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Microsoft might kill Obsidian too [Update] Schreier: "Xbox is keeping Obsidian"

jm89 said:
Rip Chris
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On Fire GIF


Fix them don't end them. Obsidian is prime for fixing.
 
pepeno said:
Decision to keep smaller footprint for their games was concious OBSIDIAN decision. I am member of rpgcodex and whole forum is basically blackisle/obsidian hug box. Or at least it was until they started to produce shit. And there are so many members there that catalogued everything about them over the years.

In general it was always main owners want to get aquired by some big publisher. They never wanted to be indie. Secondly after Falllout New Vegas and their contract failure following that they decided they won't ever make complicated games they ship with bugs which means downscaling their ideas and ambitions which caused problems down the line which lead to Chris Avellone (one of the founders and co-owners) leaving.

Later on MS actually wanted to give them truckload of money to upgrade their ambitions but Obsidian choose not to scale up in order to avoid layoffs afer bigger projects (whole studio is kind of sort of like close knit/family) out of which came Avowed. MS wanted it to be big open world RPG like Skyrim and Obsidian said no.

Alas they aren't big studio thanks to this and they will probably survive this. Probably getting bought by someone else.

That being said, losing Pillars of Eternity IP after finally having it must sting like shit. As much as POE2 sucked it needed different direction. The design itself was pretty good.



I wouldn't trust Shierer. Remembre that in corporation different people don't talk to each other and decisions are made at different levels of ladder with people not knowing a single thing until they get email that their access to company computer has been revoked.
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Really, then why did Obsidian offer to make a new Elder Scroll or Fallout, and Bethesda turned them down, and this was before both were bought, doesn't sound like staying small and being indie to me, sorry but i don't believe a word of that.
 
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Smear campaign again XBOX because of Sony physical media debacle. Jason Schreier with the save.
 
Yeah no shit Obsidian was fine.

Worst (or best case scenario depending on how you look at it) they are hit by a bunch of layoffs and are assigned to the Fallout mines for the rest of their lives.
 
Obsidian can still end up having layoffs and having to focus on one project instead of two. It would actually be funny to see how much they've fallen if they would get another Fallout project.
 
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Evil Calvin said:
Uh...........Avowed is pretty awesome. I don't know where you get that. I get that you may not like it (if you even played it) but it's certainly not 'garbage'.
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Yep, Avowed was quite great for me. Most (not all) of the haters never even played it and just parrot YouTube sayings.

Is it the perfect game? Definitely not but what's there is pretty good and I enjoyed it from start to finish and would absolutely play a sequel. But only if it doesn't get in the way of Pillars of Eternity III. 😆
 
I mean what has Obsidian put out recently that is any good? Their last pretty good game was Pillars 2 back in 2018. Everything after that has been meh. Really they're still riding off the New Vegas wave from 2010 and all those people are long gone.

This would be no loss if they were shut down.
 
do you guys think that during this whole studiocide that the executives telling them the news are bringing up the woke topic? Like some executive literally telling them to stop doing that for the studios that are "saved"
 
Laptop1991 said:
Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2, didn't do that well, not because Obsidian couldn't make better games anymore, they were told to make them for Gamepass, if Obsidian had stuck to their 1st trailer, and made their version of Skyrim, it would be a different story, Obsidian can still make top RPG's, but the management need to let them.
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While Grounded is very Gamepass fodder, Avowed seemed to be imploding even before the MS purchase. It seemed they had to do a reset because it sounded like the team wasn't working.

I don't think the "remove multiplayer" came from Microsoft, for example, but who knows.

Also, while Microsoft may have dictated elements of OW2, I don't think anyone here has said that OW2 is "less" than OW1, it's just more of it, but maybe I'm wrong.

My vibe on OW2 release was (1) the marketing was poorly done and felt late, (2) the inflated price point set a bad tone out of the gate (even though fixed), and (3) there's the "well, I have to play the first game to make sense of the 2nd game" and if the first game isn't that great (or it's just "fine"), it's hard to get excited for the sequel.

Maybe it's me, but I feel like Pillars 2 suffered that as well - Pillars 1 seemed to draw an audience, possibly to support a struggling studio and the underdog story, but Pillars 2 didn't seem to have the same reception, could be the same reason as OW2.

Also, I think the Obsidian folks have even said something that hurt them was releasing two games in the same year because of the logistic problems, but I don't know how much that contributed to either game's reception. I usually only like playing games with a good story, and neither OW2 or Avowed seemed to have a story that players got excited about or even talked about, and the companions seemed to be largely forgettable, which is definitely different from previous Obsidian games.

Anyway, I think Obsidian unfairly gets the shaft for some things, but fixing their stories should be an easy fix, hopefully with the new people they've brought in will fix that.
 
Magic Carpet said:
In my little review I called Sapadal a little puppy that keeps peeing on everything in the house.
Cute as long as it's your puppy in your house.
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You must study the morality of the world to understand: Sapadal is an immensely powerful god harboring an ancient, unpredictable entity—in fact, even Woedica fears him. Sapadal plays the part of the weak, the child, to achieve his ends. He is a manipulator.
 
Also first time today I hear they were working on Fallout

So Fallout + Avowed 2

On top that Grounded franchise IS a success.

The report made no sense and glad its debunked.

Microsoft will want Fallout ASAP. They're already fucking late to capitalize on the TV show.
 
Stafford said:
That's true, but if anything I'd rather see them working on a Fallout spin off or even Fallout 5. But I don't think Todd Howard will be fond of either idea.
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Obsidian should 100% be on a Fallout game while Todd works on TES6. But you're probably right. I don't think he'll let that happen.
 
it doesn't matter if you liked their games or not. I liked south of midnight, but I will not say they should keep them because I enjoyed the game.
all those games where made to attract modern audiences in varying degrees and the gamers refused and the games didn't sell.

so why keep obsidian and close compulsion?
 
Asha will use Obsidian to augment Bethesda to try and get TES6 ready for next gen launch, while Sony is still napping.

If she's keeping Obsidian and letting them carry on making their own woke slops nobody wants to play, I may have to reconsider my support for her.

She should at least get the racist out of there, either way.
 
Stafford said:
That's true, but if anything I'd rather see them working on a Fallout spin off or even Fallout 5. But I don't think Todd Howard will be fond of either idea.
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Simple solution is to fire Todd Howard then a massive roadblock stopping a lot of things from happening quickly is cleared.
 
No Banana said:
While Grounded is very Gamepass fodder, Avowed seemed to be imploding even before the MS purchase. It seemed they had to do a reset because it sounded like the team wasn't working.

I don't think the "remove multiplayer" came from Microsoft, for example, but who knows.

Also, while Microsoft may have dictated elements of OW2, I don't think anyone here has said that OW2 is "less" than OW1, it's just more of it, but maybe I'm wrong.

My vibe on OW2 release was (1) the marketing was poorly done and felt late, (2) the inflated price point set a bad tone out of the gate (even though fixed), and (3) there's the "well, I have to play the first game to make sense of the 2nd game" and if the first game isn't that great (or it's just "fine"), it's hard to get excited for the sequel.

Maybe it's me, but I feel like Pillars 2 suffered that as well - Pillars 1 seemed to draw an audience, possibly to support a struggling studio and the underdog story, but Pillars 2 didn't seem to have the same reception, could be the same reason as OW2.

Also, I think the Obsidian folks have even said something that hurt them was releasing two games in the same year because of the logistic problems, but I don't know how much that contributed to either game's reception. I usually only like playing games with a good story, and neither OW2 or Avowed seemed to have a story that players got excited about or even talked about, and the companions seemed to be largely forgettable, which is definitely different from previous Obsidian games.

Anyway, I think Obsidian unfairly gets the shaft for some things, but fixing their stories should be an easy fix, hopefully with the new people they've brought in will fix that.
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Yeah, i played TOW1,back in 2019, and the sequel isn't any better, the story is all over the place, i agree, but the 1st game was not under Microsoft, it was a AA title by Private Division, so the The Outer Worlds 2 should of been a lot better than it is with MS money behind it.
 
Buggy Loop said:
Also first time today I hear they were working on Fallout

So Fallout + Avowed 2

On top that Grounded franchise IS a success.

The report made no sense and glad its debunked.

Microsoft will want Fallout ASAP. They're already fucking late to capitalize on the TV show.
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Yeah on the face of it we heard both Outer Worlds and Avowed under performed but Id forgotten about Grounded which seemingly is doing ok and yeah a Fallout game from these guys could be great.
 
SomeNorseGuy said:
Only way I'd feel anything but apathy for this would be if they announced a new big-boy RPG lead by Josh Sawyer and that they throw money at Avellone until he agrees to help them out.

...and publicly fire that retarded Art Director.
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Apparently when Chris Avellone left, he'd had some pretty severe disagreements with Feargus Urquhart and the other upper management.
On the other hand, apparently their disagreements were all business, as far as I can tell no one there took any sides over the accusations against Avellone.

It would be nice if they could work things out and have him come back to help with writing. I don't put his writing up on a pedestal like some people, but if nothing else he's always seemed passionately dedicated to pure storytelling, he seems like he'd never put up with someone else from outside interfering and telling him he can't do things for political reasons imo.

and yeah Josh Sawyer too, of course. Pentiment was awesome. Pillars of Eternity 2 was cool too. If both of those games had flaws, they were because of the limited scope. It'd be awesome to see what he can do with a AAA budget.
 
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