Vault Dweller said:
On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence - primarily based on its other games - that Obsidian quite simply isn't very strong on the design/development side when it comes to game development.
Care to elaborate?
Sure. I will do my best to focus my list on objective design and development issues, rather than subjective "I don't like this" issues.
First, non-Alpha Protocol games. These will be more general (and perhaps even somewhat inaccurate), as it's been awhile since I've played any Obsidian games other than AP.
- KotoR2's bugs and general incompleteness. I know this is generally attributed to publisher pressure, but with solid project management and design, the scope of the game could've been properly limited given the timeline they were forced to work under. They simply tried to do too much with too little, and it showed - both in the cut content, and the large number of technical issues.
- NWN2's engine. It's a ridiculously unnecessary performance hog, struggling to maintain a decent FPS/detail level on even fairly modern systems. Considering there's no aspect of the game that would require such heavy lifting, I believe it is safe to assume it's just poorly written. Subsequent patches improved this, but the flaws seem to be pretty inherent in the engine itself.
- General "gameplay" in
all of their games. How many Obsidian games can you say are genuinely
fun to play when you remove anything but the gameplay? While I love the "fluff" just as much as any C&C/story-fag, I also believe a game should be fun when there's
nothing left but the game. I thinkthe closest they've come to that is SoZ, and I imagine that's only because there's so little fluff.
Now for some AP-specific stuff:
- The cover system. Dear God, what an inexcusable, nigh-unusable cluster fuck. Your opinion on "pop-a-mole" systems aside, AP's is easily the worst I've encountered. I should never press the "enter cover" button near an object that could obviously be used for cover and
hope the game designers decided to flag it as "cover". That's bad enough, but not being able to vault over cover is an unjustifiable omission as well. There's no reason for it besides lazy design. Even if the publisher for some reason
demands a "pop-a-mole" system, there's a right way to do it, and a wrong way.
- The checkpoint system. I am fundamentally opposed to checkpoint systems in general in modern games, but I'm not just referring to its
use of a checkpoint system - the way it's used is awful. I don't know if this is poor technical design, level design, development, or all of the above, but checkpoints are often illogically spaced out - going through two or three major areas with no checkpoints, only to run into two back-to-back. Again, even if the publisher for some reason
demands a checkpoint system, there's a right way to do it, and a wrong way.
- The forced action sequences, specifically boss battles. Not a development issue, but definitely a design one. Why am I forced into incredibly idiotic action sequences when I've specifically built my character to avoid direct confrontation?
- The ugly graphics. I'm not trying to be a graphics whore, but AP looks
bad, especially for a UE3 game. It doesn't ruin the game, obviously, but it serves as testament to Obsidian's technical inexpertise. Can someone tell me another UE3 game that looks as bad as AP? If you told me AP used the same engine as Batman: AA or ME2, and I didn't know any better, I'd call you a filthy liar.
I'm sure there's things I'm missing, but my time is limited, and the general thread should be clear now - these are all issues related directly to the design/development behind Obsidian's games - as well as perhaps some of the internal (
not external) project management. And, there are all issues that directly - and often majorly - impact the final quality of the product.
