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Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.
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Those who speak of Tim Cain should be aware that for the past couple of weeks he's been lurking this forum regularly.
I think the basic Star Control 2-inspired design concept behind Fallout is brilliant and ambitious, but it seems like the kind of thing that's very hard to pull off in a game that's larger than, well, Fallout, without entering fucked up flawed gem territory.
Yeah, you're obviously insisting on your original statement, which is fair enough; but what I suggested is that if you read our retrospective interview for example, he has some really strong design sensibilities and a lot of design ambition too. Pretty much every other of his answers relate to setting or narrative or area or just overall game design and how he felt about it, not just to coding or systems.
So, even if you think he's better at system design and coding and should just stick to those for everyone's sake, your original statement that he's not much of "an area/narrative/creative designer" just isn't true, imho.
I think it is. Lots of us at the Codex have strong opinions on FO2 as well. This doesnt suggest we have strong area/narrative/creative design skill sets and experience.
I think it is. Lots of us at the Codex have strong opinions on FO2 as well. This doesnt suggest we have strong area/narrative/creative design skill sets and experience.
I've been posting there fairly regularly since 2011. Amusingly enough, SA and Codex are extremely alike, except the former is actually even more fucked up.
Neither. Im pointing out its silly to ponder on the creative design talents of a man known for systems design. I wouldnt go to MCA to design a combat system or Sawyer for coding either. I am sure they have opinions on it. Why wouldnt they?
I've been posting there fairly regularly since 2011.
I find these forum wars very entertaining though. Amusingly enough, SA and Codex are extremely alike, except the former is actually even more fucked up.
I am a programmer, scripter, designer and tester for the game. I am mostly responsible for things like AI, combat, skills, interfaces and such. I like to figure out how things should work in the game, and then write code for those ideas, and then see how the game feels afterwards. I often delete my code.
I'm an artist and a designer, as well as being the Art Director when people decide to listen to me, which is rare. My main function is to try to convince my two partners, Tim and Jason, that it's time to take everyone out for lunch. In my spare time I design/write dialog/script for about half the game, as well as doing character portraits and animation.
I spend most of my time torn between being a designer and an artist. I initially spent the majority of my time doing artwork; wall-sets, ground tiles, interface and such. Lately I've been spending a lot of time designing the tech schematic system, fine tuning the interface and balancing different things in the game like currency and experience points. I also just got voted in as being the person that yells "NO!" at the other team members and slaps them down when they want to implement complex new ideas that would delay game completion. Oh joy.
I was originally hired to do animation mostly, but most of my time has been spent doing other duties.
Then what would you list as your major functions and responsibilities?
My major function on the team is the level designer. I lay out all the dungeons and cities and such.
I've done many things here at Troika, and am currently vying for the position of Big Cheese…
I was hired on as an artist, and I did a few monsters, and a couple of PC body types. I also worked for a month or so on one of our movies. For the last six months or so, I've done nothing but design, dialogue and scripting, as well as the occasional installment of Arcanum Tales.
My official title here at Troika is Office Manager, or Operations Manager, or whatever I feel like calling myself at the moment. That means I get to keep the books, pay the bills, make sure everyone gets paid, and keep lots of food and drinks in the kitchen. My unofficial title is 3D artist. So when I'm not busy with the admin stuff, I get to create and animate animals and monsters, help with the cut movies, write small side quests, and fix any computers that break. I keep pretty busy. )
The Arcanum credits don't actually give out roles because everyone did a lot of everything. This is by necessity when you try to make a game with a greater scope than Fallout with a team a fraction of its size.
[Ok, more speculation and over-analysis coming up]
Infinitron linked to a couple of older interview with Feargus that, combined with the Fig interview, are quite interesting in hindsight.
December 2013 interview with RPS:
“What’s cool about Eternity and then, well, I’d be really surprised if we didn’t make an Eternity II, is having something else we can then use that tech for,” he explains. “I mean, not exactly, because then it would just be a reskinned Eternity. But I always look at the example of what we did back at Black Isle with Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale. And then Torment on top of that. Those games used the exact same engine, but they all felt very distinct. That’s what we want to do now too, and I think that’s just gonna help us make each of those games better and better.”
From Infinity Engine to Eternity "engine", eh? I'd say it's a safe bet that their next Kickstarter project will have a very similar look and feel to it. Nothing new here, but I thought it was worth bringing it up. It's important because it's not just a matter of making another game in that style, they want to make a series of different games much like the IE games. An ambitious plan.
“What I’m trying to figure out is, how could we make something that is more like a Skyrim for PC – forget console for now – with the engine we made in Unity for Eternity? Where we are with our conversation, quest, data editors, and all of that. If we were careful about scope and let Chris Avellone go wild with creating a new world, more of an open world, what could we do?”
Irony aside, this fuels the theory that MCA might've been working on his own world/project and left after it was canned.
“There’s something we’re talking about that I think would be really cool, but it’s not an original property,” he says. “It’s a licensed property. But it’s not Alpha Protocol! It’s something we can still do a ton of creative stuff with, though. And then the other thing is an original property. Also, there’s a third thing that somebody approached us with, but I really don’t think that’s going to work out.”
1- Alright, not Alpha Protocol, folks. Licensed IP will be important below, just bear with me.
2- Original IP is not Stormlands, that was cancelled in 2012. Backspace, Prey 2 and Seven Dwarves were also way before. Feargus also mentions theses things as concepts, things they're "talking about". I'd say it could be MCA's thing, or maybe the Brian Heins project is an original property after all.
3- The third thing could be anything a publisher approached them with. Could also be the secret project they're still working on, maybe it did work out in the end, but it could also be one of the discussions they had with publishers after PoE's successful campaign.
Now from the Red Bull interview:
“It goes to some extent to budget,” Urquhart explains. “A third-person game like, let’s say, the Fallouts or the Skyrims, they’re expensive to make and there are a lot more expectations. When you do something like that we have put more resources into environments and animations and things like that. That’s the challenge there: how do you balance those two?
“And we’re looking at that right now. We go to the drawing board and say, ‘Hey, we’ve got $4 million to make Skyrim. What could we do?’We’re looking for solutions to that. Could we get something from crowdfunding, something from here and something from here, and kind of build a bigger budget that will let us move there?”
“What I’m trying to figure out is, how could we make something that is more like a Skyrim for PC – forget console for now – with the engine we made in Unity for Eternity? Where we are with our conversation, quest, data editors, and all of that.
We do know they seem to think Fig is the solution, so there's that.
Oh, so he's not exactly trying to make Skyrim with a $4 million budget. He wants "Skyrim-like" in something like Pillars of Eternity. In short, he's trying to say - and struggling to express that properly - that they're looking into an open world game in the "Eternity engine". More of an open world, sandbox experience. This might've been MCA's project. Maybe it didn't even exist, maybe it did, but the interview is from May 2015 and he was basically repeating what he said back in December 2013, so the chances are high, I'd say.
MCA left just one month after that interview. If that was the case, it was something that existed as a concept for a year and a half, at least. Maybe it still does, maybe it was butchered to pieces or turned into something completely different, which might've led to him venting on facebook and sharing his frustration.
"Sorry, Chris, we like your concept, but we have to cut most of it and make it more like Skyrim. You can still write a novella and a follower, what do you think?"
Anyways, I digress.
From the Figstarter interview:
Urquhart: We can probably say it’s going to be an RPG. [Laughs] Obviously we like certain genres and setting. It wouldn’t be for our first one, but there’s definitely a setting we’d love to return to and make an awesome game in. That’s something we’ve been talking about a lot lately.
This implies (IMO) they're not going to Figstart the things they were debating back in December 2013 and other interviews in 2014. It's a setting they'd love to return to and make an awesome game in, which is not Alpha Protocol.
At first, I thought "oh, D&D again", but now I don't think so. In this interview with Polygon, Feargus explains why they've moved away from Dungeons & Dragons.
If it's not Alpha Protocol, not South Park, and it's not D&D, what else could Obsidian revisit?
Fallout
Dungeon Siege
Star Wars
There are many factors at play here. First of all, all 3 are owned by big publishers who have more than enough money to fund such a game. This beats the whole purpose of Kickstarter/Fig/Crowdfunding, which is to fund projects that would not have been possible otherwise, or at the very least, not with the same amount of freedom and engangement with the fanbase.
"Hey figsters, we want to make a new Fallout but Bethesda won't pay the bills, yet this will only fund the game's development and they'll keep all profits."
Doesn't sound good, does it?
One should also keep in mind that Sony's botched PR during E3 made people think they were also funding Shenmue III, and to be honest, I still don't know the extent of their involvement, and I'm not a backer because of it.
Tthe guys behind that KS had spend the entire campaign doing damage control. It did break records in the end, but nothing close to what it could've been.
With any of the franchises above there's no way to do damage control and not come clean. Obsidian doesn't own any of these IPs and everybody knows it. Not to mention the other issues:
- A Fallout, even with F4 and Gamebryo as basis, will require the kind of funding only Star Citizen has achieved.
- Star Wars games (except mobile and browser shovelware) are exclusive to EA "for the next several years" (couldn't find the exact number, for some reason). How would such a deal even work? Why would EA let them use it when they have BioWare available to make RPGs (or whatever their games are) with that IP?
It wouldn't be anything remotely similar to other crowdfunded games. People wouldn't vote on features for the next Fallout. Pete Hines and Todd Howard would go with whatever's better to advertise and sell shitloads.
I don't even want to think of the conflict of interest between backers and two publicly traded companies with a multi-billion dollar IP and all the bullshit that comes with it.
"What about Dungeon Siege?"
Same principle, though not as big as Fallout or Star Wars. It'd still face the same problems and it wouldn't be anything like DS3. Maybe a DS4 in the Eternity engine, but that's not exactly "Figstarter Skyrim", is it?
So where does that leave us?
They want to "return to" a setting, but I've already ruled them out as viable, reasonable options. They could still happen, mind you. Bethesda is not as in touch with their costumers as they think, and the paid mods disaster exposed that very well. They do know their fans, but I don't think they'd buy this idea at all.
Square might be willing to let them us the IP in some weird deal. SE is kind of clueless, after all, but I can't see why they'd go after Dungeon Siege of all RPG propertys out there.
However...
Feargus could be talking about the Black Isle/Interplay days. Many Obsidian employees come from that company and era, and they would still be returning to a setting, even if only themselves and not the company per se.
Ok, were does that lead? D&D, D&D, Fallout, Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader and then cancelled projects Torn and Stonekeep 2. Eh...nothing new or likely.
He says "we", so it's not just him personally, which narrows the options quite a bit.
I guess it could be a "Classic Fallout", as someone suggested, and a lot of people would still fund it, but I don't think they'd go for this instead of the better gig with bigger pay that would be Fallout New ____ or whatever.
In the end I don't have any strong theory on what's that second crowdfunded project, but at least we know they're planning a Eternity Engine series of CRPGs and they want more funds to make an open world game with that.
Maybe I am being too optimistic, but I could see a Fallout Kickstarter as being less "Hey figsters, we want to make a new Fallout but Bethesda won't pay the bills, yet this will only fund the game's development and they'll keep all profits."
and more "Hey Figsters,Bethesda is willing to fund something akin to the Classic Fallouts, but they want proof enough people are interested". Something like what Kingdom Come: Deliverance or that game by the Castlevania dude did.
It would be a tiny fraction of the budgets of the games they usually publish/develop, so I could see them willing to take a gamble with it. Certainly much more willing than funding a F4-esque game with a voiced protagonist combined with Obsidian's design philosophy.
EA might want to develop a relationship with Obsidian because they're the "new" nerd cool console RPG development studio and are apparently here to stay.
Also, maybe they want to make a Star Wars RPG before the rights expire but have all Bioware studios tied up with other commitments.
EA might want to develop a relationship with Obsidian because they're the "new" nerd cool console RPG development studio and are apparently here to stay.
I can't remember who it was (Larian? inXile? Obsidian?) but I remember some RPG person saying they pitched something to EA and their reply was more-or-less "Uh, we have Bioware. Why would we want a role playing game from you?"
Maybe I am being too optimistic, but I could see a Fallout Kickstarter as being less "Hey figsters, we want to make a new Fallout but Bethesda won't pay the bills, yet this will only fund the game's development and they'll keep all profits."
and more "Hey Figsters,Bethesda is willing to fund something akin to the Classic Fallouts, but they want proof enough people are interested". Something like what Kingdom Come: Deliverance or that game by the Castlevania dude did.
It would be a tiny fraction of the budgets of the games they usually publish/develop, so I could see them willing to take a gamble with it. Certainly much more willing than funding a F4-esque game with a voiced protagonist combined with Obsidian's design philosophy.
But Kingdom Come and Bloodstained belong to their creators, Obsidian doesn't own Fallout.
Another issue is Bethesda and Obsidian's last deal. Bethesda kept all of the profits from Fallout: New Vegas. Obsidian was paid a sum upfront and then a potential bonus for the Metacritic score (we know how that turned out).
How would the split even work? Figstarter funds go to Obsidian and Bethesda keeps all of the profit? It's not even a good idea for anyone involved. Bethesda would make more money but funding a big budget spinoff, Obsidian would make more money with that as well, and backers wouldn't be paying for glorified pre-orders with the risk of getting shafted and having promises broken by Bethesda's management.
I can't remember who it was (Larian? inXile? Obsidian?) but I remember some RPG person saying they pitched something to EA and their reply was more-or-less "Uh, we have Bioware. Why would we want a role playing game from you?"
Yeah, it's why EA bought BioWare in the first place, they wanted to tap into that sector of the market and diversify their products. That was the official reasoning, actually, as explained to investors at the time.
2005-2006 EA was basically sports, movie licenses, racing (not even Battlefield, since 2142 failed) so they decided to expand and went shopping. Kind of ironic that it's basically where they are now again, except in better shape, of course.
I can't remember who it was (Larian? inXile? Obsidian?) but I remember some RPG person saying they pitched something to EA and their reply was more-or-less "Uh, we have Bioware. Why would we want a role playing game from you?"
Before you have these studios that have a fairly overall similar approach to game design and play to the same demographic of gamers, to the extent two of Obsidian's games were sequels to Bioware games and one was a Mass Effect derivative (Alpha Protocol). In this past scenario, shuttering Obsidian makes the market that much less competitive for Bioware/EA. EA hates competition (thus buying up and gutting studios), so the last thing they want to do is extend Obsidian a lifeline.
In the current situation, if you throw money at Obsidian to make a Star Wars game you tie them up as a competitor for 2-3 years, delaying the process through which they will establish a big console RPG franchise you have no stake in to compete with your Dragon Age and Mass Effect franchises, and at the end of it you get a game that is guaranteed to sell millions of copies without eating much into the sales of Bioware IPs.
Mass Effect is a Star Wars derivative, by the way. It is kind of weird to have Mass Effect as one of their major franchises and then try to make a Star Wars RPG. I guess it'd be like Obsidian working on Lord of the Rings and Eternity CRPGs at the same time, except Star Wars and Mass Effect are much more similar.
I'm not sure BioWare can work on both at the same time and Dragon Age, so my guess is that we won't even see a Star Wars RPG by EA unless Andromeda bombs or that's what Motive Studios is working on. We know Visceral is working on an action game and DICE is handling Battlefield, that's about it. Plus they have TOR by BioWare, which has been reinforced by a lot of people who were working on their cancelled multiplayer thing.
As for competition, they have the Witcher, Fallout, Deus Ex and the Elder Scrolls to worry about. Obsidian can't compete with these big budget RPGs unless they're funded by a wealthy publisher, which might be the case with the secret project, but we don't know.
EA does have the partners program and some of the games they've published were in the same genre as their own stuff, but they were either for a differente niche or filled gaps where EA didn't have something of their own to release. Anything they publish through Obsidian will compete with BioWare unless it's isometric or something like that.
Last weekend during PAX I spoke with Josh Sawyer, who served as lead designer on New Vegas and remains a project director at Obsidian. We chatted about the first post-release content for Pillars of Eternity, The White March (Obsidian also talked about the development and future of Pillars in its PAX panel). We spoke about the possibility of an Alpha Protocol-style spy RPG set in the Archer universe, which Sawyer thinks would be a good fit.
But mostly we talked about Fallout, and what Sawyer, as one of the creators behind the most beloved Fallout game to date thought about Fallout 4's E3 reveal. Sawyer says he hasn't played Fallout 4 ("I've only seen what everyone else has seen"), but as an RPG fan, he says he's interested in how choice is going to be handled in Fallout 4. "The thing that most surprised me was hearing a voiced protagonist, because that's never been a part of Fallout, really," said Sawyer. "I'm also interested in how they're going do choice and consequence and how the story's going to flow."
"We actually had some ideas for characters that would... like in one story draft we had, Cass would get drunk with the protagonist and then would wake up with The King having married them at The King's School of Impersonation. That seemed very Vegas, but we were also like, that's kind of a complicated series of events, so we decided not to do it. But it's also in the vein of the Fallout 2 more humorous romance, rather than in-depth and serious. It'll be interesting to see how Bethesda approaches that in Fallout 4."
Finally, I asked Sawyer what the likelihood was of Obsidian and Bethesda collaborating on another Fallout game or something different altogether. "Working with the Bethesda developers was really cool, they were very supportive with what we did and their technology actually made it very easy, relatively easy, to make the game. I mean, we made it in 18 months, which is kind of crazy if you think about it," said Sawyer. "I'd certainly like to work on another Fallout game in the future, but..." he said, shrugging, indicating that the future of Fallout is up to Bethesda.
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