The future of Fallout - IGN Interview with Todd Howard
- Thread starter The_Proletarian
- Start date
T
TorontoReign
Guest
It was good for us. It was probably bad for Obsidian because now they are slaves to Microsoft.
ironmask
A Smooth-Skin
I don't even care about fallout anymore.
Aurelius Of Phoenix
Psued.
Mr Fish
Slippy sloppy, The
I still don't see the big hubub about it.
Eumesmopo
Learned to love the bomb
And shitbox exclusive.
Eumesmopo
Learned to love the bomb
LOL. Bethesda was literally sabotaging Obsidian throughout the NV development process. And Obsidian was just one out of several development studios they did this to.
I'll probably be amused by 3d art and stuff because I'm a huge wanker for something like that, but as a game, I don't care.
Last edited:
Sisyphus05
First time out of the vault
What's even sadder is that the series has come to a point where even newer players like me who started out with fo4 2 years realize that it's going absolutely nowhere thus lose any further interest in the game. I still keep playing the older games but seeing any fallout related articles/news online I am disinterested in it knowing that it's just going to be the same shit repeated over and over again.
Mass commercialisation and monopolies are the worst thing that's ever happened to creative mediums, not just fallout
Meh. I actually watched the whole video. There is no evidence at all that Bethesda was "literally sabotaging Obsidian throughout the NV development process". Not a single shred of evidence of that has been found. Chris Avellone himself talks about the bonus situation saying that it really was just that - a bonus, a bonus that Bethesda suggested themselves, it was not part of the original contract that Obsidian was ready to accept. The guy in this video you linked goes against his title's name and starts going on about how great Skyrim, Oblivion and Fallout 3 were. His title would make sense if he put "publisher" rather than "developer" in it.
Yes, the thing that happened to Humanhead Studios and Prey 2 was extremely shitty. Yes, Bethesda deserve to be put on blast for those horrible business practices. No, there is no evidence of this same thing happening with Obsidian. Obsidian agreed to the contract and development time allotment of 18 months that was given. Bethesda put the 85+ metacritic bonus in as a bonus. If a company is accepting a contract that knows it won't be able to survive without an optional bonus, then that is their problem.
I am by no means a Bethesda drone. New Vegas is a far superior Fallout game to anything Bethesda has made, but the blatant fanboyism and corruption of the events that brought it into being doesn't really help your arguments when Chris Avellone (a person that no longer needs to maintain a business relationship with Bethesda as he is not even with Obsidian anymore) has gone on record saying that Obsidian and Josh Sawyer insisting on adding stupid shit like Caravan into New Vegas instead of polishing and fixing bugs was a bigger problem to the game's review scores (and thus lack of a bonus) than anything Bethesda did to """"sabotage"""" it. Conspiracy theory tier shit like "oh Bethesda paid the reviewers to give a product (that they're publishing and have an interest in seeing do well) lower review scores so that they could deny the bonus that THEY offered Obsidian in the first place" is literally tinfoil hat shit.
If there is anyone you should be angry at it should be the legions of retarded game journalist smoothbrains who all lambasted New Vegas for being "too buggy" while sucking Bethesda's chode and giving Fallout 3 and Skyrim 98/100 PERFECT GAME!!! scores despite having the same bugs and coming before AND after New Vegas.
New Vegas could have turned out much, much worse. We should all be thanking our lucky stars that it wasn't raped by Bethesda milestone fuckery like the Prey 2 situation.
Last edited:
Black Angel
Grand Inquisitor of the Ordo Hereticus
I agree with what you're saying in general, but this tidbit here, where and when did he says anything like this? I was following news regarding MCA quite closely, up until the middle of his May of Rage in that legendary Codex thread, and then some real life stuff caught me up so I can't keep tabs on these things as much anymore. Was it in the Codex, or perhaps on his Twitter?
It was likely on his twitter or RPGCodex, yes, but I can't find it. I do specifically remember him name-dropping Caravan and the Reloading Bench as feature creep that should have been culled in favor of more bug fixing.
There is this post from the Codex which basically mirrors the sentiment:
MCA said:
Last edited:
Hardboiled Android
Vault Fossil
There are two counters to these tweets, respectively. The first is that under the terms of the contract Bethesda, not Obsidian, was responsible for QA, and they did not dedicate enough resources to this part of the project.
As to the second one, considering Avellone is trying to rebuild his shattered career, it's probably in his interest not to speak ill of Bethesda. Same goes for all of the devs, to a lesser extent.
But ultimately both of those points are kind of copes. The whole blame game isn't very interesting to me. It's a shame we didn't get a game with a longer development schedule, but that would have been functionally impossible considering the purpose of New Vegas in Bethesda's release schedule. Bethesda didn't really do anything especially egregious when it came to developing New Vegas. I think a lot of the attempts to cast them as a villain are just a proxy for an underlying desire that Obsidian outright owned the IP.
Black Angel
Grand Inquisitor of the Ordo Hereticus
Ah, that's all fair, but tbh MCA was kinda notorious even among the Codexers as being severely self-deprecating, way past beyond the point of being mere humble. Not sure how he's doing nowadays, though, the last MeToo debacles that he was drowned in kinda put him away in my blind spot.
Mr Fish
Slippy sloppy, The
And I'll keep saying the same damn thing; Bethesda should have known about the state of the game and should have postponed it a month or two so that they could fix the bugs. The fact that they didn't meant that the product was released in a poor state which meant that the metacritic score being off by a measly point was Bethesda's fault. Yes, Obsidian should have worked on the bugs and maybe not been aiming for the moon but at the end of the day it is Bethesda's damn job to release a working product and if they CHOSE not to then they are responsible for the poor score.
And considering that Obsidian blew Bethesda out of the water when it came to designing a first person shooter Fallout game Bethesda should have given them the bonus and then some for that reason alone. Instead they didn't and learned no lessons at all from Fallout New Vegas as we see with Fallout 4.
MCA is not the word of god, fuck Bethesda.
And considering that Obsidian blew Bethesda out of the water when it came to designing a first person shooter Fallout game Bethesda should have given them the bonus and then some for that reason alone. Instead they didn't and learned no lessons at all from Fallout New Vegas as we see with Fallout 4.
MCA is not the word of god, fuck Bethesda.
Maybe, but mismanagement and poor QA (a Bethesda staple, their standards obviously aren't that high in regards to bugs, it's just that the reaction to New Vegas's bugs and Fallout 3's/Skyrim's was somehow different from the human garbage known as games journalists, probably because it wasn't Bethesda-developed which seems to be the free pass for such infractions) isn't the same thing as intentionally sabotaging the game. Bethesda is constantly failing to market Arkane's games effectively because they have no idea what audience they should be advertising for, for example, but it is unlikely that they are intentionally sabotaging Arkane.
Black Angel
Grand Inquisitor of the Ordo Hereticus
Yeah, that's fair points, because if Bethesda/Zenimax *really* wants to put a dirt in Obsidian's eye, they probably would go to the length they've gone to when they maneuvered around with Interplay for the Fallout IP, or even (and this is something that I read/watched a video of some few years ago) what they've done to the developers of the original Prey games (the ones where the protagonists is a Native American); I heard downright nasty things occurred then.
So in case of Obsidian, and the aforementioned Arkane, as I once said in the past, it was not malice, just plain incompetence. Which is pretty sad that it's considerably *their* incompetence that affected the studios whose games they're publishing.
So in case of Obsidian, and the aforementioned Arkane, as I once said in the past, it was not malice, just plain incompetence. Which is pretty sad that it's considerably *their* incompetence that affected the studios whose games they're publishing.
Hardboiled Android
Vault Fossil
I don't think it's fair to say they learned nothing. If nothing else, the four-way faction war main plot is pretty clearly inspired by New Vegas, with fans clamoring for faction conflict at the heart of all Fallout games. They just didn't do it very well and as I've expressed elsewhere, I think this is actually the wrong lesson to take away from New Vegas.
I think the reason the reaction to New Vegas's bugs were worse wasn't because of some double standard, I think it was because New Vegas was buggier than other Bethesda releases of that generation. Partly (and perhaps ultimately) this is because Bethesda did not implement QA, but part of the reason is absolutely that Obsidian did try to pack such an insane amount of content and detail into that game. In the final analysis once the bugs have been fixed I think it was the right move, but inevitably it would contribute to hamstringing the game and Obsidian's fortunes upon release.