villain of the story
Arcane
"Before beginning, we usually have a sense of what the engine will be for the game and what "type" of RPG we're creating (action, turn-based, 3rd person party, etc.)."
Massive LULZ. Like they would ever do a proper TB game. The closest we might get is South Park and unless you are already a South Park fan (I am), it's meaningless (and I still think it's meaningless).
The closest they ever got to having "the freedom" to do TB in a proper RPG was PE and anyone who had any idea already knew that they would go for RTWP.
At any rate, I don't see what your point is in quoting Avellone. You thought that it "sounded very promising" and showed more understanding of the "license" than anything else we've seen. But in actuality, he was telling a pretty story and it costs nothing to tell a pretty story. We all heard similar stuff from him and others about AP. "one of our main influences for Alpha Protocol is Syriana". End result? A piece of shit game with interesting cutscenes. And what they meant when they referenced Syriana probably was Middle-Eastern guys with beards and blowing some shit up in Middle East. Yeah, they certainly got that part right. Obsidian.
And do you think it's a coincidence that the shitty looking Aliens: Crucible tech demo looked so much similar to Alpha Popamole? And from the looks of it, it might have featured the same trademark quality writing found in AP as well:
"That didn't sound good"
"No shit. Do something about it"
"Like what? Push the button faster?"
"Quit flirting. We've got incoming!"
(upon discovering a civilian trapped in Alien-thingies that cover walls)
"Looks like one of the Almayer civies got smoked. Dean? Jean?"
"Her name was Bean, shithead"
"Oh no, did I get your dead girlfriend's name wrong?"
"It's okay, Santos. I'm sure when I see you hanging from a wall like that, I'll forget your name, too"
QUALITY DIALOGUE CHOICE TIME!!!
"Enough Santos!"
"Both of you knock it off."
"Better get used to this, DJ."
"You better get used to this, DJ. Bean's not the only one who died here"
"[Loyalty Loss: DJ] Wow, I don't know what I was thinking, giving a shit that my friend died. Thanks for opening my eyes, Parris"
"[Loyalty Gain: Santos] Nice try, Parris"
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xxmb1s_ac_videogames?start=1#.USTAdaWqbMd
Alien Effect: Crucible?
Placeholder text (complete with placeholder voice-acting) ? Maybe. Then again, isn't writing like one of the things that has a priority during pre-production? If I didn't know better, I could have even thought that those lines were from A:CM. Then again, you could put half the writing in AP into any other shit game and none would be the wiser. I can't think of a more overrated game by Obsidian.
Well, at least we know now, from the mouth of Obsidian no less, that they fucked up on that front as well (eg. lack of design documents during pre-production and hey, surprise surprise! Feargus just admitted that they are doing the same with PE as well, despite having admitted in a previous interview that it was a mistake with AP).
Not to mention how the tech demo illustrates Obsidian's deep understanding of the license: instead of barricading and setting up a tactical defensive parameter or being on the move, they stand still at choke points at a certain place, probably of some importance to the player, to rain firepower on the incoming swarms. Yeah, that is very Alieny. Now, I'll admit that the context in that particular segment of the video is not clear to make a tactical assumption but at any rate, standing around and mowing down incoming waves of aliens doesn't feel like "staying true to the license" at all to me (and oh look, a hovering turrent gun that you can move around!). In the films, people better equipped with better training drop like flies doing just that.
Not to mention how ineffective the aliens seem to be in there. Both AI and speed wise. So how is that any better than A:CM now? Maybe the aliens were dumbed down on purpose so they could make a clear milestone demonstration, maybe they would say "obviously we have slowed down aliens so you could see them with clarity here but we will speed and smarten them up for the final game". But then again, that obviously was not the case with AP. And FFS, look at that one-on-one alien encounter at around 2:00. What travesty is this? It looks like the entire game would be more like Alien Protocol: Crucible.
Also, it is obvious that significant amount of work went into that tech demo and it still feels way too bland, boring, clunky and non-Alieny to me. Not to mention the generic looking environments. Just as AP was bland, boring, clunky, generic and non-espionage-y. Obsidian quite simply doesn't have what it takes to make a good action game. You can disagree, of course, and I would be most interested to hear why as to how Obsidian succeeded at making a good espionage action game.
Also:
"Following that, I try to absorb as much about the genre as possible, including any tangential or off-the-beaten path explorations of that genre (for example, I studied the Expanded Universe in Star Wars extensively"
"The wound in the Force". Yeah. Great job. Thankfully, KOTOR 2 was still a good game despite that derpiness. I understand and appreciate that it was Obsidian's own addendum but then again, people have been bitching about SW EU for exactly that reason; that it is full of diarrheic amounts of shit. Thank you Obsidian, for contributing to it!
Aliens was about stealth?When they don't even know what stealth means? I don't think so.At very least Obsidian would have respected the license and made a cool, if flawed game.
That's what Obsidian said. Stealth and survival. Which, as they explained later, meant blowing shit up. Sadly, not the orbital kind. These days, what survival means is action and stealth means is long distance killing. At least when Obsidian is involved.
Overall, I can't quite see how anyone at all would think that A:C might have been a good Obsidian game when they fail at basic gameplay. Oh, but maybe they would redeem it with a quality expansion eg. "Aliens: Crucible: Mask of Weyland-Yutani"?