Why couldn't Obsidian make a commercially successful isometric RPG like Larian?

[smaug]

Having to look at tool tips to get an idea of what stats do is the opposite of intuitive.

Let's face it, if you're not reading the words of what attributes actually do when making a character, you're stupid.

Ugh, I hate this stupid percentage based system. One of the reasons why I don’t bother with DoS or PoE.

gurugeorge you are the embodiment of decline nigger

 

[Riddler]

Swen bet the company, and I'm ready to believe this is more than bragging after the fact, on BG3. Obsidian's leadership didn't have the balls nor the perception of business trends to even stay independent. They are looking at retirment, and the developers who are left there seem to just be kicking the can down the road.

Obsidian was formed by the remnants of Black Isle that never had any balls. The ones with ballls at Black Isle left after Fallout 1 when everybody started to intefere with their work. I;m talking about the 3 amigos.They had balls back then and were also quite young but the Troika stuff really killed their spirit. If Troika would have been formed 20 years later during crowd funding and steam era they would have killed it since the trio would have gotten serious money without having to deal with companies lilke Sierra to distribute their product. They would have had more time to focus on games than managing the company. Boyarsky is still "shell shocked" and you could see the pain in his eyes when he talks about Troika. I could imagine them churning patches for Arcanum with steam and gog platforms

Sven is the right dude at the right time because he would have failed 20 years ago. The crowd funding for his first games really helped his company and bought him enough independence to do what he wanted. BG 3 is his "magnum opus" and i think the peak of his success. If he is smart he will milk this with 1-2 more games and retire rich with a good reputation.

bonus: I loved how Todd Howard saw BG3 winning most important gaming awards while Starfield got fuck all. His "sweet little lies" cought up with him and Bethesda.

Divine divinity was released over 20 years ago and that wasn't even Larians first game.

Larian was founded in 1996, a year before the release of Fallout...

 

[Roguey]

Maybe, but nowhere near as stupid as a system designer making strength increase healing amount.

That's not strength, it's might.

 

[Artyoan]

If I had one piece of advice to Obsidian as to generating more sales, I would say to go heavy on environmental interaction and having an enormous amount of interactable content, even if 90% of it is effectively clutter. I think that is why DOS2 did well, which carried into BG3.

I also think Elder Scrolls was successful for the same reason.

 

[JarlFrank]

Yes, because games SHOULD be interactive. The more you can do with the environment the better.

Immersive sim style design is objectively the best.

 

[Kem0sabe]

If I had one piece of advice to Obsidian as to generating more sales, I would say to go heavy on environmental interaction and having an enormous amount of interactable content, even if 90% of it is effectively clutter. I think that is why DOS2 did well, which carried into BG3.

I also think Elder Scrolls was successful for the same reason.

I don't think it was only the environmental stuff that boosted BG3's appeal to have such a phenomenal impact. It was their willingness to go all the way and look at no expense to release the game they envisioned.

Take Raphael as an example of their approach to story telling and character design. A secondary antogonist that can be ignored, but Larian went and gave him the best voice work in the game, created a great theme song, with lyrics, for his combat encounter, gave him a completely reasonable and character fitting motivation for everything, tied a bunch of content and characters with his throughout the game.

After the house of hope encounter, I thought "well done Sven, Devil Charles Dance was a great idea".

Obsidian is incapable of throwing that kind of effort with a secondary character.

 

[__scribbles__]

Immersive sim style design is objectively the best.

I legitimately have a hard time playing anything for a while after playing a Looking Glass game. Everything else just seems so restrictive in comparison. Even non-RPG imsims like Thief are better at recreating the freedom of tabletop RPGs than the vast majority of actual RPGs are.

 

[Tyranicon]

I don't think it was only the environmental stuff that boosted BG3's appeal to have such a phenomenal impact. It was their willingness to go all the way and look at no expense to release the game they envisioned.

Take Raphael as an example of their approach to story telling and character design. A secondary antogonist that can be ignored, but Larian went and gave him the best voice work in the game, created a great theme song, with lyrics, for his combat encounter, gave him a completely reasonable and character fitting motivation for everything, tied a bunch of content and characters with his throughout the game.

After the house of hope encounter, I thought "well done Sven, Devil Charles Dance was a great idea".

Obsidian is incapable of throwing that kind of effort with a secondary character.

TBF though, Larian did this assbackwards because Raphael is way better than the actual main baddies, who were really lame.

 

[Alex]

Maybe, but nowhere near as stupid as a system designer making strength increase healing amount.

That's not strength, it's might.

(uncountable) Physical strength or force.

They are synonyms. Might is not even implied to be more abstract than the word strength, and since there is the Might & Magic series of games, it has been used as a synonym in CRPGs as well. But all that is actually easy to ignore if the word "might" here was referring to a concrete idea, even if one that existed only in-setting, that would work like that. It isn't, it just affects healing and magic and whatnot because Sawyer is Sawyer.

 

[likash]

Swen bet the company, and I'm ready to believe this is more than bragging after the fact, on BG3. Obsidian's leadership didn't have the balls nor the perception of business trends to even stay independent. They are looking at retirment, and the developers who are left there seem to just be kicking the can down the road.

Obsidian was formed by the remnants of Black Isle that never had any balls. The ones with ballls at Black Isle left after Fallout 1 when everybody started to intefere with their work. I;m talking about the 3 amigos.They had balls back then and were also quite young but the Troika stuff really killed their spirit. If Troika would have been formed 20 years later during crowd funding and steam era they would have killed it since the trio would have gotten serious money without having to deal with companies lilke Sierra to distribute their product. They would have had more time to focus on games than managing the company. Boyarsky is still "shell shocked" and you could see the pain in his eyes when he talks about Troika. I could imagine them churning patches for Arcanum with steam and gog platforms

Sven is the right dude at the right time because he would have failed 20 years ago. The crowd funding for his first games really helped his company and bought him enough independence to do what he wanted. BG 3 is his "magnum opus" and i think the peak of his success. If he is smart he will milk this with 1-2 more games and retire rich with a good reputation.

bonus: I loved how Todd Howard saw BG3 winning most important gaming awards while Starfield got fuck all. His "sweet little lies" cought up with him and Bethesda.

Divine divinity was released over 20 years ago and that wasn't even Larians first game.

Larian was founded in 1996, a year before the release of Fallout...

You are supporting what i said with the new era of crowd founding and plaforms like steam/gog since almost nobody heard of Larian untill DOS1. I know the Divine Divinity game that was a lame hack and slash rpg.

BG3 has very good voice acting but the BG2 voice acting when present remains superior. David Warner as Irenicus was sensational. The Edwin and Sarevok's voice actors were also great. Even after 20+ you remember them fondly. I don't know how Obsidan can't find good voice acting since in their Black Island days they hired great voice actors like: Clancy Brown(very underrated actor), Tony Jay,David Warner,Ron Perlman, Keith David ...etc

 

[Kem0sabe]

I don't think it was only the environmental stuff that boosted BG3's appeal to have such a phenomenal impact. It was their willingness to go all the way and look at no expense to release the game they envisioned.

Take Raphael as an example of their approach to story telling and character design. A secondary antogonist that can be ignored, but Larian went and gave him the best voice work in the game, created a great theme song, with lyrics, for his combat encounter, gave him a completely reasonable and character fitting motivation for everything, tied a bunch of content and characters with his throughout the game.

After the house of hope encounter, I thought "well done Sven, Devil Charles Dance was a great idea".

Obsidian is incapable of throwing that kind of effort with a secondary character.

TBF though, Larian did this assbackwards because Raphael is way better than the actual main baddies, who were really lame.

Orin and Thorm were interesting, but suffered from having very little screen time, they should have featured much more throughout the game. The other villain, yeah everything about him sucks.

I blame this on Larian typical failure to deliver a good last third for their games. The pacing on BG3 is way off. I would have started the game in the city of BG and then explore the world around it as you tried to uncover the dead three conspiracy, much like BG2.

Leaving the city exploration for the last act, and having the villains delt with quickly and without much "epicness" or effort involved, was a big downer.

 

[Blutwurstritter]

I don't think it was only the environmental stuff that boosted BG3's appeal to have such a phenomenal impact. It was their willingness to go all the way and look at no expense to release the game they envisioned.

Take Raphael as an example of their approach to story telling and character design. A secondary antogonist that can be ignored, but Larian went and gave him the best voice work in the game, created a great theme song, with lyrics, for his combat encounter, gave him a completely reasonable and character fitting motivation for everything, tied a bunch of content and characters with his throughout the game.

After the house of hope encounter, I thought "well done Sven, Devil Charles Dance was a great idea".

Obsidian is incapable of throwing that kind of effort with a secondary character.

TBF though, Larian did this assbackwards because Raphael is way better than the actual main baddies, who were really lame.

Orin and Thorm were interesting, but suffered from having very little screen time, they should have featured much more throughout the game. The other villain, yeah everything about him sucks.

I blame this on Larian typical failure to deliver a good last third for their games. The pacing on BG3 is way off. I would have started the game in the city of BG and then explore the world around it as you tried to uncover the dead three conspiracy, much like BG2.

Leaving the city exploration for the last act, and having the villains delt with quickly and without much "epicness" or effort involved, was a big downer.

Has Larian ever made an official statement regarding the clearly missing content? I mean, there was obviously an upper city planned, with the transition point already in the game. It is a shame that they haven't taken the time to finish it properly, and rushed the content towards the end. The difference in time spent on the Thorm story arc in comparison to the limited exposition of Orin and Gortash is striking. For a moment I thought the game would end before we get to deal with all three of them, due to the amount of time dedicated to Thorm. The game would have been a content monster if they had given all three the same treatment. I would have preferred it if they had split the game instead of the current state that we got. They could have ended at the gates of BG or upon entering the city, and made a lengthy expansion to provide a proper final act, but I guess that would have caused a lot of complaints.

 

[luj1]

OK, is Sawyer familiar with the concept of an elevator pitch? "Pirate fantasy RPG" sounds a lot more exciting and compelling than "Nautical colonialism fantasy RPG".

He's a history autist, doesn't matter. There's one pirate faction among many, but the game isn't about pirates or committing piracy (unless you side with the pirates).

principi = generic pirates

amazing worldbuilding

 

[Roguey]

They are synonyms. Might is not even implied to be more abstract than the word strength, and since there is the Might & Magic series of games, it has been used as a synonym in CRPGs as well. But all that is actually easy to ignore if the word "might" here was referring to a concrete idea, even if one that existed only in-setting, that would work like that. It isn't, it just affects healing and magic and whatnot because Sawyer is Sawyer.

"Might represents a character's physical and spiritual strength"

Attribute systems are largely irrelevant anyway. Tyranny has the kind of intuitive attribute system you guys say you want, and nobody's talked about that game in a year while you still can't stop talking about PoE nearly a decade later.

principi = generic pirates

amazing worldbuilding

Yeah, so? Pirates are pirates.

 

[luj1]

We need to make more threads!

What does Soyer eat for breakfast? Does he fart when he ducks down to tie his shoelaces? Discuss!

 

[luj1]

principi = generic pirates

amazing worldbuilding

Yeah, so? Pirates are pirates.

fampyrs = vampires
guls = ghouls

So? Vampires are vampires

 

[Roguey]

fampyrs = vampires

Fampyrs are slightly different in their attributes than vampires.

 

[Butter]

fampyrs = vampires

Fampyrs are slightly different in their attributes than vampires.

They get no stat modifications based on day/night for maximum ?

 

[JarlFrank]

OK, is Sawyer familiar with the concept of an elevator pitch? "Pirate fantasy RPG" sounds a lot more exciting and compelling than "Nautical colonialism fantasy RPG".

He's a history autist, doesn't matter. There's one pirate faction among many, but the game isn't about pirates or committing piracy (unless you side with the pirates).

principi = generic pirates

amazing worldbuilding

I'm a history autist too, but his autism focuses on incredibly bland things. Compare PoE's worldbuilding to, say, Morrowind's. MW's worldbuilding contains a lot more mystery and esotericism.

Sawyer really comes across as a turboautist, and not in a good way. He's obsessed with balance and his writing has a similar vibe, like it's deliberately trying to be bland especially when it comes to supernatural/spiritual elements.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

The Outer Worlds sales over three years are comparable to Persona 5, which is also a low budget game, (and I’d guess quite a bit lower budget than The Outer Worlds) and does not have action combat. Persona as a series was fairly niche before P5, with sales of previous titles being comparable to something like the first Fallout.

Persona hit mainstream with 3. The switch of art styles and presentation really pushed it into the center stage. They're also not low budget, they're full Triple A games. Persona 3 sold 1.5 million copies then 4 doubled it and 5 kept on growing. Persona 4 was so popular it dragged SMT into mainstream RPG discussions after being a niche series for years.

Yes, because games SHOULD be interactive. The more you can do with the environment the better.

Meaningful interactions are good. Pointless ones are clutter. Having a special interaction for inserting a pen into a blender is just a waste of dev time and very few people are ever going to try it.

 

[JarlFrank]

Meaningful interactions are good. Pointless ones are clutter. Having a special interaction for inserting a pen into a blender is just a waste of dev time and very few people are ever going to try it.

That's why it shouldn't be a special interaction but a systemic one.
Object + blender = object turns into shredded material.
Pencil's material = wood.
Pencil + blender = wood chips.
Easy and systemic. You don't need to code a specific case here, the game will automatically give you the expected result by following its core physics rules.

Ideally, players will figure out some cool tricks the developers didn't even intend, just by trying out different things and seeing how systems interact with each other.

Thief's water arrows and torches are a great example.
Most RPG devs these days, and I wager Obsidian would be among them, would code something like this as a special case and make it very limited. They'd literally just script water arrow + torch = extinguished torch.

But in Thief, it's all systemic. Torches have a burning flame attached to them, which has the fire property. All fires have that same property. There's no systemic difference between a campfire, torch, or candle flame.
Water arrows produce a stim effect when hitting a surface: they create a water splash. Water splash extinguishes flame upon contact.
In some fan missions you can grab water buckets, throw them at a torch, and get the same effect (I don't remember if the original game had any water buckets, but the basic systems are all in place).

Instead of scripting something very specific, make a universal rule instead, and apply those rules to everything in the game.
Another example from Thief, every surface has a material property: wood, carpet, stone, marble, etc. It determines the noise produced when you walk over it or throw something at it, and determines whether arrows will stick in it or not. Every single texture in the game has a material, and level designers can just work with it intuitively. You made the windowframe wooden? Players can shoot rope arrows into it and climb up. Because rope arrows stick in every wooden surface. No need to script anything, just slap a wood texture on it and it behaves like wood.

The more complex these systemic interactions, the more interesting the gameplay, and the wider the possibilities for player experimentation.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

Meaningful interactions are good. Pointless ones are clutter. Having a special interaction for inserting a pen into a blender is just a waste of dev time and very few people are ever going to try it.

That's why it shouldn't be a special interaction but a systemic one.
Object + blender = object turns into shredded material.
Pencil's material = wood.
Pencil + blender = wood chips.
Easy and systemic. You don't need to code a specific case here, the game will automatically give you the expected result by following its core physics rules.

Ideally, players will figure out some cool tricks the developers didn't even intend, just by trying out different things and seeing how systems interact with each other.

Thief's water arrows and torches are a great example.
Most RPG devs these days, and I wager Obsidian would be among them, would code something like this as a special case and make it very limited. They'd literally just script water arrow + torch = extinguished torch.

But in Thief, it's all systemic. Torches have a burning flame attached to them, which has the fire property. All fires have that same property. There's no systemic difference between a campfire, torch, or candle flame.
Water arrows produce a stim effect when hitting a surface: they create a water splash. Water splash extinguishes flame upon contact.
In some fan missions you can grab water buckets, throw them at a torch, and get the same effect (I don't remember if the original game had any water buckets, but the basic systems are all in place).

Instead of scripting something very specific, make a universal rule instead, and apply those rules to everything in the game.
Another example from Thief, every surface has a material property: wood, carpet, stone, marble, etc. It determines the noise produced when you walk over it or throw something at it, and determines whether arrows will stick in it or not. Every single texture in the game has a material, and level designers can just work with it intuitively. You made the windowframe wooden? Players can shoot rope arrows into it and climb up. Because rope arrows stick in every wooden surface. No need to script anything, just slap a wood texture on it and it behaves like wood.

The more complex these systemic interactions, the more interesting the gameplay, and the wider the possibilities for player experimentation.

That sounds great until stuff like this happens.



Old HL2 speed runs would break a wooden box and use the shard to fly across the entire map. You have to be extremely careful making small objects players can interact with and interact with the world with or you end up with a real mess. Water arrows are really just a fire on/off switch and are nothing compared to modern physics engines and the dumb shit you can pull off in them.


Look at the dumb shit people were doing 15 years ago in Halo 3. Even a grenade can be enough to completely destroy your game's functionality.

 

[JarlFrank]

Players breaking the game by creative use of its in-built systems is good, actually.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

Depends on what you consider breaking. Being able to get a weapon or vehicle where it shouldn't be? Pretty cool. Being able to skip to the victory screen 2 seconds into a game? Probably not the best idea.

 

[jf8350143]

I can't believe people are praising Raphael as a good villain.

You mean the largest dumb ass in the game whose whole purpose is being a joke character and introduce lewd jokes?

The only thing good about him is he has a nice theme song, everything else is butchered by Larian. They specifically lets you ask a NPC about Raphael's sex life for no reason just so they can tell you he is always at the bottom during sex. His plan is retarded and as a devil he is dumb as a rock(Just look at how Mizora manipulated Wyll, and then look at Raphael). How is that a good character as a villain?

Also he is no secondary antogonist, he has more screen time than Orian and Gotash.