>Obsidian has 4 mystery games in development, including Tim Cain's "you'll never guess what it is" game>Obsidian is owned by Microsoft/Xbox now>Microsoft/Xbox is firing everybody and shutting all their game studios downIt's the end of an era. What happens next? Do people like Sawyer and Urquhart just move into Larian or inXile?
>>4001655Obsidian and Inxile both flop.The interesting thing is xbox owns the rights to ARCANUM, if I understand the rights of succession and ownership correctly.(another interesting thing is Inxile is already making a steampunk setting game destined to flop LOL)
Conservation of Poz dictates that once all those studios shut down the studios still alive will become even gayer, new games even worse than they already are now. This process will continue until a single Turbo Poz developer is given complete control over the gaming market by the world governments or coming AI hell dystopia.
>>4001655What era? Obsidian stopped making RPGs many years ago.
>>4001655>eraWhat era? They haven't made a good game in 16 years.
>>4001795Came here to say this
>>4001655Obsidian has never made a good game. Not one. NWN2 being their absolute worst
>>4001945Anon you don't have to be a contrarian for no reason.
>>4001655They’re just going to make low budget Disco Elysium likes - that game made every white commie cum in her/they’s pants. Plus they’re way cheaper, and they don’t have deal with mechanics / math, which is hard.
>>4001655Considering Microsoft is killing Ninja Theory mere DAYS after they announced a new Hellblade game, I'd say Obsidian's fate is very murky.
>>4001692>>4001795you can very easily date obsidian's downfall. yeah, they made buggy and unfinished messes, but they clearly had visions behind them. after poe1 they started making mundane slop that just appears to various types of rpg audiences.
>>4001945nwn2 might have been janky as fuck technically with a mid at best campaign but poe's campaign put me to sleep and somehow had even worse game systems than bastardized rtwp 3.5
>>4002011Unlike Ninja Theory, Obsidian actually had a couple of hits with Grounded 1 and 2. There might be layoffs, but they won't get completely shuttered.
>>4002013You do understand that I'm responding to the OP, right?
>>4001682tim gayin already made a video while arcanum is stuck.
>>4001945South Park is their best game
>>4001958I'm not, I'm just stating fact>>4002430And none of the south park games are good, and are carried entirely by the franchise value
>>4001942No you didn't.
>>4004141>No you didn't.I would've posted "Alpha Protocol was peak Obsidian" or words to that effect, rather than a numerical reference to the year, but the concept is the same.
>>4002460Stick of Truth is a competent Paper Mario clone.
>>4001655Obsidian and inXile don't require hundreds of millions of dollars to make a game, lil' zoom-zoom.
>>4004166>Obsidian and inXile don't require hundreds of millions of dollars to make a game, lil' zoom-zoom.Except for Outer Worlds 2Or AvowedOr Clockwork Revolution
Who cares, stopped bothering once Avellone left
>>4002013>you can very easily date obsidian's downfall.Yeah, June 9th, 2015.
>>4004191>hundreds of million of dollarslol no
>>4001655There is 0 (zero) chance any of these come out now
>>4005550>when Grand Admiral Karen Flabgina is finally in charge of payroll on their anticapitalist equity gamelmao>>4001655Larian isn't going to invite either of those aging dykes into their castle lol
>>4004298This
Obsidian fucked up during PoE1 development when they sided with the crowd who hates boob plate armor.Everything was downhill from there.
>>4001689>the studios still alive will become even gayer, new games even worse than they already are nowI'm at the point where I find random Chinese FMV games more engaging than anything Obsidian has produced the past 5 years.The west has kaputten gefallen.
>>4001655>follows the downfall of Bioware to a t>people are still in denial
>>4007179I would say the difference is EA was actually protecting Bioware under their EA subsidy umbrella for as long as possible, until EA itself grew weak and got purchased.Microsoft straight up just let go of its cancer cells when its main body was starting to hurt.
>>4001655Larian and inXile don't need them
>>4007106Sawyer wanted to make a serious fantasy setting, it was the CEO who demanded boobplate. The backers were right to align with Sawyer's vision.
>>4007260>The backers were right to align with Sawyer's vision.?? According to what you said, I actually aligned with the CEO (who was it at the time?).Then this faggot Sawyer sided with the twitter mobs.Then I drifted away and didn't even notice PoE2 had been released.That's how badly you guys fucked it up. Now you no longer have the support of the people who crowdfunded PoE1, that's why you had to sell out to Microsoft.
>>4007106Boobplate looks retarded. If you want them to look sexy make them dress up in clothes that actually look sexy.
>>4007266Even BG2 had boob plates. It's litterally never caused anything bad.
>>4001655>Do people like Sawyer and Urquhart just move into Larian?I can't imagine the amount of autistic screeching when they find out Divinity 3 is going to have attractive women in it.
>>4007274Divinity 3 is going to be full of trannies and rapefugees and every race will be 50% black and it will have non-binary feminine penises and vitiligo sliders in character creation and the devs will lecture you on xenophobia and racism through the game. I cannot believe how anyone could have played BG3 and then expect a good game from Larian. Likely I am talking to people who didn’t play BG3 and just watched YouTube videos about.
>>4007267I never said it did. I don't mind if a game has it, it just doesn't do anything for me, and it doesn't make the game better. I don't play rpgs to fap or look at pin ups.
>>4007260>Sawyer wanted to make a serious fantasy settingAbout gay fish people and how gods are made up nonsense.
>>4007637>I don't play rpgs to fapThese bg2 toons, nobody has ever fapped to them.But there is an alarm in my head that rings when this is something you want to go to war against.Was the hill worth dying on?
>>4007652Those are from Tales Of Maj'Eyal, though, aren't they?
>>4007681It's the same shit anyway,The point is nobody has ever fapped to that shit, so there was no point in fishing for virtues by banning those evil tit plates.Obsidian didn't win anything from fighting on this hill...they...actually died on that hill.
>>4007652I fapped a non-zero number of times to pixelated elf titties in Daggerfall back in the day
>>4007261The CEO/studio head has always been Feargus Urquhart.Sawyer didn't side with the twitter mobs. He felt this way back in the 00s.Avellone said that the goal of the owners was always to sell the company for a lot of money. They got a pretty good deal out of it.>>4007644If that's what you got out of it, it went over your head.
>>4007779>Sawyer didn't side with the twitter mobs, he is the twitter mobsFixed.Good riddance to that faggot.
>>4007779his performative puritanical nonsense is so dumb.>dude just look at pornsexy outfits in sword and sorcery aren't fucking porn, bro. it's an aesthetic, it's camp.nobody thinks any of these characters are deep, they are all ego strokes, either to dev or player.
>>4007859>aestheticWhich looks stupid and guarantees that your setting can't be realistic or serious.
>>4008528>guarantees that your setting can't be realistic or serious2 questions for you.Is PoE somehow more realistic and serious than BG2?Is PoE now a better game due to this virtue signalling?
>>4001655My impression is that Obsidian is basically profitable, they have good fundamentals as a company that churns out Video Game Product.I think it's because they have games like Outer Worlds 2 and Avowed that are unprofitable, and they aren't paid for by games like Outer Worlds 1 that are only slightly profitable, but they are paid for by games like Grounded 1 and 2.Indie film studios like A24 or Blumhouse stay in business by making 100 horror movies, 99 of which bomb but 1 of which becomes a megahit, like Obsession, and that 1 hit pays for the 99. Why not make 100 hits? Because it's an artistic product that it's impossible to predict the success to a great degree. So they need to make films in bulk and be profitable in aggregate.Obsidian is a workhouse game studio, they're one of the few dev companies that regularly release games.
>>4008669>Grounded 1 and 2I still can't get over how Obsidian is known specifically as an RPG studio and its biggest hits in however many years are survival co-op slop with a Pixar-movie setup
>>4007859I don't think he's right in the general sense, but it definitely would have been out of place in PoE
>>4008932Because that's the direction seen as profitable by the higher ups.PoE got made only because they managed to prove that they could get crowd funding for a videogame. If it was for the suits, Obsidian would've stopped making RPGs more than a decade ago.
>>4008962The idea for Grounded came from Adam Brennecke who was feeling Honey I Shrunk the Kids nostalgia. The right kind of game at the right moment.
>>4001655That text-based game from the ads on /fit/ is unjokingly better than AAA these days.
>>4009191I played that, it wasn't very good.
>>4007260>Sawyer wanted to make a serious fantasy settingfampyrlol
>>4011421>And these names are not different-for-the-sake-of-different - they're just following location-appropriate linguistic rules.Of course this is going to go over your head.
>>4011460>And these names are not different-for-the-sake-of-different - they're just following location-appropriate linguistic rules.xauriplol
>>4007106>>4007266it's a game though and those will always have designs dictated by aesthetics, it's not real world (which could still have that, even)
Boobplate is like gross and unrealistic and totally dumb. Like, for real, typical male gaze.
Sawyer exposed himself as a WASP when he criticized people reacting to the ME remasters with the same tired argument. ME was already unrealistic camp with sexy people doing sexy things.
>1 week laterIt's telling that Anon could not answer>>4008529The silence is deafening.
>>4011471NTA but the answer is yes to both. BG2 can be fun for the story when played for the first time , but the gameplay is shit. I don't think I ever saw the boobplate outside of the inventory though.
>>4011477>I don't think I ever saw the boobplate outside of the inventory though.That means the answer to the question is no.Your virtue signalling and your boob plate removal ddn't improve PoE in the slightest.
>>4011477>but the gameplay is shitThat doesn't even have anything to do with what he asked.lmao
>>4001655>Obsidian hit with layoffs>Pajeeta CEO says she will focus on major titles for profitability>Avowed 2 cancelled, with some staff working as a maintenance crew with the vague hope of it maybe materializing>Josh Sawyer returning to direct a new Fallout title >Chris Avellone says rumored Shadowrun title directed by John Gonzales is on hold Sounds like it's a wrap for Obsidian. The Shadowrun title was interesting. Any hopes for PoE 3 at this point almost certainly over. Not only that, but a new Josh Sawyer directed Fallout. After all this time, this studio can never run from its reputation for making games for other IPs. https://archive.ph/LMNpV
>>4014237I didn't realize there was a rumored Shadowrun title. I really liked those Harebrained ones
>>4001655if outer wotlds is anything to go off of, they'll be 4 "le quirky, heckin' diverse" games that are paradoxically anti-capitalist in nature.
>>4001945hey, remember when /v/ liked fallout new vegas, and now you pretend to hate it because obsidian spewed out outer worlds? you're allowed to like things.
>>4001655No one who ever worked with Fargo will move to inxile. They all hate him.
>>4001655>Obsidianonly servicable game they made in the last 20 years is a mod for fallout 3which is still shit
>>4011461And Tolkien created Mûmakil/oliphaunts.
>>4002430Based hot take for onceStick of truth is a perfectly fun paper Mario rip off with some very memorable bits. It didn't need to be more or less. I still disagree, I think it's just obvious new vegas is their crowning achievement that they will be remembered for when they shut down.Than kotor 2But south park stick of truth is not a bad choice and pretty reasonable.
>>4014264>>4011467>>4007106This is 4chan anons you don't have to write all that extra elaborate crap and just say woke, everyone knows why it is shit. The ones that pretend otherwise don't belong here and can return to reddit.
>>4014237This will be an incredibly unpopular take to the isometric/sawyer cultists here, but who cares since I have better RPG taste than any 10 of them.>POE was actually better without Sawyer in the form of Avowed which had actual innovations and build depth, polish in the tired BGS dominated FPS RPG spaceWorst of all worlds, head wokist is going to be given more titles while the better game gets abandoned lol.
>>4015133Avowed almost felt sabotaged for how terrible the dialogue options were in an otherwise decent game. I don't follow this stuff well enough to know who to blame for that, but I hope at least that one got fucked over
>>4007260>it was the CEO who demanded boobplateThis makes a lot of sense.In the old days when the old generation had more power they delivered good stuff like this, and players were actually happy with it.As time pass, the millenial generation grab more and more influence, and video games only became shittier and shittier.
>>4015161Good point on the dialogues, I often felt trapped in the corn kernel like mind of a pajeet autist or schizoid leftist, and unable to express myself via anything resembling a normal response.>Show up to grave/corpse robber scene, tomb and corpse looting being something every single adventurer does 24/7 in the typical rpg>Gigantic altercation on the subject of grave robbing...ok but why and how is my character some saint to lecture others about this lolOwlcat did this too in Wrath, hilarious, but stupid.
>>4015561Lecturing people about grave robbing while doing it yourself on a much more worse scale is practically a RPG tradition. I was thinking more about basically everything else
>>4008669I've always wondered how they can be profitable since their games aren't really hits commercially afaik, Sawyer disclosed that his income is 213k/year, and that's juts one guy. Urqutwat must make even more than that being the CEO, then you need to pay developers, artists, writers, etc
>>4015488>Katarina's approved concept was initially done as a rebellious attempt to go overboard and get Feargus to reject her concept by completely oversexing her (since there were constant requests to "sex her up"), but the rebellious act backfired when Feargus approved it.
>>4015645I guarantee you none of those "rebels" are in charge of anything at Obsidian anymore.You can tell just from looking at the recent games.My instincts tell me there was some sort of purge between 2011 and up to 2014/2015.
>>4015133>>4015161kys zoomers
>>4007106I don't care about that. PoE1 is what happens when you put an autistic guy in charge. Sawyer was obsessed with balance so you ended up with a boring game because little else interested him beyond implementing shit in such a way that Might also makes your spells stronger, for example.
>>4015657>Might also makes your spells strongerNOOOO IT'S NOT LITERAL MIGHT IT'S A METAPHORRRRRRRR
>>4015660That never really made sense when ever stat check involving might is basically just a strength one
>>4015797I know. I agree with you. It’s a cope argument.
>>4001655Why are so many Redditors mad at Xbox for these layoffs anyway? Just a few months ago they were dunking on these devs for their late development times and now all of a sudden they’re angry that these devs were let go? What gives?
>>4015797Might represents spiritual strength, there's no contradiction.
>>4015807Personally, if I were to describe something as spiritual strength, it would probably be closer to the resolve stat
>>4015807>Might represents spiritual strengthThat's why every single storybook interaction checking might has you go>THROUGH MY GREAT SPIRITUAL STRENGTH, I BEND THESE BARSJust kidding, you grab them with your bare hands and twist them with your muscles. Which you'd know if you'd actually played the game. You have played Pillars, haven't you, anon? You're not just arguing about a game you don't know anything about on the internet for some reason?
>>4015803I would laugh about the layoffs if it meant this shit would die, but they're just replacing them with something worse
>>4015807It represents both spiritual and physical strength , which is retarded.
>>4015803there is no higher cult on social media than the cult of fake jobs that don't matter
>>4015818The strength of your soul determines how strong you are both mentally and physically. The description says this.>>4015842Perfectly acceptable for a fantasy game.
>>4015887>might = physical strength = bending and breaking things through application of physical forceThank you for agreeing with me.
>>4015890And how mighty you can be is determined by your soul, not by lifting. You can't pump up your might score in-game.
>>4015892>And how mighty you can be is determined by your soul, not by lifting. You can't pump up your might score in-game.Much like your constitution, dexterity, perceptiveness, intelligence, and resolve are all determined by your soul, and cannot be increased in-game. Congratulations, literally every stat is now “spiritual strength”
>>4015133I feel insane when people talk about the build depth of Avowed and praise its combat. Its skyrim combat with MMO skills you can use on cooldown.
>>4015647You misunderstand. The artist resented that his designs kept getting rejected because they weren't sexy enough, so he made the most over-the-top outfit he could imagine and was shocked and disappointed when the response was "Yes, that's exactly what I wanted." Avowed is the game he wanted to do all along.
>>4015940>the response was "Yes, that's exactly what I wanted."We will never have a CEO like this again in our lifetime.This is why I gave up and moved to Japanese rpgs and Chinese gachas.
>>4007260>Sawyer wanted to make a serious fantasy setting,Sawyer doesn't understand the genre he's working in, then.>it was the CEO who demanded boobplate.wtf I love Feargus now
>>4007187>EA was actually protecting BiowareAre people are actually so far removed from reality to believe shit like this?
>>4001655>>4014237Microsoft has also posted hundreds of new positions for hire in India for software people. All the companies are going to be completely gutted and replaced with Indian workforce with now an Indian CEO giving the final check on approvals for the games.Ah well, Obsidian and most other old game titans had practically none of their original work force in them for over 10 years now. It's the majority of the reason why all their series went to shit.
>>4017549This is different. Bioware employees were an ideological toy pet.Just look at what Dragon Age Veil guard was allowed to get away with.Inquisition release deate 2014. Veil giard release date 2024.ten years of development time.Going through 2 giant resets, allowed to restart project with full funding like nothing ever happend, again and again.If this was a normal situation EA would have their heads on a chopping block, not not this one, EA pretected them until EA's dying breath. And EA got punched in the gut by Saudi investors and swallowed whole.
>>4017549>this image is probably older than half of the anons on this board
