Game News Obsidian teasing game reveal at The Game Awards

[Kyl Von Kull]

Why do people keep betting on the remnants of Obsidian being able to make a quality game? While the aesthetics/setting of this game might be cool, the game itself will be mediocre to poor.

It’s really not about Obsidian, it’s about Troika. Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky, the guys who brought us Fallout, Arcanum, Temple of Elemental Evil, and VtM: Bloodlines (three great games and one great D&D platform that sadly was never expanded upon), are in charge of The Outer Worlds. This is not a Josh Sawyer game or a Chris Parker game. Boyarsky had an incredibly cushy job at Blizzard—he was the loremaster for Diablo—with great pay where he could’ve coasted (at least until the current turmoil) and he left in 2016 solely to go to Obsidian and make this game. Cain and Boyarsky both call it their dream game.

Josh Sawyer never said POE was his dream game (he frequently told us that he’d much rather be making a turn based historical RPG with period appropriate folklore based fantasy elements like Darklands). He never said Deadfire was his dream game. Tim and Leonard, on the other hand, obviously seem to care a great deal and I doubt Boyarsky would’ve taken the job without some guarantee of creative freedom. Chris Avellone knows a lot more about the project than we do and he’s been effusive, despite his hateboner for Obsidian’s leadership.

Also, Obsidian does have the capacity to make a quality game—that’s why there’s so much disappointment when they drop the ball. The tragedy of their recent isometric games is that the ingredients were all there, but because of poor decisions from upper management and the design director, those ingredients didn’t come together correctly. POE’s White March expansions are really good. Tyranny’s first act is awesome—too bad they never finished the game because Feargus looted the budget to pay for POE.

As for bugs, QA is handled by the publisher and this time the publisher is a division of Take-Two. I’m not much of a Rockstar or 2K
fan, but doesn’t their stuff tend to be pretty fucking polished?

 

[SlumLord]

*deeply thinking what tags to petition for SlumLord*

Your mistake is believing I give a shit. Petition away.

Tim and Leonard, on the other hand, obviously seem to care a great deal and I doubt Boyarsky would’ve taken the job without some guarantee of creative freedom.

True, but they're just the leads. The rest of the workforce at Obsidian is sub-par, to put it politely. The only people at the company whom I have any respect for are the background 2D artists - the rest of them range from underpaid interns to problem-glasses wamyn.

Also, Obsidian does have the capacity to make a quality game—that’s why there’s so much disappointment when they drop the ball.

I disagree. They might have had the capacity to make a good game, but studios are only as good as their workforce. And Obsidian lost a lot of their best talent over the past 5 years. Hell, they're still hemorrhaging employees. You can't make gold out of turds, after all.

 

[Drowed]

Huge chunks of content are gated behind C&C mechanics.

You keep saying this retarded thing in all the topics that you participate. I don't think you understand what an RPG really is. You really are on the wrong website.

 

[Molina]

This game is a moment of truth.
If even C & B can't bring a good RPG, well, we can stop waiting for the "incline" from a AAA/AA studio. In a way, it makes the waiting even more exciting.

 

[Black Angel]

*deeply thinking what tags to petition for SlumLord*

Your mistake is believing I give a shit. Petition away.

Yes, yes, carry on

 

[Junmarko]

And you sound like a faggot.

Who? You spewed a fantasy about lining up to suck knob - because people disagreed with you.

Stop being a nut-licking cuck

More projection. I don't want to hear your inner most thoughts, ponce.

start demanding better service from the gaming industry

CRPGs are challenging to make purely by the nature of what they are based on. Complex rules of play. When there are lots of imbalances, it usually means a great deal of effort has gone into implementing as much of this as possible - resulting in something highly re-playable. This is all any CRPG fan "demands" - flaws are expected with this genre.

Garbage CRPGs are always the most polished funnily enough, because they excel at fuck-all - just shiny garbage.

Which are you selling?

 

[SlumLord]

Drowed
Let me break something down for you, chucklefuck:

• games cost money, and the more of it you have, the more leeway you can afford with production
• RPGs are probably the most difficult genre to do well, since you need not only well-done gameplay, but also narrative
• not only are RPGs difficult to make, text-heavy isometric CRPGs are a niche market and don't cater to normies or their tastes
  
• combine the first 3 points, and you come to the conclusion that your game has little leeway in fucking up its systems if you want it to be a success
  
• you start design work, but creating even a C&C-less RPG is a gargantuan task (for reasons already listed) without adding C&C into the mix! (which only makes it infinitely more difficult)
• oh, and by the way, your company lives project-to-project (Troika), or maybe has no financial cushion (pre-Armored Warfare Obsidian), and can't afford a flop if you want to keep the lights on (Inexile)
  
• so what do you do? maybe put together a bug-free, cautiously restricted narrative CRPG with well-tuned combat? NO! YOU GO FOR HEAVY C&C LIKE THE IGNORANT RETARD YOU ARE! (because fuck finances, amirite??)
  
• your devtime increases by months, your Q&A becomes even more convoluted, and your ship date is continuously prolonged, so much so that any publisher funding the bill loses all patience with your retarded excuses
  
• once the game finally comes out (after months and months of backbreaking labor), it gets shit on by normies (expected), but more damningly it also fails to secure non-niche customers (since time that could have spent polishing was wasted on C&C)
• to add insult to injury, your buggy, ugly, broken defect of a product is lambasted for dated systems and arcane interface, and all that C&C you put in is seen by almost no one since the majority of consumers refuse to purchase your game (let alone play it 2, 3, N times in a row!)
  
• as a consequence of all of the above, your company makes less money than you projected (but hey, there's more!: you lose the IP, or have to lay off much of your workforce, or have trouble securing a new publisher because they know what a dumbfuck you are)
  
• you have less funds for your new project
• your next game is even worse than the previous, but do you learn? NO! C&C MUST BE INCLUDED! ONWARD WE MARCH!
  
• the loop repeats, you enter a death spiral
• company goes under, another bastion of incline closes
• the tards at the Dex keep thinking C&C-heavy RPGs are a good idea for anyone but the biggest companies with well-established IPs, lots of financial cushion, and a devoted playerbase

There, you happy, you dumbfuck? It's retards like you who fuel the fires of lunacy among CRPG devs.

There's a reason Underrail has limited C&C - Styg is a pragmatic motherfucker, and has a divine superpower that seems wholly abject from Californian devs.

Spoiler

Common sense.

 

[Bohr]

• the tards at the Dex keep thinking C&C-heavy RPGs are a good idea for anyone but the biggest companies with well-established IPs, lots of financial cushion, and a devoted playerbase

Well, Iron Tower has a devoted playerbase I guess... for its size

 

[SlumLord]

Flaws are expected with this genre.

But they shouldn't be. If a company can't produce something relatively stable and fun, then they should scale down and approach projects with limited scope until they obtain either the technical expertise or financial stability required to tackle epic projects. Anything else results in garbage. Only apologists and cultists make excuses for people who produce inferior products.

Admit it, you're the proud owner of an Iphone X.

Cuck.

 

[Safav Hamon]

I think the codex gatekeeps too much, but not liking C&C on an RPG forum? Are you for real?

 

[SlumLord]

Well, Iron Tower has a devoted playerbase I guess... for its size

True, but they'll never be able to scale up. You need money to make a sweeping CRPG with branching storylines. The road to getting there is releasing a string of polished products that continually widen your player base.

Blizzard back in the old days knew this. It's how they grew. They didn't attempt to make WoW right off the bat - they worked their way up to it.

 

[SlumLord]

I think the codex gatekeeps too much, but not liking C&C on an RPG forum? Are you for real?

I never said I don't like C&C - retards keep misattributing this to my lament. I want as much of it as possible, but it's an untenable system feature when your company has never released even a single game that wasn't full of bugs. C&C should be earned - it can't be forced. A company should put out maybe 3 well-made and polished games before attempting branching narrative. Most RPGs from 2005 onward lack even a compelling overarching narrative, let along branching C&C paths. It's a recipe for disaster, because games always lose out on polish just to implement a feature that eats up huge amounts of manhours and caters to a niche withing a niche.

It's bad business.

 

[Neanderthal]

Ask for less from devs men, after all its back breaking labour, and there should be no reactivity whatsoever.

 

[SlumLord]

Ask for less from devs men, after all its back breaking labour, and there should be no reactivity whatsoever.

You can fake reactivity and atmosphere through quest design that branches 90% through, not at the 10, 20, 50, 75, and 95-percentile nodes. The former will satisfy even the majority of grognards, while the latter caters to fanatics who lead lives so pathetic they need 90000 branching options in a computer game just to simulate human interaction and feel alive.


Here's a roadmap of sane design:

Game #1: unique story, well-written companions, interesting narrative overlay, fine-tuned combat, limited 'fake' C&C (as mentioned above), fuckton of polish!

Game #2: same as above, more of everything, larger amounts of C&C (still limited in scope, but bigger than the previous project), even greater focus on polish

Game #3: again, same as above, but more... also, even larger C&C web, and polished to perfection

Game #4: same as above, but this time TRUE C&C!


To anyone with half a brain, it becomes clearly evident that a company needs to work its way up to Game #4.

So what does Obsidian, Troika, Inexile, and a bunch of unnamed indie devs have in common? TRYING TO MAKE GAME #4 RIGHT OFF THE BAT!

And the majority of retards who argue for C&C can't seem to grasp this tiny little fact - that you have to pay your dues with successful, polished projects before starting work on something huge in scope.

There's no other way to grow a successful business, and without money there's no way to make games!

QED

 

[SpaceWizardz]

• you have less funds for your new project

• the loop repeats, you enter a death spiral
• company goes under, another bastion of incline closes

Last time I checked Microsoft wasn't doing too bad in the financial department, Obsidian is in no danger of running out of funds.
You have a rather personal stake in the well being of this developer, maybe you have something you'd like to share with the class?

 

[Safav Hamon]

To some extent I agree with him. I'm tired of every CRPG being an overly ambitious, broken mess. I'd rather have an unambitious, polished RPG as long as it nails the basic design principles.

That's why Expeditions: Vikings is my favorite CRPG of the renaissance. It's smooth to play, everything works the way it's supposed to, and while the combat and writing aren't revolutionary, they're well executed.

 

[Drowed]

Let me break something down for you, chucklefuck:

This will be fun.

• games cost money, and the more of it you have, the more leeway you can afford with production
• RPGs are probably the most difficult genre to do well, since you need not only well-done gameplay, but also narrative
• not only are RPGs difficult to make, text-heavy isometric CRPGs are a niche market and don't cater to normies or their tastes

Impressive, have you managed to realize this obvious information alone or needed help from Wikipedia?

• combine the first 3 points, and you come to the conclusion that your game has little leeway in fucking up its systems if you want it to be a success

It's not what it seems, with games like Fallout 3, Dragon Age Inquisition, Fallout 4, and so many others with fucked systems getting millions in sales. But let's ignore this and follow your conclusions.

• you start design work, but creating even a C&C-less RPG is a gargantuan task (for reasons already listed) without adding C&C into the mix! (which only makes it infinitely more difficult)

That must be why we've never seen examples of C&C games out there, right?

• oh, and by the way, your company lives project-to-project (Troika), or maybe has no financial cushion (pre-Armored Warfare Obsidian), and can't afford a flop if you want to keep the lights on (Inexile)
  
• so what do you do? maybe put together a bug-free, cautiously restricted narrative CRPG with well-tuned combat? NO! YOU GO FOR HEAVY C&C LIKE THE IGNORANT RETARD YOU ARE! (because fuck finances, amirite??)

Strange, because the last great games I played with C&C weren't created by any of these 2 companies. But go on.

• your devtime increases by months, your Q&A becomes even more convoluted, and your ship date is continuously prolonged, so much so that any publisher funding the bill loses all patience with your retarded excuses
  
• once the game finally comes out (after months and months of backbreaking labor), it gets shit on by normies (expected), but more damningly it also fails to secure non-niche customers (since time that could have spent polishing was wasted on C&C)
• to add insult to injury, your buggy, ugly, broken defect of a product is lambasted for dated systems and arcane interface, and all that C&C you put in is seen by almost no one since the majority of consumers refuse to purchase your game (let alone play it 2, 3, N times in a row!)
  
• as a consequence of all of the above, your company makes less money than your projected (but hey, there's more!: you lose the IP, or have to lay off much of your workforce, or have trouble securing a new publisher because they know what a dumbfuck you are)
  
• you have less funds for your new project

So, your point is that incompetent companies making bad games "for normies" end up out of the market. And that's bad how?

• your next game is even worse than the previous, but do you learn? NO! C&C MUST BE INCLUDED! ONWARD WE MARCH!
  
• the loop repeats, you enter a death spiral
• company goes under, another bastion of incline closes
• the tards at the Dex keep thinking C&C-heavy RPGs are a good idea for anyone but the biggest companies with well-established IPs, lots of financial cushion, and a devoted playerbase

Because again, this is all "C&C's fault," not the fact that incompetent companies make bad games, while other smaller, competent companies make good C&C games and sell well enough to continue. What a mystery. Really, you are the bastion of knowledge, truth and light. All game producers starting today should follow your advice, RPG Jesus.

 

[Neanderthal]

Funny how you hear same apologism, excuses and cheerleading for less reactivity, and more fake choice in every game. No wonder devs think we're all soft touches who don't mind decades of decline we've seen, let's be less ambitious and give customer less, that'll satisfy em.

Mind you anything to spare the poor backs of those hard done to devs.

 

[SlumLord]

It's not what it seems, with games like Fallout 3, Dragon Age Inquisition, Fallout 4, and so many others with fucked systems getting millions in sales.

You can get away with crappy products in exchange for social capital you've accrued over decades. And to be pedantic, those studios don't produce CRPGs - they make streamlined garbage for consoles.

That must be why we've never seen examples of C&C games out there, right?

No idea what you're trying to say here except be contrarian for the sake of it.

Strange, because the last great games I played with C&C weren't created by any of these 2 companies.

Name them. Go ahead, I'll wait. I'm willing to bet their C&C pales in comparison to Fallout 2's. Which invalidates your counter-point, and reinforces my own (limited project scope).

So, your point is that incompetent companies making bad games "for normies" end up out of the market. And that's bad how?

It's not. But this is a thread about Obsidian's new game, and their propensity towards heavy C&C which cannibalizes other features of their games (like polish). And my original point was that only companies with proven trackrecords and financial stability ought to try heavy C&C - Obsidian lacks both of these (well, at least before being bought by MS, but that recent development can't do anything for their graveyard of faulty titles ever since their inception).

Because again, this is all "C&C's fault," not the fact that incompetent companies make bad games, while other smaller, competent companies make good C&C games and sell well enough to continue.

Stop being anal. This was always about AA and III studios, never the AAA ones. You're comparing apples to oranges, and purposefully misrepresenting my point.

Really, you are the bastion of knowledge, truth and light.

At least we agree on something.

 

[Iskramor]

You have some unrealistic expectations about the game. Imho today is several times harder to create the equivalent of what Fallout was in 1997 ... not to mention that nobody can say what such an equivalent would be.

not to mention that they don't want, nor can make even mildly complex cRPGs anymore. The type of shit Obsidian has been releasing for years... now imagine under the rule of Microsoft. Obsidian fanboys always labor under the illusion that their next game will be their masterpiece they really wanted to make.

It will be unredeemable and unplayable shit.

GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE!

Microsoft has nothing to do with this project called the outer worlds.....

 

[Junmarko]

The rest of the workforce at Obsidian is sub-par, to put it politely.

You sound intimidated.

The only people at the company whom I have any respect for are the background 2D artists

Because they tolerate your bs? Lol.

Flaws are expected with this genre.

But they shouldn't be. If a company can't produce something relatively stable and fun, then they should scale down and approach projects with limited scope until they obtain either the technical expertise or financial stability required to tackle epic projects. Anything else results in garbage. Only apologists and cultists make excuses for people who produce inferior products.
Cuck.

Why shouldn't they be? PnP rules are complex, it's a factor regardless if you're going to be implementing much of it into your game, that it won't be perfect, PnP games aren't either.

You want everyone in the industry around you, to stop being so ambitious and scale down to your level, you mean? Because your game lacks complexity?

Everyone needs to cut their left leg off because you're missing one.

Good luck. Ponce

Fuck off.

Admit it, you're the proud owner of an Iphone X.

No. Some other Chinese phone with a better OS.

 

[Iskramor]

It’s really not about Obsidian, it’s about Troika. Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky, the guys who brought us Fallout, Arcanum, Temple of Elemental Evil, and VtM: Bloodlines (three great games and one great D&D platform that sadly was never expanded upon), are in charge of The Outer Worlds. This is not a Josh Sawyer game or a Chris Parker game. Boyarsky had an incredibly cushy job at Blizzard—he was the loremaster for Diablo—with great pay where he could’ve coasted (at least until the current turmoil) and he left in 2016 solely to go to Obsidian and make this game. Cain and Boyarsky both call it their dream game.

Josh Sawyer never said POE was his dream game (he frequently told us that he’d much rather be making a turn based historical RPG with period appropriate folklore based fantasy elements like Darklands). He never said Deadfire was his dream game. Tim and Leonard, on the other hand, obviously seem to care a great deal and I doubt Boyarsky would’ve taken the job without some guarantee of creative freedom. Chris Avellone knows a lot more about the project than we do and he’s been effusive, despite his hateboner for Obsidian’s leadership.

Also, Obsidian does have the capacity to make a quality game—that’s why there’s so much disappointment when they drop the ball. The tragedy of their recent isometric games is that the ingredients were all there, but because of poor decisions from upper management and the design director, those ingredients didn’t come together correctly. POE’s White March expansions are really good. Tyranny’s first act is awesome—too bad they never finished the game because Feargus looted the budget to pay for POE.

As for bugs, QA is handled by the publisher and this time the publisher is a division of Take-Two. I’m not much of a Rockstar or 2K
fan, but doesn’t their stuff tend to be pretty fucking polished?

Little correction tyranny is fucking awesome unfinished rushed side project with low budget but stil lawesome.

 

[SlumLord]

Last time I checked Microsoft wasn't doing too bad in the financial department, Obsidian is in no danger of running out of funds.

Years of bad practices and shitty designs aren't swept away by one lucky roll of the dice. Companies should exercise restraint in their projects' scope, because most of them can't rely on a big megacorp buying them out. And do I even have to mention how much of a disjointed prole you are if you can argue against my point with the caveat that bad business practices can be disregarded in the hopes of lucky acquisitions?

Nigger, really?

You have a rather personal stake in the well being of this developer, maybe you have something you'd like to share with the class?

Spoiler

Feargus molested me at Reboot last year. I told him I wanted to work at Obsidian, and he put his grubby hand on my thigh and said, "Tim Cain breaks in all the newbies. Hope you like homosex... and whips."

Pls no bully, I'm still seeing a therapist!

 

[Iskramor]

SlumLord

is right to extent that they lack writing workforce to achive the greatness and even obsidian prime team had degenerate BS like NWN 2 LOL.

 

[SlumLord]

You sound intimidated.

What is it with you and that word?

Why shouldn't they be? PnP rules are complex, it's a factor regardless if you're going to be implementing much of it into your game, that it won't be perfect, PnP games aren't either.

Are you autistic? I mean that as a serious question, because only an autist would crusade for the inclusion of a ruleset which was made to ease computation and allow it to be carried out by people with a few dice around a table. The moment PCs became good enough, that entire bowl of turds called a 'system' should never have been included into any gaming product. The setting, characters, lore, and modules, yes. But the ruleset itself? Fuck no.

And don't start bitching about dumbing down or streamlining. A game can have a good combat system and ruleset with the overbearing pedantry of D&D dice throws and 6-second rounds (and god knows what other abominable garbage they put under the hood). Look at Owlcat's game, and the amount of bugs and scripting errors which pop up just because they were forced to follow the Pathfinder system.

Because they tolerate your bs?

No, because they produce amazing work, and they've been doing it consistently for years.

You want everyone in the industry around you, to stop being so ambitious and scale down to your level, you mean? Because your game lacks complexity?

I don't work in game dev, and I don't have a game. Stop with the assumptions already, you sound like a retard.

Besides, I don't have to work in the industry to realize how shitty it is. And it's precisely because people reward bad products that we're in this mess.

But you and other simple-minded sheep continue to fork out money for garbage, and as long as that happens we'll keep getting shittier games by the year.

I stand by my point: you're a cuck.



EDIT: And that goes for every one of you knuckleheads who supports Bugsidian. Instead of buying their shitty shovelware, you should take that money and get a whore. Because you might as well enjoy the fucking if you're paying for it.