Obsidian General Discussion Thread

[santino27]

I have been out of the loop for a while regarding Obsidian, in what ways has Sawyer gone into decline?

Pillars of Eternity
Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire

 

[Ol' Willy]

I have been out of the loop for a while regarding Obsidian, in what ways has Sawyer gone into decline?

Everything except New Vegas

 

[Gordian Nutt]

Posting a lot about his game all of a sudden, is this building up to something?

Better question is if anyone cares

Spoiler: No

He needs to stop posting and do work. If he had a real job he would have been fired

 

[Flying Dutchman]

I have been out of the loop for a while regarding Obsidian, in what ways has Sawyer gone into decline?

I don't think it's "gone into decline" as much as he started talking too much and revealed what was already there. Oh, and his writing, which should stop at once or be quarantined to smaller projects (oh wait).

I don't blame him so much for the control/autism, it's mostly the condescending attitude and the clear indication that he doesn't understand or care about actually entertaining players vs. dictating what entertainment should be within his world view.

I guess you could argue that Infinitron and Woedica shilling for Sawyer is also evidence of decline. (j/k Infinitron)

 

[vortex]

Did he direct Alien RPG? What if Obsidian is making Alien Isolation successor ?

 

[I ASK INANE QUESTIONS]

it's mostly the condescending attitude and the clear indication that he doesn't understand or care about actually entertaining players vs. dictating what entertainment should be within his world view.

That's just his inner goon doing what goons always do.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Goon? Please define in this instance.

 

[Tigranes]

I have been out of the loop for a while regarding Obsidian, in what ways has Sawyer gone into decline?

I don't think it's "gone into decline" as much as he started talking too much and revealed what was already there. Oh, and his writing, which should stop at once or be quarantined to smaller projects (oh wait).

I don't blame him so much for the control/autism, it's mostly the condescending attitude and the clear indication that he doesn't understand or care about actually entertaining players vs. dictating what entertainment should be within his world view.

I guess you could argue that Infinitron and Woedica shilling for Sawyer is also evidence of decline. (j/k Infinitron)

It feels like quite a lot of veteran RPG gamers never liked Sawyer, and have often found him patronising/annoying/antagonistic.

Personally, I've not found him grating. He seems to mostly be saying: "Players often complain about X - what is the actual underlying problem and what might be a good way to solve it? I tried this, and it seems people didn't like it / it didn't work, and maybe this is why." Which is perfectly fine. You have to take customer complaints as symptoms.

However, maybe he just rubs people the wrong way, I've seen a lot of people take it as "You guys are WRONG and D&D is also WRONG and I alone have the RIGHT ANSWER". Leading to really weird complaints like how Sawyer is an arrogant idiot for daring to try health/stamina systems, when you only need to look at the Codex and tons of people had complained about simplistic HP systems and have long asked for RPGs to try something like this.

What I see as the real issue is his actual design resullts, not the way he talks. It's that when Sawyer's been in complete charge of entire gameplay systems, the result has been an ill-fitting collage of overthought decisions such that a clear, cohesive vision of a fun gameplay loop doesn't emerge so well. Sometimes he's too focused on fixing problems that aren't such big problems or correcting for known issues in past systems, that his own system ends up a mess (e.g. per-rest/per-encounter and class resource shenanigans).

 

[Sannom]

What's so bad about the class resources ?

Goon? Please define in this instance.

Something Awful member and poster, I believe.

Personally, I've not found him grating. He seems to mostly be saying: "Players often complain about X - what is the actual underlying problem and what might be a good way to solve it? I tried this, and it seems people didn't like it / it didn't work, and maybe this is why." Which is perfectly fine. You have to take customer complaints as symptoms.

That's funny, I recently saw a documentary about the creation of the most recent Killer Instinct and there is a guy in this whom I thought looked and sounded a lot like Sawyer who said pretty much this about a character balance problem.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Sailor Woedica]

I hope they show his game soon!

 

[tripedal]

Both PoE and Tyranny will be free next week on the Epic store. Some kind of promotional push before a new announcement?

 

[LESS T_T]

That's pretty conveniently coincide with TGA, but I'm not sure there's any project that can be announced right now. Sawyer's game maybe, but that's probably small and unexciting for TGA.

 

[Flying Dutchman]

Something Awful member and poster, I believe.

Do any of the Obsidian devs post on Something Awful?

I didn't want to go there to look (seems like a cesspool like Reddit), so you can say "stop being lazy and go look yourself," and I'll reluctantly agree.

 

[TT1]

 

[Sannom]

Both PoE and Tyranny will be free next week on the Epic store. Some kind of promotional push before a new announcement?

Note that we're talking about the two games published by Paradox, so I think it unlikely.

Do any of the Obsidian devs post on Something Awful?

Sawyer does. His activity in the Deadfire thread for example : https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3856099&userid=17931
You may not be able to read that, I think non-members are periodically blocked from reading.

 

[Fedora Master]

Lol posting on a dead gay forum

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Meh.

 

[yes plz]

While scrolling through this thread I thought Sawyer's current Twitter title was "Childe of Autism" which made me think, "Wow, that's really self-aware for an autist."

 

[TT1]

What the hell is happening today?

 

[DalekFlay]

Microsoft doesn't seem to want to boss around Bethesda too much yet, but if they don't put Obsidian on a Fallout game after Avowed, while Bethesda works on TES6, then they're retarded.

 

[Flying Dutchman]

It doesn't sound like Microsoft is bossing anyone around.

Also, can we just skip Avowed and move on to another Fallout game? Although I'd be a little worried what the current Obsidian folks would do with it based on recent events, they couldn't be as bad as Fallout Tactics or the console Brotherhood of Steel (jinx).

 

[Butter]

Is there any doubt that modern Obsidian would shit up Fallout just as hard as Bethesda? They've shown us with Deadfire and Outer Worlds the caliber of writing they can deliver.

 

[vortex]

Please, no no no New Vegas 2! Just stop. Obsidian could make something on his own and should .

 

[Quillon]

Obsidian could make something on his own and should .

Like all they did after New Vegas? lmao