Company News The Knights of New Vegas: A History Of Obsidian Entertainment

[villain of the story]

Fuck you, Kotaku. It was only as bugged as Fallout 3.

On release, the robots at the end of Vault 11 were accidentally flagged as part of New Vegas's faction, so once you destroyed them and went back to the strip, the securitrons would attack you. That kind of sloppiness is inexcusable.

Get back into the kitchen.

 

[tuluse]

I sort of think that since they never bothered to make design docs (whatever you want to call them) they never realized how important it was? That's the vibe I'm getting from Ziets (about how DS3 also needed it "as it turned out"). If DS3 as a sequel became a better game because of the design doc, then clearly it helps make a better game. As much as I hate to admit it, I think Roguey's right - it's a little absurd. But I'm not a game dev, so my opinion counts for nothing - although I have worked in software development before.

Fargo has talked about the importance of a design doc, and I think Tim Cain has as well. So I really doubt it was a new and strange idea to Black Isle former employees.

I mean fuck, didn't MCA write like 3/4 of PST before they even started work on it?

 

[Infinitron]

Oooh. A catfight between the Codex's two ambiguously gendered contrarians.

 

[Infinitron]

I sort of think that since they never bothered to make design docs (whatever you want to call them) they never realized how important it was? That's the vibe I'm getting from Ziets (about how DS3 also needed it "as it turned out"). If DS3 as a sequel became a better game because of the design doc, then clearly it helps make a better game. As much as I hate to admit it, I think Roguey's right - it's a little absurd. But I'm not a game dev, so my opinion counts for nothing - although I have worked in software development before.

Fargo has talked about the importance of a design doc, and I think Tim Cain has as well. So I really doubt it was a new and strange idea to Black Isle former employees.

I mean fuck, didn't MCA write like 3/4 of PST before they even started work on it?

Again, that's plot, quests, characters, areas - not gameplay mechanics. Read the thread.

 

[tuluse]

I assume that "writing" PS:T included a lot of check int here, needs item x for this node, etc.

 

[Roguey]

Get back into the kitchen.

One of the first PC patches actually made critters essential npcs. They had to emergency-fix it within hours. It was so funny just pouring bullets into those things and watching them charge at me undeterred.

Late edit: Of course I'm being unnecessarily harsh for comedy's sake. I'm aware they had months of a hellacious crunch that transformed Sawyer into this thing:

A lot of unnecessary sloppy mistakes are created in those kinds of terrible working conditions. But hey, Bethesda seemed to be satisfied.

 

[Karmapowered]

Well, he said it involved pen and paper, not that it was fully pen and paper.

I got that impression as well. Lots of QA systems actually still involve P&P in some form.

Also this is about Internal QA. Publisher QA (which is usually the big one) was probably different. Still, it's a bit surprising they changed so late.

Basically, if the information provided here in the interview proves to be true, Obsidian still very much seems like an amateur team in matters of QA.

A typical (EDIT: and I want to stress typical here, since it can vary widely from project to project, and to spare everyone here boring specifics) QA process usually unfolds as such over time in a healthy project :

• INTERNAL QA (EDITOR)
  
  1/ tests on the local computer of every developper
  2/ tests on a single computer that aggregates and synchronizes all the content uploaded by the whole DEV team
  
  -> delivery of the aggregated, tested and fixed package to publisher
  
  
• EXTERNAL QA (PUBLISHER)
  
  3/ tests on a single computer of the above package
  4/ tests on any computers built around a pertinent configuration that the above package is supposed to work on
  
  -> green-light for release to the masses customers

Both parts (internal & external) are of equal criticity, since no single testing stage replaces another further up or down the loop.

Also, pen&paper has only ever been good for tabletop RPGs (or drawing nifty cartoons while searching for inspiration during a coding brain fart). Using/promoting post-its as the main support for QA purposes is just <hahaohwow.gif>, even more so in 2012. Doing so is neither more effective (in reporting bugs), nor cheaper on the long run (since you have to roll up that many patches later to fix the bugs that were left unreported).

Fortunately, Obsidian still manages to produce mostly quality games, which are eventually playable if one is willing to show them a good deal of patience.

 

[Zakhad]

While we're at this, why not beat up on Troika as well - anyone remember that early Arcanum bug (eventually patched) where missed shots by enemy NPCs that hit your followers made them like YOU less, as though you'd hit them? Hours of fun, especially when surrounded by Kite Bowmen in the BMC mines. Clearly rank amateurs.

I mean, seriously: many ambitious game companies seem to go through a period of something like this. Daggerfall's dungeons could be beaten by levitating through the roof of a stairway and then navigating them from the outside so as to find the end goal. trying to climb over the edge of a town wall could catapult you across the whole town at something like the speed of sound. Summoning Daedra earned you money instead of costing it. Now THAT was a game with unforgivable bugs. So I guess if bugs are so important, Skyrim must be ?

I'm bemused as to why Obsidian earns so much apparent ire. Well, except that the career of Moribund proves that the best way to get attention on the Codex is to troll in every possible direction simultaneously, so there's that.

 

[abnaxus]

Late edit: Of course I'm being unnecessarily harsh for comedy's sake. I'm aware they had months of a hellacious crunch that transformed Sawyer into this thing:

A lot of unnecessary sloppy mistakes are created in those kinds of terrible working conditions. But hey, Bethesda seemed to be satisfied.

Is the guy on the left Jason Bergman? The chick looks like Obsidian's New Vegas (ex-)producer, but I'm not sure.

 

[Moribund]

While we're at this, why not beat up on Troika as well - anyone remember that early Arcanum bug (eventually patched) where missed shots by enemy NPCs that hit your followers made them like YOU less, as though you'd hit them? Hours of fun, especially when surrounded by Kite Bowmen in the BMC mines. Clearly rank amateurs.

I mean, seriously: many ambitious game companies seem to go through a period of something like this. Daggerfall's dungeons could be beaten by levitating through the roof of a stairway and then navigating them from the outside so as to find the end goal. trying to climb over the edge of a town wall could catapult you across the whole town at something like the speed of sound. Summoning Daedra earned you money instead of costing it. Now THAT was a game with unforgivable bugs. So I guess if bugs are so important, Skyrim must be ?

I'm bemused as to why Obsidian earns so much apparent ire. Well, except that the career of Moribund proves that the best way to get attention on the Codex is to troll in every possible direction simultaneously, so there's that.

I wouldn't even consider trolling about games, and I doubt many others would either, if any. It comes down to piss off some fanboys and you are an outcast, which is the way the internet seems headed.

Even the great and terrible DU calls it RTWP and calls the idiots who donated to PE race traitors. Gloves are off, pricks.

All I said in this thread is what the guy actually fucking said. I just take him at face value, though I'm interested to know if the face value is true (in which cases lol what a fucktard to make all these shitty decisions, especially go all in on a retarded south park RPG that has zero chance to succeed. And I know the reasoning. It's like costume quest and costume quest made huge masses of cash. Problem is, you are not AAA game company, and you are not a classic adventure game company either, those are fantasyland options that won't happen in a million years. At least not without building up to it like all those other people did it. If they had the comedic talent of DF that would be one thing, but there's only a couple people alive who have a proven record with something like that, and it's a certaintly this will fail. So either feargus is a delusion idiot of the highest order or they got forced into this by being on the ropes of bankruptcy.

But bugs come down to money. It's amusing to see people talk smack about stuff they know nothing about but like all of life you spend more time and money then the problem is eradicated. I doubt that they jam the bug reports up their butt or snort coke off them in the bathroom then light them on fire. OTOH maybe if, like I said, they had some coherent direction this would not be an issue. Having a new engine and new everything for every single game means it's going to be a disaster every single time. Invsting heavily in some SP nonsense is going to be even more unusable for other games, especially anything like people on codex want. Or how I thought people on codex were before I realized it's all a bunch of babies who only care about how cool the cutscenes are. Shit, even CoD fans are sick of that shit.

It's obvious this company is grossly mismanaged, but playing backseat developer about little details of development is an insult to the people who do the work and deserve the credit, while defending a guy in a suit who's said nothing but moronic crap since before I was born isn't helping anything.

Forgive if I quadruple post, if so it's the fault of the rpgwatch redirection.

 

[Roguey]

While we're at this, why not beat up on Troika as well - anyone remember that early Arcanum bug (eventually patched) where missed shots by enemy NPCs that hit your followers made them like YOU less, as though you'd hit them? Hours of fun, especially when surrounded by Kite Bowmen in the BMC mines. Clearly rank amateurs.

Yep.

I mean, seriously: many ambitious game companies seem to go through a period of something like this. Daggerfall's dungeons could be beaten by levitating through the roof of a stairway and then navigating them from the outside so as to find the end goal. trying to climb over the edge of a town wall could catapult you across the whole town at something like the speed of sound. Summoning Daedra earned you money instead of costing it. Now THAT was a game with unforgivable bugs.

Sounds like emergent gameplay to me, except for the Daedra part, that's a beneficial bug.

Is the guy on the left Jason Bergman? The chick looks like Obsidian's New Vegas (ex-)producer, but I'm not sure.

Nah, it's some Best Buy guy. And yeah, that's Tess. If Obsidian had any sense they'd drop Brennecke as Eternity's producer and rehire her for the job. Laying off an Asian dyke should be a criminal offense.

 

[Zakhad]

Is the guy on the left Jason Bergman? The chick looks like Obsidian's New Vegas (ex-)producer, but I'm not sure.

Nah, it's some Best Buy guy. And yeah, that's Tess. If Obsidian had any sense they'd drop Brennecke as Eternity's producer and rehire her for the job. Laying off an Asian dyke should be a criminal offense.

As someone who is friends with a statistically significant number of Asian lesbians, I will vouch for this.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.formspring.me/GZiets/q/405872805305940997

I’ve been somewhat fortunate in that I didn’t work on many of the canceled titles (only one, really), but that also means that I don’t know much about the others.

In 2009, I came back to Obsidian for Baldur’s Gate 3, but it was canceled almost as soon as I got there – probably the saddest moment in my career because I had always wanted to work on that series. The team barely started preproduction, so who knows what the game would have been. It was a solid bunch of people, too –Tony Evans, Jeff Husges, Bobby Null, Justin Cherry, Anthony Davis, Rich Taylor, and more.

My “real” canceled project – the one I actually spent a few months on - was North Carolina. Its secrets are bound by an NDA, so I can’t say any more than what’s in the Kotaku article.

What they didn’t cover in that article were all the amazing Obsidian proposals that have made the rounds but were never picked up by a publisher. I’m hoping that changes now, but we’ll see…

 

[DarkUnderlord]

The contrast between Obsidian at the end of 2012 and Obsidian at the beginning of 2012 is like night and day.​

[...] It almost feels like a fairy tale ending: after years of rushed projects, sudden cancellations, and brutal layoffs, Obsidian is suddenly in control of its own destiny. They've got two promising games on the way, and even just a few months ago, major publishers were knocking on their door: Urquhart told me he's been talking to Bethesda, Ubisoft, Warner Bros., and LucasArts.​

Problem, DarkUnderlord?

I lol'd.

"Everything is fine. We are in talks with developers right this very minute. We will be announcing something very soon."

Infinitron.Postcount++

EDIT: So you joined just to fap to PE, I didn't realize this until seeing you mention it in another thread. Not WL 2 or even DF, but PE. It truly stuns me. And you were immediately given a staff job. Wow the codex is truly the most hardcore RPG site.

He spams a lot. We gave KingComrade a job because of that. That didn't turn out too badly.

 

[evdk]

As someone who is friends with a statistically significant number of Asian lesbians, I will vouch for this.

Define "statistically significant."

 

[DarkUnderlord]

I sort of think that since they never bothered to make design docs (whatever you want to call them) they never realized how important it was? That's the vibe I'm getting from Ziets (about how DS3 also needed it "as it turned out"). If DS3 as a sequel became a better game because of the design doc, then clearly it helps make a better game. As much as I hate to admit it, I think Roguey's right - it's a little absurd. But I'm not a game dev, so my opinion counts for nothing - although I have worked in software development before.

Fargo has talked about the importance of a design doc, and I think Tim Cain has as well. So I really doubt it was a new and strange idea to Black Isle former employees.

I mean fuck, didn't MCA write like 3/4 of PST before they even started work on it?

http://bootstrike.com/Torment/cool.php

You want "Last Rites Game Development Vision Plans PDF DOC (2.6 MB)"

2.5 MB PDF file of 47 pages.

THE HIGH CONCEPT
The player is a scarred, amnesiac immortal in search of his identity. On the
way, the player character will kill a lot of people…including himself.

“Sheesh. Can this guy
write any more text?
I‟m already bored,
and I’m fucking
dead.”

The game begins with the character waking up on a cold stone slab in the Mortuary, a huge morgue in the city of Sigil. The player character has no idea who he is, what he is doing there, and how he died. He must escape and explore the strange world beyond the Mortuary walls to uncover the secret of his death and rebirth.1 A detailed plot summary has been provided after the vision statement. Now for a list of the cool features of this game:
[...]
“MY PRETTY THING, I CAN TRAVEL THE PLANES, BUT I CANNOT CHANGE THE NATURE OF MAN.”​

Yes, it even includes Morte.

 

[Brother None]

Yeah, Fargo required vision documents for all Interplay projects in the late 90s. The Last Rites document is a pitch document, it's the one they used to sell the concept of the game to the suits (seriously! But Interplay was doing a lot of crazy titles back then), Fallout was already ongoing when Fargo asked them to write a vision documents to make sure all the core points are nailed down.

And yeah, that's Tess. If Obsidian had any sense they'd drop Brennecke as Eternity's producer and rehire her for the job. Laying off an Asian dyke should be a criminal offense.

You think a guy should be fired and she should be re-hired for no other reason than being an Asian dyke? That is really sexist. And possibly racist.

 

[Zakhad]

As someone who is friends with a statistically significant number of Asian lesbians, I will vouch for this.

Define "statistically significant."

A larger percentage of my friendship group conform to both criteria than is the case with the friendship groups of comparable individuals?

I suppose I could do a full study based on transparent data collection and analysis, in which I control for factors like race/class/location, but it's not really my area.

Wait, I mean: define "define".

 

[Roguey]

You think a guy should be fired and she should be re-hired for no other reason than being an Asian dyke? That is really sexist. And possibly racist.

a) Brennecke is also a hopeless D&D scrub and a Diablo 3-apologist
b) Tess would be better at his producer job
c) You can't be sexist against men or racist against whites because -isms require institutionalized prejudice.
d) I also didn't say he should be fired. He can keep his programming job.

 

[Sordid MCA/Prosper Hybryd]

But who decides which "prejudice" is "institutionalized" and which isn't?

 

[Harold]

c) You can't be sexist against men or racist against whites because -isms require institutionalized prejudice.

This is the key to understanding Roguey Lesifoere

 

[Infinitron]

Roguey is much like The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism:

"Is it true, what it says?"

"As description, yes. The programme it sets forth is nonsense."

 

[Harold]

Roguey, when larping as Lesifoere, is much like The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism:

"Is it true, what it says?"

"As description, yes. The programme it sets forth is nonsense."

fix'd

 

[abnaxus]

You think a guy should be fired and she should be re-hired for no other reason than being an Asian dyke? That is really sexist. And possibly racist.

a) Brennecke is also a hopeless D&D scrub and a Diablo 3-apologist
b) Tess would be better at his producer job
c) You can't be sexist against men or racist against whites because -isms require institutionalized prejudice.
d) I also didn't say he should be fired. He can keep his programming job.

How could you, Feargus?

 

[LundB]

But who decides which "prejudice" is "institutionalized" and which isn't?

Only the unprivileged have that privilege.