Why are they so shit now? I feel like they took a nosedive in quality soon after New Vegas was released

Why are they so shit now? I feel like they took a nosedive in quality soon after New Vegas was released.

They're fine, though.

>now

A bunch of people who made New Vegas left after it was done

Most of them left, not just Avellone, though his departure is felt the most.

AVellone had jack shit to do with New Vegas.

This
And avellone barely worked on PoE at all, just wrote 2 characters.

It's a parody of it's old self nowadays.

I don't know if you noticed but they're trying hard to get back to their roots. Pillars was a test run that sold well, and Tyranny has been well received for the most part. These games are essentially worldbuilding practice.

I think they're gearing up for a AAA RPG like KOTOR2. Could even be the spiritual sequel to Bloodlines

I'm fine with you being retarded

The portion he did do was Ulysses, who was just fucking bad. Every character he writes tends to be a fucking mouthpiece for his opinions on the setting. Except for Grieving Mother and Durance.

He did Cass and Lanius as well as far as I remember

Still not John "The Survivalist" Gonzalez tho

Avellone was major for DLC, though.

>The portion he did do was Ulysses
He also did DM. OWN, Lanius, Cass and Veronica. Which are very good, but not essential.

>Durance
Wasn't a mouthpiece on the setting? Ehh.

The only above-the-line writer on NV who is still at Obsidian is Fenstermaker, who was the lead writer of PoE.

Pillars was a last attempt to save the company from going bust m8

>People defending Obidian SJW
kek
RPG are dead.

Its a somewhat large video games developer.
They have the same flaw every large developer has: Market Analysis.

Video game companies succeed when they are hungry. When its a team of 10 people who are trying to stand out, they design the game to be new and unique. When they are established industry giants, they play it safe.

Its is the cycle of capitalism. The problem is that when these new games surface, they are usually bought up by one of the bigger companies more often than not. So stagnation occurs. Much in the same way that US hotel conglomerates acquire small hotel chains or independent businesses.

They've run out of excuses.

Now Tyranny is apparently back to same old "publisher rushed them" after we found out there are two missing acts.

Apparently they've been hiring shitty Bioware tier writers that have links to SJWs

you also have to understand their CEO wants the company to get bought by someone. they simply haven't had any offers, apparently.

I should've said "One of the portions". I like his writing, really but whenever he has a soapbox character it just disgusts me. Kreia, cannot fucking stand her. I think Star Wars has potential for grey areas but it felt too heavy handed with her.

They're okay though

Well, I love Kreia!

Every studio get greedy or lazy or both at some point.

Urquhart is one of those rare few CEOs who actually has development experience. Just like Brian Fargo.

they're just not good at actually making games. this is nothing new, obsidian simply always had great writers.

And yet Brian Fargo can't stop fucking shit up

I don't think she is poorly written necessarily, I just don't think her, and Avellone's, opinions are the end all, be all of the setting. She felt extremely hypocritical to me and Avellone feels like a pseudo-nihilist. Star Wars is an intrinsically "Good vs. Evil" setting, that doesn't mean it's bad. Having shades of grey doesn't automatically equate to good writing. Her condescending attitude NO MATTER WHAT is just fucking grating.

>obsidian was good

I love her because she's such a good archetype, an unapologetic manipulative crone who sees everybody (except for Exile) as tools and uses them as such. Loved talking to her and challenging her, which often results in influence gain anyway.

You can tell her to fuck off though. Her morality isn't presented as the end all be all.

It's because, as an independent company not being contracted by a producer to work on an already existing series, the only thing they are interested in making are Infinity Engine style CRPGs that appeal to a very niche audience. In terms of the story, npcs, and worldbuilding Obsidian hasn't faltered from any of these things, but the core game itself is what's making and breaking what their new games are like. PoE and NV both have a focus on an overarching story, with three-dimensional characters that you come to personally know about in your travels, and a self-contained world that you are able to explore thoroughly but are not required to, and yet the actual gameplay in each game is completely different. One is in the same vein as Baldur's Gate, where you command an increasingly large party of characters and coordinate them in combat and other feats to continue progressing forward in the game, with the world's focus being on what your party has done to it. The other features a Bethesda style open world that you are fit to explore at your leisure and are rewarded for veering away from the oft-taken path in the game, with all in-game actions being spearheaded by your character first and foremost with little to no reliance on others, with the world's focus being on what sights your character sees in it.

tl;dr they're different games, it's like comparing Mario with Zelda just because both are made by Nintendo.

I'm more speaking about the opinions I see spouted on Sup Forums about her. Granted, taking opinions seriously on Sup Forums is a special sort of idiocy. I haven't player Kotor 2 in years, not even the restoration mod. I think I'm going to go do that right now, with Jedi Jesus, of course.

They are hiring the scrap that Bioware leaves behind

>that have links to SJW

Are you unaware of who Sawyer is?

No money.

KotOR II is easily my favorite Star Wars RPG in existence.

NWN2's OC was decent enough, despite a few lulls or flaws, MotB was great, Storm of Zehir was amazing,

Alpha Protocol was flawed, with some neat ideas, ultimately disappointing for me.

New Vegas is easily more enjoyable overall than FO3.

The Stick of Truth is well made, easily their most bug free game, they developed it and the South Park creators wrote it - solid for fans of South Park.

Pillars of Eternity and its expansions combine to make a decent experience. Never really going too low or too high in terms of quality.

Skyforge is a terrible MMO with good story and concept ideas that should have been made into a solid single player RPG instead of the cluster fuck mess that it is. Very little of Obsidian's writing style is present, and they didn't develop the game themselves just added some writing cred to it.

Armored Warfare is bad. I have no clue why they got involved in the project outside of 'money'.

I haven't looked into their involvement with Pathfinder Adventures.

Tyranny is decent, a more linear but solid experience with a drop off sequel/DLC bait ending that disappoints. Its combat is tighter than Pillars but has nowhere near the encounter variety of Pillars. Companions are hit or miss. The dialogue system and reputation systems are hands down the best I've ever seen in an RPG, and they feel like something the genre should have been doing for DECADES.

What about Dungeon Siege 3?

>implying that exists

Dungeon Siege 3 is not a fucking Dungeon Siege game. The story is decent, world is fine, characters are OK but the gameplay is so above and beyond shit, I couldn't stomach it.

You sound like the guy that jumped off the skyscraper.

Every floor he would say "So far so good.'

Obsidian will soon join the Mt Rushmore of failed RPG studios.
A shame for them but I will be indulging in their fanbois tears. Shittiest fanbase around.

>Dungeon Siege 3 is not a fucking Dungeon Siege game
That's not a bad thing considering how awful Dungeon Siege is as a series.

Pillars was good. Pillars expansions shown considerable improvement. Therefore, I think Pillars 2, which is one of the projects they're working on, will be even better.

I didn't buy Tranny because I didn't like art direction and I was aware of it made by a B-team of literal whos. I don't buy everything they make because of brand loyalty, just things that interest me.

I think Tyranny is worth it. I prefer the combat. It felt like they were testing ideas that could work in Pillars 2 out on Tyranny.

>I didn't like art direction
It looks identical to PoE.

I loved first one. Due to exploration and enemy variety. I still remember when hotseat worked.

>I prefer the combat.
I dunno.
>no friendly fire
>smaller party
Maybe I'll give it a whirl later.

It really doesn't, it's way more stylized and less crisp. It's a cheaper game. Even the promo screenshots looked bland and muddy, while PoE promos were wallpaper worthy.

It's an average-ish dungeon crawler with a decent-ish story but a questionably shallow loot table that would have been acceptable had it not been a very BAD Dungeon Siege game. And that's it's most major flaw, in my opinion, that it's a bad dungeon siege game. It's not what someone going into buying a dungeon siege game expected or wanted . . . and rightfully so.

No friendly fire is shit, I agree. I enjoy the magic system more but Vancian based magic has never been my thing, so I'm very biased. The reputation, backgrounds and the effect they have on the dialogue is especially noteworthy. Your background really does change how the game unfolds, for example I was unable to make any peaceful resolution with many of the ingame factions based solely on the conquest decisions I picked during the character creation. I prefer PoE overall but let it go on sale and I think you'll find Tyranny does have some enjoyable bits.

Nope, the look basically identical. High sharpness is not an art direction.

...

>a picture of poe for ants
Look at the ground!

Didn't PoE have hand-drawn backgrounds? I felt that PoE was much more beautiful with far more details in the backgrounds.

PoE looks better.

PoE backgrounds are 2D images of 3D renders painted over by 2D artists to give them more detail.

they were always shit, even NV is massively overrated

if they weren't this plucky small dev team, people wouldn't like their games as much

Thanks. I think Tyranny's backgrounds lack the detailing of PoE's but it also had a very short dev cycle in comparison.

Yes, they never denied it, it's a lower cost game really. I'm not even saying it as a bad thing.

I really don't understand how people can call PoE's backgrounds "beautiful" when they looked like pixelated garbage to me. The Stronghold comes to mind. Looked like a fucking facebook game.

You're not supposed to zoom in you dum-dum.

Better ground textures are not art direction. You're comparing games with different budgets. If you meant to say PoE has better graphics then say that. Though why you'd draw the line here when we're talking about games that do not look significantly different from those released nearly 20 years ago, I've no idea. This has to be the strangest, narrowest graphic whore complaint I've ever seen.

Regardless, the art direction and visuals are about as close as you can get without it being literally the same game.

As I said earlier, I think Tyranny was a game that was meant to spitball concepts for PoE 2.

I get an otherworldly celtic vibe from many of the backgrounds, which considering the setting, makes sense. I enjoy them senpai.

for sure. I'm not a big fan of Tyranny's visuals at all

>t games that do not look significantly different from those released nearly 20 years ago
Look at how BG looks in gameplay and then look at PoE. PoE looks a crapload better.

PoE looked fine at its intended zoom, but they allowed you to zoom in and out. Zooming in too far resulted in blurry. It's to be expected given the style, and it was obviously not made with the zoom feature in mind.

Tyranny's visuals hold up better to the close in zoom, as they don't blur in the same way. I won't say better or worse as an overall, as I'm quite fond of both games.

Nah, KOTOR2 is good and probably one of the few SW related things worth checking out.

Tyranny is shit half-baked product though.
it is a bad thing though. It's short, has sth like 3 different creatures total, uninteresting characters in your team save for Barik who is remotely interesting in 1 dialogue that amounts to nothing, has only few shitty uninspired side quests.

I'd gladly play it in a year or more if it meant it wouldn't be in such a fucking shameful shape.

yeah the problem with Avellone is he blew his load on Planescape Torment. Everyone since then has been sucking his dick and he has put forth minimal effort ever since. MCA is overrated.

So why is there a zoom function then? Not that it matters, because it looks like garbage from every distance and the models don't look like they belong in the world. People walk in this game like they're floating above ground.

Weird, it just looked like generic medieval shit to me, even though it's supposedly based on colonial era stuff. Generic forests (That don't even look like briton isles forests) and generic cities that I've seen before. Also don't forget boring fantasy ruins that most certainly don't look like anything in real life.

Fensetermaker is no longer at Obsidian. he is on leave, and probably won't be coming back anytime soon.

Are you fucking kidding me?

Have you even played Tyranny?
Best game since New Vegas.

Don't tell me you became jaded and want to jump onto the new cool "everything is bad" meme.

Look at the actual quality of the games. Not about what is cool to say about them.

No whip from their masters.

as long as his company keeps making money, the games don't have to be as per your specifications, shitlord. not everything is made with you specifically in mind. in fact, brian would rather have a wider audience instead of focusing on neckbeard losers.

PoE looks like a barely better Icewind Dale.

wow you have shitty taste. the fact that you posted an adam sandler reaction image just confirms how shitty your taste really is.

To each their own famalam. In regards to the ruins, considering they were built by ancient precursors with enough magic to create a pantheon of gods I'm unsure if they were meant to resemble real life ruins.

I honestly enjoyed Pillars of Eternity, South Park: Stick of Truth and Tyranny more than I enjoyed Fallout New Vegas. I legitimately don't get the love for that game and probably never will.

With that said, I'm pretty disappointed in Tyranny, I think it's an incredibly flawed game that had potential to be much more than what it ended up being.

Pillars of Eternity is great and I'm looking forward to the sequel. Fuck the haters.

No, I refuse "to each with their own". It looks like generic fucking crap and it has the same level of quality as games released 30 years ago. It has no excuse.

fuck you, you piece of shit.

That's okay senpai! I hope you get the discourse you desire!

For those that don't know, Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky are at the helm of the next game Obsidian is working on. It seems likely that it will be 3D based, so you dipshits with shit taste that hate isometric might be into that. Hopefully, it's a brand new IP with an interesting franchise and not them getting wasted on yet another license, especially not fucking Pathfinder.

Stop posting this shit in every thread.

He said he leaved on good terms and is just taking a break because of his kid. Definitely not an Avellone case of "Fuck all of you, I'm out of here"

Another writer that will be missed is Ziets. He's on Inxile now working on the promising Torment game and then all the other stupid shit they've got going and is only coming out one decade from now.

Like an extremely better and more high-res IWD. And IWD was gorgeous so

Can't they just make a fantasy 3D RPG similar to the scale of New Vegas

Isometric is a 20th century meme

>PoE
>High res

Man, you obsididrones are fucking pathetic, you know that? At least Biodrones don't pretend that their shit looks good.

Isometric is the best you fucking pleb.

It's not 4k, but it's definitely made with HD resolutions in mind.

They look excellent man, the hell are you talking about? The art is gorgeous. Although I do have to admit that I always did my best to keep it as zoomed out as possible, the art wasn't made to be seen zoomed in.

he left, not "he leaved". do you even speak english? how the fuck do you play games that expect you to be able to read?

No it's not you garbage kid. It doesn't even have graphics settings and it was made to run on toasters and everything looked like pixelated shit.

You can zoom in and out and it'll still look like shit. The proportions, the artstyle, the """"""graphics"""""" are all awful. The castles and buildings in this game look like badly drawn wallpaper.

You're out of your god damn mind. You can shit on Pillars of Eternity for a million of things when comparing it to the older games. Art is absolutely not one of them. In that department, Pillars of Eternity is HD and blows the competition the fuck out of the water.

I'm still waiting for an RPG where I can shoot my jizz on a cute elf girl's face

What shit? The hell are you talking about? Durance's art?

Are you sure about that?

Shit, man, I made a typo, not that big a deal. I imagine my post was mostly comprehensible otherwise.

Urquhart said he would like to do a 1st person game in the future, but they are a lot more expensive compared to isometric.
I just feel that the studio hasn't recovered from the post NV layoffs. Pillars' biggest issues could've been avoided if it had a good design document, but it feels like they rushed the pre-production and ended up with a very linear game with first draft script.

it looks beautiful

I really really hope they will do the Bloodlines sequel. I mean everything is in place for this to happen. Paradox bought the IP, they have a healthy relationship with Paradox, most of the Bloodlines people are in Obsidian. Why isn't this even announced yet ?

100% positive. Is that supposed to look bad? Let's have a nice comparison.

Sure does.

>now
they were always shit