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Will Obsidian do a new Fallout?

Kolx

Member
Bethesda intentionally fucks over partners and then tries to buy them on the cheap. Obsidian almost went bankrupt because of NV. So unless beth changes management and offer really good terms, no.

Obsidian agreed on the contract. It's not like Bethesda forced it on them the day the game launched. If NV was really what fucked Obsidian up then that's their mistake not Bethesda.
 

nded

Member
I do have to agree that FNV was made on the shoulder of giants. Its easier to iterate than to invent. Bethesda had the harder task and FO3 was amazing as well.

I don't really know what else Bethesda did for Fallout 3 except write a story and make a bunch of 3D Fallout assets, Fallout lore was already well developed at that point and F3 isn't that far removed from Oblivion in terms of engine and gameplay mechanics.
 

kswiston

Member
Obsidian agreed on the contract. It's not like Bethesda forced it on them the day the game launched. If NV was really what fucked Obsidian up then that's their mistake not Bethesda.

I don't think it was. They had their Aliens game cancelled, and Alpha Protocol flopped around that same time. Obsidian had a string of bad deals or deals that fell through in the late 00s early 10s.
 

Ekai

Member
New Vegas was the best and least buggy of the current Fallout games so I would much prefer them to work on it.
 

O.DOGG

Member
I think it's unlikely but even if it were to happen I don't think I'd want to see an Obsidian Fallout without Chris Avellone.
 

QaaQer

Member
Obsidian agreed on the contract. It's not like Bethesda forced it on them the day the game launched. If NV was really what fucked Obsidian up then that's their mistake not Bethesda.

Ahh, to have such a simple view of the world.

I don’t know if this business tactic has a common name but I call it “Darth Vader’s Deal”. Here’s how it works: You partner with a company that is smaller than you to provide you with services (in Arkane’s case, to develop a game which Bethesda will publish for them, under which they have a profit sharing agreement.) Ideally, your partner will be so much smaller than you that they don’t have the means to survive if they lose your deal and don’t have the financial means to fight you in court if you screw them over. This is why Bethesda almost always partners with small, independent developers. Once the project is under way and the developer is a decent amount into it, you start throwing up hurdles. You reject milestones for no good reason, you say the quality isn’t good enough, you start delaying reviews or changing your design requirements. You basically conjure up reasons why they aren’t holding up their end of the bargain so you can withhold crucial payments to them that they need to keep their company running and to continue working on the project. Then you offer to give them the money despite them supposedly not meeting your requirements but say that will require altering the terms of your deal.

You keep doing this over and over again until the developer is on its knees, likely struggling to make payroll and keep the lights on. It doesn’t matter if what you’re doing is truthful or in some cases, even legal under the terms of your agreement, the developer needs you to survive, they can’t say no. At that point, you offer them a choice: Let them be acquired by you for a fraction of their true worth (in some cases, only as much as they “owe you”, plus any other debts), try to have them find other money so the project can be finished on your conditions (but likely with poor quality because they no longer care about pleasing you) or if they blink, they go out of business. You’ll lose the time and money you’ve put into them so far but you get to keep whatever they’ve worked on to shop around to someone else and barring that, you write it off your taxes and move on. Were I to hazard a guess, I’d say Bethesda has experienced all three of these scenarios. Arkane would fall into the first camp, Rebellion would fall into the second (go look up Rogue Warrior) and Human Head with Prey 2 falls into the third. Human Head does technically still exist but by all accounts, they’re basically a husk of a company now and are for all intents and purposes, out of business.
 
They did.

Also, Obsidian has had several big budget RPGs cancelled on them in the middle of development in the past few years. I am sure that they would have liked some extra money for New Vegas, but at least it both shipped and wasn't sent to die like Alpha Protocol (and they got paid for the DLC stuff on top of the regular game).

The bonus was $50,000. People act like this amount of money would have stabilized the studio.

Who wrote the good stuff in FONV? With Chris Avellone gone would it still be as good?

Did you like Fallout 1? Chris Avellone didn't work on Fallout 1.
 

HotHamBoy

Member
In a lot of ways NV was the more open-ended game. If you really enjoy role-playing your character NV let your imagination run wild with the backstory. If anything, FO4 ruined all of that by saying "you are this character we have created and you just get to decide if they are nice or mean." I resent that. It didn't ruin the game for me but that's just no fun. It's almost like they decided it was more important to implement the clever little bathroom character creator than it was for players to invent their own person. NV also gave players more options with difficulty and resource management and FO4 really scaled that back. I know equipment degredation is a bit of a pain but to me it really added to the feeling of scrounging to survive with whatever you could.
 

Kolx

Member
This is true, but you're ignoring what he was saying. Bethesda has a track record of moving goalposts in the hopes that the development time eventually puts the developer on the brink of death, then they swoop in to "save the day" by acquiring them. I guess Feargus waved them off rather than falling for it, and without the metacritic bonus they were very, very close to, they couldn't keep their full staff on.

Very shitty situation, but an example of the predatory tactics used by publishers to acquire developers.


Can Bethesda force Obsidian into a longer time frame by setting new goals without paying them compensation? I know Bethesda had done some shitty shady stuff in the past but I don't see how they were the culprit in Obsidian financial situation back then.
 

HK-47

Oh, bitch bitch bitch.
Could you imagine them having to work around Fallout 4 new shit dialogue system and the voice acting? Forget Fallout. They have better properties to be working on.
 

QaaQer

Member
Can Bethesda force Obsidian into a longer time frame by setting new goals without paying them compensation? I know Bethesda had done some shitty shady stuff in the past but I don't see how they were the culprit in Obsidian financial situation back then.

A small studio cannot afford to fight. The legal system works quite well if you are rich.
 

DMiz

Member
Would love to see them work on an Elder Scrolls game instead, but I don't they'll work with Bethesda again.

That would actually do wonders for the franchise, I think.

Bethesda has been more and more content to make a lot of what makes the Elder Scrolls unique (with respect to their world mythology) rather bland and vanilla in tone and flavor. They still have their moments of creativity and genius, but a game set in the Black Marsh by Obsidian would honestly do a lot to showcase just how unique that universe is.

On topic, the probability is likely very low, despite how much I would love one. I didn't really like FO3, but I played FONV for countless hours. It was the game that made me actually pick up the first two Fallouts which, I pleasantly discovered, were closer to it in tone and style.
 

jesu

Member
New Vegas was the best and least buggy of the current Fallout games so I would much prefer them to work on it.

I've only played Bethesda's published games on the 360/X1 and New Vegas was by far the worst/buggiest there.
 

Jigorath

Banned
Zenimax will probably do a Fallout MMO while Howard and his team work on the next Elder Scrolls.

New Vegas was the best and least buggy of the current Fallout games so I would much prefer them to work on it.

New Vegas was the best but it certainly wasn't the least buggy. The game was a complete mess at launch.
 

Breads

Banned
Could you imagine them having to work around Fallout 4 new shit dialogue system and the voice acting?

Nope. According to an interview Feargus did they actually have their own dialogue engine that they can ghetto rig into Bethesda's engine and I imagine given the chance they would most likely just do that again.
 

Kolx

Member
Ahh, to have such a simple view of the world.

Never thought contracts could be this vague that the publisher can reject something for not liking it's quality and not based on clear criteria that the developer can argue against which I find strange that a developer can accept a contract like this unless they trusted the publisher. Still that doesn't explain how Obsidian were fucked by Bethesda exactly. Do you have story of that?
 
Who wrote the good stuff in FONV? With Chris Avellone gone would it still be as good?

Multiple people wrote good stuff for New Vegas. Avellone was one of them. John Gonzalez was the lead writer for the base game and Honest Hearts, but he's no longer at Obsidian. Eric Fenstermaker designed the famous "Beyond the Beef" questline and is still at Obsidian. I'm sure Josh Sawyer handled plenty of writing in addition to his overall design responsibilities, but I don't know if he was responsible for a specific faction or companion.
 
Could you imagine them having to work around Fallout 4 new shit dialogue system and the voice acting? Forget Fallout. They have better properties to be working on.
and god help them if they remove it entirely, casuals who play it will call down from high heavens that their immersion is removed. As if poor writing, dialog, worldbuilding and lack of choice doesn't remove their immersion more.
 

HK-47

Oh, bitch bitch bitch.
Nope. According to an interview Feargus did they actually have their own dialogue engine that they can ghetto rig into Bethesda's engine and I imagine given the chance they would most likely just do that again.
Bethesda would never allow them to go non-voice acted. The dialogue wheel is a symptom of that.
 

Stevey

Member
"Too many people have opinions on things they know nothing about. And the more ignorant they are, the more opinions they have. ”

-Thomas Hildern, Director of OSI East, Fallout: New Vegas

Nice.

No problem with that. But saying beth makes better worlds and role playing games, well your going to have to back that up. From what I've seen/played, Fallout 4 is a piss poor rpg with a meh world. But like the other guy said, if you like to wander and pew pew lasers, f4 is a good choice.

I never said it was a better RPG, I just said I enjoyed it more.
 

sirap

Member
Ahh, to have such a simple view of the world.

I don’t know if this business tactic has a common name but I call it “Darth Vader’s Deal”. Here’s how it works: You partner with a company that is smaller than you to provide you with services (in Arkane’s case, to develop a game which Bethesda will publish for them, under which they have a profit sharing agreement.) Ideally, your partner will be so much smaller than you that they don’t have the means to survive if they lose your deal and don’t have the financial means to fight you in court if you screw them over. This is why Bethesda almost always partners with small, independent developers. Once the project is under way and the developer is a decent amount into it, you start throwing up hurdles. You reject milestones for no good reason, you say the quality isn’t good enough, you start delaying reviews or changing your design requirements. You basically conjure up reasons why they aren’t holding up their end of the bargain so you can withhold crucial payments to them that they need to keep their company running and to continue working on the project. Then you offer to give them the money despite them supposedly not meeting your requirements but say that will require altering the terms of your deal.

You keep doing this over and over again until the developer is on its knees, likely struggling to make payroll and keep the lights on. It doesn’t matter if what you’re doing is truthful or in some cases, even legal under the terms of your agreement, the developer needs you to survive, they can’t say no. At that point, you offer them a choice: Let them be acquired by you for a fraction of their true worth (in some cases, only as much as they “owe you”, plus any other debts), try to have them find other money so the project can be finished on your conditions (but likely with poor quality because they no longer care about pleasing you) or if they blink, they go out of business. You’ll lose the time and money you’ve put into them so far but you get to keep whatever they’ve worked on to shop around to someone else and barring that, you write it off your taxes and move on. Were I to hazard a guess, I’d say Bethesda has experienced all three of these scenarios. Arkane would fall into the first camp, Rebellion would fall into the second (go look up Rogue Warrior) and Human Head with Prey 2 falls into the third. Human Head does technically still exist but by all accounts, they’re basically a husk of a company now and are for all intents and purposes, out of business.

I've seen this sort of shit in the VFX/Animation business as well. Big companies outsource or copro large projects with fresh new studios, then introduce delays that put massive amounts of strain on the studios. When you're stuck in production hell on one project, money stops coming in until you hit your milestone. Productivity degrades, relationships become strained and the dominant company swoops in and steals talent.
 

HK-47

Oh, bitch bitch bitch.
Who would want to work with Bethesda if they had any other option?

I could see Arkane doing a stealth spinoff.

Dishonored is a much better game and world than Bethesda's version of Fallout. I'd much rather them stay on their own thing.
 

CloudWolf

Member
I wish. Bethesda isn't going to give them the chance though.

and most of the new gameplay features, like ADS, Hardcore Mode, Companions, etc, were all featured in FO3 mods before NV was even announced. [/B]
So, I take it that you dislike the sprinting, grenade button, V.A.N.S., slo-mo V.A.T.S. and the building mechanics in Fallout 4, too, right? Those were also all in some of the most popular New Vegas (and in some cases Fallout 3) mods out there.

Bethesda would never allow them to go non-voice acted. The dialogue wheel is a symptom of that.
They could try to put the Alpha Protocol-system in. That wouldn't work great for a Fallout game, but it would be better than what we have now.
 

JohnnyFootball

GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
All of the reviews? Also, in general Bethesda Fallout is more well received by the public.

All of the reviews? That's hilarious. Many people preferred New Vegas over Fallout 3. Impossible to say whether it was the majority.

My original post was responding to some bozo saying that new Vegas was poorly received, which is subjectively false.
 

Teeth

Member
Bethesda would never allow them to go non-voice acted. The dialogue wheel is a symptom of that.

They've done it before with Alpha Protocol. It was even less explicit.

And let's be honest, Obsidian would do whatever it can, regardless of the depth of RPG mechanics. They did Dungeon Siege 3 and are working on that tank game.

The OH MY GOD BABIES dialogue system would be the least of their worries.
 

Bricky

Member
Heck stuff like Witcher and Bioware games have had fully voiced leads and they dont feel nearly as crippled because of it as Fallout 4.

That's because in those games, especially the Witcher franchise, your character has a more predefined role in their universe. You make choices as Shepard or Geralt. Bethesda games (and Fallout in general) used to be more about deciding yourself who you are and what your role is, and then making choices as your own character. You're not Shepard or Geralt, you're the 'Vault Dweller'. Sure, you usually have a predefined heritage (Sole Survivor) or destiny (Dragonborn) to some extent, but for the most part the protagonist is a blank slate.

Fallout 4 wants to make both approaches work at the same time, but having a voiced lead cripples both. Instead of being a Shepard/Geralt or a blank slate it has to comprimise, with as result a generic sounding voiced lead that can't be as interesting a protagonist as a Shepard/Geralt to allow for blank slate style role-play, while limiting the latter just by giving your character a voice.

Of course, the new dialogue system and Bethesda's writing don't help either.
 

HK-47

Oh, bitch bitch bitch.
I wish. Bethesda isn't going to give them the chance though.


So, I take it that you dislike the sprinting, grenade button, V.A.N.S., slo-mo V.A.T.S. and the building mechanics in Fallout 4, too, right? Those were also all in some of the most popular New Vegas (and in some cases Fallout 3) mods out there.

You dare say that Bethesda isnt a fount of original ideas, do not steal?
 
Obsidian agreed on the contract. It's not like Bethesda forced it on them the day the game launched. If NV was really what fucked Obsidian up then that's their mistake not Bethesda.

Bethesda literally pretends certain milestones during development aren't met so they can halt payments to make companies go...almost bankrupt. Then they offer to buy the developer for a song and a dance.

They are assholes.
 
Bethesda might be salty how Obsidian took their game and did a better job than they did. It wouldn't surprise me if that was the case since the Bethesda team is so small. But who knows. Probably not.
 
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