Obsidian...what happened?

[Atlantico]

Todd Howard is man perfected, no surprise he's capable of releasing 4 back to back greatest video games of all time.

Proof positive of retardation

Needs Bethestard tag

 

[Readher]

That lead to this.
Best thread evar!

Thought for a second there she was going to put on a MAGA hat.

Don't worry, we've got you covered.

Bioware up to 2012 was still onto business of making games popular with gamers (aka straight males) they even made Ashley Williams the first wifu from Mass Effect 1 more hot

Honestly, I think she looks worse in ME3 than in ME1/ME2 and suffers Miranda effect, but it was clear that they were trying to make her look hotter, so at least their intetions were right.

They increased Liara's breasts with every installment too, to the point where they were really fucking huge in ME3.

 

[Chippy]

Some good people left and those remain learned from their past "mistakes" and try to do all the "safe" things.
I think I died a little inside when I read Sawyer boasting about how he shuts down ideas from young people whenever he thinks it would be cumbersome to implement. "You like Beyond the Beef? But you see that kind of quest is too much effort, I am too fucking experienced now to make that mistake again LOL."

Sounds like Josh still has some PTSD from the Icewind Dale II dev cycle.

Is Josh Sawyer a lefty? I remember something about him supporting the Mermaids charity. Which is a charity tht is pro-gender changing for kids. So can I assume that he now works for a company that suppresses his artistic talent, has gone along with it by self-censoring, and isn't prepared to admit that if he voiced his ideas - the snowflakes would cancel him?.

Which means he isn't really part of their community, culture, or political paradigm. He's just a guy that has successfully sidelined himself.

 

[toro]

Is Josh Sawyer a lefty?

No. He masturbates with his right hand.

 

[Tigranes]

Obsidian had one good schtick when they started: the Chris Avellone brand of genre-subversive RPG writing + relatively extensive C&C, both of which could be maximised because everything else about the games would be rigidly structured to 'tried and true' (existing IP, familiar mechanics and design structures). That's the one thing they were actually proven to be good at.

We all hoped that this was a temporary process towards eventually creating their own original IPs and more innovative / ambitious design. This didn't really happen, and we know that the largest factors here are (1) difficulty with funding & scaling up to a larger studio size capable of bigger scoped projects, which was related to (2) several notable missteps where the company failed to produce original and ambitious work that really clicked (notably, Aliens & AP both in development hell). And this wasn't uncommon at all. Sometimes you manage to push through those problems and everything comes together in the last few months to make the game a true gem - we know now that was the case with games like FO1/2 or Deus Ex, where very very late into development it still looked like it could all fall apart.

Obsidian's quality of writing has massively declined, but I think the real fatal flaw was that they could never find their own formula for gameplay beyond "good old Bio/BIS games with MCA sizzling". And every time they tried and failed, it got worse because you're losing more and more of the one formula you knew how to do while failing to come up with a better formula. Alpha Protocol has areas it truly excels in despite being utterly janky in others; when you get to Dungeon Siege 3, though, you get to true mediocrity because there's no structure left to make Obsidian-style writing or C&C actually meaningful.

By the time Pillars comes around, ironically, it's not Obsidian's old guard rubbing their hands and saying "alright we know how to do this, we know how to make old school RPGs". Although Sawyer himself has been around since BIS days, it's largely Obsidian's newest hires that are basically starting from scratch and trying to see what they can do, at a company which has not had a clear design identity for years. And although I personally enjoyed POE, it was a far cry from the hopes we had back in 2005 or 2010 when we were saying "if only they get the backing to make their own original RPG, think of what they could do!" And that's sad, because back in 2005(?), when Obsidian opened doors, it really was a ray of light. We had lost BIS, we had lost Black Hound & Fallout 3, it was already clear Bio would never do another BG2, and it just felt like there was nothing in the future. But they never made 'the' RPG that we imagined and I'm sure they imagined when they started.

Edit: Gosh, I forgot about the Outer Worlds entirely, which is no surprise. Not entirely fair of me to judge it without playing it, but every indication is that it doesn't exactly provide Obsidian with a new formula or fully restore the glories of its one old schtick.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Obsidian without Avellone is like Bethesda without Todd Howard or Larian without Sven.
The magic is gone, but nobody has bothered to tell them.

 

[TemplarGR]

All those words about "Obsidian declined". No they did not decline. They have always been mediocre and are extremely overrated on this forum. It is not a decline, it is just you coming to terms with their true nature after many years of brainwashing/believing your own lies and hype.

Even their best success, New Vegas, was not really that good as people make it out to be. Fallout 3 was better as a video game. It was better designed, apart from the extra weapons that New Vegas had. You people are always mesmerized by cheap tricks and cheap words in a video game, while you fail to appriecate the actual meat of a video game, the gameplay, the maps, the exploration, the enemies, etc. All you need to look for is around 30 or more speechchecks and some stupid endgame slideshow which changes slightly depending on some not-really-important choices in the game and suddenly you are ecstatic. Like the rest of the 90 hours you spend on the game and were inferior to another game didn't matter at all. This is the definition of autism.

 

[Atlantico]

Obsidian without Avellone is like Bethesda without Todd Howard or Larian without Sven.
The magic is gone, but nobody has bothered to tell them.

Larian is garbage, Bethesda is mega-garbage and Obsidian didn't change when Avellone departed.

Dumbfuck.

 

[Melcar]

They are all shit.

 

[TemplarGR]

Larian is garbage and Obsidian didn't change when Avellone departed.

FTFY

 

[gogis]

I disliked every game from Obsidian aside from Tyranny. Funnily enough people think that it was their weakest game for some reason. Oh well

 

[Butter]

I disliked every game from Obsidian aside from Tyranny. Funnily enough people think that it was their weakest game for some reason. Oh well

People prefer to forget Dungeon Siege 3.

 

[Atlantico]

FTFY

Hi-larious. Seriously, you can't expect anyone to believe your "Bethestard"-shtick? Nobody is that retarded, in 2020, post FO4, post FO76, after these clowns admit to leaking customer personal information, after running the Fallout franchise to the ground, after proving incompetence, maliciousness and pure greed, time and time again.

Nobody can be such a "fan" of those faggots, like you present yourself. You'd have to be on the highest consumerist level, kneeling at the altar of trademarks and corporate logos. You'd have to be sick in the head.

 

[Ol' Willy]

30 or more speechchecks

- [Trolling 3/10] Even their best success, New Vegas, was not really that good as people make it out to be. Fallout 3 was better as a video game. It was better designed, apart from the extra weapons that New Vegas had. You people are always mesmerized by cheap tricks and cheap words in a video game, while you fail to appriecate the actual meat of a video game, the gameplay, the maps, the exploration, the enemies, etc. All you need to look for is around 30 or more speechchecks and some stupid endgame slideshow which changes slightly depending on some not-really-important choices in the game and suddenly you are ecstatic. Like the rest of the 90 hours you spend on the game and were inferior to another game didn't matter at all. This is the definition of autism.

 

[Zer0wing]

Obsidian without Avellone is like Bethesda without Todd Howard or Larian without Sven.

So much without that most remembered Obsidian game, Fallout New Vegas, of which the vanilla game is a joint effort of mostly JSawyer and John Gonzales, yet nobody bothers to remember Alpha Protocol with much more memetic duo of actual Chris Avellone and Brian Mitsoda (they did an excellent job as writers). And doesn't bother to remember those three FNV DLCs Chris wrote.

No, Obsidian is killed by it's higest management. Feargus sucked every last drop of creative energy and driving force out of both those who left the studio and those who still work there. Without Feargus being Feargus, those former BIS guys would still deliver actual QUALITY.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Obsidian without Avellone is like Bethesda without Todd Howard or Larian without Sven.

So much without that most remembered Obsidian game, Fallout New Vegas, of which the vanilla game is a joint effort of mostly JSawyer and John Gonzales, yet nobody bothers to remember Alpha Protocol with much more memetic duo of actual Chris Avellone and Brian Mitsoda (they did an excellent job as writers). And doesn't bother to remember those three FNV DLCs Chris wrote.

No, Obsidian is killed by it's higest management. Without Feargus being Feargus, those former BIS guys would still deliver actual QUALITY.

the best obsidian game is kotor2 though

 

[Zer0wing]

the best obsidian game is kotor2 though

>Sequel to the Bioware game

 

[Darkforge]

I like to think I'm a pretty nice person, I don't like or agree with the racism and sexism on here, I think it's good to be kind to people and that the world needs more love in it. I'm almost done with my psychology PhD and I'm really invested in figuring out how to build community and empathy and stop cycles of violence.

but will this Templar guy shut the fuck up?

No. I understand you would love a monoculture-echochamber where only your opinion and those who agree 100% with you is posted, but it is nice that RPGCodex still remains a free forum, despite your hard efforts to destroy it.

I know it may seem strange to you, but there are people that don't enjoy what a small vocal cult inside the Codex enjoys. Sales show that pretty clearly and objectively/scientifically i might add. In fact, i would argue that i am not the troll, YOU ARE.

Since in your world sales apparently equals quality next you will be telling me Justin fucking Bieber is a good musician right?

 

[TemplarGR]

Since in your world sales apparently equals quality next you will be telling me Justin fucking Bieber is a good musician right?

He is entertaining. All those billions of people who listen to him, don't do it because the US government passed a law to force them to.... Whether he is good or bad is in the eye of the beholder.

The same applies to Bethesda games. They are entertaining. And since we are talking about video GAMES (search in the dictionary what the word "game" means), their main purpose is to be entertaining, and Bethesda games are the best for their purpose therefore they sell more than the niche crpgs.

 

[Sranchammer]

All I'm gonna say is that Tyranny is the only RPG I felt compelled to finish since Fallout: NV

 

[rusty_shackleford]

All I'm gonna say is that Tyranny is the only RPG I felt compelled to finish since Fallout: NV

I'm still holding out hope that they release the other half of the game too bro.

 

[Tigranes]

Tyranny was criminally unfinished, but I can understand why quite a few people are fond of it: it was the first time in years that you fired up an Obsidian game and got a hint of their old style, i.e. subversions of genre tropes that try to present a different configuration of morality decisions in RPGs. It's just a pity that not only did they phone in the combat (understandable given budget), they also undermined the best aspects of their own plot/setting needlessly in the second half.

I would really like to know how they came to make decisions like, let's just get this imperious independent judge character we built up the whole game, to bend over and become your sex slave after 5 seconds of conversation.

 

[Nano]

Pretty sure it's impossible to fail conversation checks in Tyranny, I'm sure that earns it extra points with the storyfags.

 

[Sigourn]

Since in your world sales apparently equals quality next you will be telling me Justin fucking Bieber is a good musician right?

"If it's popular it has to be bad."

Guess The Beatles are pieces of shit musicians.

 

[Häyhä]

"If it's popular it has to be bad."

Guess The Beatles are pieces of shit musicians.

That's not what he said.