Obsidian Mailbag

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

I've said mixed things about New Vegas here and there, both defending it and speaking against it in various regards as I felt it was appropriate.

I will however say that I think that your overlooking the role the Publisher can play in all of this. I suspect that Obsidian likes the push the envelope with content quite a bit, and then when the publisher sees what they have produced goes "OMG, noes you can't do that" and forces them to roll out the censorship and rebuild portions of the game close to release.

This is however apparently not the case with "New Vegas", but I do think it was a factor with "Neverwinter Nights 2" and some of their other games. Atari in paticular seems to be a group of prudes, I keep looking at "Troika" and "Temple Of Elemental Evil" as an example of why things probably go wrong when they deal with real RPG developers who are serious about making M rated games.

I don't think you should dismiss the fire that has been thrown at their publishers before is all.

Also one reason why I won't defend them is that the "Gamebryo" engine has been around for three games now. Oblivion, Fallout 3, and New Vegas have all suffered pretty buggy releases, and truthfully by the third game I would have expected a pretty clean game. The only thing I can think of is that Bethesda just handed them the engine and didn't give them any information on how to use it or kill the bugs they found, and that compounded with the fact that Obsidian was building a deeper game which compounded the bugs.

Wait wait wait... they censored "Temple of Elemental Evil"?

As far as I can remember, that game had going for it: one of the best soundtracks I've ever heard in a game (seriously, why couldn't the likes of "Oblivion" and "Fallout 3" take a cue from that game and get proper ambient scoring, instead of relying on overblown orchestral scores that just get so damn irritating after the first twenty times you've heard them?) and a good character creation screen.

Other than that it was short, the level-up times were brutal (there was no way you'd get to a decent level by the time you actually reached the elemental planes unless you'd deliberately sought out battles you didn't need to fight in the first place), and the whole thing was buggy as hell. But censored? You remember Bertram, right? If there's one thing the American publishers would've censored, I would imagine Bertram would be It. (Not that I'm suggesting all Americans are homophobics... just the ones who publish videogames.)

What exactly was taken OUT of that game? Or did I just play a different version?

 

[Imbechile]

Well bethesda released 3 buggy games: Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion and then F3 but i didn't hear a media and fan outcry and F3 was buggy, making it number 4 in a row for Bethesda

 

[TheEndlessSleep]

Tbh it's not valid to say that Obsidian are not to blame for the buggy engine they got from fallout 3: surely part of the dev's job is to make sure the game engine is working properly?

This is even more so when the game engine and it's know problems have been passed on to them and they don't fix it.

 

[gl1koz3]

Let me be outraged that you pulled the dumbest comments out of that outrage.





joke

 

[krellen]

-> You're picking on Obsidian! I love their games and you're just a big mean hater-face. <-

This made my day. Kinda sad you have to argue over evidently valid opinions though. Keep up the good work i enjoy reading your articles.

I read the comments both on his blog and here; I'm fairly certain that my arguments are the ones being summed up as "you're just a big mean hater-face". And while I'm glad Shamus recognises good in Obsidian, and I know he savaged Bethesda for their shoddy work too, I still think joining the lynch mob is not the right solution.

 

[WittyInfidel]

I said that the game ran flawlessly at my PC. I wasn't trying to accuse people who claimed the opposite of lying. I was trying to help reflect the game's reality in a more realistic way. Thousands of people bought the game. Only the ones who experience bugs, go to forums and complain, which generates a too negative image of the situation of a whole and makes them believe that they will definitely experience a buggy game.
Which they won't.
I haven't.

Yet I have seen numerous people stand and shout into the encroaching void "But it ran great for me!".

This doesn't seem to be giving only a negative view/opinions.

What it seems to be, from my limited point of view, is this: People who are experiencing bugs are getting shouted down by the seeming minority by those who have not.

It's like standing in a theater, and there's a fire. People are standing up, pointing and yelling FIRE! And other are standing and shouting back BUT MY SEAT'S NOT ON FIRE!

It's not helping with the issues at hand, it's just generating more noise and confusion while the mess gets straightened out.

 

[luclin92]

Regardless of platform it seems each version has a wide array of bugs. My personal favorite? The black screen of death. Not sure if it's present on the PC or PS3 versions though.

i have had that on pc.

 

[Seneschal]

There are no bugs that can compare to the Ballistic Stage Coach I encountered in Red Dead Redemption.

All the stagecoaches in the game were shaking like they were in an earthquake, and then when outside armadillo, I actually saw a stagecoach launch into the air and fly around like a deflating balloon.

X_x I love these. Funny bugs are okay with me.

I had a few hilarious ones in Fallout 3 (thankfully, only those and a few crashes) where super mutant corpses started bouncing around the landscape like they were landing on explosives.

 

[Exterminas]

It's not helping with the issues at hand, it's just generating more noise and confusion while the mess gets straightened out.

That would imply that yelling "Fire!" is doing something to help the situation. It doens't. It just speards panic and keeps people from leaving the room and putting out the flames.

To resolve that Metaphor again: Almost any major game these days has some bugs on day one, some even major ones (look at Civ5).

Tigth release scedules seem to be an industry-wide problem, that comes down particularly hard on open-world-rpgs, because of their complexity (may be?) or because they are a niche product, what forces devs to keep especially tigth to their budgets and plans.

In any way complaints and flames against a developer don't seem to provide any kind of solution. Probably the only solution would be to not buy these games anymore, but that certainly can't be it, because that would kill these genres. If anything the solution would be to buy the buggy games on day one, BECAUSE they are buggy. That would pump some money into these underdog-genres and may be would enable them to stand their ground against pushy publishers.

Aaahhh... Solutions that start with "If everybody would..." I love them. There is no problem on the world that can't be solved by them.

 

[giort08]

Yes, I agree. Although, I did find it an entertaining read ^_^

 

[Therumancer]

I've said mixed things about New Vegas here and there, both defending it and speaking against it in various regards as I felt it was appropriate.

I will however say that I think that your overlooking the role the Publisher can play in all of this. I suspect that Obsidian likes the push the envelope with content quite a bit, and then when the publisher sees what they have produced goes "OMG, noes you can't do that" and forces them to roll out the censorship and rebuild portions of the game close to release.

This is however apparently not the case with "New Vegas", but I do think it was a factor with "Neverwinter Nights 2" and some of their other games. Atari in paticular seems to be a group of prudes, I keep looking at "Troika" and "Temple Of Elemental Evil" as an example of why things probably go wrong when they deal with real RPG developers who are serious about making M rated games.

I don't think you should dismiss the fire that has been thrown at their publishers before is all.

Also one reason why I won't defend them is that the "Gamebryo" engine has been around for three games now. Oblivion, Fallout 3, and New Vegas have all suffered pretty buggy releases, and truthfully by the third game I would have expected a pretty clean game. The only thing I can think of is that Bethesda just handed them the engine and didn't give them any information on how to use it or kill the bugs they found, and that compounded with the fact that Obsidian was building a deeper game which compounded the bugs.

Wait wait wait... they censored "Temple of Elemental Evil"?

As far as I can remember, that game had going for it: one of the best soundtracks I've ever heard in a game (seriously, why couldn't the likes of "Oblivion" and "Fallout 3" take a cue from that game and get proper ambient scoring, instead of relying on overblown orchestral scores that just get so damn irritating after the first twenty times you've heard them?) and a good character creation screen.

Other than that it was short, the level-up times were brutal (there was no way you'd get to a decent level by the time you actually reached the elemental planes unless you'd deliberately sought out battles you didn't need to fight in the first place), and the whole thing was buggy as hell. But censored? You remember Bertram, right? If there's one thing the American publishers would've censored, I would imagine Bertram would be It. (Not that I'm suggesting all Americans are homophobics... just the ones who publish videogames.)

What exactly was taken OUT of that game? Or did I just play a different version?

There is a whole section of the game and a series of quests missing that is based around a whorehouse in the second town you get to (not Hommlet, the ones with the pirates). The festhall is actually located behind the Gypsy lady down on the docks.

The area still exists in the game code, and can be accessed, along with a lot of quest areas connected to it (it was a fairly major quest hub). There are patches that allow access to this material, I believe "The Cicle Of 8" a mod group that was dedicated to restoring the game and patching it's functionality was the group that put them out...

The thing is that when Atari saw the finished product they forced Troika to go with an earlier build, and to pretty much lock out that entire area. As a result the remnants of that content are buggy and unfinished, and the rest of the game was littered with bugs and errors that had been fixed in the final version but they didn't have the time to complete before release.

It was a big topic of discussion back when the game first came out. While it was apparently patched out of the game, Troika hid a bit about a gay pirate dentist in there. In that same town (Nuln I think? It's been a while since I've played the game or done anything with the modle it was based on). He's the one who was recruited for the crew "because he was a bit differant" and if you win his freedom from the captain in the nearby bar you find out that he's "differant" because he's gay and he performs oral sex on one of your male characters.

Alledgedly Troika which was collapsing after this put that in as a "last word" to Atari for being prudes and never told them.

This is relevent because one of the rumors about NWN2 when it first came out was that Obsidian (which does not have a reputation for being prudes) put a lot of adult content into the game, including lesbian romance options and a dominant/submissive relationship and some other stuff, not to mention a return of the festhall from the first NWN game which was changed to a dance hall.

At any rate the story is that a lot of the bugs are because Atari said "make an M rated game" but didn't REALLY want one and told them to go back to an earlier build, which caused all kinds of gaps in the storyline and a lot of the bugs in the game. Apparently this rumor was verified by the voice actress who did Neeshka (The Tiefling Thief) who apparently recorded a lot of dialogue for romantic options and the like that was never used in the final cut of the game. I have been unable to verify that however.

At any rate if you do a search for "Circle Of Eight" and "Temple Of Elemental Evil" and perhaps "Computer Game" you can probably find some of their old patches and maybe some of the old discussion boards. You should be able to find verification about ToEE easily. If you can't I'll see if I can dig it up (and while this might sound like an excuse I'm writing a long message and need to run out the door).

The ToEE stuff is why I lend credence to what might have happened with NWN2, even if it was with two differant developers.

 

[WittyInfidel]

-snip-

That would imply that yelling "Fire!" is doing something to help the situation. It doens't. It just speards panic and keeps people from leaving the room and putting out the flames.

If somebody said "Hey, room's on fire" I surely wouldn't sit around to watch. Yelling fire lets people know there's something wrong, notifies people who can help take care of it, and gets innocents to safety. Thus, situation can be resolved. Not "keeping people from leaving the room".

Probably the only solution would be to not buy these games anymore, but that certainly can't be it, because that would kill these genres.

It would not kill the genre, it would force a sub-par developer to adapt or die. The genre, as a whole, would continue. it would just be minus one Obsidian/Bethesda/other shoddy developer.

If anything the solution would be to buy the buggy games on day one, BECAUSE they are buggy. That would pump some money into these underdog-genres and may be would enable them to stand their ground against pushy publishers.

This would not fix the issue. If this were to fix the problem, Neverwinter Nights 2 would have been cleaner, KOTOR 2 would have shined, and Fallout; New Vegas would have nary a glitch. By purchasing and supporting product, you do not further progress and change. Instead, it helps support the status-quo. And the staus-quo for the current season is shoddy, broken product.

How much more money does Obsidan/Bethesda need to quit releasing broken games? By my count, they have released multiple games, which has brought in some serious money, yet their product is still sub-par.

Bugs have become expected from Bethesda and Obsidian. The problem does not lay with lack of funding or not enough other resources. It instead has to do with a shameful work ethic and a willingness to release something that they know is unacceptable.

If you, assuming you have a job, performed in such a way at you place of employment, how long do you think that you would continue to have a job.

And that's what this is for these people. A job they do in order to make money.
Question is, why are they still employed?
Because we keep buying unacceptable product from them, knowing full well it's unacceptable from the beginning.

The problem is not just them. The problem in us, as well. In our willingness to buy that which we know is broken.

We all, developer and customer alike, know that this is wrong. Why are we not making this right?

Aaahhh... Solutions that start with "If everybody would..."

Well, I can't think of anybody else better suited to the task. Mr. Nobody currently is working on the project, and he's doing a pretty shoddy job.

 

[nipsen]

The ToEE stuff is why I lend credence to what might have happened with NWN2, even if it was with two differant developers.

I wondered about that when I played both of those games. It sounds a lot more convincing than Shamus': "Obsidian is lazy and must be encouraged to make a good game" theory, at least. Thanks for posting.

 

[carpathic]

For me, though flawed, New Vegas is a good game.

It is the first RPG where I have the feeling that there are societies that surround you, rather than having oblique hints in notes and such.

THe combat is deeply frustrating at times..I mean the giant rad scorpions found me at level 1, in the graveyard. And killing one of those things takes like 20 rounds minimum.

But the bugs are bad, clearly Obsidian could have spent more time play testing. An extra month prior to going to gold, would have made all the difference in the world.

 

[theklng]

i don't think i've ever checked out articles by this guy before, but looking at this, i see i wasn't missing out at all. "opinion column by pundit", BUT NOT A REVIEW? no pundit would ever have written any "opinion column" like that, nor would he or she have felt the need to rebut any questions from the posters. if anything, this was a crass way of defending a point of view that had no reason to exist in the first place.

 

[Therumancer]

The ToEE stuff is why I lend credence to what might have happened with NWN2, even if it was with two differant developers.

I wondered about that when I played both of those games. It sounds a lot more convincing than Shamus': "Obsidian is lazy and must be encouraged to make a good game" theory, at least. Thanks for posting.

I just got back from Dunkin' Doughnuts

Here are a couple of links:

http://www.caltrops.com/review0026p2.php

http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/441/441983p4.html

Wikipedia also mentions it briefly in there article, and you can find tons more stuff on it if you look.

One thing you will notice though is that in the Caltrops review it talks about how Troika was forced to go with an earlier build, where in the IGN report you have a more professional comment that talks about cutting content, and being "thankful" that they got to keep the gay pirate which is kind of odd given how things actually went down when the game was new, but again it mentions those details.

The Cicle Of Eight Forums also include a patch to restore/unlock the content which was not cut but is actually sealed in the game:

http://www.sorcerers.net/Games/ToEE/index_circle2.php

That link is to a patch that mentions it specifically, though there is a newer one that includes these fixes/mods that you will actually want to use if you plan to play the game again with their patches.


I just figured I'd put up some links since I was making some serious allegations, and I really was in a hurry. In most cases I prefer people to do their own research, but this was pretty old news.

I will say however that I can't find any documentation at the moment on Neverwinter Nights 2 though it was discussed heavily when it came out. But as I said, a lot of that came from comments from one of the voice actresses allegedly and even then I couldn't verify it, though the way the original campaign is it seemed very likely as it didn't flow well and seemed like bits were missing.

In closing I will say that this does not totally excuse Obsidian's quality, I mean if they keep working for Atari they should know what to expect, and as much as I hate censorship if they keep getting forced back to earlier builds they should know better. Atari is a group of prudes, but they do apparently take their money. What's more the current game ("New Vegas") wasn't done with Atari and while Bethesda is a group of prudes nowadays themselves (I still remember them freaking out over Oblivion nude patches created by fans), they were using an established engine and seemed to have a fairly free hand with their content. If Gamebryo isn't a Bethesda engine (as someone pointed out in a response to me) that actually gives them less of an excuse.

 

[mbourgon]

Yay! Thanks, Shamus. I've actually held off buying it because of the horror stories... and I feared this was going to happen, given Obsidian's track record. Maybe in a few months they'll actually finish the game, and I can it. But I'll go play some other games until then.

 

[mbourgon]

It's unfair to compare Bioware, one of the largest game developers in the world, with Obsidian. They are a huge company and very well-established, unlike Obsidian.

But what about NWN2, which was published with Bioware's assistance? Same with KOTOR2.