Game News Time to Conquer the Cold: Wasteland 3 Fig Campaign is Live

[Bubbles]

We barely know anything about the base game, so I doubt they're going to get into much detail about the stretch goals.

 

[undecaf]

What a lame batch of stretch goals. Very little incentive to go further from there.

What ever, though.

The first round of kickstarter stretch goals proved that pie-in-sky grand ideas just can't happen with ~slightly-more~ money.

Yeah, true enough. That doesn't change what I said, though.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Can we romance the car companion?
Can it assume the position?

I have a link to a picture for just this occasion...

 

[Darkzone]

Even Fish-Lips is stoked!

I hate fucking clipping and it is a sign of laziness.

 

[acer palmatum]

Can we romance the car companion?
Can it assume the position?

I have a link to a picture for just this occasion...

https://a.disquscdn.com/get?url=htt...K1rqfhi2o1_250.gif&key=ddj-_XSRIrBKxL53Jr5CXg

 

[markec]

Same devs, 10 to 20 years maturer/more knowledgeable; add the 'meta' factor in (what others did, why and how it did not work) and i naturally believed that given a chance, today, they could with my money take the ---inevitable--- steps forward. No one did that. NO ONE. Not a one.

Because KS doesn't fund games. It gives developers a bit of money to get started. 4 mil is a lot of money for a guy in his mom's basement, but it's not enough to do what these "same devs" did when they were younger and had bigger budgets and more manpower.

Take PoE, what I expected was a game half the size of BG2 (if we were lucky), tried and true combat system and not reinventing the wheel into a square and a well written story in standard Obsidian fashion.
Low budget cant explain why such a visually stunning game has such a shitty combat system and shitty, bland, boring writing coming from a team of a veteran devs.

 

[Aenra]

Take PoE, what I expected was a game half the size of BG2 (if we were lucky), tried and true combat system and not reinventing the wheel into a square and a well written story in standard Obsidian fashion.
Low budget cant explain why such a visually stunning game has such a shitty combat system and shitty, bland, boring writing coming from a team of a veteran devs.

Maybe you should take this a step further?
In a wording different than mine, you said what i said.."not even what once was, but in fact less". So what is it that justifies to you a faux "pre-ordering" (at that point, you paid for air, not what a true pre-order is) rather than your waiting to buy it? When released, and assuming it met your criteria? When you'd indeed have been able to see for yourself whether they'd been met or not?

And yet one step further, when your criteria (as the informed and monocled customer) are so muddied or vague or just lax perhaps, where do they lead? Because where they lead? Is in a situation where you have no right to complain for anything, not if you really think about it.
Which.. is where the problem is. How it's used (KS) and what for

 

[Vault Dweller]

Same devs, 10 to 20 years maturer/more knowledgeable; add the 'meta' factor in (what others did, why and how it did not work) and i naturally believed that given a chance, today, they could with my money take the ---inevitable--- steps forward. No one did that. NO ONE. Not a one.

Because KS doesn't fund games. It gives developers a bit of money to get started. 4 mil is a lot of money for a guy in his mom's basement, but it's not enough to do what these "same devs" did when they were younger and had bigger budgets and more manpower.

Take PoE, what I expected was a game half the size of BG2 (if we were lucky), tried and true combat system and not reinventing the wheel into a square and a well written story in standard Obsidian fashion.
Low budget cant explain why such a visually stunning game has such a shitty combat system and shitty, bland, boring writing coming from a team of a veteran devs.

Because it was a side project and their focus remained on working with publishers because for a company the size of Obsidian 4 mil is nothing. Feargus stated before that their burn rate was 1 mil a month. Let's say they tightened the belts and it's only half a mil a month. That means that 4 mil will cover only 8 months at best. The game was in development for 2.5 years.

 

[markec]

Same devs, 10 to 20 years maturer/more knowledgeable; add the 'meta' factor in (what others did, why and how it did not work) and i naturally believed that given a chance, today, they could with my money take the ---inevitable--- steps forward. No one did that. NO ONE. Not a one.

Because KS doesn't fund games. It gives developers a bit of money to get started. 4 mil is a lot of money for a guy in his mom's basement, but it's not enough to do what these "same devs" did when they were younger and had bigger budgets and more manpower.

Take PoE, what I expected was a game half the size of BG2 (if we were lucky), tried and true combat system and not reinventing the wheel into a square and a well written story in standard Obsidian fashion.
Low budget cant explain why such a visually stunning game has such a shitty combat system and shitty, bland, boring writing coming from a team of a veteran devs.

Because it was a side project and their focus remained on working with publishers because for a company the size of Obsidian 4 mil is nothing. Feargus stated before that their burn rate was 1 mil a month. Let's say they tightened the belts and it's only half a mil a month. That means that 4 mil will cover only 8 months at best. The game was in development for 2.5 years.

Low budget would explain smaller scope of the game, less detailed locations and characters, limited sounds, less diversity in character models and enemy design, unpolished and unbalanced combat...

You can explain many things with low budget and limited time, but in case of Obsidian, a group of veterans who worked on clutch projects before to release such a shitty game is not much of a excuse. I would have forgiven pretty much anything but the poor writing is something that has no excuse.

 

[Grauken]

One aspect couldn't have been allowed to be better than all the others, everything was well balanced on the edge of mediocrity

 

[DeepOcean]

Because it was a side project and their focus remained on working with publishers because for a company the size of Obsidian 4 mil is nothing.

Fallout 1 was a side project of a single man for alot of time and was almost cancelled that didn't stop it of being a good game though. The problem of PoE is not only budgetwise, somethings like the stronghold and the token faction system I could forgive if the critical part of the game was good, you can justify why some parts of a game are underdeveloped on budget but an entire game being mediocre from the story to the combat, from the start to finish? If your entire game is this mediocre, the problem at this point maybe you and not only the budget.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Fallout 1 was a side project of a single man for alot of time and was almost cancelled that didn't stop it of being a good game though. The problem of PoE is not only budgetwise, somethings like the stronghold and the token faction system I could forgive if the critical part of the game was good, you can justify why some parts of a game are underdeveloped on budget but an entire game being mediocre from the story to the combat, from the start to finish? If your entire game is this mediocre, the problem at this point maybe you and not only the budget.

If Tim Cain had to be project lead, lead writer and lead programmer on PoE, used ToEE's engine as the starting point and had a couple of artists to make assets, PoE could've been the game everyone expected in the first place.

 

[Zanzoken]

The games industry is schizophrenic sometimes. On the one hand it's impossible to evoke 20 year-old games like PS:T or BG2 without spending millions upon millions of dollars, despite all the new technologies and experience people supposedly have. On the other hand you have excellent games like Super Meat Boy and FTL that are made by a couple of guys with no money.

I know, it's different genres and stuff, but still. I wish I knew what causes this huge gap. Like could you change BG2 so it would be easier to create games like that, while still preserving what made it great?

 

[Kev Inkline]

One aspect couldn't have been allowed to be better than all the others, everything was well balanced on the edge of mediocrity

Not the graphics, though. They are beautiful, may cobblestones be my witness.

Also, let's see if we can turn this into yet another PoE thread. Shows how much it is loved here, even if everyone claims to the contrary.

 

[Fry]

You can explain many things with low budget and limited time, but in case of Obsidian, a group of veterans who worked on clutch projects before to release such a shitty game is not much of a excuse. I would have forgiven pretty much anything but the poor writing is something that has no excuse.

Wha? Read the Fenstermaker interview on this very web site. The writing was rushed. They used first drafts with very little revision.

That was all down to time and budget.

 

[Invictus]

Honestly it seems to me that having Styx and the Brotherhood guys along Zeits and the good writers would be an awesome vote of confidence; Styx will surely be innvolved in both combat and overall game design (he kind of proved the point you dont need money to make an excellent game like Underrail)
The Brotherhood have a very good style which will fit the "Frozen Age" theme very well
And the writers are proven commodities by this point
All in all it is not a dream team or as sexy as having Christ Avellone as a guest writer or whatever but it looks very promising to me
I have not pledged yet since I rather use paypal and want to see what else they got up their sleeve

 

[Bubbles]

Zeits and the good writers

Harsh, dude.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

Honestly it seems to me that having Styx and the Brotherhood guys along Zeits and the good writers would be an awesome vote of confidence; Styx will surely be innvolved in both combat and overall game design (he kind of proved the point you dont need money to make an excellent game like Underrail)
The Brotherhood have a very good style which will fit the "Frozen Age" theme very well
And the writers are proven commodities by this point
All in all it is not a dream team or as sexy as having Christ Avellone as a guest writer or whatever but it looks very promising to me
I have not pledged yet since I rather use paypal and want to see what else they got up their sleeve

Have we heard anything about Styg having a role or is this just your conclusion from Underrail being a KS giveaway? Fargo described the Stasis guys as helping out or consultants or something like that, yet to be seen how involved they are,

 

[Bubbles]

Have we heard anything about Styg having a role or is this just your conclusion from Underrail being a KS giveaway?

Styg works on WL3?!?!

We're not involved in development in any way. We're just doing some mutual promotion.

However, there's rampant speculation that he could be a stretch goal.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Honestly it seems to me that having Styx and the Brotherhood guys along Zeits and the good writers would be an awesome vote of confidence; Styx will surely be innvolved in both combat and overall game design (he kind of proved the point you dont need money to make an excellent game like Underrail)
The Brotherhood have a very good style which will fit the "Frozen Age" theme very well
And the writers are proven commodities by this point
All in all it is not a dream team or as sexy as having Christ Avellone as a guest writer or whatever but it looks very promising to me
I have not pledged yet since I rather use paypal and want to see what else they got up their sleeve

Have we heard anything about Styg having a role or is this just your conclusion from Underrail being a KS giveaway? Fargo described the Stasis guys as helping out or consultants or something like that, yet to be seen how involved they are,

Nothing. It's just wild speculation based on first 48 hours promo.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Besides the only way that Styg involvement would have produced something good would have been one where he was given full creative control.
Meanwhile we just must hope that Underrail expansion will be good.

 

[Rev]

Because it was a side project and their focus remained on working with publishers because for a company the size of Obsidian 4 mil is nothing. Feargus stated before that their burn rate was 1 mil a month. Let's say they tightened the belts and it's only half a mil a month. That means that 4 mil will cover only 8 months at best. The game was in development for 2.5 years.

You're right, 4 mil for Obsidian is almost nothing, but they didn't have anything else of note at the time and they put pretty much all their best and most reknown designers, artists and writers working on it (Cain, Sawyer, MCA, Fenstermaker, Menze, McLean, etc., although some of them later left the project to embark on Tyranny or ended with a smaller role than what was anticipated), so I don't think PoE's failures can be linked to Obsidian treating it as a secondary title. Besides, it was also very important because they were finacially at risk before the KS, their reputation relied heavily on the game and it was a big turning point for the company. If the game would've failed both critically and commercially they probably would have been forced to fire a lot of people again, at the very least.

Wha? Read the Fenstermaker interview on this very web site. The writing was rushed. They used first drafts with very little revision.

That was all down to time and budget.

Yeah, that's true. A lot of PoE's problems are probably caused by the lack of time. In fact, they continued to work on the systems for more than a year and introduced a lot of changes with the 2.0 and 3.0 versions and all the patches.
Also, I found the expansions better designed than the base game, because it was a more focused and short experience and I guess they had more time to refine everything, as well as more experience with the engine, the tools and these kind of games.

 

[Vault Dweller]

You're right, 4 mil for Obsidian is almost nothing, but they didn't have anything else of note at the time and they put pretty much all their best and most reknown designers, artists and writers working on it (Cain, Sawyer, MCA, Fenstermaker, Menze, McLean, etc.

Their best writer is Avellone who wrote two party members for PoE. I wouldn't call it putting their best writers on it.

 

[Rev]

Their best writer is Avellone who wrote two party members for PoE. I wouldn't call it putting their best writers on it.

As I said, not all of their designers ended up having a big role, but they worked on the game nonetheless. Also Tim Cain ended up doing the stronghold's systems (which was terrible btw) and little else, hardly anything that could make or break the game.
I don't know why they ended up with smaller roles, if it was because they weren't that interested in the project, had other work to do that prevented them to take more responsibilites (Avellone had to work also on WL2, TToN, write some novellas and probably some other stuff, for example) or anything else, but Obsidian put them to work on PoE from the start, it's not like they assigned only their junior designers to the project because they didn't care.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Everyone contributing a bit in their spare time (instead of focusing on it) is a sign of a side project. Had Avellone written the entire game (or most of it), instead of two characters, people would have overlooked bad combat like they did with PST.