An open letter to Obsidian Entertainment

Khan FurSainty said:
Or, a better idea, drop the DLCs as a whole and get back to expansion. I know it's not going to happen because of financial problems, but if you get to a point where you need to sell parts of a game just to stay in business, you might as well just put on your coat and developer hat and look for another job.
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At the beginning of DLCs I thought, or better hoped, that addons and expansions would not die because of them. I rather thought DLCs are like little bridges for more massive expansions.

But well, the financing is a publisher's, not a developer's decision.
 
Khan FurSainty said:
Or, a better idea, drop the DLCs as a whole and get back to expansion. I know it's not going to happen because of financial problems, but if you get to a point where you need to sell parts of a game just to stay in business, you might as well just put on your coat and developer hat and look for another job.
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I also said that earlier :)

The only proper way to expand a Fallout game is with an actual expansion. DLCs should be left to games where there's less interdependency expected of content, so they won't become like some alien growths on the game's body, but integrate gracefully with the existing structure.
 
I may also point out that Fallout 1 and 2 were amazing games but, for me, still hold the 'buggiest games ever' title. Especially Fallout 2, until the multiple patches those games were a technical mess. This is because the developers stretched themselves, they thought creatively and sometimes they had to cut ideas, sometimes went down creative cul de sacs, sometimes overstretched themselves. It leads to problems, get over it. Bloody hell they even left parts of quests in the games after they'd cut them, confusing. I forgave them because the games were great.
 
Add on, DLC, expansions, you guys are arguing semantics. The problem presumably that Obsidian had is being lumbered with Bethesda's design philosophy regarding DLC. This whole business of being able to do everything with one character therefor needing to be accessible from the main game.

There is nothing wrong with DLC in itself, but it is both as a business model and design model still in it's infancy, there are bound to be teething problems.
 
Drifter420 said:
Second, he's fed up with Obsidian's consistent bug problems
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As opposed to Bethesda's consistent bug problems?
Drifter420 said:
A lot of people here give Obsidian a pass for this particular game,
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As opposed to people in other places giving Bethesda a pass for Fallout 3?
Drifter420 said:
Bad bugs are a huge part of their track record.
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As opposed to Bethesda, a company notorious for releasing bugged games and then never fixing them?
Drifter420 said:
Lets face facts: New Vegas is bug-infested,
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As opposed to its bug-infested predecessor, Fallout 3?

So yeah...what were you saying about people giving a developer a pass? :roll:
 
People give way to much credit to crappy games. Whatever was interesting about Fallout New Vegas is beyond me. Hell, I can't think of anything particularly interesting about Fallout or Fallout 2. The thing is, it's how the game presents it, about how you interact with an uninteresting story that makes an interesting game. The writing is interesting in New Vegas, and some plots are too, but the game ruins it all to hell.
 
Yeah. Everything is shit, throw it into the garbage bin.
 
imo, when judging a game like FNV you have to look at the source.

and no, i am not 100% talking about obsidian.

when you are playing a game from someone running someone elses engine, you have to consider that as well.

FNV was not running on obsidians engine. whenever you come across a bug in FNV, you have to look where the "bug" comes from. if its a bug in the engine, then you cannot really blame obsidian as they may not have had the time/money/support to fix the bug in the engine.

especially after playing FO3 and even oblivion, we KNOW 100% that the engine has serious issues/flaws. all these "bugs" people are complaining about, do they come from the engine or the content?

if the bug is from the engine, its excusable. if its from the content, then obsidian should feel the full brunt of the issue.

this of course excuses very little from AP, but you do have to keep in mind that they used a publisher ( SEGA ) who did impose some really stupid things on the game.
 
Sigh, not this shit again. Honestly, I've never had nearly as much glitch problems as some people. I own all the mentioned games and never ran into a single show-stopper bug, and on rare occasion a clipping issue. Maybe I'm lucky.

However, yes, this guy sounds like a whiny cunt. The Escapist, in my opinion, is nefarious for this though. And their website is utter shit that occasionally crashes my Firefox... who would have thunk it?

Buggy website, Escapist! Luckily, the only good thing on that site is Zero Punctuation, so I am spared their bloated ad spaces and bullshit.
 
I don't think developers should be excused from releasing buggy games and Obsidian have certainly been guilty of that.

However, I think the reputation is kinda getting out of proportion at times. Or at least, like it's been pointed out before, people are often quick at jumping at OEIs throats about bugs while at the same time being very lenient towards other devs who also released games with lots of bugs.
And what's more, I think it's a damn shame that more people aren't able to appreciate what OEI does really well at the expense of bugs. I think their titles really push the envelope in some areas and I think that ambition is really worth suffering through some bugs, just like with Troika when they were around.

Perhaps it is a defect from growing up in an era where getting games installed and getting them to play was like a mini-adventure in itself, but a game has to be *extremely* buggy if I'm to care that much about it. At least if the game is a complex one, which I think is certainly true of Obsidian's games.

But again, if people can't access DLCs they bought because of bugs in the main game, then yeah... That *is* a huge problem and both OEI and Beth share blame in this.

Still, articles like this... It's like reading a slightly more lengthy forum post. I mean... a dude angry about bugs in Obsidian's games? My god! Go to any forum discussing any of their games and you'll find the same thing you find in this article, except with (often) less words.
 
I don't know of any game that hasn't had bugs or random crashes. Its just apart of being a gamer. I don't really get bothered that much from crashes.... over the years I learned to expect them. Its a non-issue imo. As long as an official or unofficial patch is made, everything is usually fine. Look at Vampire Masquerade: Bloodlines..... I used an unofficial patch and was able to complete/beat the game with an improved joyful experience; all the half completed content was mostly completed.
 
randir14 said:
Is it strange that I've played New Vegas for 100+ hours and encountered almost no bugs?
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I've only encountered one game breaking bug, and that bug has been corrected by recent patches. I don't think it's really as bad as people are making it out to be.
 
People here are quick to give Obsidian a pass, the same way people out there give it to Bethesda. Even if the dev kit sucks, shitty development is shitty development. You can't always blame the tools. That doesn't fly in the world of dev of any kind.

Edit: Just to be clear, I haven't experienced any real problems with New Vegas myself. I did however get a chance to experience Alpha Protocol and that was a fuck fest.
 
Bugs that affect your game are major bugs. Ones that affect other people's games are minor bugs. I think this guy simply ran into a bug that affected his game and decided the sky was falling.

We only have three major RPG makers left these days: Bethesda, Obsidian, and Bioware. Bethesda is a lost cause and Bioware is starting to dumb down their games as part of a shift to consoles. So, Obsidian, despite its reputation for bugs, is probably our best hope right now.
 
korindabar said:
I did however get a chance to experience Alpha Protocol and that was a fuck fest.
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Well, but the game was very bug-free. It only had problems with polishing when it comes to interface, controls, etc.
 
korindabar said:
People here are quick to give Obsidian a pass, the same way people out there give it to Bethesda. Even if the dev kit sucks, shitty development is shitty development. You can't always blame the tools. That doesn't fly in the world of dev of any kind.

Edit: Just to be clear, I haven't experienced any real problems with New Vegas myself. I did however get a chance to experience Alpha Protocol and that was a fuck fest.
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I think that people here give Obsidian a pass for the same reason they give CD Projeckt a pass: Both companies are interested in actually giving the player the kind of role-playing experience where you actually feel in control. You excuse the bugs, which in NV seem to be more to do with quest sequence and so on, Because you enjoy creative quest design, dialogues with interesting characters, and a plot that emphasizes player-choice over setting contrivance.

Equally, other people are prone to give Bethesda games like FO3 or Bioware games a pass because they value different things. They enjoy cinematic experiences, emotive storytelling, and the ability to recreate the kind of heroic or iconic storytelling that they saw as kids in stuff like Star Wars.

Basically any RPG Studio puts out buggy games that often suffer from poor dialogue (because there's so much more of it compared with other games that have Dev Cycles with comparable length) and unrealized goals (whether it's New Vegas trending towards the NCR instead of offering a balanced ques slate, or botching the plot structure and ending of Mass Effect 2), and a lot of missed opportunities. That's just a symptom of the genre and the fact that the genre demands scale.

People who enjoy reactivity and interesting characters can even give Alpha Protocol credit despite all of its problems. RPG fans are fickle and strange that way. Nerds amongst Nerds, when it comes to gaming, we're characterized by different flavours of extremely rarified taste.

edit: Also I think part of the backlash against New Vegas is the KIND of bugs It's purely anecdotal but, in my experience, Fallout 3 was more likely to have crashes to desktop, or clipping errors, or small and missable things like Ghoulified Moira and so on not work. New Vegas on the other hand tends to have quest-breaking bugs that fuck up interesting questlines like Beyond the Beef or companion quests like Old School Ghoul.
 
Not this crap again. I played the PS3 version and the worst I got was freezing every now and again, and some weird graphical glitches, that's it. Does Obsidian release bug games? Sure, but they are hardly as bad as this guy makes them out to be. Maybe Obsidian should just let Bethsoft do all the PR/buzz word dropping bull shit they are famous for.
 
i dont give anyone a pass

but you also have to consider the situation.

obsidian is creating games on someone elses engine that probably barely resembles the original with as long as beth has been tinkering with it.

plus PC development is much harder. a bug on a console is inexcuseable. you have a fixed platform to develop or port for.

i have come across numerous games that have no issues on probably 99% of platforms, but i run into sound issues. i know why i have these sound issues, but just because maybe 5-10 people out of 100,000 experience it, is it a bug? yes. but it is excuseable on the PC because there are so many pieces of different hardware.

i know why i have sound issues in lots of games. its because nobody tests to make sure their games work on my setup. i have even had companies ( even small dev studios ) tell me they cannot fix the bug because they will not setup a testing platform that resembles my computer because it would be too expensive for little gain.

i have also had small studios work with me for sometimes 2-3 weeks to track down the source of the bug and fix it.

it has given me probably a very different mentality on bugs than most people.
 
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