this post was submitted on 01 May 2024
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Ha, as if Obsidian would work on another fallout when they didn't get paid for the last one.
Majority of their pay was contracted on a bonus to be awarded if they for a metacritic score of 85 by a certain deadline after launch.
The game was rushed and underfunded and Obsidian wasn't really up to the task resulting in a pretty catastrophic launch that took over a year to fix all the bugs while also shoveling out DLC.
They were decieved into thinking it'd be an easy job and missed the mark just like how they fumbled the KotoR2 launch just 6 years priorr. And lost their bonuses as a result.
They didn't??
Part of the contractual agreement between the studios was that Obsidian would only earn their "bonus" if the game performed well and got an 85 on Metacritic. Somehow, FO:NV missed that rating at the last moment and only scored an 84, denying obsidian the promised money.
I mean, when the only quest available at launch was "FalloutNV has stopped working", and it only had one solution, I'd say 84 is pretty damn good.
Still, there is something that just feels terrible about Obsidian not getting the bonus considering they made one of the best RPGs of all time in 18 months...
How the hell do you make that game in 18 months?! Wow
80% of the game was already made in the form of Fallout 3. 10 years prior NV would have been considered an expansion pack, not a standalone game. Most of what they did was story work and added a few new things like gambling mini games and use the ingame editor to make new npc faces and clothing. It was an impressive undertaking but they still bit off more than they could chew
80% of the game being made is definitely a stretch. The engine and many assets were there but they still had to build the world and populate it, that in itself is a gargantuan task. Call it DLC if you want but it's a fully fledged story with a full game's worth of content and deserved to be full price.
Ah gotcha. If that had been sold as a DLC it would probably have been the most comprehensive DLC I've ever seen.
Yeah it's definitely more substantial than something like Blood Dragon for Far Cry 3.
After apparently being given insufficient time to properly tune the game. There's another story going around about how Bethesda wants to increase their output since at the moment we're not going to see any proper Fallout from them until into the 2030s, over 15 years after the last one. I say hire Obsidian now and pay their bonus up front including their New Vegas bonus they got scammed out of last time.
That Obsidian is long gone.
The current Obsidian made The Outer World's. I don't know how you go from FO:NV to that. I guess the difference is that, while NV had jokes, the world was taken seriously with jokes added. TOW was essentially 100% jokes. There isn't a single part that was seriously considered I don't think.
Honestly I thought Outer Worlds was really well made, it was also just very low on content. One thing it did super well was for optional quests to not be obnoxiously telegraphed but placed in a way where I just found them while wandering around which feels a lot better than running down a cheklist. It also prevented me from feeling like I'd missed out on content even after finishing the game and learnign there were a bunch I missed.
TLDR: Outer Worlds was a fantastic tech demo.
Haven't you played Old World Blues? It was like the best DLC while also 100% jokes, even more jokes than Outer World while being the best DLC.
It had a lot of jokes, but it wasn't a joke. It still took its place in the world seriously and made sense in-universe. The Outer Worlds doesn't really ever. It never tries to be consistent.
Never heard that criticism about Outer Worlds and I wouldn't agree with it either. The story and world felt consistent to me.
If you've got the time, I think this has about the same opinion. I had this opinion long before these videos came out but (if they are the right videos) they have essentially my exact same issues with the game.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=KpT305C6SUc
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Even The Outer World was in development 6 years ago. Before covid and during Microsofts acquisition.
Game studios have high churn, the writers, designers, artists, etc are so far removed from their previous works that its a brand name like every other studio.
The New Vegas director did work on Pentiment but thats a perfect example of how a single person doesn’t mean a lot. Not to say he doesn’t do good work, but that its a collaborative job with many influences.
Aren't they both owned by Microsoft now?
Actually you're right, I forgot about that detail on Obsidian. I'm not a fan of Microsoft owning Everything but at least there's a chance someone higher up will see all the dollars they would be missing out on here
What a nice dream. They’ll push it to the fallout 76 devs so it’s broken as fuck at release instead!
It's hard to say if it was "given insufficient time" vs Obsidian leadership agreeing to a date that was too ambitious for them to accomplish, but I get everyone just wants to say Bethesda bad here.
I wasn't in those discussions, so I can't say for certain one way or the other, but it definitely would have been nice of Beth if they had still paid out the bonus considering it was one point off, alas American corporations rarely do anything (especially if it involves money) out of kindness.
they did not get scammed out of anything. old practice nobody really does anymore, sure, but obsidian released a game so buggy nearly everybody had crashes, or the game wouldnt start, or permanently lose saves. and obsidian agreed to the 18 month timeframe, which for a team like them should have been enough time given they had all of bethesda's resources at hand and didnt need to create a whole lot of the assets. obsidian has been know to mismanage their time (like kotor II) and new vegas is just another showcase of it. they only have themselves to blame for missing the bonus
Sorry, but you must not be very familiar with game development to think that a mere 18 months would be enough time to churn out a AAA game. It needed 2-2.5 years at least.
new vegas was a larger dlc rather a AAA game. and if it needed 2.5 years at the least then go ask obsidian why they didnt ask for a little more time. they obviously were able to deliver a game in 18 months, but they yet again went too far and mismanaged their time resulting in unfinished legion quests and the buggiest launch maybe ever
You want Obsidian to ask the guys who would eventually stiff them over a single MetaCritic score point to give them more time? Obviously, there was a rather hostile relationship between the two.
it was so hostile in fact that pretty much every dev at obsidian has had nothing but nice things to say about bethesda. so hostile that josh sawyer praised being able to work with creation engine
and bethesda didnt stiff them zenimax did, so it was something bethesda didnt really have control over. but then again, maybe obsidian could have not released a game THAT buggy and they would have gotten that bonus
For anyone who wasn't into Fallout in 2010 when the game launched: it was a fucking disaster. Crashes, broken story triggers and in some cases completely unplayable. The fact that it got 80 was a miracle and it was only months after their original deadline they got the game working. A lot of fans were also rightfully pissed DLC was beinf dropped before patches for day one bugs.
I never had egregious visual bugs like Skyrim's dragons flying in reverse. But when I first launched New Vegas the doc waking you up from your coma had a glitch where his head would gently rotate like a clock hand while his mouth flapped. If his mouth stopped flapping his head stopped pivoting on the top of his neck.
I honestly thought it was intentional until his cheek went inside his shoulder.
Ohhh damn yeah, I do remember that, now that you spell it out. Thanks for the splainer