposing of the plot; namely, player choice was given more importance, intertwining of gameplay and reactivity became a forefront design philosophy, and the core and motivations of several narrative threads were changed. The new narrative team, which consisted of Avellone, Travis Stout, and Matt MacLean, wrote new dialogue for the characters previously created by Mitsoda and Carlson, and wrote a new story and script using the locations previously determined by Mitsoda. Each writer was given a set amount of work; MacLean wrote the majority of the in-game emails, and Stout was the lead writer for the Taipei hub, writing for characters such as Steven Heck, Omen Deng, and Hong Shi. Stout was also responsible for writing several secondary characters in the Rome hub, while Avellone designed most other characters.

Sega was supportive of the team's rewriting of the plot, sending over quality assurance and cohesion strike teams to make sure there were no issues with the in-game reactivity or with plot holes, but they didn't have much involvement in regards to the narrative itself, with the publisher mainly focusing on the game and combat design. However, Urquhart said that one of the reasons for the game's development problems was due to indecision on Sega's part, particularly in regards to budgeting; he gave an example of one long segment of the game that cost around 500 thousand dollars to produce, which was eventually cut because Sega thought it wasn't a good fit for the game.

 

[daveyd]

Not that I follow news of Obsidian that closely, but my opinion of them hasn't really changed. I always thought there were a mediocre, disappointing RPG developer. I guess I used to blame publishers for some of that mediocrity, but now I just blame Feargus.

I hate that they have a fixation with shitty RTwP combat and only turn-based RPG is South Park (and that's JRPG combat with fucking QTEs)

I hate that they have an obsession with trash encounters and like throwing endless mobs of mooks at you

I hate that they employed Tim Cain for 7 years but haven't put him as creative lead already.

I did enjoy Mask of the Betrayer and NWN2 (mainly for the great user generated modules, but also the companions were pretty good, especially Grobnar Gnomehands. I have not played New Vegas because I can't imagine enjoying anything created with Bethesda's shitty FO3 engine. From what I remember KOTOR2 was OK and maybe could have been great if they were able to finish it.

Basically I wish I lived in the parallel universe where Troika never shut down, were able to acquire the Fallout IP, start getting enough funding to polish their games, release Arcanum 2 with a good combat system, etc.

 

[Mangoose]

TBH I'm not sure I can blame just one person for the general mismanagement issue for Obsidian. Fearqus' problem IMO is wanting to do a lot of shit in a short amount of time, which is kinda more business than management oriented.

I don't know who derailed this into about AP. Maybe it was me.

I apologize then because my point is really general Obsidian management over the years (... and SEGA). And while "separation" happens all the time, what happened here with MCA... well... it makes me worried about all the other employees. That's really my point, it's quite brief lol.

Though, now that I think about it, it's kinda ironic how Obsidian doesn't need go down for employees to lose their jobs. Granted if this behavior continues, it is going to be very bad for business. Obsidian should be scared now, because this news scares employees, current and future. If one doesn't feel like they have job security, that makes life.. quite complicated.

Just take this shit to court, we'll help fund, and let the legal process "decide" who's in the right and who's in the wrong. Whatever I have said here, I readily admit I don't know the truth. Legally speaking, this is hearsay. Which actually is good because being vague, because again, presenting specific slander or libel risks jail. Since 1735, btw, before the U.S. existed. On the other hand, it takes quite a bit of interpretation as to what counts as "libel" and "slander" (in terms of not explicitly defined in the Constitution, and having to deal with precedence). And also that the interpretation of defamation is difficult as it relates to two amendments, both the 1st and the 9th.

 

[Aim1ess]

I care a lot more about the funds that should have gone to Tyranny getting used on a different franchise than I do about the MCA shit. Sure that sucks but if I boycotted every business that did shitty stuff I would basically have to be a farmer and live off the grid. Taking funds from a game that had some potential to sink into another game really pissed me off though. Tyranny is underrated(though certainly very flawed) and maybe if it had a little more money then it would have had a better chance of getting a sequel(which I assume at this point it isn't? Not entirely sure) or maybe been able to have a real fucking ending instead of basically going to a commercial break and oops the show is actually over. I read about the abrupt ending beforehand and STILL was surprised by the extent of it even while literally on the lookout for it.

As for Deadfire, Ill let you know after the expansions are all out and I get around to playing it. I'm too old to play most games on release anymore. Get em cheaper and higher quality after patches and DLC.

At the end of the day though, the Cain/Boyarsky game will be the true test for Kickstarter revived edition Obsidian, not Deadfire. God help me, I'm beginning to expect that the stars will align somehow and it will be great. The 3 creative people I know on the project are Cain/Boyarsky, and the ME guy Chris L'Etoile. This is a writer who was angry that others "who got paid more than him" made him give a robot too much emotion/random motivation in Mass Effect because it didn't make sense for the character. He wrote the Codex in ME1(pretty much the only game codex I actually read when I played the game, other than Horizon(Gonzalez)) as well as the best characters in the series in 2 (Thane, Legion). I shit you not I always said the worldbuilding/atmosphere (and music) was the reason to play ME1 and the characters were the reason to play ME2. Apparently a lot of that had to do with this guy. But, moreso than what he did, looking at things hes said he seems to view things in a very ground up way(figure out what makes sense given the circumstance/characters) like Cain and Boyarsky, rather than a top down approach(do whats fun/cool then figure out why as an afterthought.) He also left during ME2, basically when the writing took a turn somewhat like Battlestar Galactica and went from "serious" Sci-fi to starchild prophecy bullshit. If these are the kinds of creative people Cain and Boyarsky are getting to run this project there is a surprisingly reasonable chance this game will be what many Obs and Fallout fanboys like myself are hoping it will be.

Unfortunately it could still be Obsidian's Action RPG Mass Effect/Skyrim with a better character creator and story as well. Time will tell.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Unfortunately it could still be Obsidian's Action RPG Mass Effect/Skyrim with a better character creator and story as well. Time will tell.

The worst part is this last part gnaws at me continuously. I should be praising the greatest God Cain and His Prophet, Boyarsky. Instead I have this awful feeling in my gut, the same that a fundamentalist must feel when he sees Western decay affect the youth of his community.

 

[Cael]

I wish you are dead. That really hurt you? Really?

You. Fucking. CUCK! Go to your safespace and die there of starvation, you millenial, SJW, professional offense taking shiteater.

You clearly are disrespectful to me. Thus proving my point right.

I have no respect for SJWs, so it is in no way adding to your hurt.

However, since if only wishing you dead is enough to hurt you, my spew about you being the lowest form of life that is possible to exist coupled with a few other things should have made you spontaneously combust, dissolve in acid, die of acute cyanide poisoning and be bitten by a million blue ring octopii. As you are still posting, it is proof that your claim of hurt is as fake as your offense taking. Which is, of course, typical of the SJW ilk.

 

[fantadomat]

I wish you are dead. That really hurt you? Really?

You. Fucking. CUCK! Go to your safespace and die there of starvation, you millenial, SJW, professional offense taking shiteater.

You clearly are disrespectful to me. Thus proving my point right.

I have no respect for SJWs, so it is in no way adding to your hurt.

However, since if only wishing you dead is enough to hurt you, my spew about you being the lowest form of life that is possible to exist coupled with a few other things should have made you spontaneously combust, dissolve in acid, die of acute cyanide poisoning and be bitten by a million blue ring octopii. As you are still posting, it is proof that your claim of hurt is as fake as your offense taking. Which is, of course, typical of the SJW ilk.

How the fuck did you end up with the conclusion that Jacob is a fucking sjw???? Your standard for SJW seems to be getting pretty low mate.

 

[Cael]

I wish you are dead. That really hurt you? Really?

You. Fucking. CUCK! Go to your safespace and die there of starvation, you millenial, SJW, professional offense taking shiteater.

You clearly are disrespectful to me. Thus proving my point right.

I have no respect for SJWs, so it is in no way adding to your hurt.

However, since if only wishing you dead is enough to hurt you, my spew about you being the lowest form of life that is possible to exist coupled with a few other things should have made you spontaneously combust, dissolve in acid, die of acute cyanide poisoning and be bitten by a million blue ring octopii. As you are still posting, it is proof that your claim of hurt is as fake as your offense taking. Which is, of course, typical of the SJW ilk.

How the fuck did you end up with the conclusion that Jacob is a fucking sjw???? Your standard for SJW seems to be getting pretty low mate.

If it takes offense like one, it can run, but it can't hide. Seriously, he equates wishing someone dead as being the same as stabbing him to death. That doesn't scream SJW offense taking to you?

 

[fantadomat]

I wish you are dead. That really hurt you? Really?

You. Fucking. CUCK! Go to your safespace and die there of starvation, you millenial, SJW, professional offense taking shiteater.

You clearly are disrespectful to me. Thus proving my point right.

I have no respect for SJWs, so it is in no way adding to your hurt.

However, since if only wishing you dead is enough to hurt you, my spew about you being the lowest form of life that is possible to exist coupled with a few other things should have made you spontaneously combust, dissolve in acid, die of acute cyanide poisoning and be bitten by a million blue ring octopii. As you are still posting, it is proof that your claim of hurt is as fake as your offense taking. Which is, of course, typical of the SJW ilk.

How the fuck did you end up with the conclusion that Jacob is a fucking sjw???? Your standard for SJW seems to be getting pretty low mate.

If it takes offense like one, it can run, but it can't hide. Seriously, he equates wishing someone dead as being the same as stabbing him to death. That doesn't scream SJW offense taking to you?

Hmmm not really,he said that it is a shitty thing to do and morally bad. To me it sounds more like a religious guy with high moral standards than anything from the left. SJW would have wanted you dead also and tried to get you kicked off work. Here on the codex we have very few degenerate real SJWs. Even some of them are really turning to the center.

 

[Cael]

I wish you are dead. That really hurt you? Really?

You. Fucking. CUCK! Go to your safespace and die there of starvation, you millenial, SJW, professional offense taking shiteater.

You clearly are disrespectful to me. Thus proving my point right.

I have no respect for SJWs, so it is in no way adding to your hurt.

However, since if only wishing you dead is enough to hurt you, my spew about you being the lowest form of life that is possible to exist coupled with a few other things should have made you spontaneously combust, dissolve in acid, die of acute cyanide poisoning and be bitten by a million blue ring octopii. As you are still posting, it is proof that your claim of hurt is as fake as your offense taking. Which is, of course, typical of the SJW ilk.

How the fuck did you end up with the conclusion that Jacob is a fucking sjw???? Your standard for SJW seems to be getting pretty low mate.

If it takes offense like one, it can run, but it can't hide. Seriously, he equates wishing someone dead as being the same as stabbing him to death. That doesn't scream SJW offense taking to you?

Hmmm not really,he said that it is a shitty thing to do and morally bad. To me it sounds more like a religious guy with high moral standards than anything from the left. SJW would have wanted you dead also and tried to get you kicked off work. Here on the codex we have very few degenerate real SJWs. Even some of them are really turning to the center.

Actually, he did:

You know who else wishes that people affiliated with things they don't like lose their job and live a miserable life?

SJWs.

There is a difference between wishing and hoping, and actually actively pursuing such an outcome.

Guess which one describes SJWs.

The differences is logistical, not moral, though. People who actively pursue such outcome simply have the time and resource to do that.

To him, they are the same. The only difference is one has the opportunity and the other didn't.

 

[Micormic]

I wish you are dead. That really hurt you? Really?

You. Fucking. CUCK! Go to your safespace and die there of starvation, you millenial, SJW, professional offense taking shiteater.

You clearly are disrespectful to me. Thus proving my point right.

I have no respect for SJWs, so it is in no way adding to your hurt.

However, since if only wishing you dead is enough to hurt you, my spew about you being the lowest form of life that is possible to exist coupled with a few other things should have made you spontaneously combust, dissolve in acid, die of acute cyanide poisoning and be bitten by a million blue ring octopii. As you are still posting, it is proof that your claim of hurt is as fake as your offense taking. Which is, of course, typical of the SJW ilk.

How the fuck did you end up with the conclusion that Jacob is a fucking sjw???? Your standard for SJW seems to be getting pretty low mate.

If it takes offense like one, it can run, but it can't hide. Seriously, he equates wishing someone dead as being the same as stabbing him to death. That doesn't scream SJW offense taking to you?

Whine about safe space when you have 25 members on your ignore list including me whom you had a breakdown to in pm so I would stop 'trolling' you.



Talk about hypocrite

 

[Lilura]

Cael easily takes the number 1 spot on my upcoming Top 10 Butthurt Codexers post.

 

[Mangoose]

You know, the more I think about this the more disturbed it feels. Because I don't feel this was due to immorality. I don't hate the management or anything. And I doubt MCA has hate either, otherwise he wouldn't have taken Feargus with him. Now, anger is definitely justified, but anger is an emotion that can go away, hate is a deeper "feeling" that does not easily go away. Perhaps this all happened because of emotions clouding reason. Or perhaps it's like the prequels, where Lucas real fault is taking the wrong role in the production, as in that he did not play to his strengths (producer, management, guidance as a project lead, etc.) but instead his weaknesses (directing, script). I mean, looking at Feargus' mobygames list, he was almost always a division director, or an executive producer. And he was GOOD at it. BG2 would not be as good without him. Only when Obsidian was formed did he step into head-head of management. Maybe that role simply isn't his strength. Making mistakes doesn't make one evil, it just means you made mistakes. (And if one were immoral, one would not consider them mistakes ).

But I'm just brainstorming so, ahem.. let's move on.

What makes me feel... bad/worried... is how things turned out. Giving MCA the benefit of the doubt, what happened was asshole-ish. Lemme repeat, this was not evil, it could've been just a heavy feud, but there are more ways to "let go" of employees than the way it was done this time. And the thing is, personality traits/issues don't just appear once and disappear (it can be changed, but we all know to change as a person takes a loong time). Because of that, there is real possibility of other employees being handled the same way. That's again not an accusation of management's morality. Mismanagement comes from mistakes, not from and desire to screw over one's employees. Well, I hope that's the case.

Perhaps the best thing to do is to take legal action in the form of settlement and avoid court. If things can't be handled amicably, that will screw up Obsidian as a business. I don't wish ill will for the company, but perhaps the company roles need to be reformed?
I don't know. This is hard because I doubt morality or intentional malice was involved. On the other hand, bad shit did happen, and so bad shit can happen to anyone else.

Q: What do y'all think? How should this be settled? A legal settlement? Actually taking this to court? Non-legal-related recompense? I'm not asking leading questions here. I don't know the answer so it would be nice to hear other peoples' opinions.

Nano ?

 

[fantadomat]

Cael easily takes the number 1 spot on my upcoming Top 10 Butthurt Codexers post.

That must be very low effort list then. I do remember at least 2-3 people that got really butthurt like the blue dog guy,there was a idiot that was spouting that he have 170 iq and god some shitty tag and went mental,there was an idiot that decided to insult Thief games in a Thief fan thread,got ravaged by JarlFrank .

 

[Lilura]

I'm low effort all 'round. Anyone who insults Thief needs their eyes pecked out by crows, though.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Q: What do y'all think? How should this be settled?

Boycott Obsidian until they go bankrupt.

 

[Strange Fellow]

What do y'all think? How should this be settled?