Michael_Galt

I saw the gameplay estimates, so that was what kept my enthusiasm down, slightly. That being said, because I am such a completionist, I honestly thought that I would still get more gameplay out of it. In general, I have always played more hours than are estimated for the games I have played, and usually a significant number more. That being said, I think that I clocked in right around 45 hours by the time that I finished this, and while that isn't terrible... the problem is more that I don't feel the need/desire to replay it again. I beat Tyranny in probably about the same amount of time, then I immediately started replaying it with a different character and immediately could appreciate the difference in the story reactivity and the gameplay experience itself. And despite them being semi-similiar characters, the game and the epilogue were VERY different. I told a friend, "Yeah, my 2nd playthrough, I got exactly the epilogue that I was hoping for... but I had to do a LOT of stuff that I really didn't want to and make some seriously hard decisions." Sure! That is what I most like about RPGs. I like that they are essentially "choose your story" adventures that can make you examine philosophical, moral, or political issues. I love when there are serious companions that make you think of people you know or could imagine and actually identify or sympathize with and want to "get to know". If you haven't played Tyranny yet, I highly recommend it. I wish that it hadn't been marketed as "grim dark" and "evil has won, be as evil as you want to be". I don't play evil, ever. I don't like to. I can maybe get by with some lawful evil or neutral evil, but I want to play as a paladin, or desert ranger. I want to be the hero and to help people. That is why it took me 2 years to play Tyranny. But, it is completely possible to play a "good" character and still enjoy the game. I essentially played as "lawful good" and "chaotic good" and it was incredibly interesting and rewarding.

So, not going to lie, I had pretty high hopes for The Outer Worlds. Given who was involved in its development, I thought that it was going to be Arcanum/F: NV in space. Honestly, I still prefer Arcanum or F: NV to TOW. What had I hoped to see from those games that I didn't or felt like it wasn't delivered as well? Length and depth. With both F: NV and Arcanum, you can play them dozens of times, because there are so many quests and so many things to find/discover/uncover. It is impossible to do all that in a single playthrough. I am a completionist. I don't care what game I play, I try to milk it to its fullest potential, I want to squeeze absolutely everything out of it as I can. If I play it again, I will still try to get everything out of it that I can. Great RPGs in general, and F: NV and Arcanum in particular, have tons of juice to squeeze after a single playthrough. I have played both of those games MANY times (5+). I always found new things. I have beat TOW and honestly don't want to give it another playthrough, because I feel like it wouldn't be that much different. I obviously have a different experience by making different choices, but I feel like there is probably nothing that I missed (or, very, very little). I feel like there is not much more juice to squeeze. I briefly started a playthrough with a 2nd character, very different from my 1st, and could already see where it was going. I could imagine how the rest of the game would play out and it just didn't motivate me to keep playing. In terms of the sheer number of hours involved in playing either (being a completionist), TOW is nowhere near as long. Companions. To be fair, neither Arcanum or F: NV had great companions. Arcanum had companions who had interesting backstories and could have been really compelling, but they were almost free of banter, interaction, and reaction to the story. F: NV only let you have a single companion, effectively. Some of them were good and had a reasonable amount of development, but you still didn't get that deep character depth, development, and involvement. I was hoping that Obsidian would draw from their experiences making Tyranny and Deadfire, and we would end up with companions along the lines of Baldur's Gate 2 or the Mass Effect franchise - heck, Planescape Torment. I thought that we were going to get some seriously fleshed out, interesting companions who would develop over time and have fascinating backstories and really interesting banter and reactions/interactions with the story and player actions. The companions weren't complete trash... but honestly, I find absolutely nothing memorable about any of them. Anomen, the noble who has struggled to do well for his family name and honor Helm, who is arrogant but internally conflicted about his status and sometimes the actions of the Church of Helm. Viconia, who is jaded, distrustful and contemptuous, but can be convinced that life is valuable and that there is value in trying to help others. Aerie, who is wounded and hobbled by fear, with a heart of gold, who can be given confidence and learn to be strong. ME's Garrus, Miranda, Morgan, Grunt and the list could go on. Any of the Planescape Torment companions. All of these companions genuinely interested me and I was invested in them. Ellie, Vicar and Parvati were the only companions I could even stand in TOW (I liked SAM... but he had zero personality), and while I didn't dislike them, I also found them to be very vanilla and not at all interesting. Customization. This game doesn't even get close to F: NV or Arcanum in either respect. There are a billion character builds for either game. In both of them, I played Doc Holiday - physically weak, fragile, but very fast, great with handguns, super lucky, and a gambler. I literally got rich in both games gambling as my Doc Holiday character and would gun people down with my pistols if it became necessary. I played a sniper/scout, a brawler, a thief, a scientist and a talker in each game. No gambling in this game, so no Doc Holiday. Stealing is possible... but it is honestly pretty easy, in general (with pickpocketing being ridiculous). In my first playthrough, without trying very hard, I managed to be a scientist talker sniper thief. Didn't have great charisma, but could pass most dialogue checks with my intelligence or knowledge. Was pretty damn effective with "long rifles". Was super smart. This doesn't get into items. There were TONS of cool schematics in Arcanum, and it is impossible to master all the different tech branches in 1 playthrough. In F: NV, there are also tons of options for mods to weapons/armor, unique/special weapons/armor, and things of that nature. At the midpoint of TOW, I was literally already bored with the weapons and armor I had found, and it didn't really change from there. Bad guy. To me, Jon Irenicus remains the absolute best bad guy of any cRPG. He was interesting, believable, and actually scary. He was also slightly sympathetic and definitely understandable. His voice actor was incredible. Arcanum's bad guy was not nearly as interesting, but he was still good. Who you wanted to designate at the bad guy for F: NV depended entirely on your perception of who would do the best for the Mojave, or who you philosophically supported most, as an organization. TOW? As far as I can see, there is really only "1" bad guy... and he is pretty pathetic (and not really that bad, per se). He is hardly developed. You don't even know who he is until late in the game. Defeating him is... anticlimatic. Beating Jon Irenicus was HARD. Beating the bad guy in Arcanum was HARD. Beating the key bad guy in a cRPG should be really hard and you should feel invested in defeating them.... I just didn't feel that way with TOW. The universe in general. Both F: NV and Arcanum had some genuinely interesting NPCs. So did Planescape Torment, Mass Effect, and a number of great RPGs. Sidequests that were really interesting and compelling. I didn't feel this with TOW. There were a few here and there with a bit of development and backstory, but for the most part, the side quests were to go kill something or fetch something, and that was about it. The majority of the NPCs simply had no development or backstory. There might be more, but that is all I can think of right now. Honestly, though it took me 2 years to play it, I vastly prefer Tyranny to TOW. I prefer Deadfire to TOW. I had thought TOW actually had a chance of dethroning BG2 as my favorite cRPG... but I honestly don't think that I would put it in my top 10. Definitely not in my top 5. This isn't to say that TOW "sucks" or is a bad game. It is a good game. I would give it and 88 out of 100. But, I had hoped that it was going to be a 96/97/98/99.

I completely concur. I beat it over a weekend, and kept wondering when it was that I was going to find some unique armor or get to make it. Honestly, I felt disappointed in the armor/weapon customization of this game. Nothing felt truly unique or awesome. I wish there was some way to "order directly from the manufacturer" or to contract someone to build you an amazing weapon or armor for a very high premium. Or, way more schematics. Everything felt very "samey".

That does help. Temperment still doesn't seem to make exact sense, but I am assuming that the tutorial or gameplay will make it pretty clear... hopefully. It sort of sounds like "constitution", but not exactly.

I actually did forget that. Now this makes me even sadder, because I honestly enjoyed gambling in 3 different Obsidian games, and it was done well in each of them. It seems borderline preposterous to me that I won't be able to gamble in what is essentially a "space western" with a bit of punk in it. I just hope that they don't make stealing impossible/worthless, considering that is something that I enjoy doing in an RPG as well... but I have heard 0 mention of it in anything I have read or watched regarding The Outer Worlds... so should probably assume that it isn't going to be in the game. And since there is no "luck" attribute like in Arcanum or FO:NV... that means it probably isnt in.

That actually makes a lot of sense. More "temperament" = more "time dilation" or something to that effect. I really hope that isn't the case, because I think that I am really going to want time dilation (aka, VATS), and I don't like the idea that I might have to dedicate an entire attribute to it rather than it just being a composite of several which have other utility outside of combat. Unless this is ALSO useful outside of combat... maybe for conversations and technical tasks? Also, the dictionary doesn't agree with you, unless you are talking about something that the developers said: temperament noun the combination of mental, physical, and emotional traits of a person; natural predisposition. unusual personal attitude or nature as manifested by peculiarities of feeling, temper, action, etc., often with a disinclination to submit to conventional rules or restraints. Well, through more Googling, found out there will indeed be no mini-games OR gambling... that makes me sad. Arcanum had gambling. FO: NV had gambling. I enjoyed gambling in both... so, no Doc Holliday character this time. I am not counting information provided in video interviews. I know that people love being illiterate nowadays, but I don't have the time or patience to sit through hour long interviews where the interviewer will inevitably ask a bunch of stupid questions so I can potentially get a couple answers I actually care about. I miss the day when journalists actually had to know how to write articles and I could read in 10 minutes what it took them an hour in real time to say. And while I fully grant that there is a difference between being crowd-funded versus not (in terms of information dissemination), there really has been very little put out. This is the only game coming out this year that I am interested in (since Wasteland 3 got pushed to 2020 and Cyberpunk 2077 is set for the same time frame - Q2), yet I know LESS about this game than I know about either of those games. I know A LOT about Cyberpunk 2077, which was not crowd-funded, and it comes out nearly a year from now. I know way more about WL3 and it comes out at the same time. I don't even know what temperament is, and apparently neither does anyone else... and this game is hypothetically going to be released in a little over 3 months. I understand that Obsidian had to keep their cards close to their chest for a while, for a variety of reasons... but how do they expect to build hype when there is so little information out there regarding a game they are releasing in Q4?

So... I went to that Wiki, and there is basically nothing there. I don't care about the corporations or companions, we'll see what they are like in-game. I have really only seen some limited amount of information about combat and dialogue options, and not much else. We are less than 4 months away, and besides some promo trailers and a bit of gameplay, it is pretty sparse on the information. I know that this game has been in development for a while, so that strikes me as quite odd. I would think that they are literally in the final stages of polishing and QC right now... which means that we should have tons of information. Yet we don't even have a character creation screen or explanation of the combat system, attributes, minigames (if there are any), etc. I'm not whining about this, I just find it odd. I feel like they are not going to meet the date they set for release, given how relatively little has been shared.

Interesting - thanks! No idea what "temperment" is... as an attribute. Normally that is some sort of thing that you "earn" based on your actions, decisions and statements. I can't see how you would "put points" into having a certain temperment. And I find it somewhat odd that so little has been revealed, but it is supposed to release in October. Does anyone else think that is overly ambitious and it is likely going to get delayed? I mean, Wasteland 3 has revealed more, and they pushed their date from late 2019 (basically the same time) to April 2020... which is probably a bad idea, what with Cyberpunk 2077 coming out then as well (they should probably wait until June or something).

Do we know what they are yet? I haven't seen a whole lot of information on the interwebz regarding The Outer Worlds, and am very curious about this. I still yearn for the days of Arcanum, where "beauty" was a an attribute and making your character beautiful or ugly had real consequences. I sincerely doubt that in today's politically correct world that Obsidian would have enough courage to bring beauty back as an attribute... but who knows? What about "luck"? A feature in many RPGs I love (especially Fallout and Arcanum), will I be able to play my Doc Holliday character again? Rolling around with low charisma and constitution, but high agility, luck and a pair of pistols, stealing everyone's money in card games and games of chance... and shooting those who mistake my physical frailty for weakness and vulnerability. Are there any good screenshots of the character creation screens?

Oh hell yes. Cyberpunk 2077, Wasteland 3, BG3, and The Outer Worlds?? Maybe the next couple years aren't looking so bad after all...

I am also having this problem. I tried deleting the local files, as well as checking the integrity of the game files, and neither has worked. I logged out and am repeating all those steps, just to see if I get a different result... And crash. I have attempted to attach the files. Can't attach all files but can send in DM if Obsidian person reaches out. output_log.txt

Hey everyone. About to start my 3rd playthrough, but the last time that I really played was probably August or September. Has there been any significant changes since then that I really need to be aware of? I've tried to keep on top of the updates, so I know that all the DLC has been released, which adds new areas and lots of boss options (and high level options in general). But, in terms of rebalancing, or story or gameplay outside of the DLC stuff, is there any really big things that I should be aware of? I plan on playing as full on "melee mage" (a paladin/mage combo). I want to stick to staff for melee and magic for range. That is about it.

I just appreciate that there was humor. Humor is good. I like humor. Now let me have humorous interactions with my party of NPCs... and even better. Let me have humorous romance options? Pretty please. Let me have a miniature giant space hamster????? Pretty, PRETTY please!

I didn't. I thought that it got locked. Can I still edit my OP as well? I just think that if I do that, the rest of the thread will become confusing.

I was not talking about economic viability in this post at all. Because Fallout 4 "sold better" does not make it a "better" game. That is the result of aggressive and successful marketing. Lots of inferior products outsell better products because the inferior products are marketed better. You can go to any aggregate score website, and F:NV scores better among consumers than does Fallout 4. That is what makes it a better game. Given the fact that nearly 40% of the people who responded to this poll listed F:NV as their #1 favorite game by Obsidian... it is clear that people here want more games like F:NV than Fallout 4. I don't think that people work at Obsidian because they hope to become multi-millionaires, they work there to work on the types of games that they like and enjoy. Provided that they are able to afford the things they enjoy in life, they are probably content to not be making boatloads of money, but being able to make great cRPGs. I'm all about capitalism and ambition, but sometimes you have to pick your values over potentially making more money. It isn't clear in the op's first paragraph what the point of your post was, its buried somewhere in the body of the thing. In fact, I'm not seeing a cogent idea anywhere, until the fourth or fifth paragraph, where you tell me the point is "I like F:NV". Your real idea is even further away, spread across two or three more paragraphs. The title is at least misleading, don't you agree? I tried to find the lesson in your op, couldn't find one. My cautionary tale's better, I think. You can't expect people will meander with you through a haphazard formatted, stream-of-consciousness post. I mean, anybody can make a poll what their favorite obsi game is. You should have just stopped there m8. Also, I have no idea why you're talking about capitalism and multi millionaires in response. Again, I apologize for failing to put that in the OP. Without editing the OP to include what I wrote later, after I realized that I had not explicitly talked about that... really no way to "solve" that problem. I feel like editing a post days after writing it... is bad form. The point of the poll for the favorite Obsidian game was meant to serve as a tool for helping Obsidian to get real feedback from their dedicated community. The people on these forums would more than likely be Pillars of Eternity backers, right? Except, despite the fact that those are those most recent games, there is a clear indication from the community that they might like POE, but in general, they LOVE F:NV and they really like KOTOR 2. This remains the case despite the relative old age of those games. The age of those games does not diminish the story-telling they did, or the quality of the writing. The point about the financial success of non-Obsidian titles is moot in this argument. There are tons of games with ridiculous premises, that are horrible games by any objective standard of story-telling or intellectual stimulation, but are INCREDIBLY successful financially because they let people do something they want to do, but can't do in real life, or not as easily as they can in that game. Obsidian games, have, by and large, been about excellent writing and storytelling. When someone who works in the videogame industry applies to work at Obsidian, they KNOW that the games that Obsidian makes are not the types of game that sell 50 million copies. They know that if they go to Comicon that year, they will not find 1/2 the cosplayers in costumes from Obsidian's games. They go to Obsidian because intelligent, thought provoking RPGs are the types of games they enjoy and want to make. They go to Obsidian to "boost their resume" before applying to another major videogame studio that maybe DOES make those games that sell millions of copies, because they know that if they show that they worked at a studio known for making great games, they are much more likley to get accepted into the "big leagues". Now that Obsidian HAS been acquired by Microsoft and they DID get their "dream project" approved... I just hope that they don't make a game that has nothing in common with F:NV and KOTOR 2, but rather make a game that combines the best features of all their best games. Both Bioware and Bethesda have strayed a long way from their roots, and financial successes or not, their latest games have NOT gotten very good consumer reviews and are generally considered to be worse games than what came before those games. This is in spite of having plenty of money and large teams for development. I just HOPE that Obsidian doesn't make their "dream project" into Fallout 4/76 or ME: Andromeda, whether that is more financially successful or not. Is that selfish of me? Yes, it is. I want high-quality, well-written RPGs. That is the only type of video game I play. None of those equals no video games for me. I can survive without video games... but I would like for that to be an option, as opposed to a non-option. I would happily pay 2 - 3 times the normal price of a video game if I was sure that it would be a quality RPG. Right now I am VERY tentative about this new project because of some of the things that Tim Cain said a year ago. It doesn't SOUND like a game that I will like, if it adopts a lot of those philosophies. If I DON'T like it, and it is the "new Obsidian", then I can probably write off future Obsidian games the way that I have Bioware games and Bethesda games. That would mean that I would have only CD Projekt Red and inXile to look forward to their games, and MAYBE Harebrained Studios, but maybe not. I prefer Obsidian games to the games of all of those studios. That means I would be left with studios that I like less.

I just hope that this poll is useful to Obsidian. While it is clearly not a huge sample size, 60 people is not a small number. This poll CLEARLY shows that people consider F:NV to be, if not the "best" Obsidian game, their personal favorite. It also shows that, together, the POE games do quite well, but taken individually, yes, most people seem to prefer Deadfire (roughly 25% more total votes for Deadfire). It also effectively shows that KOTOR 2 still ranks within the top 3 Obsidian games for most people, with nearly 50% choosing it for one of their favorite Obsidian games (and this is despite the fact that it was released over 10 years ago). Hopefully more and more people respond so that the overall sample size grows. That way, as Obsidian is making design decisions for this new game... they can base those decisions off of customer feedback, instead of pure supposition.

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/92420-tim-cain-at-reboot-develop-2017-building-a-better-rpg-seven-mistakes-to-avoid/?hl=%2Btim+%2Bcain Thanks! Followed with... I am suddenly much LESS excited for this game. Pretty much every single thing he said... I disagree with. I will wait to see what is said in the announcement... but... damn, now I am not sure at all if I will like this. I had literally got my hopes up that it would be Arcanum in space... and now that seems VERY unlikely...

Birds of a feather! Have you played Arcanum, per chance? I really enjoyed that talk Cain gave. I might have to rewatch it now. Obsidian is indeed a lonely beam of light. Do you have the link to this? I am interested in listening to this interview.

Best? Best?! How can you say that when you can't even kill a werewolf in it with your skills. You have to use the really big doors to do it. Totally bogus. Bad design. Sad! RIP Visceris. Sounds like a good reason to me. Vampires suck... But, even in that universe, werewolves hunt vampires. That's why I still hold out hope that Harebrained Schemes will take over the Werewolf game and make it Werewolf Run: Denver, so that I can go around as a werewolf shredding effete vampires

I was not talking about economic viability in this post at all. Because Fallout 4 "sold better" does not make it a "better" game. That is the result of aggressive and successful marketing. Lots of inferior products outsell better products because the inferior products are marketed better. You can go to any aggregate score website, and F:NV scores better among consumers than does Fallout 4. That is what makes it a better game. Given the fact that nearly 40% of the people who responded to this poll listed F:NV as their #1 favorite game by Obsidian... it is clear that people here want more games like F:NV than Fallout 4. I don't think that people work at Obsidian because they hope to become multi-millionaires, they work there to work on the types of games that they like and enjoy. Provided that they are able to afford the things they enjoy in life, they are probably content to not be making boatloads of money, but being able to make great cRPGs. I'm all about capitalism and ambition, but sometimes you have to pick your values over potentially making more money.

Well... it looks like Christmas is coming early this year... December 5th and big reveal time! Woot woot! Especially because it will be Fallout in space? Just tell me that there will still be magic and I'm sold. Well, tentatively sold. I do want to hear the details, but the very small teases released in that announcement... indicate some pretty awesome stuff. My two favorite Obsidian games are F:NV and KOTOR 2... so, space Fallout basically sounds like those games got together and made a baby. Knights of the Old Fallout? KOF? :D The story is that a massive nuclear war nearly wiped out the human race on Earth, but enough of us were in outer space colonies or escaped, and are now forging a new future. Old animosities and regrets remain... and there is word that there are strange things leaving Earth that can't be explained. Just let me play as a damn robot or cyborg already!

For the record, in case there IS confusion, my point had nothing to do with the viability of people's abilities to have homosexual sexual relationships... My point was that if you PERSONALLY have never seen publicly homosexual behavior... you might very well ASSUME that it is NOT possible, based on your experiences. Whereas... if you have been to places where it is VERY openly acceptable, then it SOUNDS like a dumb question. So... when you answer a question with a question, especially when your question is, "Did you see this happen in this single isolated example?", you are basically doing the same thing. That is the EQUIVALENT of me going to some place where I KNOW that open homosexual behavior is very uncommon or unaccepted, looking around, and saying, "Do you see any homosexuality here?" Of course you don't. But if you used a different example when asking that question (meaning, a place where in fact homosexuality is COMMON and ACCEPTED), then you would naturally get a different answer. My question was, "Is there any precedent for 2 DIFFERENT video game studios to work on 1 title, TOGETHER?" I still don't know that answer, and that is why I asked it. I don't follow the video game industry as a whole, I only follow studios who make cRPGs. I check Obsidian forums and news regularly. I stopped checking Bioware news earlier this year. I don't have any hopes left for Bethesda, but maybe they will surprise me... in several year. I check inXile and Harebrained and CD Projekt Red. That is IT. I don't play games in other genres, and if it was made by a studio other than the ones I listed in the paragraph above... then I probably don't know about it. So... because I personally am unaware of it having happened... does NOT make it a FACT, that it does NOT happen. That is what I was trying to ascertain. And, I can assure you, that I was asking that in good faith. An answer that doesn't answer the question, but instead asks a different question which still doesn't answer the question... is not in any way helpful. THAT was the point of my "homosexuality" question. It was that anwering a question with a question is not productive and especially less so when that question would have different answers depending on your personal knowledge and experience. I asked that question, admiting my lack of personal knowledge of the answer, asking if anyone HAD knowledge and an answer. "Are Naughty Dog and Guerilla teaming up on games because they are both owned by Sony?" I have no idea who either of those studios are. I had no idea that they were acquired by Sony. I have no idea if they are or are not making a game jointly. But I can play that game all day, where I "cherry-pick answers" that suggest that something is or is not possible because I know the answer in a single instance. More examples, that are simpler? "Can girls have blonde hair?" "Does Kim Kardashian have blonde hair?" "Is it possible to build an electric car?" "Is the Ford Mustang an electric car?" "Can you eat crayons?" "Have you ever ate crayons?" I was not asking for a single anecdote. My question was, "across the industry (more specifically, RPG studios), is there any precedent for this happening?" That doesn't mean that because it didn't happen in a single instance that it has NEVER happened, NEVER will happen, or CAN'T happen. Saying, "To the best of my knowlege, it has never happened", or "I know of no such examples", or "Legally, they are not allowed to", or "I have worked in the videogaming industry 20 years, and have never heard of it happening"... THOSE are legitimate answers. They state your level of knowledge and experience. Or, you could answer with some economic study which SHOWS that there has never been a cRPG that was jointly developed by 2 different studios... that would be using facts and evidence. There is a big difference between all those responses. But... on a separate note... I really AM excited to see what it is that this secret project is... because those were direct quotes from the 2 biggest head honchos at Obsidian...

I have found that sometimes it is pointless to even attempt to argue with certain people, because they are just arguing for argument's sake, and no other reason. They aren't arguing in good faith, they just want to argue. So far, it is a fact that we don't know the next project for either inXile OR Obsidian... who were both acquired by the same company. Another fact is that both inXile and Obsidian make relatively similar games, and have shared senior members at various points of their existences. Fact is that both studios previously have relied upon Kickstarters (or something along those lines) to generate money to do the types of games they love. Fact is that they have both used Unity extensively for several games... ok, maybe only 1 game for inXile. Fact is neither studio is particularly large, as video game studios go... So... I really hope we hear soon what they will both be doing. inXile is locked in until they complete WL3, so that means they probably won't be able to work on anything until late next year. Obsidian... should be "done" with Deadfire by the end of the year, effectively. That means that the probability that they even COULD work on a joint project is probably pretty low. Unless Obsidian has their next project completed before the end of next year, which sounds practically impossible. So, realistically, Obsidian goes and announces new project around Christmas. It is new IP, and something that they have wanted to do as their DREAM project, but haven't shared any information in the past because they just didn't have the money to make it. Now that they got the greenlight to do it by Microsoft, as part of their acquisition deal... they are quietly, behind the scenes, preparing all the estimates and doing the initial planning... As an example, I found a quote from someone at RPGcodex who claimed, "his dream project is a historical rpg in the veins of Darklands, with a classless system and TB combat". And from JSawyer himself... “I'm taking a break from Pillars for a while, from directing, especially, because I've been working on it for six years,” Sawyer said. “I didn't create Pillars as a dream project for myself. I created it because I felt it was important for the company as a whole to have something that we owned, and that other people could do things with. I really do believe the best part of this is I don't have to work on more Pillars games. Other people at the studio can do that. Actually, I'm excited to work on the tabletop version of Pillars because I'm going crazy with that.” And further... "Despite his preference for independence, Urquhart acknowledged the difficulties of being in charge of making sure hundreds of people had money to eat and pay their bills every month. Another immutable fact of life at Obsidian: Projects always needed funding, and there was no surefire source. “Kickstarter and Fig are great, but there's a limit to the amount of money you can get. Depending on how well you do, you're looking at two-and-a-half, three million to five or six million. That's kind of the range now. If we wanted to make an epic game, that's a thirty, four, fifty, seventy-million-dollar game. That's not coming from Fig. Where's it going to come from?” Urquhart believes Obsidian has another epic RPG—one as massive as Stormlands, if not bigger—in its future. When, not if, the time is right, he will be approaching publishers rather than crowdfunding platforms." https://www.shacknews.com/article/103473/beneath-a-starless-sky-pillars-of-eternity-and-the-infinity-engine-era-of-rpgs?page=28 Anyone want to bet on what the new game will be???? Does anyone remember Sawyer speaking about some project that he would love to do... but the stars never aligned, or it got rejected?

I will say that it used to be, if I saw a Bioware label on the game, I would buy or preorder it. ME3 was the last Bioware game that I bought, and probably the last that I will buy. As to Bethesda... who knows? After what they have done to Fallout... I won't buy anything they put out until AFTER it is out and customer reviews start coming in. So, right now, I'm waiting on WL3 and Cyberpunk 2077... and the last Deadfire DLC. Besides that, I haven't heard of any games that really spiked my interest. I really DO wonder what Obsidian has planned... because they haven't announced anything... They are almost done with the last DLC, they had to keep things under wraps because of the acquisition... but the real question remains, "What is next?" I'm guessing they will tell us AFTER the last DLC... right before Christmas? Looking through the list of Microsoft owned IP... I can't find anything that stands out. I can only assume that it is an Obsidian IP... So, that makes me very curious. I doubt that they want to make another POE game this soon after having spent so much time on the 1st, all its expansions and DLC, and now Deadfire and its DLC... Which means that it is either an original IP that we haven't seen yet, or a follow up to Alpha Protocol? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Studios#Owned_franchises_and_properties

I did "lose the narrative" when I started writing. The point that I didn't make in the original post is that both Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 received bad reviews. Fallout 4 got bad, but not TERRIBLE reviews... but people are clearly not happy with it. Fallout 76 is widely considered to be a piece of trash. The last GOOD game was F:NV... which was done by Obsidian. Mass Effect 1-3 got solid to incredibly positive reviews. The last Mass Effect game was trash. Anthem is not an RPG. So... Bethesda, a major videogame studio that specialized in and was founded in the RPG genre... now appears to have abandoned it, and has produced 2 games which are not good. Bioware, which used to be a gold-standard in RPG gaming... no longer makes RPGs either, OR good games. Hence, the post. 2 companies which historically did a very good job with RPGs... no longer make them, for all intents and purposes. Both have tried to do new types of games... and have largely failed. I HOPE that this is not what happens to Obsidian. If Obsidian follows this path... Then there will be very few studios left which are dedicated to cRPGs AND do them well. Additionally, my personal suspicions have so far been largely confirmed, where more people prefer the games that Obsidian did which were sequels to other IPs. 20 out of 34 (~60%) people have picked those games as their #1 favorite Obsidian titles. That might be proportionate to the total number of games that Obsidian has created, but it is still a significant majority. Surprisingly, my choices for #1, #2, and #3 favorite Obsidian games... are VERY close to the overall results of the poll, thus far. I picked F:NV for #1, KOTOR 2 for #2, and Deadfire for #3. This certainly doesn't mean that my views are representative of all the people on this forum, but at least so far, it looks like we have similar tastes and preferences, at least insofar as Obsidian games go. So, sorry I forgot to write explicitly about the new "Fallout" games. I thought it was implied that I did not approve of them, or have any interest in them. You Google "Fallout 76" right now and can find that No Mutants Allowed is now not the only one talking trash about Bethesda, it is the entire internet. Hell, even the gaming magazines gave it awful reviews... which means that you KNOW it is terrible. People are talking about how Bethesda might die on its Fallout 4 and 76 swords. I think that is premature and silly... but everyone does seem to be in agreement that if Bioware's Anthem fails to sell well... Bioware might go bankrupt. Let that sink in. 2 companies which have been famous for making RPGs, and have historically made great ones, might be on the verge of going bankrupt. Bioware, who used to be the absolute best videogame studio for RPGs... doesn't make them anymore and might go out of business. Between the two of them, that represents 1,200 employees... that is nearly TEN times as many employees than are at Obsidian. If Bethesda and Bioware go... who does that leave? Harebrained was bought out. Obsidian and inXile have both been bought out by Microsoft. I personally think that this is a good thing... but it might not be. Owner holds power. Owner decides what gets greenlit and what doesn't. Owner decides how much money to spend on promotion and sets timelines. At this point, the only 2 studios with good track records that appear to be financially sound... are CD Projekt Red and Larian. That is it.