Obsidian General Discussion Thread

[EnthalpyFlow]

Fairfax, are you Chris Avellone?

 

[Starwars]

Well, it was used for South Park too.

I kinda liked Dungeon Siege 3 though it's pretty forgettable overall. I thought the gameplay was pretty fun and by far the best part of it, I had a lot of fun with it on the highest difficulty. The graphics were nice.

But yeah, in the end it just felt... very forgettable. Some of the writing and setting stuff was pretty interesting but it was just wasted on the type of game it was. It never really amounts to anything.

 

[Harry Easter]

But yeah, in the end it just felt... very forgettable. Some of the writing and setting stuff was pretty interesting but it was just wasted on the type of game it was. It never really amounts to anything.

It kinda felt like a prototype for Pillars, didn't it? I always thought "Wow, it would be nice, if they could put the story in their own setting." Otherwise it was okay, but the camera was terrible.

 

[Roguey]

They tried to resurrect the IP and turn it into a hit

If that were true, they would have spent more money on it.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Is it public knowledge how Obsidian got the DS3 deal? Did they pitch it or did SE approach them about it?

 

[Rev]

If that were true, they would have spent more money on it.

Well, they didn't expect it to turn into a new Hitman, Deus Ex or Tomb Raider, but surely they expected it to perform better.

Is it public knowledge how Obsidian got the DS3 deal? Did they pitch it or did SE approach them about it?

I think they were approached by SE. I can't really see them so eager to work on a Dungeon Siege, frankly.

 

[Roguey]

Is it public knowledge how Obsidian got the DS3 deal? Did they pitch it or did SE approach them about it?

tl;dr Feargus pitched Defiance, they countered with DS3.

There was no one person that said, 'Hey, let's do Dungeon Siege 3 together.' David Hoffman (Director of Business Development at Square Enix) approached us, because Square had made it known that they really wanted to do a western RPG, and team up with western developers. And we started talking because they're pretty close - they're in El Segundo, right by LAX. And so me and David had met for lunch a number of times, and we were trying to come up with a game to work on. And we actually pitched them an original IP, which was a game called Defiance. (I would love to be able to make it at some point.) The idea behind Defiance was that we kind of took the alternate [route] that intead of like, "happy Lord of the Rings land" in which the evil people get killed and the ring gets thrown into the volcano - what happens if Sauron won? So, [it was the idea of] making a whole fantasy world based off of: "What does Sauron become, and what does the world become, if Sauron won?" We had been talking about that, but it was a big-budget project. And so at that point, as we start to get into late 2008 and 2009, the "badness" occurs with the economy. But Square was smart, and they didn't want to kind of slow down, and things like that. What was happening on another side is that they'd been working with Chris Taylor at Gas Powered [Games] on Supreme Commander 2. And so, of course, [Chris] had Dungeon Siege, but didn't have another team to work on it. I don't remember how it happened. I don't know if it was John Yamamoto who was running Square U.S. at the time, but they were like, "Well, we're talking to Obsidian about [Defiance] - and we'd really like to do it, but it's a little scary right now because of the economy and all that kind of stuff. And now we have this IP [Dungeon Siege], and Chris. And Chris can't do it, but it would still be cool to be able to do it." And so, that all got put together, and I got the phone call one day about, "Well, what about doing Dungeon Siege 3?" And I'm like, "That'd be cool! I love action role-playing games." (I was glad to be able to do them back [when I was working] at Black Isle.) There wasn't really a long conversation about it. It wasn't me getting all of the Obsidian owners together and going "So, what are the plusses and minuses." We were just like, "Yeah! Absolutely!"

 

[Flou]

It's at 61% on Steam, by far the lowest for an Obsidian game. They managed to alienate the Dungeon Siege fans without gaining any new ones. And it's not like SE is afraid to milk successful franchises. Had it been considered a success, we would've seen another one.
The best thing to come out of it was probably Obsidian's engine, but Feargus killed its development afterwards and it was never used again.

Obsidian didn't want to call it Dungeon Siege 3 though (or well, at least some of them didn't). Most of the alienating happened due to people expecting a clone for bad Dungeon Siege games and they got a better game instead, but as it wasn't Dungeon Siege clone those 3 fans were quite pissed off.
It was Square's decision to call it Dungeon Siege 3 and theirs alone. Yes, it didn't sell the millions and millions Square hoped for, they had ridicilous expectations for multiple IP's around that time. Weren't they highly disappointed over Lara Croft selling only few million copies and making only some profit initially and were planning on burying that IP as well.

They used that engine for South Park. As far as I know that engine was quite costly and wouldn't have been possible to use for Pillars of Eternity due to all the middleware. So it's not like they just went "oh, we won't be needing this anymore" more about just cost of middleware that they used in the engine.

 

[Flou]

Well, it was used for South Park too.

I kinda liked Dungeon Siege 3 though it's pretty forgettable overall. I thought the gameplay was pretty fun and by far the best part of it, I had a lot of fun with it on the highest difficulty. The graphics were nice.

But yeah, in the end it just felt... very forgettable. Some of the writing and setting stuff was pretty interesting but it was just wasted on the type of game it was. It never really amounts to anything.

The game could have used a bit more story. Gameplaywise it was the best action rpg I've played, I can't stand the original Dungeon Sieges, nor Path of Exile etc.

Camera was bad for multiplayer which is the 2nd thing that caused grievance with fans. Though I didn't have problems with the camera with 2 player co-op, 4 players it did hurt the gameplay.

 

[Anthony Davis]

It's at 61% on Steam, by far the lowest for an Obsidian game. They managed to alienate the Dungeon Siege fans without gaining any new ones. And it's not like SE is afraid to milk successful franchises. Had it been considered a success, we would've seen another one.
The best thing to come out of it was probably Obsidian's engine, but Feargus killed its development afterwards and it was never used again.

Obsidian didn't want to call it Dungeon Siege 3 though (or well, at least some of them didn't). Most of the alienating happened due to people expecting a clone for bad Dungeon Siege games and they got a better game instead, but as it wasn't Dungeon Siege clone those 3 fans were quite pissed off.
It was Square's decision to call it Dungeon Siege 3 and theirs alone. Yes, it didn't sell the millions and millions Square hoped for, they had ridicilous expectations for multiple IP's around that time. Weren't they highly disappointed over Lara Croft selling only few million copies and making only some profit initially and were planning on burying that IP as well.

They used that engine for South Park. As far as I know that engine was quite costly and wouldn't have been possible to use for Pillars of Eternity due to all the middleware. So it's not like they just went "oh, we won't be needing this anymore" more about just cost of middleware that they used in the engine.

I don't know the business side or the contractual side of the name. I do know that several of us, myself included, wanted to call it "Dungeon Siege: Alliance" or "Dungeon Siege: Legends" to help adjust player's expectations that it was moving more towards an Action RPG direction. Oh well, I'm very proud of the game no matter what the Codex thinks.

 

[Anthony Davis]

I know that internally, Obsidian consider Dungeon Siege 3 a success and one of the most important titles they've ever developed. It's "the game that turned us around". Not because of its content of course, but because of how they made it.

Content wasn't completely bad though, thanks to Ziets.

I wish we could release Zeit's Lore book he wrote for DS 3 (and I do mean book, it was looong). It was amazing. I'll ask Feargus about it.

 

[Sannom]

I can already say the answer would be "no", what with it being a Square Enix property.

I think Dungeon Siege 3 had really good Renegade options, dick moves which are also beneficial to you and your cause. Especially the choice to keep the Cyclops enslaved.

 

[Lhynn]

I don't know why anyone would think a slamdunk Obsidian sequel would have worse gameplay though. They improved Fallout 3.

agree on the first statement, but this is not really true, obsidian makes game with shitty gameplay. Nwn2 was a disaster, kotor 2 had almost no improvements from kotor 1, AP suffered from mediocre gameplay. PoE is unplayable, so is tyranny.

 

[EnthalpyFlow]

I don't know why anyone would think a slamdunk Obsidian sequel would have worse gameplay though. They improved Fallout 3.

agree on the first statement, but this is not really true, obsidian makes game with shitty gameplay. Nwn2 was a disaster, kotor 2 had almost no improvements from kotor 1, AP suffered from mediocre gameplay. PoE is unplayable, so is tyranny.

Bit of a hyperbole, isn't it? Don't know about Tyranny, haven't played it yet.

 

[Quillon]

PoE is unplayable, so is tyranny.

Bit of a hyperbole, isn't it? Don't know about Tyranny, haven't played it yet.

Anyone I know who's had serious problems with PoE, was also running it on a 32bit OS.

 

[Roguey]

agree on the first statement, but this is not really true, obsidian makes game with shitty gameplay. Nwn2 was a disaster, kotor 2 had almost no improvements from kotor 1, AP suffered from mediocre gameplay. PoE is unplayable, so is tyranny.

The Bioware slam dunks were building on existing disasters, and the others were made from scratch.

 

[Lhynn]

The Bioware slam dunks were building on existing disasters, and the others were made from scratch.

My point being that they arent good at either fixing it or making it good from the start. Gameplay has always been a problem for obsidian.

 

[Prime Junta]

obsidian makes game with shitty gameplay. Nwn2 was a disaster, kotor 2 had almost no improvements from kotor 1, AP suffered from mediocre gameplay. PoE is unplayable, so is tyranny.

 

[badler]

a bad genre (click click action RPG)

It's not that. It's a brawler/beat 'em up.

It's got less owners on steam than Pillars Of Eternity does, so unless it sold like hotcakes on consoles it was probably a dismal failure.

In 2011 it sold 820,000 across all platforms. However, that was enough for it to be profitable because it had a budget comparable to Pillars of Eternity.

Negative. The budget was significantly higher than Pillars'.

 

[badler]

I know that internally, Obsidian consider Dungeon Siege 3 a success and one of the most important titles they've ever developed. It's "the game that turned us around". Not because of its content of course, but because of how they made it.

Content wasn't completely bad though, thanks to Ziets.

I wish we could release Zeit's Lore book he wrote for DS 3 (and I do mean book, it was looong). It was amazing. I'll ask Feargus about it.

Yeah, I remember it being massive. Had a bunch of information that never made it into the game, if I remember correctly.

 

[Infinitron]

Negative. The budget was significantly higher than Pillars'.

*cough cough* How much is "significantly"?

 

[2house2fly]

Double Pillars would be very significant and still less than what Davis implied.

 

[Infinitron]

Double Pillars would be very significant and still less than what Davis implied.

Final PoE budget was over 5 million FYI

 

[2house2fly]

Over a million from slacker backers?

 

[Infinitron]

Over a million from slacker backers?

That plus they added some of their own money. It's not an unusual amount, inXile have raised a similar one for Torment post-Kickstarter: https://torment.inxile-entertainment.com/