Obsidian General Discussion Thread

[HoboForEternity]

fucking corporates ruining everything :trigglypuff:

 

[Infinitron]

Feargus Digital Dragons talk:

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

I always get depressed about my life when I realize how young these guys are.

Feargus was heading Black Isle at 25 and MCA already worked on Fallout and PST at that age.

 

[Infinitron]

I always get depressed about my life when I realize how young these guys are.

Feargus was heading Black Isle at 25 and MCA already worked on Fallout and PST at that age.

Yep, and Brian Fargo was only in his late 30s when Interplay collapsed. What's even more depressing is the decade wasted scrabbling for work after that, wasting that head-start.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.gamebanshee.com/news/117314-feargus-urquhart-digital-dragons-2016-talk-video.html

The talk focuses on Urquhart's career and the lessons he's learned during it, most specifically when working at Obsidian, and by its nature contains several interesting anecdotes and snippets of info on the company and its games, some previously unreleased.

For example, Urquhart revealed that, during the development of Neverwinter Nights 2, Obsidian invested $1 million from its own cash reserves into the game, and that, perhaps partly as a result of that, the company risked going out of business right after the game's release.

Urquhart also revealed that Pillars of Eternity II is in development (something we're well aware of by now) and that, while they could have moved into production faster, the studio decided to overhaul the game's development tools first, to make sure that the game could be developed as efficiently as possible. Hopefully those overhauled tools will include the expanded AI tools that were mentioned back in a PAX Prime retrospective last year, because both the companion and enemy AI could use some work.

To stress the importance of toolsets, Obsidian's CEO noted that Fallout: New Vegas could only be developed so quickly (18 months) and with such a small team (50 people) because of the tools developed by Bethesda. And speaking of schedules, one project that took longer for Obsidian than initially anticipated was The White March pair of expansions for Pillars of Eternity. According to Urquhart, part of the reason is that the initial schedule for the expansion didn't take [into account] the time and manpower needed to support the base game.

Other mistakes were made when developing the expansions, as Urquhart noted that, for example, the price point was simply too high for the target audience, especially when they had to contend with older AAA games that were flying off the digital shelves for as little as $9.99. For future Pillars of Eternity projects, Urquhart stated that post-release content will be developed in a much different form, one that is much closer to Fallout: New Vegas' smaller but more frequent story-based DLC.

It's also worth noting that, during the talk, Urquhart noted that Armored Warfare -- Obsidian's free-to-play tank MMO -- is being worked on by a team of roughly 130 developers. Considering the fact that the company is currently employing slightly more than 200 people (as stated by design director J.E. Sawyer on his personal Tumblr blog), that means that more than half of the company is busy on the project.

In practice, I can't help but wonder if, for all intents and purposes, an enthusiast website like ours shouldn't consider Obsidian a smaller company than it used to be, as counterintuitive as that might sound, simply because so few of its developers are currently working on RPGs. I'm well aware that it's not that simple and that developers can be shuffled between projects among other things, but it's certainly something worth pondering over.

As a final note, during his talk Urquhart revealed that he's been closed to resigning several times and made no attempt to hide the fact that he's been frustrated at being unable to bring the company where he wanted several times in the past. However, it looks like he's currently in good spirits, which hopefully means the company is currently on solid footing.

 

[Latro]

I always get depressed about my life when I realize how young these guys are.

Feargus was heading Black Isle at 25 and MCA already worked on Fallout and PST at that age.

don't worry, they had straight white male privilege

 

[Infinitron]

So apparently this is a thing:



Obsidian founding date?

 

[CyberWhale]

 

[Sannom]

Why the sudden urge to kill yourself?

 

[LESS T_T]

 

[SniperHF]

RPG Games

Spoiler

Yeah yeah stupid hashtags w/e

 

[Infinitron]

He must be talking about Aliens: Crucible.

 

[AN4RCHID]

Sawyer gonna sawy.

 

[Roguey]

Sega had no problem with the female protagonist in Alien: Isolation though.

All those dummies are getting mad because the rumor of a female Link turned out to be false. They're getting mad at something that never existed and was never promised.

 

[santino27]

They're getting mad at something that never existed and was never promised.

Isn't that what people do these days?

 

[Fairfax]

Sawyer just salty because he ruined the game and got it cancelled.

Sega had no problem with the female protagonist in Alien: Isolation though.

All those dummies are getting mad because the rumor of a female Link turned out to be false. They're getting mad at something that never existed and was never promised.

To be fair, that Linkle bullshit surely didn't help.

 

[Athelas]

Sega had no problem with the female protagonist in Alien: Isolation though.

Because she was literally walking fanservice - Ripley's daughter who was mentioned in the movie.

Without circumstances like those, counting on publishers to prioritize female protagonists over male ones strikes me as oddly naive.

 

[Roguey]

Sawyer just salty because he ruined the game and got it cancelled.

It was canceled because the 2008 financial crisis put Sega in a crunch and it needed more time than Alpha Protocol to be released in a state that could be considered near-complete

Sawyer also had no say regarding the character system.

 

[Sannom]

Without circumstances like those, counting on publishers to prioritize female protagonists over male ones strikes me as oddly naive.

I doubt Sawyer had lots of hope there, it was probably a troll, if it went through, great, if it didn't, well, it's like he said, the reactions were comical.

 

[Fairfax]

Sawyer just salty because he ruined the game and got it cancelled.

It was canceled because the 2008 financial crisis put Sega in a crunch and it needed more time than Alpha Protocol to be released in a state that could be considered near-complete

Sawyer also had no say regarding the character system.

Eh, accounts differ. Not even Feargus tells that version, which sounds much better than "we couldn't turn the excellent vertical slice into an actual good game".

 

[vortex]

John Deiley GameBanshee interview: http://web.archive.org/web/20040110021453/http://www.gamebanshee.com/interviews/johndeiley1.php

I didn't know that Josh Sawyer was working on Baldur's gate 3: Black Hound. Now I know where from came easter egg in Pillars of Eternity: Black Hound Inn.
Reading all of this, PoE is probably what BG3 would have been or wanted to be.

 

[Roguey]

Eh, accounts differ. Not even Feargus tells that version, which sounds much better than "we couldn't turn the excellent vertical slice into an actual good game".

Developer Obsidian has revealed that its canned Aliens RPG was very nearly finished.

"Oh, if you had come in and played any of the last builds we were working on, you would have said it was a finished game," boss Feargus Urquhart told Joystiq.

"That's how close we were. It looked and felt like it was ready to ship."

Note: Right after that article went up, Josh clarified on SA that no it wasn't anywhere near "ready to ship" and would have required more than a year.

 

[Fairfax]

Eh, accounts differ. Not even Feargus tells that version, which sounds much better than "we couldn't turn the excellent vertical slice into an actual good game".

Developer Obsidian has revealed that its canned Aliens RPG was very nearly finished.

"Oh, if you had come in and played any of the last builds we were working on, you would have said it was a finished game," boss Feargus Urquhart told Joystiq.

"That's how close we were. It looked and felt like it was ready to ship."

Note: Right after that article went up, Josh clarified on SA that no it wasn't anywhere near "ready to ship" and would have required more than a year.

Even if he's right, the game was in development for almost 3 years at that point. If they didn't have something "anywhere near ready to ship", that's on him as well.

 

[Ninjerk]

John Deiley GameBanshee interview: http://web.archive.org/web/20040110021453/http://www.gamebanshee.com/interviews/johndeiley1.php

I didn't know that Josh Sawyer was working on Baldur's gate 3: Black Hound. Now I know where from came easter egg in Pillars of Eternity: Black Hound Inn.
Reading all of this, PoE is probably what BG3 would have been or wanted to be.

Play the creator commentary in the Inn; they talk about it there.

 

[Roguey]

Even if he's right, the game was in development for almost 3 years at that point. If they didn't have something "anywhere near ready to ship", that's on him as well.

They had to create everything from scratch, including the engine. It started development at the end of 2006 (JES himself was tied up on NWN2 through October), canceled at the start of 2009. That's closer to a little more than two than three, and RPGs made from scratch typically require 3.5 years. His estimate regarding how much longer it'd take was fair.