Obsidian General Discussion Thread

[Crooked Bee]

This reminds me of that Fallout 4 "leak" on reddit from last year, which claimed the Fallout 4 spin-off is being developed not by Obsidian, but by... Behaviour Interactive.

Which turned out to be true, in a way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallout_Shelter

I wonder if F4 is even going to get a New Vegas-like spin-off.

Obsidian is too obvious a choice. Arkane has experience with first-person RPGs, it's in-house, etc, but Obsidian has people who worked on the first Fallout games, not to mention the creator. F:NV also speaks for itself, and they made it in 18 months.

You mention Tim Cain and the people who worked on New Vegas as the likely reason for Bethesda to choose Obsidian for the spin-off, but the project that Anthony Davis mentioned is led by Brian Heins. Sawyer and Fenstermaker don't work on it either. Would it make sense for Beth and Obsidian to hand a Fallout project over to an entirely different team?

 

[Infinitron]

This reminds me of that Fallout 4 "leak" on reddit from last year, which claimed the Fallout 4 spin-off is being developed not by Obsidian, but by... Behaviour Interactive.

Which turned out to be true, in a way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallout_Shelter

I love the passive-aggressive wiki page they got on the Fallout wikia: http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Behavior_Interactive

 

[Fairfax]

This reminds me of that Fallout 4 "leak" on reddit from last year, which claimed the Fallout 4 spin-off is being developed not by Obsidian, but by... Behaviour Interactive.

Which turned out to be true, in a way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallout_Shelter

I wonder if F4 is even going to get a New Vegas-like spin-off.



You mention Tim Cain and the people who worked on New Vegas as the likely reason for Bethesda to choose Obsidian for the spin-off, but the project that Anthony Davis mentioned is led by Brian Heins. Sawyer and Fenstermaker don't work on it either. Would it make sense for Beth and Obsidian to hand a Fallout project over to an entirely different team?

Brian Heins is project lead, yes, but that doesn't mean Sawyer, Tim Cain et al. can't join the project as well. We know Sawyer and Fenstermaker are working on White March right now, but they can still work on this project at some point.
Fergus said once that it takes ~9 months to negotiate a potential deal with a publisher, work on the basics, make a vertical slice and then present their treatment. It could be in this stage at the moment.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Hasn't Brian's project been ongoing for a while now already, though? Duraframe300

 

[Crooked Bee]

OMG, Fallout spin-off by Behaviour Interactive confirmed. Sorry, Failsidian.

Also from one of their job postings:

CryEngine, Unreal or Gamebryo engin development experience

 

[Rake]

 

[Infinitron]

If they really end up making it than I guess Bethesda want their next Fallout spinoff to not be an exception to what Roguey said above.

 

[Duraframe300]

Brian Heins is project lead, yes, but that doesn't mean Sawyer, Tim Cain et al. can't join the project as well. We know Sawyer and Fenstermaker are working on White March right now, but they can still work on this project at some point.
Fergus said once that it takes ~9 months to negotiate a potential deal with a publisher, work on the basics, make a vertical slice and then present their treatment. It could be in this stage at the moment.

Nah, whatever Sawyers next project is he's probably going to be the Project Lead or any higher position again.

Also January 2014. It's been a bit more than 9 months.

 

[Crooked Bee]

If they really end up making it than I guess Bethesda want their next Fallout spinoff to not be an exception to what Roguey said above.

Additionally, at least one of the job postings suggesting Gamebryo experience also contains the word "MMO".

Fallout Online confirmed?

 

[Roguey]

OMG, Fallout spin-off by Behaviour Interactive confirmed. Sorry, Failsidian.

A metacritic score of 85 or more is the opposite of what Bethesda wants if it means they have to pay a bonus. They'll sabotage it themselves to make sure if doesn't happen if the product is shaping up to be too good.

 

[Crooked Bee]

A metacritic score of 85 or more is the opposite of what Bethesda wants if it means they have to pay a bonus. They'll sabotage it themselves to make sure if doesn't happen if the product is shaping up to be too good.

Do you think they sabotaged New Vegas too?

 

[Roguey]

Do you think they sabotaged New Vegas too?

Brian Fargo confirmed as much when he said they moved their release date up (by a few weeks). Reviewers get buggier code = lower scores.

http://www.ripten.com/2012/03/27/br...l-publisher-treatment-and-having-fun-again/3/

BF: Because they are afraid to talk, because they’ll never get another contract if they do. That’s why. You cannot believe… it’s awful. It’s really bad. You should try to dig in and get some stories out there. Look at the most recent one with those poor guys at Obsidian. They did Fallout: New Vegas, the ship date got moved up and, who does the QA on a project? The publisher is always in charge of QA. When a project goes out buggy, it’s not the developer. The developer never says, “I refuse to fix the bug,” or, “I don’t know how.” They never do that. It’s the publisher that does the QA, so if a product goes out buggy, it’s not the developer’s fault. So, (Fallout: New Vegas) goes out buggy and they didn’t do the QA, their ship date got moved up and they missed their metacritic rating by one point. Did they get a bonus? No. Do you think that’s fair? I tried to get some of my publisher friends, who I used to make a lot of money for, to donate. Do you think they donated? No. Their employees did.

 

[Fairfax]

Nah, whatever Sawyers next project is he's probably going to be the Project Lead or any higher position again.

Also January 2014. It's been a bit more than 9 months.

Yeah, it'd be weird for him not to take point again. The date is interesting, means the project is past pre-production and he was made lead way before MCA left the company. I think this supports the theory that he left because of differences with Fergus and the other higher ups, as it's the 5th project (6th or 7th if you include cancelled ones) since AP that he was not project lead or lead designer.

Anyway, I guess it also means it's not a new Fallout by Obsidian, as it's unlikely that they'd work on the game almost 2 years before F4's release. Just guesswork again, but I'd say this means it's not a Square-Enix project either, because it's uncommon for them to take 1 year and a half of development and not reveal the project. No clues in any of their schedules or docs that were made public either.

Considering the ~9 month period mentioned by Fergus, the date suggests it might be something with one of the publishers which were "knocking on their door" after the Kickstarter (Bethesda, Ubisoft, Warner Bros., and LucasArts, mentioned in an interview from December 2012).

Party-based Justice League RPG, anyone?

Spoiler

More like Harry Potter F2P TCG.

 

[Duraframe300]

As for what we know about it

Brian Heins is Project Director and Lead Designer (Second part concluded from Anthony's recent post)
Constant Gaw is Lead Level Designer

That's the only thing I would bet on.

 

[Infinitron]

As for what we know about it

Brian Heins is Project Director and Lead Designer (Second part concluded from Anthony's recent post)
Constant Gaw is Lead Level Designer

That's the only thing I would bet on.

We also know it's an RPG, which is nothing to sneeze at these days.

 

[Abu Antar]

Fallout: BoS 2

 

[Duraframe300]

Don't know if this is even news, but Matthew Sheets got out of QA and into systems design

 

[Duraframe300]

Also Olivier Pougnand may also be working on the new rpg as he didn't work on eternity (last project south park), but was listed by Anthony as an Obsidian vet still working at obs

 

[Fairfax]

I was looking for more info on each publisher's schedule for 2016 (not just because of Obsidian's project, but I digress), and it's very unlikely that the next project is being funded by Ubisoft, Microsoft, Bandai Namco or SEGA.

Ubisoft is known for announcing games in advance, and there's nothing in their reports, press releases or interviews to suggest this project is in their schedule. They said recently that there's just one other AAA game in store for 2016, which is probably the rumoured Prince of Persia game.

Microsoft, according to Phil Spencer, is focusing on first party titles, and everything so far seems to support that. They made their bet with Tomb Raider and that seems to be it. Their console could definitely use a big exclusive RPG, but that ship has sailed, I think.

Bandai Namco seems to have their schedule filled for 2016, and much like other japanese studios, this kind of project would've been implied in previous occasions, at least. Also worth mentioning that "Tales of" has been their only core RPG title for a long time, and they've published a western RPG since the two companies merged in 2006. They distributed Lords of the Fallen in NA, but that was it.

SEGA is rather unpredictable, and their last financial report is vague regarding their core consumer business. They seem to be investing a lot in digital titles, calling it a core business and their focus for "short to medium term growth". Their "core titles" in the west have been almost all internal projects since they acquired CA, Relic and SI. In fact, Alpha Protocol was the last time they published a AAA project by another western company, and the only RPG besides Valkyria Chronicles.

With that said, and assuming it's the usual big budget RPG project, I'd say it's between Square-Enix, Warner Bros, Disney and Bethesda now. Since duraframe said it's been implied that they're not working with Bethesda and the project was started in jan/14, I'd say WB.
If not one of the above, we have Deep Silver, Paradox and Nordic Games as second tier publishers that could probably afford it. After world of tanks B, however, I wouldn't bet on anything.

 

[Abu Antar]

There's Paradox, but I don't know what we could expect from that partnership.

 

[Anthony Davis]

I love reading this thread.

Next time I stream, if I ever do again, I should post here and then you guys/girls/trannies can come ask me questions.

 

[One-and-a-half-Ivan]

Codex Investigations: Serious Business (c)

 

[dukeofwhales]

I only recently realised that, by and large, the masses also think that F:NV is a better game than F3. Which is interesting because, for my money, Bethesda would not want that to be a trend (in fact, I would expect that they'd prefer it to be the other way around, with Bethesda being the Infinity Ward to Obsidian's Treyarch). I don't mean this as some kind of conspiracy theory - it's just good for branding for the flagship developer to make the flagship titles. Considering that, I would expect them not to offer a future Fallout spinoff to Obsidian, just in case they do it again.

That said, it will obviously depend on FO4's reception, and who else is available to make the spinoff. A bad game from another developer also tarnishes the brand.

 

[Beastro]

I only recently realised that, by and large, the masses also think that F:NV is a better game than F3. Which is interesting because, for my money, Bethesda would not want that to be a trend (in fact, I would expect that they'd prefer it to be the other way around, with Bethesda being the Infinity Ward to Obsidian's Treyarch). I don't mean this as some kind of conspiracy theory - it's just good for branding for the flagship developer to make the flagship titles. Considering that, I would expect them not to offer a future Fallout spinoff to Obsidian, just in case they do it again.

That said, it will obviously depend on FO4's reception, and who else is available to make the spinoff. A bad game from another developer also tarnishes the brand.

Northernlion's been doing a NV Let's Plays for FO4 release build up and FO3 got outvoted by NV by a large margin while the gameplay has been everyone loving it besides NL and his dislike of dialogue heavy games (could be him being a dense idiot that likes dumb games, thinks dialogue makes streams boring or both).

 

[prodigydancer]

Northernlion's been doing a NV Let's Plays for FO4 release build up and FO3 got outvoted by NV by a large margin

From YouTube comments: "Why play new vegas when fallout 3 is a better story?"