Obsidian General Discussion Thread

[DosBuster]

Well, for the most part, in terms of decision making fallout has followed the same four choice structure. The only problem lies in asking questions to an npc.

 

[Sannom]

Says the lunatic with 12,000 posts.

I think you're off the mark by about 5,000 posts.

Assuming this could happen, is the Fallout 4 template (voiced protagonist, lack of skills, etc) really salvageable? I haven't played it, but I doubt Obsidian could make a New Vegas out of it with those limitations. I wouldn't be interested in a better man's Fallout 4.

I think you could salvage something half-good if you put skills back in as a replacement for attributes. At least it would make more sense.

The voiced protagonist however, I don't see how anyone can salvage it. Unless they decide to make Alpha Protocol in the wasteland, in which case it wouldn't exactly be a FNV-like game.

 

[Duraframe300]

Also, considering Sawyer actually threatened to quit during the Kickstarter discussions,

Can you remind me what that was?

 

[Infinitron]

Can you remind me what that was?

A rumor: http://www.rpgcodex.net/article.php?id=9978

 

[Duraframe300]

Can you remind me what that was?

A rumor: http://www.rpgcodex.net/article.php?id=9978

Ah. He threatened to quit over the discussion Kickstarter or no. Isn't really that uncommon though, and I don't see how this relates to him somehow demanding he's put on Fallout. Or Fenstermaker, especially considering John Gonzalez was a new hire when he was put on FNV.

 

[Flou]

Well, it's also worth considering the AW has to leave open beta at some point and most of its team will move on. If they don't find another big project, a lot of people would have to get fired or they'd bleed money.

Agree, but PoE2 could generate $10-15 million in profits, which I'm pretty sure is a lot more than what Bethesda would pay them. I mean, $10 million over 18 months to ~50 people would be $200k/person on average.
Tough call if they were offered it. PoE2 is more important to the company, Fallout might me more important to them personally.

I don't think AW will lose that much staff, unless My.Com decides it's not worth it. Even after beta stage they still need to create new content and features for the game to keep people interested in the game. If they don't have constant new updates for it people will just quit playing, so yeah. Artists etc. will still be really busy creating new maps and tanks for the game. And if they really want to beat WoT, they still need to come up with new game modes, tweak their engine to work better etc.

The thing is, they can always go back to PoE2 after Fallout, if they do PoE2 first they will definately miss the opportunity to work on Fallout. So if the Fallout contract is worth about the same money they could create with PoE2, it's definately worth pulling team from it and making a new Fallout game. PoE2 might actually benefit from the pause, they could still have some people tweaking the ideas, testing what works and what doesn't before fully committing to it.
But in my opinion it all comes down to whether Bethesda actually will pay them roaylties this time around or not. Otherwise I think the better option would be to work on PoE2 and whatever else they got planned out that will create actual income from sales to the company and not taking something that will just be a contract work for a short period of time, with the risk of not getting any royalties from a massive hit game due to too low metacritic score.

Logistically it could be impossible for them. Unless Tyranny team is almost finished with the game and they can just pull people from AW to work on Fallout for a short periods of time. PoE team alone isn't big enough to tackle Fallout and the Pathfinder team is just couple of people. I want to believe, but... I guess I'll just wait and see

 

[Sordid MCA/Prosper Hybryd]

Perhaps, Anthony Davis or TimCain can confirm that Obsidian is not working on a Fallout title.

 

[Flou]

Perhaps, Anthony Davis or TimCain can confirm that Obsidian is not working on a Fallout title.

I see what you did there! If they do not confirm, clearly they are working on one!

 

[Prime Junta]

Perhaps, Anthony Davis or TimCain can confirm that Obsidian is not working on a Fallout title.

Like that would help. It'd just result in "Well, maybe they're not working on one now but clearly negotiations are far along and they will be working on one soon..."

 

[Fairfax]

I would expect the Fallout deal to be $25 million and upwards, but I could be wrong.

It is still complicated, because on one hand PoE belongs to Obsidian, but on the other hand a Fallout will give Obsidian much more exposure and might even turn them into a AAA company (if they want to and handle it smartly). The point remains, on a personal level it is very hard to ask your big guns to stay away from a title like Fallout. But maybe a compromise can be reached with part of the time devoted to each project.

$25 million if it took 4 years or something. That's way too much for 18 months of development.
Feargus said back when the company had almost 200 people that it cost $1 million a month to keep it going (probably salaries+bills). $25 million would pay almost 200 people for 25 months. This would take 18 with a team of 50-60.

Assuming this could happen, is the Fallout 4 template (voiced protagonist, lack of skills, etc) really salvageable? I haven't played it, but I doubt Obsidian could make a New Vegas out of it with those limitations. I wouldn't be interested in a better man's Fallout 4.

The game would need a new dialogue interface, which could be done in time, but Bethesda wouldn't let them get rid of the voiced protagonist.

Ah. He threatened to quit over the discussion Kickstarter or no. Isn't really that uncommon though, and I don't see how this relates to him somehow demanding he's put on Fallout. Or Fenstermaker, especially considering John Gonzalez was a new hire when he was put on FNV.

My point is that, being the FNV director and Obsidian's design director, I doubt he'd gladly sit this one out. The threat to quit was just one example of how vocal he can be.

I don't think AW will lose that much staff, unless My.Com decides it's not worth it. Even after beta stage they still need to create new content and features for the game to keep people interested in the game. If they don't have constant new updates for it people will just quit playing, so yeah. Artists etc. will still be really busy creating new maps and tanks for the game. And if they really want to beat WoT, they still need to come up with new game modes, tweak their engine to work better etc.

The thing is, they can always go back to PoE2 after Fallout, if they do PoE2 first they will definately miss the opportunity to work on Fallout. So if the Fallout contract is worth about the same money they could create with PoE2, it's definately worth pulling team from it and making a new Fallout game. PoE2 might actually benefit from the pause, they could still have some people tweaking the ideas, testing what works and what doesn't before fully committing to it.
But in my opinion it all comes down to whether Bethesda actually will pay them roaylties this time around or not. Otherwise I think the better option would be to work on PoE2 and whatever else they got planned out that will create actual income from sales to the company and not taking something that will just be a contract work for a short period of time, with the risk of not getting any royalties from a massive hit game due to too low metacritic score.

Logistically it could be impossible for them. Unless Tyranny team is almost finished with the game and they can just pull people from AW to work on Fallout for a short periods of time. PoE team alone isn't big enough to tackle Fallout and the Pathfinder team is just couple of people. I want to believe, but... I guess I'll just wait and see

Sure, part of the team will keep working on AW, but adding new stuff doesn't take as much work as creating the game from the ground up;

I don't think PoE2 in 2017 would be as successful as the first for a lot of reasons, but 500k copies would be ~$12 million in profits. It's also the first original IP they own, so it's even more important in the long run.
Still, the market for independent studios making AAA RPGs is very small, probably smaller than it was in 2009-2010. It's an opportunity they shouldn't pass up.

They won't get royalties (pretty much never happens) or any great deal unless ZeniMax is feeling very generous. Back in 2009 they had more leverage than they would have now. ZeniMax hadn't bought or created a bunch of studios yet. If Obsidian complicates the deal, they'll give it to Arkane, Bethesda Montreal or another internal studio.

The trickiest part would be the writers. Good ones are hard to come by, and both PoE2 and Tyranny need plenty. Also, even after Tyranny is released they're gonna need most of the team, as Paradox will milk the shit out of it with DLC.

 

[Rev]

Am I the only one who'd prefer Obsidian to create its own spiritual successor to Fallout instead of trying to revive the corpse of the franchise?
I mean, they did a great job with New Vegas, and they had to work with that shit of an engine, a short timetable and had to follow Fallout 3's formula, but Bethesda has proceed in ruining the franchise and Fallout 4, from what I've seen, is even worse than their previous works, with all the changes they made to the systems, the voiced protagonists and all the other things that Zenithesda wouldn't allow Obsidian to change back in order to make a proper rpg. They could still pull out a decent game, hell maybe even a good one, but it would still be just a spin-off that would be retconned (or just ignored) by the canon Beth's games and it would still have to be a popamole fps with the raped SPECIAL ruleset applied in FO4.

Now, on the other hand, a new IP lead by Cain and/or Boyarsky (Sawyer did a great job with FNV but he's working on PoE2 and after that he said he want to make a historical rpg, so he can't work also on this new project) would probably bring something fresh on the table, it wouldn't have to deal with the limitations imposed by Bethesda and, if funded through Fig, KS or PoE's profits, could also turn out to be more profitable for the company as well, since we all know the controversy for FNV metacritic score and all. And Feargus hinted some time ago that there might be some new crowdfunding project coming with Tim Cain in a key role, by the way.

 

[Excidium II]

No sequels. No spiritual sucessors.

New things. I honestly cannot believe creative people are happy working on really similar projects.

 

[Flou]

Sure, part of the team will keep working on AW, but adding new stuff doesn't take as much work as creating the game from the ground up;

I don't think PoE2 in 2017 would be as successful as the first for a lot of reasons, but 500k copies would be ~$12 million in profits. It's also the first original IP they own, so it's even more important in the long run.
Still, the market for independent studios making AAA RPGs is very small, probably smaller than it was in 2009-2010. It's an opportunity they shouldn't pass up.

They won't get royalties (pretty much never happens) or any great deal unless ZeniMax is feeling very generous. Back in 2009 they had more leverage than they would have now. ZeniMax hadn't bought or created a bunch of studios yet. If Obsidian complicates the deal, they'll give it to Arkane, Bethesda Montreal or another internal studio.

The trickiest part would be the writers. Good ones are hard to come by, and both PoE2 and Tyranny need plenty. Also, even after Tyranny is released they're gonna need most of the team, as Paradox will milk the shit out of it with DLC.

I would say at least half of them will keep working on it, if not even more. They can't really let go of art team, they need those new tanks and maps badly. There's a gazillion tanks they can implement into the game and let's face it, every premium tank they can put into the game will create some income. Even if they are done with building from the ground up, there's still need for programmers and such to get it working better and to help implementing new stuff and I doubt everything they've mapped out for the game will be out before "release" anyways. WoT is a juggernaut and you can't compete against it if you are not committed fully to beat it.

Bethesda Montreal isn't really well known though, naturally some drones will buy it no matter what just by seeing the Bethesda logo on it, but it could be a disaster if the team isn't capable. Arkane I believe is quite busy with Dishonored IP and I doubt Bethesda wants them to move from that to work on Fallout, unless Dishonored 2 fails completely sales wise. From marketing point of view, giving Boyarsky & Cain a chance to work on Fallout would benefit them a lot more than putting some B team internally onto it. Not to mention they can promote it by claiming it's from the makers of F:NV. But still it's a longshot and it's impossible to say what the people at Zenimax think about it. They might even want to cash in on creating a "sequel" to Fallout: "Tactics" by making Fallout turn based and isometric again and have it play out like original Fallout's not like Tactics, but calling it such so drones will know the difference between Fallout 4 and Fallout: "Tactics". Creating something like that would not cost much and as Wasteland 2 proved, there's still demand for such game.

 

[Flou]

Am I the only one who'd prefer Obsidian to create its own spiritual successor to Fallout instead of trying to revive the corpse of the franchise?
I mean, they did a great job with New Vegas, and they had to work with that shit of an engine, a short timetable and had to follow Fallout 3's formula, but Bethesda has proceed in ruining the franchise and Fallout 4, from what I've seen, is even worse than their previous works, with all the changes they made to the systems, the voiced protagonists and all the other things that Zenithesda wouldn't allow Obsidian to change back in order to make a proper rpg. They could still pull out a decent game, hell maybe even a good one, but it would still be just a spin-off that would be retconned (or just ignored) by the canon Beth's games and it would still have to be a popamole fps with the raped SPECIAL ruleset applied in FO4.

Now, on the other hand, a new IP lead by Cain and/or Boyarsky (Sawyer did a great job with FNV but he's working on PoE2 and after that he said he want to make a historical rpg, so he can't work also on this new project) would probably bring something fresh on the table, it wouldn't have to deal with the limitations imposed by Bethesda and, if funded through Fig, KS or PoE's profits, could also turn out to be more profitable for the company as well, since we all know the controversy for FNV metacritic score and all. And Feargus hinted some time ago that there might be some new crowdfunding project coming with Tim Cain in a key role, by the way.

I would rather have spiritual successors or completely new IP's than generic crap/sequels. But then again, Fallout made by Obsidian would still be quite special, not that I think it's likely. I think with PoE and Tyranny they are definately on the right track, both of them being their own creations, they just need to diversify with the setting from fantasy to something else for a change. Hopefully after Tyranny and PoE2 Boyarsky and Cain will amaze with something that is completely new and not a damn fantasy game with dragons in it.

 

[Cadius]

https://twitter.com/Obsidian/status/662486390391746560

Sadly, and this is why I exclaimed that no one should believe me, I cannot reveal my source to anyone since that was what I agreed to in order to obtain this information.

I invited some people from Obsidian, including Mikey Dowling (he runs their twitter account). He's a very good friend of mine, so he was my guest at the LA release party. I also made sure Tim Cain, Robert, and Feargus were invited. Once again, friends of mine that I wanted to see at the party.

I'm not sure why you randomly posted my NCR helmet and flag as proof of OEI working on stuff? I worked on New Vegas at Obsidian. It's at my desk now at Bethesda.

Also, stop trolling for attention. This discussion is pointless, and you have no real source. I will end it right now. Obsidian is not working on a Fallout game. If you don't believe me, here are Obsidian's own words: https://twitter.com/Obsidian/status/722157591770476546

 

[Crooked Bee]

brb removing DosBuster's brofists

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Fairfax]

Actually surprised someone from Bethesda is an user here. Perfect timing with the post, too.

 

[Latro]

what compels a man to forfeit his internet brofits like this?

 

[Rev]

No sequels. No spiritual sucessors.

New things. I honestly cannot believe creative people are happy working on really similar projects.

I agree in wanting new things, but spiritual successors are not sequels. Arcanum was kind of a spiritual successor to Fallout and yet it was a very different game, same as Age of Decadence and Underrail, or ME to KotOR or D:OS to Ultima VII.
As I see it, a new IP influenced by Fallout wouldn't be another post-apocalyptic with vaults, retro art style, deathclaws, ghouls and supermutants and all that stuff. It could just take the general design behind Fallout (classless system, freedom to create many different characters with their own different ways of solving quests, non-linearity, C&C, etc.) and make something that is not just another ripoff of a classic game, but also something fresh.

Am I the only one who'd prefer Obsidian to create its own spiritual successor to Fallout instead of trying to revive the corpse of the franchise?
I mean, they did a great job with New Vegas, and they had to work with that shit of an engine, a short timetable and had to follow Fallout 3's formula, but Bethesda has proceed in ruining the franchise and Fallout 4, from what I've seen, is even worse than their previous works, with all the changes they made to the systems, the voiced protagonists and all the other things that Zenithesda wouldn't allow Obsidian to change back in order to make a proper rpg. They could still pull out a decent game, hell maybe even a good one, but it would still be just a spin-off that would be retconned (or just ignored) by the canon Beth's games and it would still have to be a popamole fps with the raped SPECIAL ruleset applied in FO4.

Now, on the other hand, a new IP lead by Cain and/or Boyarsky (Sawyer did a great job with FNV but he's working on PoE2 and after that he said he want to make a historical rpg, so he can't work also on this new project) would probably bring something fresh on the table, it wouldn't have to deal with the limitations imposed by Bethesda and, if funded through Fig, KS or PoE's profits, could also turn out to be more profitable for the company as well, since we all know the controversy for FNV metacritic score and all. And Feargus hinted some time ago that there might be some new crowdfunding project coming with Tim Cain in a key role, by the way.

I would rather have spiritual successors or completely new IP's than generic crap/sequels. But then again, Fallout made by Obsidian would still be quite special, not that I think it's likely. I think with PoE and Tyranny they are definately on the right track, both of them being their own creations, they just need to diversify with the setting from fantasy to something else for a change. Hopefully after Tyranny and PoE2 Boyarsky and Cain will amaze with something that is completely new and not a damn fantasy game with dragons in it.

I don't think Tyranny will have dragons or too much typical fantasy stuff, but I too would welcome a change of scenery for sure, some new IP set in the real world or a good sci-fi, or something that hasn't already been done to death like classic fantasy rpgs.
As for Fallout, Obsidian managed to pull out a great game with NV but it would've been even better if they didn't have to work on that framework, so why not make their own stuff? Now, of course they couldn't make an AAA rpg without a publisher like Bethesda, but who cares? A smaller project may be both more profitable for them and better quality-wise.

 

[Fairfax]

:mrpresident:

 

[Athelas]

I invited some people from Obsidian, including Mikey Dowling (he runs their twitter account). He's a very good friend of mine, so he was my guest at the LA release party. I also made sure Tim Cain, Robert, and Feargus were invited. Once again, friends of mine that I wanted to see at the party.

I'm not sure why you randomly posted my NCR helmet and flag as proof of OEI working on stuff? I worked on New Vegas at Obsidian. It's at my desk now at Bethesda.

Also, stop trolling for attention. This discussion is pointless, and you have no real source. I will end it right now. Obsidian is not working on a Fallout game. If you don't believe me, here are Obsidian's own words: https://twitter.com/Obsidian/status/722157591770476546

While I appreciate the clarification, I think jumping to their defense like this will only fuel the flames of speculation. I can already imagine the Kotaku headlines: 'Bethesda developer denies Obsidian developed Fallout spin-off on racist fanforum'.

 

[Fry]

It's so sad when trolls get trolled.

 

[DosBuster]

Truth be told, this was more a test to see if it would somehow spread to sites like Kotaku.

Regardless, I now have a talking point with the ladies: 'How is it you have 1,068 messages and no brofists Dosbuster?'

Freedom feels good.

 

[Cadius]

While I appreciate the clarification, I think jumping to their defense like this will only fuel the flames of speculation. I can already imagine the Kotaku headlines: 'Bethesda developer denies Obsidian developed Fallout spin-off on racist fanforum'.

I was going to let it go until he started posting OEI and my twitter posts.