Matthew Rorie

The character designs are one of my favorite things about this game, honestly. Can't wait until we can show you more of the friends and foes.

Well I didn't mean to imply that realism and fun are mutually exclusive, obviously.

The design team has decided to scrap all the work on Alpha Protocol and turn it into a top-down shmup. Thus, infinite ammo. Seriously, though, I wouldn't make a tempest in a teapot about all this just yet. Every dev team has to find some way to balance realism and fun, and I think we can all agree that the latter part of that equation is the more important when it comes to a game. Part of that process is trying out new stuff and game concepts. Things are still being worked on, obviously; the game isn't coming out until next year. I can confirm that weapons do need to be reloaded, and that there are other resources that will be limited, including, in some cases, ammo. So I wouldn't pile on too much until we get more specific with the game mechanics. There'll be a lot more info coming down the pipe in the next few months, but for now, just keep an open mind. Oh, and please don't post your topics in all capital letters...

Welcome. Like I said, they've been cleared for the interwebs, but I don't think most sites will be uploading them until tomorrow (Monday), so you guys are probably getting the first look at them. Thanks for your interest in the game!

Hey guys. These screens are clear for internet consumption as of June 1st. Some have appeared in European magazines, but you may not have seen them, so take a look.

What do/did you guys like to play as in Diablo II? I've been playing it a bit recently, trying to restart a battle.net character. I remember having good times with my Barbarian and Bowazon, and I'm working on a Hammerdin now, although I'm not sure if I'll stick with it. The main problem is that it's tough to just get started in the game from scratch; it's kind of like starting a character on a new WoW server without the benefit of hand-me-down cash from high-level characters.

There'll be some middleware in Onyx. I don't know that I can say specifically what it is, but it's not a middleware-free engine. I don't know that a lot of people try that nowadays...the time savings that come from using middleware are pretty substantial.

I started reading The House of Leaves yesterday on the recommendation of a friend of mine. It's about a guy who finds a book written by another guy, who was writing about a film made by another guy, which is itself about a house that the third guy was living in which is bigger on the inside than it is outside. It's pretty crazy, but mostly for the way it's presented; it's a full-color book. The new edition is 45 dollars and actually has a bit of braille in it. If you're ever in a bookstore, track it down and check it out.

As mentioned, we do have Alpha Protocol in development, which is a unique franchise that we've created in-house. You can check out a preview here. If your comment about us working for someone refers to working for Sega with Alpha Protocol, then that's just part of the game everyone plays when you try to make games. There are very few developers that also self-publish, at least when it comes to games with the scope that Obsidian likes to include. Working with a publisher helps spread out the risk for everyone involved.

I'm still getting online with the Sega people. I'm assuming all of the Gamer's Day stuff has been set up before I even came aboard. Same goes for E3; that's kind of Sega's bag, as they're the ones who are ESA members and will have a booth, etc. I'll let you know if I find out more, of course...

We shall see. I definitely want to try and get some more activity in here, but everyone's pretty busy. Change will come fairly gradually, I imagine.

You could do an aerobic set up. I used to do sets of push ups/air squats/sit ups - 50/40/30/20/10. One right after another until I was done. Trust me, you're heart should be pounding, plus if you keep at it the squats will give you good lung power. Which numbers correspond with what, though? Like 50 of each exercise, then 40 of each exercise, etc? I doubt I could do anything near 50 push-ups in a row...

Haven't read through all these threads, but has anyone tried Simplefit.org? I've recently started them (although my move has left me without a chin-up bar) and they seem to be good exercises when you don't have a full gym available to you, as they work with simple reps of pullups/pushups/squats. They don't do much for cardio, though, so I guess I need to find a way to replace that. I used to hit the exercise bikes at the gym nearby, but again, I just moved and don't have those available. Maybe lengthy jumping-jack sessions? I'm not a big fan of joggin/running, so that's out.

I could be very mistaken (and the prospects for embarrassment are a lot higher now that I actually work at Obsidian), but I never noticed any differences in failing/passing dialogue checks when I reloaded saves when I played through NWN2. I'm guessing that they use some set value instead of rolling a random d20. (Although if you're missing "most" of the checks then I would imagine that something is going awry.) I also suspect that some of the dialogue checks are red herrings and are nearly impossible to pass (for story purposes) even if you've invested heavily in the speechcraft skills.

Also, when it comes to dialogues, be sure that your main character has something like Eagle's Splendor on him/her whenever you think an important dialogue is coming up. There are also some pieces of equipment that will directly modify your Intimidate/Diplomacy/etc. scores; these can be handy to have around whenever you see an NPC looming on the horizon, or if you insist on reloading quicksaves to get the best outcome from a dialogue. At any rate, good luck with the game. Both NWN2 and MOTB are pretty big achievements in the CRPG genre, although I may be a bit biased in saying that.

I can't speak concretely on the idea of forum events, but Rob McGinnis and I have spoken about it. I agree that if you do something compelling that other sites (especially fan sites) will link to it, so hopefully something will happen at some point. You guys are reading too much into the projects comment. Obviously I can't talk about anything that hasn't been announced, even in a theoretical/hypothetical sense.

Heh, I don't know. Every time I have to take a break from WoW it makes it that much more difficult to get back into it. Unfortunately now that I work at a competitor I don't know that my connect at Blizzard will be willing to hook me up with Beta access for WOTLK. Oh well, it'll be a busy summer and fall irregardless.

I'll do my best to answer these... My job is a new one for Obsidian. As far as the mechanics of acquiring it, I'll just say that it revolved around the usual factors of networking, a decent resume, a good interview (I think), and willingness to move for it. I don't think I can say much about Sega at this point; I just started here on Monday and haven't had a lot of time to interface with them. When I get a feeling for how my job will interact with the Sega people, I'll try to let you know. We all want the games to sell millions of copies, though, so hopefully that'll be a good starting point for our interactions. As far as other, informal stuff, I'll definitely be trying to ensure that Obsidian is better represented on fansites, blogs, forums, etc. Part of that begins here on the Obsidian forums, but as time moves on and more information is revealed about our games we'll see how much broader it gets. We're definitely thinking more about various events and cons, but a lot of that needs to be coordinated with Sega, so I can't say a huge amount about it yet. The day-to-day stuff will evolve over time; this first week was mostly getting my computer set up, entering contacts in Outlook, catching up on AP and Aliens (reading design documents, etc.), and so on. In time I'll work on filtering interview requests for the staff, dealing with inquiries from the press and websites, interfacing with Sega, posting on forums, traveling to events, and so on. I doubt I will be interfacing with the games in development on a daily basis, but obviously I am going to try and stay in touch with the milestones as they're made just so I know how the projects are developing. My job will mostly be to simply ensure that the games have presence in the mind of people who might buy them. I'll also probably help brainstorm swag and goodies to give away at events, I think. I worked in San Francisco for GameSpot, so I've been in the OC less than a week now. (Flew in on Sunday evening and started work on Monday morning.) I didn't bring much down besides a laptop, a bunch of clothes, and some magazines, so I'm currently hunting for something to occupy my time with. The fact that I don't own a car is somewhat limiting, though. Luckily you can't walk more than half a mile in Santa Ana without hitting a strip mall, so I suppose I will do some book shopping today. I own all of the consoles except for the Wii, although my PS360s are still in storage up in SF, as is my HDTV. Hopefully I'll reclaim them soon and get started on GTAIV. Apart from that, I've recently played Crisis Core and Dark Sector before I moved. I've been playing a lot of WoW lately, but this laptop I'm on gets around 10 fps with everything turned down low, so I'm in a bit of a pickle there. It's good to get time away from WoW every once in a while, though. So far as music goes, I don't follow much recent stuff. I'm a big fan of people like Joanna Newsom, Feist, Regina Spektor, Rainer Maria, Sleater-Kinney, Mates of State, Mirah, etc. Mostly indie rock/indie folk stuff. I haven't had much time to think about extracurricular activities just yet. There's not much you can do in the OC without a car, so that's kind of constraining me at this point. Hopefully I'll be able to partake of some of the Obsidian activities in the future, like the intramural soccer stuff. Good workout. Hopefully that answers some of the questions. Obviously there's a lot of stuff that I can't talk about regarding our games (it's still weird saying "our" when it comes to Obsidian, heh), but as more information comes out hopefully I'll be able to be more forthcoming.

I think everything that could be said about that has been said about it...luckily Gerstmann and Ryan Davis are up and running at www.giantbomb.com and things seem to be working out for everyone involved.

I perfectly understand that Obsidian is currently focused on AP and Aliens. But considering the ridicoulous ammount of turned-to-be-false rumors about Kotor3 in the last couple of years, any information that LA at least gave a green light for K3 would be good. So my second question is: Does your answer for my first question means I'll be very happy in couple of years or does it means that LA doesn't even think about K3 at the moment? I hope you'll understand when I say that I really can't talk about it one way or another.

No ETAs or anything. I think there's still a bit of time before you'll hear more about Aliens. We had a media event for AP last week, which was mostly for European print magazines, so hopefully more info on that will be out soon.

Do we think about the same thing? All I can say is that any other projects aside from Alpha Protocol and Aliens are probably in the "years away" category at this point. Sorry! My lips are sealed.