Obsidian's doing a Kickstarter, what are your thoughts?

[DracoSuave]

Well, let's see them blame the publishers on their buggy mess of a game this time.
I hope it's fun though.

Well, frankly, I don't care if it's buggy. I am aware of the guys who are in obsidian and I know theycan and most probably will make a game I will want to play. Bugginess is not a factor in my feelings for them and their games.

Exactly. Give me a good/interesting game with some bugs over a bland regurgitated POS ANY DAY.

Cause bugs can get fixed, a shit game stays shit forever.

Obsidian's one of the few companies that can take an existing working game engine and have it come out buggier than it came in.

I mean KOTOR2 could be a great game but it's hard to tell because it's constantly crashing on me. Sorry, some shit's just not acceptable when you pay good money for a game.

Well with the shitty publishers and deadlines out of the picture now, this will be the true test for Obsidian.

I dunno about that.

There might be reasons they're not meeting deadlines--we can't blame all the publishers when they've dealt with so many and came out with the same problems time and time again. I mean if it were just Bethesda, I'd go 'Yeah, it's Bethesda' but they have trouble making EXISTING engines work well.

KOTOR 2 was way buggier than KOTOR 1 and it used much of the same assets. FONV had problems where the engine would stall to unload textures already in front of you, then stall to reload them exactly as they were before. And some of the publishers they've worked with AREN'T the big evil ones.

 

[eimatshya]

I am not sure on this Obsidian is a developer studio as they say in the video these guys made fallout new Vegas,planet side and star wars the knights republic 2 that is 3 games that were very successful lately.

They must have the money to fund this themselves but as i always said its down to the backers if people want to give a successful developer studio money it is not my place to stop them.

Obsidian is an independent developer. They rely on publishers to fund their games. KotOR II was published by Lucas Arts, meaning that Lucas Arts paid Obsidian to develop the game. Fallout: NV was published by Bethesda, again meaning that Bethesda paid Obsidian to make the game. Planetside was made by SOE and Obsidian had nothing to do with it. If you meant Planescape, then Obsidian didn't make that either; that was Black Isle. A number of the developers who worked on it, including the Project Lead, now work at Obsidian, though, which is why it is often brought up in association with Obsidian.

Anyway, normally the money that pays the salaries, licensing fees, and rent is provided by the publisher during the development cycle of the game. Once the game is released, the publisher hopefully recoups its expenses when sales start rolling in. Even if Obsidian's games had been making lots of money, that would be going primarily to the publisher, not the developers (especially since Bethesda didn't pay them their bonuses from New Vegas due to the game's score on Metacritic being too low). As such, if Obsidian wants to make a game that publishers don't want to invest in, such as a late 90s style RPG, they need to get funding from somewhere else, such as crowd-sourcing.

tl;dr

Publishers have payed the development costs for Obsidian's previous games and are the ones who have reaped whatever profits they have made. As such, Obsidian, which is not a publisher, does not have the money it takes to develop a game on their own, thereby necessitating the use of Kickstarter in this instance.

 

[eimatshya]

Temple of Elemental Evil had the *most accurate* 3.5 combat by far. Too bad the rest of the game was so utterly whack.

They're creating their own system though, aren't they?

Yeah, they're creating their own system, but in the interview with Feargus (and also in the description on the Kickstarter page), he says that they're going to use a pause-and-play system like Baldur's Gate, Dragon Age, etc. rather than a fully turn-based system. Basically, it sounds like this is supposed to be a modern version of the old infinity engine games.

I loved the Infinity Engine games, but I did find the fully turn-based combat of ToEE to be a lot more fun and strategic (although I agree that the non-combat aspects of the game were not so good).

*EDIT*

Here's a link to the interview with Feargus Urquhart about Project Eternity (the section about Pause-and-Play combat is at the bottom of page 2):

http://www.gamebanshee.com/interviews/109456-project-eternity-interview.html

 

[Terrible Opinions]

Even if Obsidian's games had been making lots of money, that would be going primarily to the publisher, not the developers (especially since Bethesda didn't pay them their bonuses from New Vegas due to the game's score on Metacritic being too low).

Too low by one god damn point.

 

[eimatshya]

Yea, that's the one thing I'm disturbed about with this whole thing. They have no publishers forcing ideas on them, they have Tim Cain now (a big TB & old school d&d guy) and they STILL went with RtwP over a turn based combat system.

Hopefully they'll improve on the RtwP formula (although I have my doubts as I haven't played a great one yet) Give you options to slow it down (so I can see wtf is actually going on), auto pause features (like the one to pause at the end of each characters round, say), better pathfinding, zones of control (so battles don't become clusterfucks and positioning takes a more important role)

It would also be great to be able to create your entire party from scratch with the option to pick up others along the way if you want, like Wasteland 2 is gonna have. Not just create your main character only.

In the interview with Feargus he says that they are building the combat system from scratch, and as such, he thinks they will be able to avoid the awkwardness of trying to make an essentially turn-based system work in real-time. Not sure if this will actually help the issues you bring up, but I guess we'll find out when the game launches.

It also sounds as though party members will be controllable NPCs, rather than a custom party like in IWD/ToEE/Wasteland. Personally, I'm OK with this. Back in the day, I used to prefer a custom party and would play BG 2 in multiplayer mode with just me so that I could control a party of imported characters created by me. Over the years, however, NPC party members have grown on me, and now I would prefer to have a single PC with memorable NPC sidekicks, rather than a party of Player Characters.

*EDIT*

Here's an interview with Chris Avellone where he confirms that you will create a single PC and collect NPC party members with distinct personalities over the course of the game.

http://kotaku.com/5942307/the-people-behind-fallout-and-planescape-are-making-my-dream-rpg

 

[Kragg]

I think this is AWESOME news, and with any luck this will free Obsidian from the publisher pressure that has probably contributed to if not outright created their bug/unfinished game problem!

I hope contributors go on their forums and make it VERY CLEAR that REASONABLE DELAYS in the release date will be acceptable but THERE ARE LIMITS. Obsidian does some AMAZING stuff but it also tends to come along with some AMAZING screwups.

In any case, I expect this to be fully-funded before tomorrow. No kidding.

I think so too. I think this game might break the Kickstarter record. I'd be surprised if this wasn't funded before tomorrow. It's almost 800000 already and it seems to increase every time I refresh the page.

its up to million 33k, 70k to go, so guess you are right ^^

 

[endtherapture]

Yea, that's the one thing I'm disturbed about with this whole thing. They have no publishers forcing ideas on them, they have Tim Cain now (a big TB & old school d&d guy) and they STILL went with RtwP over a turn based combat system.

streated

I've always enjoyed RTwP over TB. TB is just far too slow and dull or a game. It fails to get me excited and in fact makes me quite frustrated.

RtwP allows you to be slow and methodical but also keeps it more exciting and tense and less frustrating than full TB.

That's just my opinion though.

 

[Rascarin]

I haven't actually played an Obsidian game that I enjoyed, except the MotB add-on for NWN2, but NWN2 itself was crap. I really didn't like it, especially compared to the original. KotOR 2 was just terrible.

I am also put off by the fact that their video explains nothing about what Project Eternity is going to be about beyond "magic and mature themes".

 

[TeletubbiesGolfGun]

What are my thoughts? What do I think about an Obsidian RPG headed by Sawyer, Cain, and Avallone?

That.

hahaha reflects me also

my mental erection just broke a hole through the screen after seeing this. too much awesomeness.

L:SKDJF:LSKDJF:SLKDJF:LSKDFJ

as soon as i pay off the last bit of tuition in the next week, funding 100 bucks at least to this.

 

[eimatshya]

I've always enjoyed RTwP over TB. TB is just far too slow and dull or a game. It fails to get me excited and in fact makes me quite frustrated.

RtwP allows you to be slow and methodical but also keeps it more exciting and tense and less frustrating than full TB.

That's just my opinion though.

Personally, I find it difficult to get unit positioning right in RTwP. The characters always go to where I tell them too late or take a strange route or just don't go to where I told them. This means I spend most of my time and energy on implementation rather than planning. With a turn based game, I never have any trouble getting party members to do what I want and spend most of my time devising strategy, rather than wrestling with uncooperative characters. It's possible that the usual disconnect that occurs between the time in which the order is given and when the character actually executes the order could be mitigated by doing away with the hidden system of combat rounds that these games usually still use, but I suspect that I will always prefer the greater control afforded by turn-based systems.

 

[eimatshya]

I haven't actually played an Obsidian game that I enjoyed, except the MotB add-on for NWN2, but NWN2 itself was crap. I really didn't like it, especially compared to the original. KotOR 2 was just terrible.

I am also put off by the fact that their video explains nothing about what Project Eternity is going to be about beyond "magic and mature themes".

I think I read in some interview with the devs that they are planning on revealing more information during the course of the kickstarter drive. They said something about it being important to introduce information gradually to keep momentum up, rather than all in one fell swoop. So, we will probably get more specific info in the coming days. I don't think they anticipated meeting their fundraising goal on the second day of the kickstarter drive.

Personally, I don't really need more info. They've given a fair amount of info on the type of game they're making and what their design process is. And from what they've said, it sounds like a game I would like.

Honestly, there have been plenty of games that sounded boring but that I have loved once I actually played and plenty of games that looking interesting but that bored me to tears when I tried to play them. As such, buying a game is always something of gamble for me. Since I've liked all of Obsidian's previous games, the fact that it's another story driven RPG is enough for me to invest in the project.

Since you haven't been impressed with Obsidian in the past, I can see how you wouldn't share my enthusiasm, however.

 

[Paradoxrifts]

I've spent twenty dollars on stupider things than this.

 

[lumenadducere]

I backed it at the $35 tier for the digital download of the stuff - soundtrack, artbook, etc. Obsidian has some of the best writing in the industry and to see an old-school isometric RPG backed with the names of some of those devs...well, I'd really, really like to see that happen.

And I'm greatly hoping that they actually are able to get decent QA or post-release support without publisher shenanigans. Given their history I'm worried but I figure the $35 amount is worth the risk because of how much I've enjoyed their previous work despite the bugs.

 

[Amaror]

What am i thinking. Well i am currently thinking:
"Suck it, BiowEAre i don't need your Dragon Age 3, which i am pretty positive will suck!"

 

[Denamic]

My god, one day and they've already met the goal.
Well almost, 4.9k short, but that'll fill up in minutes.

What am i thinking. Well i am currently thinking:
"Suck it, BiowEAre i don't need your Dragon Age 3, which i am pretty positive will suck!"

What does BioWare and Dragon Age 3 have to do with this?