Obsidian General Discussion Thread

[ColonelTeacup]

It's gotta be a new White Wolf action-RPG.

If only the world were so kind as to give us a sequel to VTM:B. Unfortunately, I think those days are over, and Bloodlines will be a standalone title.

I don't know. Paradox (who owns the IP) and Obsidian have good relations. Also Leon Boyarski is back. A crude inference, but still.

I'm remaining incredibly skeptical. I don't see it happening unfortunately.

 

[Infinitron]

It's a new IP period, folks.

We've already been told point blank that Obsidian isn't making a VTM game.

 

[Excidium II]

It's a new IP period, folks.

We've already been told point blank that Obsidian isn't making a VTM game.

But is it fantasy or what.

 

[Infinitron]

I'd like to think the setting will be something a bit unusual because I don't see Boyarsky coming back from a decade of Diablo to design standard or even not-so-standard fantasy.

 

[ColonelTeacup]

It's a new IP period, folks.

We've already been told point blank that Obsidian isn't making a VTM game.

But is it fantasy or what.

It will most likely be an RPG.

 

[Morgoth]

It's a new IP period, folks.

We've already been told point blank that Obsidian isn't making a VTM game.

Well shit I never saw that.

But now I'm even more excited about the prospect of a Cold War noir RPG.

 

[Nano]

People asking for a Bloodlines sequel from Obsidian are unimaginative. There are so many other interesting settings in WoD to work with.

 

[LESS T_T]

I remember Feargus once mused about the possibility of reviving Aliens: Crucible as a digital-only title, with saying how it was a milestone or two away from going gold.

 

[vortex]

I remember Feargus once mused about the possibility of reviving Aliens: Crucible as a digital-only title, with saying how it was a milestone or two away from going gold.

This could be happening because Obsidian tweeted Sega's plan of revival major IPs with the words "What if ...".

 

[Excidium II]

Which coincides with revival of alien movies.

 

[Morality Games]

PoE is kind of bland but that's because they were trying really hard to have their cake and eat it too in terms of ripping off forgotten realms / appealing to Baldur's Gate 2 nostalgia while also trying to strike out and do their own thing.

And whaddya know, it was their most successful.

Blandness aside, there is a genuinely appealing fantasy story/world hidden in the spaces between PoE's excessive info dumps.

In some ways I imagine Eora to be closer to the version of the Forgotten Realms that Ed Greenwood describes from his private tabletop campaigns: bleak, sinister, and mysterious. Much closer to the moral tone of Greyhawk than what exists in WOTC's official Forgotten Realms publications.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

It's a new IP period, folks.

We've already been told point blank that Obsidian isn't making a VTM game.

Do we know for sure it's a new IP? I believe they made statements like "they're cooking up something new" and that it's a "dream project", but I don't know if we've read too much into that. They haven't had big rounds of layoffs so the WoT people must be doing something. The Boyarsky/Cain game being an original IP using ~150 staff members and running with a small publisher feels a bit fanciful unless they have big piles of their own cash lying around to burn through.

The other possibility is that there are multiple projects. Other than the Sega tweet (which I'm not confident in), and as abhorrent as it is for me to suggest, Marvel/Disney has been throwing around fat wads of cash and snapping up studios for hire (Sucker Punch, Eidos Montreal+Crystal Dynamics) to develop games for them. They're making a broad push into videogames beyond the shovelware level that they were previously working on, and it wouldn't be totally outlandish that there was a mid sized project at Obsidian working on one of their properties, secondarily to what Cain/Boyarsky are working on. That might be a logical place for WoT people to go, while the core-RPG people are off doing their dream project.

 

[TT1]

I´m pretty sure its Columns RPG... or maybe Alex Kid

 

[Quillon]

Do we know for sure it's a new IP? I believe they made statements like "they're cooking up something new" and that it's a "dream project", but I don't know if we've read too much into that. They haven't had big rounds of layoffs so the WoT people must be doing something. The Boyarsky/Cain game being an original IP using ~150 staff members and running with a small publisher feels a bit fanciful unless they have big piles of their own cash lying around to burn through.

All the info so far, off the top of my head: Its a new IP, its the dream game of Boyarski, there is a publisher involved, its AAA, its like Fallout or if you like Fallout you'll like this, so probably post apoc.

Obs had around 170 devs last time Feargus disclosed IIRC; around 50 of them are on Deadfire, 10 on Pathfinder & there is "Tyranny support" team and this so it isn't likely 150 devs are working on this. At most 90 devs...which still sounds too many given most people Obs had on an rpg was around 60 and they were making New Vegas. Tho Armored Warfare prolly topped that & Obs' been hiring in the past couple of months.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

Do we know for sure it's a new IP? I believe they made statements like "they're cooking up something new" and that it's a "dream project", but I don't know if we've read too much into that. They haven't had big rounds of layoffs so the WoT people must be doing something. The Boyarsky/Cain game being an original IP using ~150 staff members and running with a small publisher feels a bit fanciful unless they have big piles of their own cash lying around to burn through.

All the info so far, off the top of my head: Its a new IP, its the dream game of Boyarski, there is a publisher involved, its AAA, its like Fallout or if you like Fallout you'll like this, so probably post apoc.

Obs had around 170 devs last time Feargus disclosed IIRC; around 50 of them are on Deadfire, 10 on Pathfinder & there is "Tyranny support" team and this so it isn't likely 150 devs are working on this. At most 90 devs...which still sounds too many given most people Obs had on an rpg was around 60 and they were making New Vegas. Tho Armored Warfare prolly topped that & Obs' been hiring in the past couple of months.

Thanks for the write-up. As far as it being a new IP, what's the actual source on that?

 

[Background Character]

Why do people want Bloodlines 2, you and I and everybody knows full well its not gonna be half as good the first game. Better to try and make something new than tarnish the memory.

Likewise why do people start creaming themselves when they caught a whiff that Obsidian may be working on a new Fallout game, it's not gonna be an isometric good game like before it's gonna be a Bethesdard turd using their piece of shit engine. At least when it just says Bethesda you can just ignore it instead of having to slog through it.

FUCK.

 

[Quillon]

Thanks for the write-up. As far as it being a new IP, what's the actual source on that?

https://youtu.be/mTQG_iLXyFU?t=3219

...but most importantly I'm working with Tim, to create another brand new IP, something we haven't done together since 2001.

It's a new IP period, folks.

 

[Morgoth]

Based Tim & Leon are back fuck yeah!

 

[Quillon]

This is on youtube for 2 months and no one posted it? Or have I missed it?

 

[Infinitron]

Took them long enough to upload, that talk was in December.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Do we have any idea who would be the publisher for this? I figure it must be MS again, as all of the other big sharks have their won RPG studios and zero need to hire an outside contractor.

 

[Fry]

Do we have any idea who would be the publisher for this? I figure it must be MS again, as all of the other big sharks have their won RPG studios and zero need to hire an outside contractor.

I doubt it's a big western publisher. Still betting on :russiastronk:

 

[Infinitron]

TimCain posted about his Reboot Develop talk on the Obsidian forums yesterday: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/92...better-rpg-seven-mistakes-to-avoid/?p=1912692

That was just one example way of grouping them. Instead of mental and physical stats, you could also group stats by power (strength, intelligence) or speed (agility, wits) or resistance (endurance, willpower). You could have squares instead of triangles if you want more stats in each group, and if you have more than two groupings, the groupings themselves can be arranged in a meaningful way (i.e., with three groupings, one group could be the most important and another the least, and bonuses assigned accordingly).

This geometric way of representing stats allows more ideas to be expressed than just numerical superiority.

p.s. Sorry for the delay in answering. I returned to work from a conference in Croatia, posted here, then left for another conference in Australia two days later.

 

[Grape_You_In_the_Mouth]

Sounds like Tim Cain is illuminati tbh

 

[Infinitron]

More: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/92...better-rpg-seven-mistakes-to-avoid/?p=1912903

I wrote my response quickly, Quillon, so I will go into more detail.

First, sure, a line is a shape, and it can be up-down or side-side in orientation. But I would rather invent more stats and make triangles or squares.

When bonuses are applied to a shape, all of the stats get the bonus. So just like what you said, GREAT-OK-OK becomes LEGENDARY-GOOD-GOOD.

And here's why the shape and its values are better than numbers. In Fallout, stats went from 1 to 10. This makes you think that each number is an increment better or worse than the one after or before. But that wasn't true. A 3 Intelligence is much worse than a 4, compared with how bad a 4 was to a 5, because dumb dialog kicked in at 3. Similarly, a 6 Luck was better than a 5, but a 7 Luck was way better than a 6, because that was the threshold for certain random encounters to become possible. In other words, numbers imply a smooth gradient from low to high, where having 4 or 5 distinct values does not imply that they are linear in any way. They act like thresholds. You expect something new when your Luck goes from OK to Good,a nd from Good to Great, and not just your crit chances to go up a little for each one.

Here's another reason I like shapes better than numbers. Instead of giving you points to spend, and perhaps some additional constraints about not being able to lower too many stats to 1 (because maybe a character with stats of 10 10 1 1 1 1 1 is just not viable), shapes have their constraints built into their geometry. You cannot point all the vertices of a triangle up. And humans have evolved to handle visual comparisons more easily than numerical ones.

I'm not saying this idea of shape-based stats is ground-breaking or revolutionary. It's just a different way of thinking about the issue of character creation and stats. I am sure I would allow an interested player to "look under the hood", so to speak, to see the numbers corresponding to the stats. But many players won't care about that, and most shouldn't have to. It's all part of the "play how you want" philosophy.