Wulf

In fact, I won't bother talking to the people in the thread, I'll just say this one last time, and to Obsidian: Please don't play up to the PC Master Race. I mean, for the love of all that's good, just don't. Please? If you do that, you're cutting out most of the people who would put money down on this. You're cutting out other platforms, you're cutting out people who don't want to spend 60 hours learning needlessly obfuscated game mechanics, you're cutting out disabled people, and most importantly - you're cutting out what you're good at. I'm asking you to do what you're good at. Were you ever really good at walls of text, and number fetishism? I don't think so. Those were always the worst parts of your games. People hated on Neverwinter Nights 2 for not being as number fetishist as NWN, or not being as reliant on stats. Those things were never your strengths. Your strengths are: - Interesting ideas. - Strong, compelling, believable, and genuinely emotional storylines. - Gripping narrative. - Truly bringing characters to life. - Proper, non-illusory choices, with actual consequences. - Anticipating what the player might try in a very interactive environment. - Showing us a world that's real, through artistic talent, not detaching us via walls of text. (And this isometric/wall of text stuff really is a kick in the nuts to your art team.) - Allowing us to live a character, the way we want to. - Some of the most immersive gaming experiences I've seen. You've gone from strength to strength. And New Vegas was your perigee. You flew so high. I'm not sure if you can fly higher. Can you? I don't know. But I'd love to see you realise your potential even further. But by being tied down by ****ty 2D representations, walls of text, number fetishism, and other, ancient, nerd-laden elements... what makes your games so amazing, what makes New Vegas so amazing, is easily forgotten. Your art guys are just as important as your writing chaps, and really, whilst some people might love those unending walls of text that cut into the quality of the dialogue in bad ways, I prefer seeing what your art team can show me. I want to see you at your highest, at your best. That's what I want. --- In fact, I'd go further than that. I'd say: You're writers and artists, you're not number-fetishists, it's not what you do. That's what Bioware does. So don't even bother with the numbers at all! Go with a story-driven game where the stastics involved are either incredibly light, or just not present at all. Stats, number juggling, inventories, these were never what made Obsidian games great. They just got in the way. I'd love to see what you could do unencumbered. Just a tale of adventure, perhaps with an interesting inventory system which isn't like past RPGs, innovate a bit, and if you think you can get away with it, just throw stats out the window! No STR, no DEX, no stats at all! Just eschew that in favour of concentrating on the writing and the art, make this an interactive experience to remember, concentrate on the world, the story, the people, and the choices. Get gameplay in there, but like I said, stay away from the numbers and the walls of text. That's what I think would really push things forward and cause a paradigm shift, anyway.

I will say again that there are a number of problems with Infinity engine games. I just want to get this out there as often as possible. 1.) Licenses are expensive. If you want to use 90% of their funding up in one go, with next to no money left over for the actual game, then yes, let's get them to make a Planescape sequel. Really, what they want is an obscure license that's not related to videogames, or for an original IP. 2.) Isometric games might be a nerd aphrodisiac, but they also cut out a lot of people. For example, if Obsidian wanted to move to platforms other than the PC (such as mobile devices or consoles), then they can't. Mobile devices and consoles don't have the means to control something as gruesomely overcomplicated as an isometric game. 3.) Quantity over quality is a bad thing. New Vegas was popular because it had great dialogue, not because it had lots of it. If quantity was more important than quality, then we could take the content of the Twilight series of books, dump them into an RPG Maker game, and it would have to be the greatest game ever. I'm sorry to say it but Planescape: Torment is looking dated, these days, and its dialogue/story was fairly pants when compared to later Obsidian epics like Mask of the Betrayer. (Mask also concentrated on quality over quantity.) 'Epics' aren't always 'epic,' or even good. I know from recent play-throughs that Planescape: Torment does not stand up to modern scrutiny. It's just nostalgia talking. ...or the words of those who've somehow missed decades fo videogame evolution. 4.) Giant walls of text and no voice acting cuts people out on an accessibility basis which also cuts down on the amount of people who could or would want to play it. If you had reasonable amounts of voiced (even by amateurs) good dialogue, or pages upon pages of decidedly average dialogue, the former is better for reasons I discussed above. But not only that, those pages of average dialogue would put paid to anyone with sight problems playing the game. Having loads of text and no voice acting is a big "SCREW YOU GUYS!" to anyone who has disabilities or handicaps. I know, I know, this plays up to the PC Master Race idea. But really, let's not. Please? Let's not. Conclusion: If Obsidian were to concentrate on an isometric, 2D game then they'd only be able to release it for the PC and only beardy nerds would really be interested. What we have here is a vocal minority, and this vocal minority would see Obsidian shoot itself in the foot. If Obsidian were to listen to this vocal minority, I frankly doubt they'd raise more than a few thousand dollars in a month, and nowhere near the millions that DoubleFine is raking in. By rooting ourselves in the past, we're killing accessibility and portability. And thus we're teaching Obsidian that being tied into publishers is the only way to actually sustainably create games. They need to pitch something that will at least be accessible to the largest amount of people. And how do you do accessibility? Don't screw over people on other devices, and don't screw over handicapped people. If they want this to reach DoubleFine levels of success, then the LAST thing they need to create is a 2D, isometric RPG. That's like begging the Reaper to come and steal the soul of your project before it's even begun.

Actually, no! I was pretty much told that I was banned by Alec Meer because I pressed his buttons. How did I do this? I was getting annoyed at him and his pets for their "console toys" and "PC Master Race" attitudes. Apparently, by holding the position that the PC is not a platform for some Master Race, and that this is as offensive as it is arrogant, I got banned. It's humiliating for Meer to be picked up on this, and I was one of the few to actually criticise him and his fans for it. That's what I was banned for. For actually not being holier-than-thou. Go figure. I tend to find that PC users, like yourself, tend to project a lot. I'm not the one being holier-than-thou here. I'm just fighting the idea of "Master Race" notions. Like old RPGs must obviously be superior, or that the PC is the greatest platform ever. Geez. I'm just disagreeing with the hipster horde. If disagreeing with the hipster horde makes me holier-than-thou, then so be it. Well, I suppose it is if you have the sort of mindset where someone fighting for the respective underdog is actually being holier-than-thou for disagreeing with the majority. Because trying to make out that current RPGs aren't inherently evil, or that the PC isn't inherently superior than every other platform puts me on a high-horse. Yup. It all makes sense. Sigh. Internet. --- Also, if I wasn't speaking a lot of truths here, why would people be getting wound up? I'm just fed up of stuffy attitudes where people are all "MONEY FOR SEQUELS!" or can't get past the idea that the '90s had the best RPGs ever, and that this era of consoles has brought the evil and vile 'dumbing down' with it. I mean, there's a lot of that, here. Intellectual superiority. The thread smacks of it, and I've just been voicing an opinion which is contrary to what people hold as the superior opinion, the correct opinion. So, by not having the correct opinion. I am therefore being holier-than-thou/on a high horse/a troll/whatever other labels people feel they need to apply. If there wasn't any truth to what I have to say, then people wouldn't get wound up. People never get wound up over lies, because lies are easy to ignore. I've never seen anyone get wound up by a lie. No, there's truth to what I say. Perhaps an examination of perspectives is in order. Because all I've done is support the idea that, hey, modern RPGs are actually pretty okay and that you don't need walls of text, or turn-based combat, or walls of text, or to be an archaic RPG from the past to actually be good. The thing is is that only a small subsection of the Internet is going to be here, only a few people will have their attentions caught by this. Someone has to speak up for differing opinions. And yeah, I have an opinion or opinions which are unpopular with those who believe their opinions are intellectually superior. I must be some kind of troglodyte for not supporting the isometric, wall-o-texty RPG, right? Yeah. Again: Oh Internet. --- Ultimately, to wrap up: There is a host of opinion here that Obsidian should just try and recapture the past and try and make a sequel or try and do something archaic. And it's easy to demonise someone with an unpopular opinion. Very easy. It's always easy to demonise the guy with the unpopular opinion. But what I'm saying is that instead of forcing Obsidian to do exactly what you remember, ignoring their years of evolution in the process, why not let them put what they've learned to use? Why not let them experiment and do something wildly different, something that's nothing at all like the RPGs you remember. It's just sad that potential like this could be overturned by a desire for people to just have their nostalgia satisfied. Except that nostalgia never will be. How many people actually feel satisfied when returning to those isometric, wall-o-texty RPGs? If you don't, then having Obsidian making a new one isn't going to help. --- And one last thing. Don't you think it's just a tiny bit entitled to push for an RPG which console gamers wouldn't be able to play? Once this is done on KickStarter, if Obsidian do it right, they could port it to consoles. But if we listen to the PC Master Race types, then that can't happen, because that sort of person would happily damn console users to non-existence. But they DO exist. And they don't have the right to enjoy a strange, new RPG too? Do you honestly believe that it would be comfortable playing something like Baldur's Gate on a television? Like I said, I just think that there's a lot of snottiness here, a lot of upperclassman behaviour, a lot of one-upmanship, and a lot of damning of groups of people who aren't PC nerds. I'm calling it out and I'm getting demonised for it.

You have a very interesting point of view here. Please name at least 9 PC rpgs using a steampunk setting. Arcanum, Septerra Core... What else? I see what you did there. You baiter and switcher, you. No, I said it was a commonly used setting, I didn't say on the PC. And really, you should know as well as I do that there have been a bunch of MMOs that have featured this setting, not to mention console games, cartoons, and so on. And it was overused back in the '90s. I have a long memory, see. But then again, so does the world. Back in the '90s settings like that were stretched to exhaustion, because there were so many console games which involved steampunk (or subsets thereof, with strong steampunk themes). It doesn't have to be on the PC in order to be an overused setting. Unless you're some sort of crazy elitist. I mean, there's no saying even that this KickStarter project is going to be PC onlly. Where does this PC elitism come from, anyway? I don't know what it is with PC people (which I am one of), what with their keyboards & mice only, and their console toys don't exist. Geez. Consoles exist, okay? And like it or not, they have a massive impact on our platform, too. The PC is not some superior platform for some silly Master Race. It's just another platform, one of many. To ask me to cite PC games alone is not just intellectually dishonest, but it's silly, too.

Why are walls of text good? I don't understand this. If you actually understand your medium, then walls of text are bad. It would be sort of like saying: Okay, here's [an/a] [obscure/popular] film of [your favourite] genre. The only catch is that you have to stop and read 50 cinema screens worth of text every once in a while. Gaming is an interactive medium, and as such, it should be that: interactive. Walls of text aren't interactive. And moreover, quantity is bad when weighed against quality. As I've said many times before - if quantity of text mattered more than quality, then we could create a Twilight RPG, dump the text of the Twilight series into it, and it would be the greatest RPG of all time. Do you see the problem with this logic? In fact, walls of text can hugely impact games in negative ways. Have you ever played To the Moon? If not. Do. Go on. It's over on Steam and it doesn't cost much, so stop being so bloody stingy. You go and press that button, grab your meal for the mind, and sup upon it and hopefully your eyes will open. Gemini Rue is a great example, too. In fact, take any adventure game and add walls of text to it - it would ruin it. We're past the age where walls of text can make up for a lack of overall quality in the dialogue, which a lot of old, isometric games did suffer from. And guess what? Fallout 2, a Black Isle game (Black Isle being the predecessor to Obsidian) did not have walls of text. What did it have? Quality dialogue. What's Neverwinter Nights 2 (especially Mask of the Betrayer) known for? Not walls of text, that's for sure! No, quality dialogue. What's New Vegas known for? Again, not walls of text, but quality dialogue. You don't need a wall of text to convey a good bit of dialogue. In fact, the game does most of the 'text' for you. The thing is is that a game provides a lot of the visuals which gives it a sense of character and identity. Imagine if Psychonauts were an isometric game with walls of text, instead of being a visually charismatic game with quality dialogue. Just... sit there and let that perculate. Let the realisation impregnate your mind with rationality. If Psychonauts were an isometric game with walls of text. It'd be ****, frankly. It'd be completely ****. I feel that dialogue should always be measured by its quality, rather than its quantitative properties. I think that having walls of text in a game can leave the game feeling cold and characterless, and the very poitn of our genre is that we have this great, glorious interactive medium. And Obsidian prides themselves on allowing us to interact with their stories. You're asking for a book. But a game is not a book. A book is not interactive (unless it's Fighting Fantasy or something, but even those don't rely on walls of text). A book provides a static story for one to peruse through, and a book is bloody brilliant at what it does, but that doesn't mean that we should turn every medium into a book, and the reason why is all the reasons I've just covered in very logical, very sensible ways. By trying to convince Obsidian to concentrate on walls of text, you're trying to get them to do something they've never done, and you're detracting from the overall quality of the game. Yes, Planescape: Torment had a lot of text, but (and this is going to be so controversial, but screw it)... BUT... how much of that was actually as interesting as the dialogue in Mask of the Betrayer? I'm sorry, but it's true. I was a fan of Planescape: Torment, a long time ago. I suppose that if you're a youngling and everything is new, then PS:T may seem like the Greatest Thing Evar. But to me, it's an artifact of the past and better left there. Mask of the Betrayer did everything that PS:T did, and it did it all better, and it did it with style and aplomb. And it was glorious. MotB is the ultimate proof that dialogue quality is far, far more important than dialogue quanitty. Again, just imagine how terribad MotB (or New Vegas, or Alpha Protocol, or Fallout 2) would have been if there had been walls of text. Like I said, it'd be like having to sit through a film with walls of text. For one thing: It'd be really horrible. For another: It'd seem really, really lazy. Our medium has evolved beyond walls of text. Until someone can show me that Mask of the Betrayer, New Vegas, Psychonauts, or any game with any sense of character and identity would have been better as a turn-based isometric RPG with walls of text, then I won't budge. But how could they have been? Why do we want to go back to the dark ages? What we could have is: - A quality game. - An expedition into a strange, alien world, presented with experiences that we wouldn't get from most other developers. - A strong sense of character and identity. - A plot put together with passion, plundered from their fertile imaginations. - Well written narrative that excels by its quality, rather than spamming the player with walls of text that put them to sleep. - Interactivity, a world with choices and reactions to actions, a world that reacts to the player in tangible ways (walls of text impede this, and an isometric viewpoint impedes showing you the things you're interacting with or the consequences thereof). - A short game, but a voyage into brilliance, something that could be built upon with mods and future Kickstarter project. Focusing on giving us a few hours of replayable content that will linger in our memories for a long time, rather than the 60 hour snorefest that was Dragon Age (FFFFFFF DWARF TUNNELS, FFFFF YOU TO HECK). - The things you experience would be tangible, your character would be experiencing them, and you vicariously through him. Rather that the Old Way of a nerd sitting in an office chair like a tumer reading about these fantastic things but not immersed at all. Why would we want that? - A voyage of discovery is hard to express with tiny, pixellated graphics or walls of text. Every film of intrigue ever would not have worked as walls of text. I mean, think of a game with the aesthetics of Journey (the PS3 game) or something similar, but with a truly interactive world crafted from the exemplary minds at Obsidian, interactive, and with characters you actually care about because you get to know them by their personality and actions rather than just reading Yet Another Wall of Text. Something like New Vegas, then. But stranger and shorter. Instead of that we could have the least immersive game possible, with terribad dialogue, just spammed onto our screens, as we read about environments that we could see with our own eyes if they weren't just pixellated messes. I really can't understand why anyone would want a game about walls of text and isometric perspectives. Is this a hipster thing?

I feel that steampunk as a setting is vastly overused, and that's why it's not been seen recently. It reached a peak with Arcanum, and things can only go downhill from there. I don't want to see Obsidian become part of that decline. Now dieselpunk on the other hand... Dieselpunk allows you to do some very unusual things, and some particularly fun pastiches.

To say what I already said again: Quality > Quantity. If quantity was more important than quality, and if having a book's worht of dialogue in a game was more important than having a small amount of good dialogue, then we could take the content of the Twilight series, dump that into a Twilight RPG, and ti would automatically make it the best RPG ever. Quality is more important than quantity. Doing dialogue right and having important, non illusory choices is far, far more important than having a lot of dialogue.

Then report me for it. It really was detrimental to the thread and I think it makes you ten times more of a jerk for telling me that I can't speak my mind. Believe me, I've put up with discrimination that would leave you foetal, and thus perhaps I'm less thin skinned. But this is a chance for Obsidian to do something brilliant, something outside the box, and something less creatively bankrupt than sequel to game I like. I mean, some of the requests don't even make sense. Some of them I swear are trolling. Dungeon Keeper III for example. Really?! I thought the whole point of a project like this was to avoid the typical triple-A/publisher dross. But what defines that dross better than a sequel? Nothing! Some games were meant to be better without sequels. Sequels to Planescape, Arcanum, or the likes would kill either the original game, or would leave the sequel looking terrible by comparison. Whereas if let off the leash of the aforementioned dross, then Obsidian would be able to make something equally as brilliant. I mean, sure, I'm being a jerk. Fine. I admit that. But I'm not doing it to troll, I'm doing it to get people to stop and think. Instead of suggesting yet another sequel, instead of just being so creatively bankrupt yourself, why not think of what you liked about that game and suggest that instead? And if you think I haven't done that, you're a selective reader and you haven't been following my posts through the thread. Buuut people do tend to be selective readers when they've decided to do a lovely bit of character assassination. Yes, I've suggested lots of things. Plenty of things. Go read. And yet you pick me up on the post where I get sick of people who're just suggesting licensing one expensive IP after the other. Like I said, you're a very selective reader. That, or a naturally intellectually dishonest person. Look, this talk of sequels doesn't benefit everyone. It's better if we just lay down a "NO SEQUELS" philosophy and get peope to talk about why they liked those games, instead of just getting post 1,738 which is nothing more than a list of wishful thinking and empty hope.

@Ardent Everything you said? I agree with it. All of it. You can have some sort of prize for that. Anyway, the only part I'm not so comfortable with is the lack of voiced dialogue. I'm old, my eyes are ****, and voiced dialogue means that I don't have to go blind through eyestrain reading lots of dialogue. If they choose to not bother with voiced-dialogue, then I hope they'll go the New Vegas route and only bother with dialogue that is actually good, rather than dialogue which is long winded. Having a book of dialogue does not a great game make, because if it did then we'd be able to make a great game by taking the content of the Twilight books and dumping them into a Twilight RPG. Quality over quantity when it comes to dialogue. And if they keep the dialogue to a reasonable amount and actually concentrate on the quality of it, then they shouldn't have too much of an issue getting voice actors. And really, they can just hire amateurs or get volunteer voice work from the community, that'd be fine. I woudln't be bothered if the voicework was terrible, so long as it was there. This is why I listen to audio books rather than reading, these days. My optic nerves have gone to **** due to a degenerative issue, so yeah. And just give people who don't want dialogue the option to turn it off. OR... make voiced dialogue an optional side pack as part of the KickStarter project or a pay-for thing on release. Like: KickStarter gets you the game, and you can pay $20 on release for a voice pack. I would be completely okay with this. Completely okay. But yeah, in general, I just support your ideas, Ardent. It's been a while in this thread where I haven't read a post that's either been boring, or has made me sigh a long sigh of disappointment by either suggesting "PLUMSCOPE 2!" or some equally dull alternative. I really want to see Obsidian do something that isn't creatively bankrupt. I think that they could rock what expectations people have of modern RPGs with this.

Nnnnno... No you don't. In fact, what you've described would cost far, far, far more to make than a simple four hour game on the Unity/Gamebryo engine, in 3D (with abstract/cartoony graphics), based on a brand new IP (or a lesser known IP which could be cheaply bought). So... can I stress this? It's so incredibly costly to license something famous/well known that it's outside of the scope of what they'd be able to do. That means no Plumscope 2, no Magery 4, no Penultimate Fantasia XIII's, and so on. If Obsidian come forth and tell us that they think they could afford it, then fine, but I don't think they'd be able to. So all of these "JUST GIVE ME PLUMSCOPE 2!" posts are detrimental to the thread. --- Anyway, back to being constructive. I also think that a 2.5D side-scroller would be really interesting. Something along the lines of Fortune Summoners but not with those aesthetics. It would be something completely new, and it would mean that fully detailed environments from all angles wouldn't be necessary. Plus, 2.5D RPGs are rare, we could really use more of them.

:| Sega owns Alpha Protocol, don't they? Thus Obsidian can't make a sequel unless it's at Sega's behest. So... no, then. Unless they can convince Sega to do a follow-up, which is unlikely. But they could do that anyway. If they're going to go to a publisher, then they can do that for any game. This project, I thought, was about being free of publisher shackles. Much like the Double Fine one is. --- @Oerwinde I've said this tens of times. It falls upon deaf ears. Sigh. People, eh?

Okay, I has more to say. I've spent some time thinking today and one thing I realised was how much I loved "Old World Blues." Now, if you've been following my posts, you'll realise that the last thing I'm going to ask for is anything Fallout IP related, or related to any IP. But it made me realise just how amazingly good Obsidian still is at 'intelligently funny.' There are too many games that take themselves seriously these days, almost to the point of... well, if they were people, they'd be brooding, emo drama queens. "LET ME TELL YOU OF MY PAIN!" Would it be so wrong to have the odd Gai Daigoji-style character in a game? One that's optimistic, and has boyish enthusiasm for everything? Maybe it's that I played a lot of Asian games in my youth, but sometimes, the completely serious nature of games just gets me down. It adds burdensome weight to the proceedings. I mean, it all feels as though it's a world that doesn't know how to laugh, that doesn't know joy, and that I find more depressing than anything else - a world that doesn't know how to laugh at itself. I remember how much I loved Skies of Arcadia because Vyse wasn't a trembling mess of psychoses like most RPG characters, or how much I loved Grandia because of the interactions between Justin and Mr. Tigerman Knight Person. What was his name again? I'll go and look it up. Ah yes. Gadwin. Gods I loved Gadwin. "We are manly men, Justin! Manly men. Yes, yes we are. And as such, we must do manly things! Manly things, as manly men of action. And we must express our manliness in platonic ways!" It was so innocent and ridiculously funny, I miss that. So if I'd like to see Obsidian try anything, it's more along the lines of Old World Blues. Because, Chris, do you know what OWB managed? It made me do a rare thing, something that games don't do enough of these days: It made me laugh. Joy is underrated, and there's nothing wrong with having a setting that can be serious, but can also be completely silly in the same breath. This is why, in my first post here, I mentioned Discworld. Discworld is the most nonsensical setting imaginable, and it has its moments of pure hilarity, and yet... it can be so serious, so warm, and it can remind me of the things I loved about non-earth settings. I recall things like Seargent Vimes brandishing a swamp dragon as a flamethrower and I laugh. Vimes believed that he was such a badass in that moment, completely unable to comprehend how much of a nerdy goof he really was. That's great. And one of my favourite shooters, just to go there... can you guess? Bulletstorm. I loved Bulletstorm. It did the same thing. Bulletstorm made me laugh, but it also had purpose. It was funny, yet serious, and it could do both of these things. I was out to protect Ishi, so I was emotionally invested in it, but I also loved the patter back and forth between Ishi and Gray. And later on, the extra dimensions added by the other characters. The most disappointing thing about Bulletstorm was that it didn't sell well. When did we forget how to laugh? There was a time when you could have a wolfman, a steampunk armadillo, and a flying octopus with a pot on its head team up with you to save the world. And that was completely okay too, because it was funny. It was silly, it was really out of left field, but it was okay. So another thing I'd love to see is these abstracts, these silly worlds, and this underlying humour tied in with Obsidian's storytelling, narrative, and choice. I'm tired of drama queens, I'm sick of emo characters, I'm fed up of playing an omnicidial maniac, I bore of having to put up with characters who're ready to crumble under their own psychoses. These are things that have been done so much that they've been troped to heck and back a billion times over. What could Obsidian do with a setting that handled itself like Old World Blues? Which was serious and silly at the same time? That's something I'd like to see them do as well. You guys have a great sense of humour, I'd love to see it in your next game.

A thing I have learned from this thread: The majority of people have no creative vision whatsoever. Obsidian could do something really interesting and all you can think of is either a sequel to an ancient game that wasn't actually all that great anyway, or an isometric RPG with such obfuscated mechanics that no one would be able to or want to play it? This has honestly gotten to the point where I can't tell if many people are being serious or just being hipsters. If we gave them the creative freedom, they could do something really amazing. I want to see them change the game, I want a paradigm shift that will help alter how people look at RPGs in general, and what I do not want is Ancient Game That Belongs in the Past VI. I think that they should look at how differently you could make an RPG, too. Shy away from mechanics both ancient and modern, and try to do something new. Do you think that Vampire - The Masquerade: Bloodlines would have been as touted if it were isometric? Its predecessor, Redemption, is almost unbeknownst to PC gamers because it's isometric and obfuscated. If you obfuscate things, then it's hard to get at the story beyond the ridiculous amounts of number fetishism. Even The Witcher (and II) had this problem, it was almost an impenetrable bog of numbers. But that's not Obsidian, why are we forcing this on them? Obsidian has never been an 'impenetrable bog of numbers' developer. What Obsidian does well is storytelling and world building! They give us plots which make us think and feel, they give us choices which challenge us emotionally and intellectually, they create games which linger in our memories because they were so unusual, and not because they're just a repeat of some old, overly touted game that we shouldn't really care about any more (again, I can't tell if people are just being hipsters). I'm an old fart myself. I Icewind Daled it up with the best of them, I liked Fallout, but if I'm honest then I'm just going to come out and say it - Fallout 2 was probably my favourite game of that era because it was fun, it had a great plot, and it didn't take itself too seriously. And I think that since that era, we've had a lot of evolution. New Vegas, for example, was a massive step up in many ways. I was a bit sad that New Vegas lost some of the incredibly intelligent back humour and atmosphere of the prior games, but what it did get is what essentially makes Fallout Fallout. New Vegas was a post-post-post apocalyptic setting. They'd already done the post apocalyptic thing, then the post-post apocalyptic thing, and by this point society was starting to rebuild. This was the setting of Fallout 2 as well. This is actually what Fallout 3 didn't get, and what Bethesda didn't understand, that what made Fallout so special wasn't all the things that they clearly believed, but purely because of the story and setting. If you look at New Vegas, you'll see what I mean. Obsidain understands these things, they know how to do something which is off the beaten path. If you want a game that fetishises numbers of drudges up ancient games, then I think your best bet is heading over to GoG.com and buying their entire library. Because Obsidian has never really been about that. Perhaps whilet hey were at Interplay as Black Isle, they might have been somehwat about that, but what's not well understood is that that was purely because of the technological limitations of the time. In fact, I'd love to see them do purely what their good at: Strip the math right back, let the computer handle the number progression of a player character, and concentrate purely on world, story, narrative, and choices. These are the areas where Obsidian excels. I want to see them do a brilliantly alien world which challenges some of the best we've seen, with plenty of intrigue, lots of "WTF?", and generally a world we understand through playing. Not a world which (like The Witcher or Dragon Age) you sit and learn about by reading tooltips or magically updated entries in an omniscient journal, but something you learn about through experience. In fact, I'd love to see them go all the way out there and not include a single human, to do a truly alien world where the order of the day is discovery. I'd like them to try to tackle things like "What if a character was empathic and could feel emotions, how would that affect dialogue?" Or "What if a character was bound with a parasite and had to deal with things that the parasite slipped in through them in conversation and/or action?" I'd like to see them tackle concepts which are really off the beaten track, and to do something that a publisher truly wouldn't buy. Of course, any publisher would go for Planescape: Torment 2, and we all know that they'd be idiots not to. That would be something that any publisher would buy. But that's not the point of this, is it? Not only that, but they're working on a limited budget, and I'd rather see them do something unusual than blow all of their money on licensing a setting and/or combat system. I really wish we could sit here and brainstorm something incredible rather than just getting another post where someone sits up and yells "Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! I know! I know! I'd totally fund if their game was Planescape: Torment 2, or Arcanum 2, or Neverwinter Nights 3, or Some Other Old Game VI!! Totally would! LICENSE THEM ALL!", because actually moving away from that and trying to embrace the idea of something really new would make me happy. I suppose for the youngsters, who've not played years of RPGs, the idea of a Planescape: Torment 2 may seem appealing. But for the old farts like me who've been playing RPGs for over thirty years in one form or another (pen & paper, tabletop, computer, or what have you), I think that a lot of us older gamers just want to see something new. Paradigm shifts aren't hard. You just move away from what the mainstream wants and stop appealing to hte lowest common denominator. And isn't that precisely what this is about? I'm sorry, but the lowest common denominator in this case amounts to number fetishists, and people screaming for Ancient Game VI. We need to move beyond that. We really do. Give your imaginations a workout. Go beyond sequels. Forget IPs. What do you truly want to see? --- And if we really must have humans in the game, why don't we make them Interdimensional Explorers and land them in a world where all sorts of crazy **** could happen to them? "Well, one of our number became a werewolf-like thing and he wants to stay with his hippie werewolf monks. One of them was absorbed into this fleshy mass of an overmind and claims to now know everything. One of us has become a pure energy being that can possess other people. One of us now has a parasite attached to his head that allows her to see beyond the reality that we see. And that just leaves two of us who're still actually kind of human... so let's be xenophobic and get the **** out of here before something happens to us, too!" Where did the wonder for exploration go? That's what I want. I want a bat****, crazy world where all manner of bizarre things can and will happen. I want a world where you never know what sort of crazy experience might lay around the next corner. I want to see the brightest and darkest corners of the imaginations of the people at Obsidian printed into the very fabric of this game. The Universe is an incredible place and all we can think about is pissing about and languishing in stuff we're already familiar with? I hope that this project won't be about that, but about just imagination for the sake of imagination. I want to see what they can do when their creative leashes are removed, when their restrictive harnesses are unbound, and they can do whatever the heck they want. --- Essentially, I want an unfamiliar "What the eff is wrong with this world?!" game. We spend so much time in humancentric settings, doing humancentric things, that people are never really taken out of their comfort zones. This is a chance for Obsidian to write stories which really screw with the minds of the people playing. Why would we not want that?

Oh, and more... I'd like to see Obsidian concentrate on a world this time, on a unique IP, and something strange. The co-op idea is nice, too, where anyone can make choices and that can screw things up for the party unless you have someone with the correct talents to make things right. But nothing overly ambitious, just something that can be completed in 2-4 hours, 4 tops. But something that has lots of replayability due to the choices on offer, and due to how alien the world is actually having players miss out on stuff because they simply didn't understand how A or B worked the first time around. Not only that, but once you have a basis, you can expand upon it with expansion packs and DLC, and you could even fund those through Kickstarter if this is popular. I think Starting Small

@CahiersDuViday Not only that but I'm not sure that Planescape: Torment would actually be so great by today's standards. And some can HERESY! all they want at that, but rose-tinted glasses shouldn't play any part in a discussion like this. Obsidian should make something new, not republish something ancient (GoG does that).

Anything related to Planescape or Arcanum is ridiculous. For one thing, do you realise how much of their fund it would cost to acquire those IPs? And for another - it would reign in their creativity. The whole idea of this is to not do something as dullcentric (DULLCENTRIC IS NOW A WORD) as past, long belaboured trad RPGs. They want to do something new, so let them do something new. They want to be unrestricted, so let them be unrestricted. Desiring that they be stranded in sequel land is the worst thing you could do to them.

I contest the notion that choices in RPGs tend to be 'kick puppy' or 'save orphanage.' I contest that vehemently. In Obsidian games at least, they tend to be so much more. In Fallout: New Vegas there were loads of choices like that, especially surrounding the characters. Another situation that was hard to know what was best with, but wasn't an artificial 'choose the dickish choice or choose the dickish choice' was Lily's medicine. There are lots of choices made there, and there have actually been some huge arguments (and some very philosophical ones) over what the 'right choice' for Lily was. Some peope place importance on her memories and identity over her well being, some do vice versa. It's a tough choice however you cut it. And there are tough choices all throughout New Vegas that don't feel artificially tough. That's how you handle an RPG with choices properly. Obsidian have never failed to do that, and to do so subtly and with aplomb. They're the masters of choice, so any game without the degrees of choice that only Obsidian knows how to offer would, quite frankly, be a criminal offence. No one does what they do as well as them, and that's why Obsidian games are such rare joys. I think that in this case, Obsidian should stick with what they're best at, becasue with what they're best at literally no other studio in existence does it as well as tehm. The only other game I can think of that's not Obsidian-developed that's come close to the incredible level of choice and consequence that Obsidian muster is Vampire - The Masquerade: Bloodlines. No matter how you slice it, there isn't a single instace of a 'kick puppy/save orphange' or 'kick puppy/kick puppy' choice (I'm looking at you, Skyrim) in New Vegas. --- That said, being gay myself I'd completely be in support of having the option to play a well written gay character, and to have a couple of well written gay characters as relationship options. But Obsidian don't force things on people - that's Bethesda, Bioware, and all the two-bit hacks that couldn't put together a real choice-and-consequence RPG to save their lives. (And we all know they couldn't, so let's not beat around the bush. Bethesda and Bioware do what they do and they do it well, but what they do NOT do is choice-and-consequence sceanrios.) Here's another thought: I'd love to see a co-op RPG where the choices of other players who're with you can screw things over for the entire party. So if someone does something stupid, then your entire team gets a bounty on your head, and then you have to hope that the silver-tongued member of your party can talk their way out of whatever it was that the stupid guy did.

There's a false dichotomy going on here that's bugging me. It goes like this: "An old, isometric game you could NEVER sell to a publisher because, uh... it's old! So make that, Obsidian!" Except, to the contrary, an isometric, old-school, traditional RPG with low costs and low risks (to the niche being sold to) would have no trouble finding a publisher. I mean, look at the success GoG have had. If a developer approached a group of publishers asking them to sell such a game, they'd probably end up with more than a few offers. I agree with the notion of having something you couldn't sell to a publisher, but a thing that's already been tried and proven isn't the way to go about it. "Wild and risky!" doesn't equal "Make the same game that GoG is selling twenty times over." I mean, the way most people do it is to either keep the traditional mechanics, or the traditional setting, and that's why that sells. Cthulhu Saves the World and Avernum have seen success, so has Kingdom of Amalur. But (barring perhaps the humour of Cthulhu), these games are all quite dull. Quite, quite dull. The way to really create a game that a publisher wouldn't buy would be to go outside of the comfort zone of the lowest common denominator. And that means being experimental and controversial, not only with your setting but with your mechanics. It's intellectually dishonest to claim that a publisher wouldn't buy something that's a sure bet, and really, with the low production costs of an isometric RPG and a studio like Obisdian behind it, that's a sure bet. This is why I challenge them to be abstract with their game, to NOT create the same generic world, to NOT create the same generic RPG, to NOT dwell on the same old mechanics. To make something that's actually new, and to do it their own way.

On top of what I'd said before - I'd love to see you do an RPG sans combat. Where combat just isn't an element at all - where the concentration is more upon exploration, puzzles, and learning about a unique environment. That would be interesting, too. I just think that there's a lot of focus on combat in RPGs of late and there doesn't need to be. This "EVERYTHING CAN BE SOLVED BY MURDAR!!!11" attitude adopted by so many RPGs (I'm looking at you, Skyrim) makes me feel like an omnicidal maniac, and I don't want to feel like an omnicidal maniac! So at the very least, even if you include combat, I'm hoping that there'll be ways to completely avoid it entirely. I know some people get their rocks off at gutting virtual people, but... Iono, I'm just not a violent person. In general, it's not something that appeals to me. And the more 'serious' it is, the more 'in Universe' it is, the more it bothers me. This is why the omnicidal maniacs of Skyrim bothered me, but Bulletstorm didn't so much. If you have to include mandatory combat, silliness is a good aspect to have there. But yes, let's prove that we're not a bunch of hormonal idiots unable to conceive a game where we weren't satisfying deep, bizarre needs via poking things with manswords. Let's do away with that stereotype altogether. Like I said before - with something like this you have the chance to take a risk, to do something really unique. And whilst I realise that a completely sans combat game from you guys is unlikely (no matter how much I'd wish for it), I do hope that you'll not put a heavy focus on combat. There are other ways of doing things - you could even try to have a really fleshed out diplomacy system, for example. You know, that's the one thing I really liked about Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. That's what kept me in that game for almost five months. I despised it graphically, I felt that aesthetically it was terrible, and the world was boring. So why did I stay? I stayed on because diplomacy was a card game that you got to play, and you could actually use that to 'level up,' you could explore the world as a diplomat, never engaging in combat at any point. So you'd seek out other diplomats and people represnting cultures, clans, peoples, nations, or what have you, and you'd engage in diplomacy with them. It was great. It was silly, but it was great. Why not more of that? I don't know, but it makes me feel like some bloodlusting savage when I think of just how violence-focused games are, we could do better. And when I think of Obsidian games, it's never the COR VIOLENCE I'm thinking of, but the brilliant moments of story and choice. Vault 34, for example... Vault 34 was one of your greatest moments. It was truly a triumph of storytelling, of atmosphere, and it was so, so clever. Why do we need such a focus on combat? When we think of a wildly original fantasy world, is the only thing that the average person can think of is how many new and different species they'll be able to stick their mansword into? Because that's more than a big repugnant, really. I want gaming to be about more than "That thing where stupid manchildren hit virtual boogaboos with virtual sticks." So I'm hoping that in this game, combat won't have a huge focus.

I'd love to see you ladies and gents come up with your own fantasy setting, something that would leave the 'incredibly original' Amalur six feet under. I'm getting depressed of just how generic and cut & paste fantasy settings are. So I'd task you with taking a risk and doing something wildly bizarre. Just plumb the depths of your imagination and be abstract, be bold, be unafraid, and most importantly - be unusual. Also, on a more selfish note - I'd love to see a beast race portrayed in something as more than just stupid/angry brutes. That would be something. That'd be a bloody paradigm shift, that would. Geez, it's like xenophobia is so woven into the fabric of our being that we can't even conceive of an inhuman race that might actually be intelligent and mostly peaceful. It's sad when webcomics like Freefall are more compelling, imaginative, intriguing, and unusual than pretty much anything in the mainstream entertainment industry. That is a bit sad, really. Failing that? Possibly try and get the rights to do a Discworld RPG, possibly based around the City Watch - and work with Pratchett to make it something really special. At Obsidian you actually have decent writers, really talented writers, and you should use that. You could certainly outdo those terrible Discworld point & click adventure games of yore. Just generally though... be unexpected. Try to appeal to the highest common denominator (fun and passion) rather than the lowest. --- Oh, and keep the voice acting. "Elitism HO!" attitudes aside, voice-acting helps regarding accessibility. People with poor sight don't exactly want to be left with screens of tiny text to read. This will be a barrier of entry to some people, especially to aging folk, and it will determine whether one CAN play the game, regardless of whether they actually want to or not. So try to keep tiny tooltips filled with microscopic text that you have to be some sort of bionic eagle to read to a minimum. Try to actually stray away from what other people think makes an RPG and concentrate on your strengths - your strengths being amazing writing skills, thus story and narrative, and choices which are neither illusory or forced. Go with what you're good at. Don't try to be Bioware just because elitism. ---- To add a bit more to this - I'd really like to see you tackle more alien cultures. This can mean fantasy, sci-fi, science-fantasy, alternate realities or what have you. Anywhere where we could introduce a really strange race, to be honest. I was always disappointed at how you disassociated the talking deathclaws with Fallout, Chris, but this is a chance to make good. See, I don't just see the chance to actually work on an alien culture somewhat xenophobic (even though it is), but it's cowardly. Again - if you guys are as talented as I think you are, then tackling a peculiar culture that is alien to us and not familiar, something that may take us out of our comfort zones, should be something that you could do. I spent months musing over the many things that I could do with a race liek the deathclaws - an artificially advanced race of reptiles, and how much of standard reptilian behaviours I could evolve into a culture through my understanding of anthropology. As the creation of a person is half genetics, and half societal, and thus what would the society of a particularly alien race be like? It's ways like this in which you could challenge yourself. That's what I want to see you do - challenge yourself. If you're just going to go with a generic fantasy setting, if you're just going to go with a nostalgia trip, or something you've done, or a sequel, or something entirely typical then I'm going to be disappointed. You guys are writers, you're perhaps one of the few development houses in the industry that has writing talent that I can actually feel excited about. Thus it's somewhat infuriating to see that you never push yourselves. The last thing I want to see you do is something pedestrian. So make the game you want to make - but more, perhaps, try to do the things that you never thought you could. It's a massive risk to do something really abstract, but isn't that what these Kickstarter projects are about? Everything about this is a massive risk. I just want to see what you guys could do if you really tasked yourself with coming up with your own IP. It could even be a fairly short game, something that could be completed in a few hours and I'd be satisfied, so long as it was something you really worked on - something that was outside the mainstream. Just look at what everyone else is doing and ask what you could do different. *falls over.* Ventventventvent. Done now. I hope. --- Hokay... ONE MORE THING damn it. I'm having an Uncle moment. I don't think I could really express in words the ridiculous amounts of faith and fanboyish praise I've always had for you guys. No matter what you do I doubt I'm going to be that disappointed even if it is just some generic thing. So, just do your best with it. But yeah, I have a lot of faith in you, and I think that you have more of a chance to do something really special than most mainstream developers. This is a chance. Don't miss it. Love you guys. (In perhaps not an entirely platonic way.)