Look, I know the title is provocative, I know most were expecting some bashing, I know most wanted a long point-by-point thread comparing the games of years past...but why? People know the truth, it's all out there for most to see anyways.
My problem isn't that I think Obsidian is capable of making a great game. I have a lot of respect for the guys because:
1. NWN2's story was FAR superior than the original. The graphics were far superior, it used DnD 3.5 in a great way, I really enjoyed the manual and the game if it worked was quite a good game. Not game of the year, but very good.
Sadly my problem isn't so much with the production of the game but the way it was released. I am not in the corporate know, so I don't know who to blame, the publisher or the devs, but being a centrist I figured I'd just blame both equally.
NWN2 was released with some of the worst bugs I've seen in a live product. All though this might have been fixed by now, when it was released a lot were very upset that a game was unplayable yet was released to the whole wide market.
Check out the user comments on: www.metacritic.com
2. KOTOR2 again has a great story, the graphics were improved from the original, not light speed ahead, and Obsidian added new things that I thought was awesome, like more fully customizable weapons and NCP disposition towards you, that changes if you do stuff they don't like. (NWN2 had that also, which is a very awesome touch of realism)
Again though, I bought the game when it was released and it was unplayable out of the box. It crashed constantly and even though my comp was MORE than capable of running the game, it still ran like crap (Same with NWN2)
Again, this might of all been fixed but to release a game that has many game breaking bugs is sort of an insult to the customer that pays full price for a game they want to play when they get home.
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I've heard many theories about why the games were released when they were, who was to blame, blah blah blah, it doesn't change the fact of what happened.
Trust me, I really do realize Obsidian's excellence is making games, I just hope for Fallout 3 Vegas they release it when they are 100% happy with it.
I'm not here to bash them, but to just let them know that I am counting on them for a third time to be the developers I want them to be, and hopefully not let me down a third time.
If people are curious as to what experiences of the previously mentioned games I'm referring to, I suggest you goto www.metacritic.com and read the USER reviews for a game. Or if you know another site where gamers/users offer reviews, I suggest that. The reason I am wary of magazine reviews is that when they reviewed the game, they were told it was a pre-release build and all of the bugs wouldn't be live, so the Mag reviewer took the game at face value thinking everything would be working fine when released. Sadly that didn't happen, though 1up.com got their review dead on.
Ok, I just did the work for you:
Neverwinter Nights 2 user reviews: http://apps.metacritic.com//games/usercomm...kz6FBEiXZ2TdA**
KOTOR 2 review from theforce.net talking about the game when released: http://www.theforce.net/jedicouncil/editorials/030405.asp
These are just to clue people in who might not know what I am talking about. All of it is old news and I dont want to stir up anything, but context needs to be established and mistakes from the past must not be repeated