RingMachine

Not really. The majority of the people there don't care enough about Obsidian these days for that to happen.

If Tim Cain and Chris Avellone can't then nothing will.

Boyarsky joining Obsidian is great, but I'm pretty sure none of the Bloodlines writers are there. It won't be the same without them. (In fact, I think I'd prefer a WoD game from inXile, with George Ziets as the creative lead.)

According to Davis, Matt MacLean is either the lead writer or a senior writer on Tyranny (Davis said he wasn't sure, since he's working on Armored Warfare). This explains why MacLean didn't contribute any writing to the Pillars expansions.

The guys at Obsidian probably deserve it tbh the more chrisA posts such stuff, the more he yields whatever moral high ground he mighta' once held a claim to. the twitter and interview sniping that chrisA indulges in, knowing full well that obsidian has not and will not respond, is getting extreme old. am actual curious why, given the 'mount o' time that has elapsed since his obsidian departure, some folks keep posting chrisA's one-sided slappy fight with his former colleagues. HA! Good Fun! You know what I like about Avellone compared to other Obsidian devs? His honesty. He's never afraid to say what he thinks. It was fun back when he was still there and posted a bunch of behind the scenes stuff (like the Metacritic bonus, which was a smart move from him that had improved Obsidian's reputation incredibly).

The guys at Obsidian probably deserve it tbh

Damn.

If Obsidian's writers had more control on SP then we would have probably seen some more narrative reactivity and less banal fetch quests. Anyway, what I said about Ziets caused me to look over an interview he did a while back last year: http://grimuar.pl/interview/george-ziets Reading this is so ****ing depressing. At least he's working on a project he's passionate about now.

You're right, New Vegas is the most disastrous game release Obsidian ever did because they didn't get any royalties nor a bonus for it. Just imagine where the company would be today if they did get royalties for it. P.S: you can thank Avellone for letting us know about that Metacritic thing. Don't have a Codex account. Seriously. And the thing Fenstermaker said is a statement from Obsidian, not 'Codex content' or whatever you call it. As for your pre-edit comment: it's called 'reading between the lines'. I guess you're just not used to hearing these criticisms outside the Codex. That doesn't change the fact that the small amount of rights Avellone had as a co-owner was ridiculous. Someone with his title should have a say on what they're working. "Just well enough" is practically the lowest bar Obsidian could've set. Feargus should've negotiated better terms so the writing team at Obsidian could've been more involved. It's ridiculous they only had one in-house writer on the game when their writing staff was the strongest aspect of Obsidian. (The UI artists seem to be the strongest side of the company nowadays.) The quest structure and C&C is basically the same as Skyrim btw. Literally who wants a Pathfinder cRPG from Obsidian? DS3, Pillars, and Tyranny are already more than enough generic fantasy. Too bad for Ziets that DS3 is one of the very few projects where Obsidian didn't have complete control over the story and writing. It must've been hell for him being so artistically constrained for years when he was working on it. I know, I already said this in one of my earlier posts in this thread. This all goes back to one of my original points about how Obsidian played its cards badly over the years and are now paying the price for it. I would've preferred for Obsidian to die in 2012 than go on like this. Avellone isn't even necessarily my favorite writer. I thought Bloodlines and MotB were both better written than any of his games. Anyway, here's a fun picture of Feargus from 2011 that I'm posting here just 'cause.

"But you also said Avellone "Apparently, Avellone's title as 'chief creative officer' didn't mean much in the grand scheme of things over at Obsidian." So which one is it? He had a huge impact on the writing at Obsidian or he didn't?" It's a combination of both. He couldn't decide which games they would make or which settings they worked on. For example, Feargus and Jones are the ones who came up with the idea of a Spy RPG, and apparently he had no say on whether they would work on Aliens. On the other hand, he's responsible for a lot of Obsidian's best writing, as you probably already know. KotOR2, Kaelyn, Old World Blues, Durance and the like. Avellone's also the one who interviewed Ziets for his job at Obsidian, coincidentally. "Safe games? Really? They've released... one game. One game of their own and it's the end of the world apparently that PoE didn't fit your or RPGCodex's criteria of a mature themed game. Their previous game South Park for example was in no way safe when it comes writing, and yes I know, it comes with the IP. This whole rant is basically over PoE and it's writing, I would understand if they had released Tyranny and you didn't like it either, but going on and on over one game is pretty pointless to me." These are Obsidian's games in the last five years: Pillars of Eternity, Pathfinder card game, Dungeon Siege 3, and South Park. PoE isn't a mature themed game. (Seriously, some of the descriptive text reads like a bad fanfiction writer tried to copy Planescape and utterly failed. Eric Fenstermaker himself even admitted some of the writing is plain bad.) South Park is the definition of safe, not for its writing, but for basically being a clone of Skyrim. The other two don't even need an explanation. "It's pretty much obvious why they wanted to try to something "safe" with PoE and it's Kickstarter campaign. Doesn't mean they will just make that same game over and over again for eternity." No, I don't think it's obvious. I'm pretty sure they didn't want to disappoint their backers. (Or maybe they did considering all the talk from Sawyer about how he hates Baldur's Gate.)

Everything points to him being a bad director, so I'm not sure what more you want me to say. By the way, Mitsoda isn't the only one that left when MCA took over. Holmes, the first lead designer, did too, which implies the mess had to do with the project as a whole and not just with Mitsoda's script as you two seem to think. I already addressed this point about the owners in my very first post about this subject. Recap: the owners didn't contribute nearly as much to the narrative and writing aspect of Obsidian as Avellone did. Ergo, you're kidding yourself if you think this won't affect Obsidian's writing department, especially considering the studio's current policy of making their RPGs as safe as possible. You talked about the size of the Pathfinder team and I talked about the size of the AW team. You're the one that implied Pathfinder's small team size is evidence for these projects not changing anything at Obsidian. If this convo is making you this angry then you probably need to chill.

Chris Parker was the project director, Raymond Holmes was the lead designer. Mitsoda was the creative lead, which means he had less say on direction and design than the two previously mentioned guys. There's also that rumor from back in 2010 about how Parker managed the project horribly. Monahan, Jones and Parker have done less for Obsidian than Feargus & Avellone and that means the former are less known than the latter. Not rocket science. I like how you mentioned Pathfinder but not the tank MMO which is Obsidian's biggest game to date. I really doubt Mitsoda's version of the script would've been humorless. He himself said that Stout's version of Steven Heck is pretty much the same as the concept Mitsoda had for him, and some of that character's lines even stayed after the re-writing. Development process has been a mess at Obsidian for the following projects: - KOTOR2 - NWN2 - AP - SP:TSoT - PoE Rumored: - Dwarfs (according to some rumors I've read on the Codex) - Aliens As for NWN2 vs AP, Avellone made his game good, Sawyer made his game passable enough for release. But to be fair, Avellone had a lot more time.

Not sure what you're saying here. I just thought it was obvious the project was in a state of complete disaster before Avellone, with help from Stout and MacLean, swooped in to save it. How did you reach that conclusion? I was talking about the owners in general and the public perception of them. I know. But it wouldn't surprise me if those projects are among the reasons he left. Apparently, Avellone's title as 'chief creative officer' didn't mean much in the grand scheme of things over at Obsidian.

Humor/comedy should always be included (to some degree) in every video game. Humorless games tend to be boring and bland, similarly to a certain game we all know. *cough* "While Mitsoda created the initial characters, names etc. their dialogues and tones were mostly rewritten when Mitsoda stepped down / was fired. From what I remember the game was supposed to be more serious before Avellone took over." Doesn't mean you have to downplay his contributions, Mitsoda still had a big hand in creating the game. He's the one who designed its innovative dialogue wheel after all. "Why? Obsidian is still Obsidian even though they have lost some of their writing staff. If it was a complete overhaul and Obsidian in name only, that would mean most of the owners would have left and company was bought by some Evil Corporation. Since Chris Avellone is still the only owner who has left and Feargus and rest of owners still decide which way to steer the ship, it's not a completely changed studio." Don't kid yourself, Avellone was the only owner people cared about besides Feargus. Anyway, Feargus and the other owners seem to be past their glory years considering the direction they've taken with the studio recently. Even before that, Parker already proved that he doesn't have any idea what he's doing if we're judging by the way he directed Alpha Protocol. This is factually wrong. Source: comments from the majority of people who actually played both Obsidian's other games and PoE. But hey, you're free to think that.

"Tess was a producer, not a writer." But she's credited for adding writing and I was listing writers. "Fenstermaker was working fulltime on South Park as well as writing for PoE. Not that easy jumping from one project to an another." Avellone did Fallout 2 and Planescape at the same time. Just sayin'. "Which parts of F:NV did Travis Stout write? Other than AP's Steven Heck I have no idea what else he created while at Obsidian." According to Sawyer: He also did the majority of the Taiwan hub in AP. "They just had Ziets back over to work on PoE, what makes you think they won't do it again on some other project? Does Ziets even want to work fulltime at company, rather than freelancing and taking projects he finds interesting?" Ziets is working full-time at inXile. Him and McComb are pretty much the only reasons I care about that company. "Brian Mitsoda's writing was pretty much scrapped from what I recall, cba to check from rpgcodex what he and/or Annie said about it back in the day. Yes, he did come up with some of the characters but how I remember is that MCA and few others ended up rewriting most of it and since Project New Jersey (which I believe Brian was working on) was cancelled most of what Mitsoda ever wrote for Obsidian was never seen by the public. So why exactly should Obsidian fans care about Mitsoda? Bloodlines was over 10 years ago or was the writing in Dead State so good that people should still worship him? Since that's pretty much what he has done since Bloodlines, Dead State." Mitsoda created a lot of the characters in AP. And Bloodlines is one of the best-written games of all time, so it's understandable why people love him so much. And former/current Obsidian fans care about him since Troika is pretty much Obsidian's dead sibling. "And, no. You are not getting it. Just because they lost Gonzalez etc. doesn't mean there isn't a new "Gonzalez" working for the company. The company hasn't changed how they make games. Story and writing still matter in their games and therefore when ever they are recruiting new writers they are still looking for the same quality as previously. Some dev even commented here that they are looking for their writers to be even more talented (cba to find exact the quote for you from these forums) than previously. But, hey this conversation is pretty much pointless when you've already decided that no one can replace Stout, Gonzalez, Ziets, Avellone etc. So why ****ing even bother." Mind sharing examples of great studios who completely changed over the years and are still good?