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Obsidian General Discussion Thread

jaydee2k

Savant
Joined
Nov 3, 2016
Messages
449
Git gud Obsidian. You haven't made a really good game since 2010. Nobody wants your NOFUNALLOWED isometric borefests anymore.

Play the damn game you are talking about. There is more than enough "fun". I don't need some shitty comedy fag rpg. Play Biowares turds then.
Neither is it a borefest. The lore of Eora is good and believable...
 

Urthor

Prophet
Patron
Joined
Mar 22, 2015
Messages
1,872
Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
The amount of people on this site willing to call White Match boring shit and yet glowingly endorse some resurrected 90s turd with truly fucking awful turn based gameplay and a UI that wouldn't even make it through Steam Greenlight beggars belief sometimes. Grognards will be grognards I guess
 
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Prime Junta

Guest
Seriously, are you saying F:NV was a popamole shooter? Have you even played that game?

I never said a damn thing about FO:NV.

For the record, I think it's the second-best instalment in the Fallout series, right after the original -- but I think it would've been even better as an isometric borefest.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,232
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Brief interview for PC Gamer's RPG book: http://www.pcgamer.com/obsidians-feargus-urquhart-on-the-future-of-rpgs/

Obsidian's Feargus Urquhart on the future of RPGs
"I want our games to feel just more real with even more choice for players."
For our recent special edition magazine, PC Gamer: The Ultimate RPG Handbook, we asked game developers about the future of role-playing—how they'd like to see the genre evolve, and what advancements we can expect in the years to come. Here, as a supplement to that feature, you can read Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart's thoughts on the future of RPGs. PC Gamer: The Ultimate RPG Handbook is out now in UK newsagents, and through My Favourite Magazines.

PC Gamer: How exactly would you define “role-playing game”, right now?

Feargus Urquhart: For me, role-playing is what it has always been. It’s about choice. It’s about letting players do what they want to do, and having the game react to their particular way of playing the game. In the early days of CRPGs it was mostly about party choice. Players could choose to have certain classes in their party, but there were always more classes than party slots. So, players made choices, and then had to fight their way through the game with that party. In modern RPGs those choices have become much more about what type of role the player wants to play – are they good, evil, male, female, straight, gay, violent, charismatic, stealthy, etc… We talk a lot in the industry about AR and VR, but often look at the best RPGs as the best way to escape from reality, and immerse yourself in another world.

PCG: What do you think have been the most important role-playing games of the past few years? Which games have inspired you?

FU: It’s probably been more than a few years, but I was always impressed with the Mass Effects. You have to play a more specific role, but they really fulfill the feeling of being James T. Kirk in many ways. More recently, the Witcher 3 did an incredible job of creating a very living world, and it’s cool to play an RPG with a bit more of an action slant. When it comes to Fallout 4, no one does it better than Bethesda in creating a visually dense environment helping to really put you in the post nuclear world of Fallout. I’d also like to point out Spider, another RPG developer, who is still learning the craft, but has made some interesting games with Mars: War Logs and Technomancer. I’m interested to see where they go in the next few years.

PCG: Broadly speaking, what would you say are the topics, types of subject matter or story themes that you think RPGs will explore (or explore more) in the next few years? Are there any kinds of story you personally wish that RPGs would look into more - or less?

FU: Funnily enough, this is something we talk about a lot. We ask ourselves questions like, if Fallout came out now, would it resonate the same way as it did in 1997. Fallout was made by a bunch of Gen Xers – the cold war kids. Now-a-days, I think we should look at how invasive technology has gotten into our lives, where AI is going, what is it to be human or machine (Tears in Rain by Bruna Husky is a cool book about that), hacking biological viruses, could anything we want be printed in twenty years and what would that mean, and what is the natural progression of mega-corporations like Apple and Amazon and their ecosystems? I’m not trying to get all paranoid here, but it’s interesting to take a lot of these things to a logical end, particularly when I think those things are concerning to a lot people.

PCG: Where do you see the most room for growth in terms of game mechanics and systems? And again, is there anything you wish RPG developers would look into more?

FU: I want our games to feel just more real with even more choice for players. I don’t mean real from the standpoint of how they look, but that you just feel a part of the world. It’s not a world that starts and stops as the player enters and then exits an area. It’s a world that feels like it is always moving. A denseness of experience. I read an article about Blade Runner years ago, where one of the guys working on the set sat down in Deckard’s apartment, looked around, and then realized that it truly felt like someone lived there. That’s what I want us to hit not just with how an area looks and feels, but with the choices that players have as well.

PCG: Are there any technologies or platforms you think will strongly affect the evolution of role-playing games at this stage (e.g. VR or distributed processing)?

FU: I like to say that RPGs are probably the most adaptable of the game genres. We’ve been playing them since monitors only had one color, and I think we’ll be playing them into the generation of VR and AR. Ultimately, I always go back to how RPGs are about the experience of choice, which is not about the technology, but about what we let them do.

PCG: How do you think your own projects have contributed to the genre's evolution? If you could do anything differently, what would it be?

FU: I wouldn’t screw up the entire balance of Fallout 1 by inventing the Turbo Plasma Rifle. That was really dumb on my part. Now that’s me personally, and not the fault of anyone else at the time back in Black Isle Studios. What I think we have contributed is constantly pushing player agency, multi-faceted deep companions, and that RPGs can both be non-linear and have compelling stories. I think we can all do more there as well, but I am incredibly proud of what the teams at Black Isle Studios and Obsidian have been able to do when creating what is our own unique flavor of the RPG genre.
 

Volrath

Arcane
Patron
Joined
May 21, 2007
Messages
4,297
Someone give me a quick refresher what's Obsidian working on right now besides Popamole of Eternity II and Armored Warfare. Thanks.
Cain and Boyarsky are supposedly working on some console shitter.
 

Abu Antar

Turn-based Poster
Patron
Joined
Jan 19, 2014
Messages
13,514
Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is. Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Probably the new Vampire game with Paradox. I guess that's still three years off. Anything else? Didn't they have something like 200 employees?
Pillars
Cain x Boarsky Project
Armored Warfare
Pathfinder Card Game

Probably some more Tyranny content
Crapton of pitches
 

Rev

Arcane
Joined
Feb 13, 2016
Messages
1,180
How much money did Poe bring in for Obsidian
Considering it sold around 1 mil copies at an average price of 30 $ (it's probably a bit higher because the game was already at 600k on Steam in the first months, while now more than 1.5 years later is still at 850k so the discounted copies were less than the full-priced ones, and also it was sold on multiple editions at higher prices but whatever), we got 30 million dollars, but 30% of that goes directly to Steam/GOG so the revenue would be around 21 million dollars. Finally a part of that is due to Paradox for their publishing role.
Let's guess we're left with 15 mil, considering the game was mostly funded through KS almost all of that is profit for Obsidian (well, there are also taxes but I have no idea how they work in California). Just an estimation, though.
 

Sentinel

Arcane
Joined
Nov 18, 2015
Messages
6,633
Location
Ommadawn
Can they finally wrap up this tank crap and make Alpha Protocol 2 or Kotor III please?

Yeah more sequels, woo.

From where I'm at one of the biggest indicators of :decline: is the dearth of new IPs. Same thing with movies. It's just the same old crap recycled, sometimes better, sometimes worse. Even "new" IPs are usually recycled from some other genre -- CDPR's Cyberpunk from the PnP game, that upcoming Luc Besson Valerian movie from a comic, and so on and so forth.

I wouldn't be sad if Obsidian never made another sequel again. We need more studios willing to do new things.
Yes because Tyranny and PoE are very original. :nocountryforshitposters:
 

Azarkon

Arcane
Joined
Oct 7, 2005
Messages
2,989
Brief interview for PC Gamer's RPG book

In modern RPGs those choices have become much more about what type of role the player wants to play – are they good, evil, male, female, straight, gay, violent, charismatic, stealthy, etc…

:incloosive:

You have to play a more specific role, but they really fulfill the feeling of being James T. Kirk in many ways.

James T. Kirk spent most of his time scanning planets for resources, mining them for said resources, rolling out on land rovers, collar grabbing space thugs, and cover shooting aliens?

Well, at least they got the fuck everything that moves part right.

When it comes to Fallout 4, no one does it better than Bethesda in creating a visually dense environment helping to really put you in the post nuclear world of Fallout. I’d also like to point out Spider, another RPG developer, who is still learning the craft, but has made some interesting games with Mars: War Logs and Technomancer. I’m interested to see where they go in the next few years.

:notsureifserious:

Now-a-days, I think we should look at how invasive technology has gotten into our lives, where AI is going, what is it to be human or machine (Tears in Rain by Bruna Husky is a cool book about that), hacking biological viruses, could anything we want be printed in twenty years and what would that mean, and what is the natural progression of mega-corporations like Apple and Amazon and their ecosystems? I’m not trying to get all paranoid here, but it’s interesting to take a lot of these things to a logical end, particularly when I think those things are concerning to a lot people.

Besides the fact that all of these issues have been big topics in science fiction for at least 40 years...

:updatedmytxt:

What I think we have contributed is constantly pushing player agency, multi-faceted deep companions, and that RPGs can both be non-linear and have compelling stories.

:drink:

:negative:
 
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Sentinel

Arcane
Joined
Nov 18, 2015
Messages
6,633
Location
Ommadawn
His comments about Bethesda and big landscapes aren't wrong though. When was that interview published?
If it was after 2015 then I think it's a pretty retarded thing to say because CDPR shat all over Bethesda.
 
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Hobo Elf

Arcane
Joined
Feb 17, 2009
Messages
13,998
Location
Platypus Planet
As far as I can tell, Armored Warfare has been pretty well-received.

Given the wage disparities, the real question is how Obsidian ever got to make it in the first place. Perhaps mail.ru had no local talent available initially (all sucked up by Wargaming.net?), or maybe there was a prestige factor involved in having an American studio develop the game.

http://venturebeat.com/2016/12/08/obsidian-lays-off-undisclosed-number-of-its-amored-warfare-staff/

Well-received, perhaps. But that doesn't seem to be helping Obsidian much.
 

Hobo Elf

Arcane
Joined
Feb 17, 2009
Messages
13,998
Location
Platypus Planet
Yes, you're responding to my response to a post about that layoff

And now I'm responding to a response about my response about a post about that layoff.

The point is that Obsidian seems to have, once again, negotiated themselves into another zero-sum contract. Obsidian should consider hiring a lawyer to look over their contracts. They will never get out of this rut as long as they negotiate over desperation and the other parties keep taking advantage over that.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,232
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Yes, you're responding to my response to a post about that layoff

And now I'm responding to a response about my response about a post about that layoff.

The point is that Obsidian seems to have, once again, negotiated themselves into another zero-sum contract. Obsidian should consider hiring a lawyer to look over their contracts. They will never get out of this rut as long as they negotiate over desperation and the other parties keep taking advantage over that.

What rut, you think they thought they were going to work on a Russian tank MMO forever? Read Anthony Davis and badler's posts in this thread, they're all right.
 

Hobo Elf

Arcane
Joined
Feb 17, 2009
Messages
13,998
Location
Platypus Planet
Yes, you're responding to my response to a post about that layoff

And now I'm responding to a response about my response about a post about that layoff.

The point is that Obsidian seems to have, once again, negotiated themselves into another zero-sum contract. Obsidian should consider hiring a lawyer to look over their contracts. They will never get out of this rut as long as they negotiate over desperation and the other parties keep taking advantage over that.

What rut, you think they thought they were going to work on a Russian tank MMO forever? Read Anthony Davis and badler's posts in this thread, they're all right.

The Obsidian shilling is strong here. Layoffs are never a good sign for Obsidian. The rut is Obsidian making all their deals out of desperation, meaning that the publishers can make convinient backdoors in their contracts that let them screw over Obz. The only time this wasn't the case was when Obsidian conned the public via Kickstarter.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,232
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
The Obsidian shilling is strong here. Layoffs are never a good sign for Obsidian. The rut is Obsidian making all their deals out of desperation, meaning that the publishers can make convinient backdoors in their contracts that let them screw over Obz. The only time this wasn't the case was when Obsidian conned the public via Kickstarter.

It's a very large project (half the company) that doesn't have much overlap with their other projects. And they've been working on it for years. At some point, that golden goose was going to stop laying eggs and there were going to be layoffs. You can hardly say that they've been screwed because like I said, it's surprising that an Eastern European publisher hired an expensive American developer to do anything in the first place. Honestly I'd say Obsidian were the ones doing the screwing.
 

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