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Fionavar

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  1. Fionavar

    Ghosts & Goblins & Chocolate

    By Fionavar,


    Community Blog
    This is a story about sacrifice. It is also a story about nostalgia, but more than anything, it is a story about the sacrifices gamers make.
    We travel back to a time of low pixel count and greenish screens – specifically the summer of 1992. The radio that summer would blast SNAP! Rythm Is a Dancer and my cousin and I, shortly before our 13th birthdays, were in summer camp on the German island of Norderney. 
    In the evening, after lights out, with eight kids per tent, obviously nobody slept. In our tent we did two things. Firstly, one of the boys had brought terrible horror novellas, and we read those. Over thirty years later I still have nightmares. Mostly because the story did not make sense – you can’t hide a whole labyrinth inside the walls of a bell tower! The second thing was eating chocolate and other sweets.
    And this is where this becomes a story of sacrifice. You see, the eating was predominantly done by the other six. The two of us would initiate it, but then we’d spend the night selling our stash to the others in the tent. In retrospect, we should have found a way to expand business to the other tents, but we were not even thirteen.
    There was a reason to this, which had little to do with entrepreneurial spirit. The camp organizers had permitted each kid a 50DM allowance per week for the two weeks of camp. Incidentally, as my cousin pointed out, 50DM was roughly the price of a new Game Boy game. Not eating chocolate but watching others enjoy my stash was not a choice. It was a sacrifice that only gamers will understand: others would eat so I could game.
    Everything went well. Until the very last day. It was hot. We were on our last excursion in town, killing time until we had to get the ferry. In the (heat of the) moment we decided to grab an ice cream. The worst 3,50 I ever spent. Also, one of the worst ice creams I ever had and most likely the reason why I still do not eat lemon ice cream. It almost put me off lemonade as well. An hour before we left, I dropped to 46,50.
    One, horrible tasting lemon ice cream was the reason I couldn’t pay for Gargoyle’s Quest solely through the chocolate black market.
    Mind, the entire process did turn Gargoyle’s Quest into one of my favourite games, even though it wasn’t really my thing – too dark in tone, too much jumping around spikes. In the end, the cool green daemon on the box cover turned out to be red! That was an unexpected plot twist. It highlighted something though about descriptions and plot relevance: how often do authors abuse the fact that in written format you do not have information until they give it to you? In comics, movies, and games, you see things from the start. Unless it is a greenish Game Boy screen and after hours and hours some NPC tells you: your skin is red.
    Two things I remember about Gargoyle’s Quest: how I made the money to buy it and how surprised I was finding out the protagonist was red. Also, the many spikes.
    Three things I remember about Gargoyle’s Quest: how I made the money to buy it, how surprised I was finding out the protagonist was red, the many spikes, and the gnarly trees, the inextinguishable flames, the different breath weapons…
    Among the many things I remember about Gargoyle’s Quest is that it is a game literally worth it’s weight in chocolate.
     
  2. Fionavar

    Me & Obsidian

    By Fionavar,


    Community Blog
    For a while now, I've wanted to write something about me and Obsidian. About the history, about the community, about the games. From Sith Lords and Project New Jersey up to Avowed and Outer Worlds 2.
    I've been here for 20 years. If it sounds like a long time, it's because it is. I first joined the forums on the day they opened, along with a bunch of people who had come here from the old Black Isle Community, which I was never a part of. Western RPGs were at a bit of a low ebb in 2004, especially PC ones. Bioware and Bethesda were the major RPG developers at the time, and already responsible for some of my favourite RPGs ever. However, while both Morrowind and Neverwinter Nights had a lot to offer, and I was very much looking forward to them, they ended up not quite meeting my expectations. Bloodlines came out that same year, and while great, it did not do as well as it deserved. To me, at least, it kind of felt like Obsidian would be the torchbearers for the kind of RPGs I wanted to play.
    C&C was the key design feature: Choice and consequence. Or as some of us used to say back then, "The Chosen One must choose!" I wanted games with multiple paths, where my gameplay choices affected the storyline and the world around my character. I wanted the sort of agency I felt I got in games like Fallout, Planescape Torment, or Baldur's Gate 2, but more so. I felt that the CRPG as a genre was good but could move forward and improve, and even back then I already felt that wasn't happening. With game budgets already ballooning, the trend was not to make games with loads of essentially optional content but rather to create games with very rigid critical paths, or open world games with very little gameplay depth. RPG features that I thought should be standard were falling by the wayside, instead of being improved and expanded upon.
    And that was what I often focused on when posting here on the forums.
    Or maybe not. Sometimes I did do some substantial posting, but frequently my posts were little more than short jokes, trying to get a laugh out of people. More often than not I was just lurking, perhaps silently agreeing with posters like Metadigital or Baley, while disagreeing with posters like Volourn or Hades_One. But it was without noticing that eventually the community became a part of my identity. It quickly became a daily online destination for me, a way to connect to like-minded people across the world. And it led to slowly making sort of online friends like Role-Player, Darth Drabek, or Rosbjerg, by being a part in events and side communities. I even met some forum denizens in real life, and thanks to the coming of Obsidian loot, I now go around in my everyday life with Obsidian stuff, be it a pen, a backpack or a t-shirt. My wife knows that Obsidian games are my jams, my kids sometimes used to wish they'd get gaming loot like me.
    Nowadays I don't post that often on the forums. I still lurk on a daily basis and help out a bit with stuff as time permits. What I think about, sometimes, are the people that have come and gone. People that have been around for a decade or more that I feel are still new users, users that were here for a short time but left an indelible mark. Forum posters that I cherished and enjoyed, and others who were infuriating and wrong.
    Essentially, in some ways I'm not the person I was when I joined. 20 years is a long time, I said. In the time I've been here I left a degree, went into another degree, got a job, started a career in an area I never thought I'd be in, became somewhat good at it, moved to another country, acquired a whole new family, lost my parents, learned to enjoy myself, developed a serious comic book reading habit. It's a lot and it happened without me noticing, really.
    But I'm still the same person, as well. I'm still a gamer, with a healthy focus on RPGs, I still furiously devour music and books and movies, I still have a terrible tendency to want to be right about everything, (to my own detriment "I'm right and you're wrong" brings me joy), I'm still a nerd, and I still want to finish that first degree. I also sometimes still wonder what it would be like to work at Obsidian. Even if I'm really not a fit for the company, or Irvine, or SoCal in general. Pretty sure my family would have liked it though. 
     
  3. Fionavar
    Emerald Vale is the starting area of The Outer Worlds, introducing the player to the systems and the setting. The planet belongs to the Spacer’s Choice corporation, whose colony is on the brink of collapse. After discovering the body of their expected companion and going through a basic tutorial (how to hide, talk, and shoot), the player is free to explore a large map, while the main quest gently guides the story. From the local enforcement officers to the talkative and surprisingly cooperative ship AI, to the town, and beyond. Below are some observations on combat. Obsidian games are known for their engaging writing, interactive and thought-provoking stories, and intricate and well-balanced gameplay systems (that are not based on the player’s reaction time). There are quite a few essays dedicated to these aspects. 

    Overall, the foes always fight to the death, but retreat to their area and instantly regain health if the player moves too far. The ranged human foes take cover. The melee opponents, be it animals or humans, just charge head on. When I killed two armed and armoured guards at the town entrance, the Junior Inhumer, an unarmoured civilian working nearby, whose only weapon was his shovel, continued attacking. A tutorial note helpfully informed me that the locals would forget about me shortly unless the faction reputation was “Kill on Sight.” When a non-playable character (NPC) discovers a player-made corpse, it takes them less than a minute to stop pacing and looking for the perpetrator and return to their routine. As the saying goes, “must have been the wind.” On a positive note, if the player’s character is discovered by a hostile NPC (or if the player made an NPC hostile to them), it alerts only the NPCs in the immediate area around, who could hear or see the fighting, instead of everyone on the map.

    It is worth mentioning that the shortcomings can be explained by the history of video games (in particular, first person shooters (FPS), action and role-playing games) and the designers’ assumptions about the players’ convenience - if the enemies tried to get reinforcements or flee and the player was interested in the experience points and loot from their bodies, chasing them would have been inconvenient, while the NPCs begging the player to spare their lives might cause the latter to think about their in-character motivation, and limiting NPCs’ attention span makes it harder for the player to lock themselves into combat-only scenarios. While there are 2 combat-related abilities, Cower (causes the foe to cover in fear for a few seconds) and Terrify (causes the foes to run away for a few seconds), that provide some variety of behaviour, they do not show the hostile NPCs as sentient beings with the self-preservation instinct or any social ties. With the in-game lore, it could be said that the NPCs are just very loyal to their corporations or fear the repercussions of the disobedience more than the protagonist, while on the higher difficulties, the combat might provide a significant challenge. Additionally, the lack of self-preservation fits perfectly well for the robotic foes, though they do not react strongly to corpses either. 
    The region offers some variety of non-human living opponents, though they are like actual animals visually and narratively, while, as mentioned, the behaviour strongly differs. An animal would try to avoid contact with an armed and armoured human if they could, or, otherwise, to intimidate into the human into leaving, due to the likelihood of suffering injuries and being unable to provide for themselves in the event of combat, with very few exceptions (mating season, being unable to run, seeing the human as a threat to their children). 
    In particular, canids might not look like regular fluffy dogs, but, despite the colourful scales and fins, they do resemble them, including the small ones (the teacup canids seen in the late-game areas). Many people have issues with hurting dogs in games, so it is understandable why one would want to create a dog-like hostile NPC without the negative feelings attached. Then there are sprats - cute little reptile space rats with large eyes and large ear-like appendages. I saw them escape the quarantine house in Edgewater and the guard shot them. There also were some aggressive “rabid” sprats in a house outside the town’s walls. Finally, the primals look like gorillas with fangs, but they also throw rocks (because The Outer Worlds has quite a lot of ranged weaponry for the player, every second hostile NPC must be able to shoot as well) and can dig underground tunnels. There are several areas with groups of them, but no quests attached. There are also chickens, but they are completely non-hostile. 

    Some other animals are mentioned, but not shown in Emerald Vale - mantiqueens (giant mantis-like insects) and saltune, which is related to the one instance where Spacer’s Choice is described positively (granted, I assume the writers had thought of it as negative) - the company collects the already dead fish instead of torturing and killing living fish. As mentioned by Animal Equality UK, “wild fish often live in complex social groups, they use tools, and exhibit signs of anxiety and pain. However, fish are treated like commodities by the fishing industry.” So, the fictional evil corp managed to be more sympathetic than many real ones. Then again, piles of dead sprats could be seen at the Edgewater Cannery. 
    As for human enemies, there are marauders, who are the guilt-free source of diverse combat encounters fitting for any player’s character since the marauders attack on sight. The Peril on Gorgon DLC sheds light on their origins, though in Emerald Vale, their behaviour does not quite match the narrative. They seem to form social bonds and hierarchies between each other and are able to tame and take care of their canids, who stay close to their handlers and show aggression only towards the player. In a side quest, a former worker NPC attempts to join the marauders’ ranks and she is not harmed by the ones around her. The marauders also are capable of planning - they laid mines around their encampment and near the back entrance to the abandoned Community Centre. Though, when the combat started, they charged right on their own mines with predictable results, then retreated when I moved slightly farther away from their camp. 
    In terms of locations, the foes around story-significant structures are usually distributed thoughtfully and account for the more stealthy and less murderous players’ characters, while also interacting with the environment (e.g. the marauders looking at desks or sitting on chairs). On the other hand, most of the other enemies look as intentionally placed as the randomly generated camps in Dragon Age: Inquisition. 
    In conclusion, I believe that making the NPC combat-related behaviour more realistic and diverse, while also considering the location, would increase the players’ immersion and engagement. Let the animals flee and the civilians alert the guards or just run for cover or try to surrender. The next Obsidian game, Avowed, takes place in the same universe as the Pillars of Eternity duology and has the first-person camera view like The Outer Worlds. I have heard that combat there will be unavoidable, but I hope for more complex and intelligent NPC actions. 
    But there is another crucial technical quality of The Outer Worlds, which I would love to see in Avowed - the edition with the higher system requirements, Spacer’s Choice Edition, was cleanly separated from the base one and I was able to keep the better performing and more accessible version of the game. I would not be able to notice the 4K textures and Global Illumination nor to run the game with them on, so saving the storage space, bandwidth, and power, while enjoying the game, was most welcome. It would be great if Avowed had the VA and the 4K textures in an optional free DLC, available for the players who want it and not forced upon those who cannot use it. 
     
     
     
     
  4. Fionavar

    We are What We Play

    By Fionavar,


    Community Blog
    I believe, somewhere in our hearts, we are what we play. We don’t become angry half orcs slaughtering villagers or bold knights fighting for justice, but those ideas become part of our person. They swirl around in our heads like swarms of butterflies. I have been formed as much by games as I have by the events in my life.
    I played games as a child. Recess had tag, dodge ball, and kickball. At home, we would play the occasional board game. It wasn’t until my mom received the original grey Dungeons and Dragons boxed set as a gift in 1978 that games became a peculiar focus in my life. I was only nine years old at the time. I didn’t understand every word, but I understood enough to know I wanted to play. Wanting and doing are two different things and my nine-year-old self could not grasp every concept. That didn’t stop me from valiantly trying to construct modules. No one else had much interest and so I would fashion what, to my mind, were elaborate maps and imagined encounters for players who did not exist. Sometimes the idea of the game is as entertaining as the game itself. Sometimes, I think, the idea of the game *is* the game.
    In 1981, after I returned from Guam, my eldest brother brought over an Atari 800. Magic! Two-word text adventures were simply brilliant! Unlike my experiences living on a tropical island, there were plenty of kids in California who wanted to play games like Dungeons and Dragons and some of my friends would also come over to my house to play computer games. If solitary play fueled my imagination, including other players forced me to put that imagination to practical use in a game setting. Sharing a computer meant one person could be at the keyboard while the other one or two would be forced to stand in back yelling comments or barking orders.
    As I grew into my teens, Dungeons and Dragons became central to my life. I would hunt out modules to play with friends or, more often, simply read and imagine playing. There wasn’t enough time to play everything. One of my best friends liked to play, but his mother, a staunch evangelical Christian, was convinced that Dungeons and Dragons was Satanic, so we played Gamma World. However, soon after, her pastor proclaimed all RPGs were Satanic and it was difficult for him to play. I loved his mom, and she was very kind to me, but she gently explained that I should enjoy my life on earth because, as a Catholic, I was bound for hell. …And she was certain RPGs corrupted young minds! Lol
    Alas, I’d started drinking and smoking at 12 years old and much of my time was spent in callow and self-destructive behavior. If only the pull of games had been stronger, it may be that I would have been a much more useful member of society earlier in my life, but I was not. Turns out games hadn’t corrupted me, but I was still corrupted. The fault, as always, was my own.
    I was 17 when I graduated from high school and immediately joined the United States Navy. Far from being rare, it turned out a lot of my fellow sailors were gamers. I often wonder if I would have had even more chance to game if I’d been stationed on a ship. Not a lot of chance for other things shipboard. I was always land based, however, and mostly overseas. We did have some great computer games. One of my fellows overseas, an army grunt if I remember correctly, would use such creative names as Prelf for his elven priest and Dwight for his dwarven fighter. : Eldar’s shaking his head with a bemused smile icon : As it seems, some of us didn’t have our imaginations enriched by gaming, but what some lacked in imagination they returned back with practicality. Same manual, different lesson.
    When I returned home, basically bummed out and aimless, I wandered around a lot. I’ve had a variety of jobs ranging, in no particular order, from cashier to human resources for Longs Drugs, meter reader for the gas company, teacher at a parochial school, wedding photography salesman on the Las Vegas Strip, quality assurance for a video game, security guard, and registered nurse with a couple of others I’m probably forgetting. I’m currently a nurse practitioner. I’m done floating around in the ether, so this one is going to be my last. As you can tell, gaming has been more consistent than employment for me.
    Like a lot of gamers my age, there are particular computer games that were fundamental in my developing tastes. Zork would probably be the first and foremost. Fallout and Baldur’s Gate, of course. It’s now that I invoke Planescape Torment. What words exist that have not been said of PST, good, bad, or somewhere between? I won’t add to them here. It is for me what it is. I love the game.
    As an aside, my wife loved this T.V. show during the 1990s called The Pretender. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but just this year my wife found it again on some streaming service and we discovered the main character did the voice work for The Nameless One.
    During all this time, talking about games has been as important as playing them. I’ve spent considerably more time discussing PST than playing it. Same for all of my favorite games.
    I became part of the online community at Black Isle Studios and eventually, a bit before the place folded, I was a moderator. Sadly, I can’t remember the names of all the people there. One of the moderators at that time left a message on my answering machine, playing his guitar and singing a song. I don’t remember who it was, but I remember the song. That was some point after I’d dropped off the face of the earth for months. Being someone with a number of character flaws, I’m a bit of a wanderer by nature. As they say, I’m constantly pushing people away with one hand and pulling them closer with the other.
    Eventually, since everything was quickly going to a fire sale at Interplay, I signed up as a community member at Obsidian. I want to address particular Obsidian games since this is the Obsidian board and I’ve loved a number of Obsidian titles. I’m currently hundreds of hours into Grounded, for instance. I’ve spent thousands of hours enjoying Obsidian games, but I can’t go on without owning to a past of which I am ashamed.
    I don’t know who all is at Obsidian at this time. I sent word asking someone there to help me find work and he arranged to have me do quality assurance on Mask of the Betrayer. I tried my best to do a good job, but I was an utter failure. My personality defects were simply too great to put in quality work. I refuse to submit anything here without giving a nakedly truthful account.
    Ironically, Mask of the Betrayer was an excellent title. The story, the unfolding of every element, was so well done I always believed it should have been a stand-alone title outside of NWN2.
    After I worked on Mask of the Betrayer, I was bereft of hope. Not because of my work on MotB, but because it threw into stark relief how lacking in distinction I was as a human. I realized, with my degrees in history and classical studies, with my wife and varied job experiences, that I had done nothing to justify my existence, let alone distinguish it. I fell into abject despair and rarely left my house. I gained weight and eventually weighed over 400lbs. Even so, in all this, I gamed. Games were the last frayed strand of a rope to which I clung, and my grasp was starting to fail.
    The point of this isn’t my sad state. I have a private blog that serves perfectly well in order to flog myself. My point is that, in a pinch, I had games. Maybe you’ve all heard the story of the man who is falling from a cliff, clenching the roots of a tree. Looming on the cliff above, there is a ferocious tiger. Below him lie jagged rocks in the distance. The man, desperate and despairing, sees a berry on a bush growing from the side of the cliff. He takes the berry and eats it. Savoring the flavor, he thinks to himself, “I have tasted no berry sweeter than this.” Games.
    I’m clearly in a much better place now. I’m a professional and I help people in my practice. …But games.
    New Vegas. Pillars of Eternity 2. Mask of the Betrayer. Masterpieces.
    I have tasted no berries sweeter than these.
  5. Fionavar

    My Gaming Journey

    By Fionavar,


    Community Blog
    "Where did it start? How did it start? These are questions I asked myself when I made this post. The question being “my love of fantasy and fantasy RPG PC games? And why not Sci-fi, why fantasy as my favourite genre?"
    For me it was the late 1970’s, I was young and don’t remember much but I do remember my dad reading to us Enid Blyton’s “The Magic Faraway Tree” and that’s where it started.
    I was absolutely enthralled and mesmerized by this idea of a tree and portals that led to incredible and fantastic lands. You never knew what creatures they were going to meet or what place they were going to discover and my love for fantasy only grew from there.
    In the 1980s I also started collecting comics with Conan being my favourite and to this day I still RP my characters in RPG on Conan’s personality and world views. Basically, Chaotic Good but someone who helps the downtrodden, wanting wealth and never saying NO to a damsel in distress.
    It was also in the 1980’s where I started playing the very popular and loved Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone books and I was given my first D&D Red Box ruleset with that indelible image of a fighter and   dragon and a new world opened up to me. The world of tabletop RPG. I still consider D&D ruleset and the various D&D fantasy worlds my overall favourite because that’s where my journey on RPG really started.
    Due to Apartheid sanctions, we had limited access to general fantasy paraphernalia and goods, but my dad was an investment banker and he travelled 3-4 times a year to the UK and sometimes the US and he would buy us things we couldn’t get in South Africa.
    But we were generally behind in IT and the advancement and creation of the PC, and this included Internet access and connectivity speeds. I used to read Dragon magazine and they had these adverts and stories about games called Ultima, Wizardry and Might and Magic and I always wondered “it looks and sounds amazing … imagine an RPG on a computer.”
    But in the late 1980’s that started ending because Apartheid was ending and suddenly people had PC at their homes and that meant PC gaming was also coming to South Africa.
    And in 1989 at my uncle’s house was the first time I saw a PC game and it was one of the classic Sierra games, Kings Quest 1. The PC had monochrome graphics and was incredibly basic, but I still was blown away by the concepts and how you needed to type actions to advance the game like “open door” or “push witch into fire “ 😀 . It was a life changing experience and my love, enjoyment and passion for PC gaming never ended from that moment like my love of general fantasy.
    I stopped gaming from 1995-2007 because of RL responsibilities and I was travelling overseas a lot, but I bought my first real gaming machine in 2007 and PC gaming has been an active hobby of mine since then.
    I play many different genres like action or RTS games, but fantasy RPG are still my preferred choice and it’s because of my childhood connection to the Magic Faraway Tree books. The idea of what waits behind that door, what lives in that ancient temple, what strange beasts await me are still the most exciting design themes of RPG that I treasure and appreciate.
    And Obsidian has created many games that align with my core expectations of what I want to experience in playing any RPG.
    These 3 Obsidian games are all in my top 10 of “best RPG of all time “and it’s tough to think of a top 10 or 20 list because there are so many excellent games out there. Lots of competition which is a good thing for gaming. 
    NWN2: MoB: Brilliant D&D setting with an exciting and fascinating narrative that takes you on this epic journey to the Planes with memorable and interesting characters and companions. I love the entire NWN2 series, but this expansion was my favourite with the whole Spirit Eater curse and then the choices you need to make about the Wall of Faithless
    Fallout:NV: It’s my favourite third person\first person Fallout game outside the first 2 isometric games. I love open world and sandbox games and I like the concept of exploring anywhere you want and F:NV provides that reality. I had the single most appreciated moment in F:NV and that is the most appreciated of any game I have ever played.
    To get to NV I didn’t go directly and went through small regions and areas of interest, and I remember I reached a point where I was wounded with no ammunition, and I was being chased by brutal and indefatigable Deathclaws. I had a sniper companion who bravely stood his ground and died while I fled. But the Deathclaws continued to pursue me, and it was night and then I went around a corner and saw something … incredible bright lights on the horizon. I had reached NV finally and I was saved.
    I have never been so relieved in any game to find my destination as that single experience.
    PoE2: I thought Obsidian created a fun and worthy alternative to standard D&D ruleset and the whole PoE mechanics worked for me. I thoroughly enjoyed the overarching and depth of the narrative, the lore of the game world, the companions were interesting, and I appreciated the whole naval exploration of islands and open world design PoE2 created.
    So, in closing its easy to support Obsidian and love their games because Obsidian is not just a name of a company, it’s a world-builder and creator of so many games that resonate with me and the mystery and allure of The Magic Faraway Tree from my childhood.
  6. Fionavar
    Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire is a computer/classic roleplaying game (CRPG), which explores the topics of personal freedom and responsibility, religion, and colonialism. The story takes place in the (fictional, but it is obvious) Deadfire archipelago, where several local and foreign factions stand in uneasy peace, while the protagonist follows a reborn god (who destroyed their very nice castle during his rebirth) to save their soul. The game was unique in many aspects, most importantly, in supporting the player's agency and acknowledging their choices, and some admirable design decisions, such as not rewarding murdering random non-playable characters without an in-character reason (quest) and the critical path (the main story) being of reasonable length. Then, in one of the last updates, the Blackwood Hull, required for it, was moved from the shipyard at the capital, broken into 5 pieces, and these pieces scattered at random places, thus, successfully decreasing the immersion and securing another sale on GOG, which allowed to rollback the update almost painlessly (installing and uninstalling GOG Galaxy while downloading the game twice was not the most positive experience, but it worked). Keeping the 51GB around was less painless, but absolutely worth it. 
    Usually in video games, the final part where the player and/or the party are proficient with the technical aspects of the gameplay systems and have completed most of the story, thus, being invested in both, consists of several hours of story-free battles, which, on one hand, allow to utilise the most powerful equipment and skills the player has. On the other, these long battle sequences are predictable, boring, and do not exactly serve the narrative.
    In terms of the in-game lore, Ukaizo was the lost birthplace of the local people, the Huana, which also was the final destination of Eothas, whom the player's party was pursuing throughout the story, and the target of the factions vying for the control over the Deadfire archipelago and its resources. Therefore, it would be expected for the island to be mechanically similar to the end-game locations from other CPRGs, including the first Pillars of Eternity (fortunately, as far as I remember, Obsidian did not go overboard there either).

    The level and narrative design of Ukaizo was impressive in general and in the context of CPRGs - while it featured one avoidable (blessed be the Bounding Boots) token boss battle with a unique foe that had little to no bearing on the story (the Guardian did provide some lore), the encounter with Eothas was never meant to be combat, due to him inhabiting a giant adra (soul-sucking-rock) statue from the practical point of view (granted, a few well-shot explosives could have solved it), and because I wanted to see him taking down the creatures that were much worse than he was, which made travelling to Ukaizo in the first place rather out of character, but the quest journal pointed there and, as a player, I wanted to know the outcomes of my actions. It also was very convenient to replay, considering the number of expansions, with all of them taking place in the story before visiting Ukaizo. 
    Another boss battle at Ukaizo was against a leader (I think there were several for each option) of a non-chosen faction. For some reason, despite me not compromising my moral high ground for any of them, it usually was the Royal Deadfire Company of the Kingdom of Rauatai, with Hazanui Karū as the boss. Possibly, it was because of Atsura, who was definitely not a spy, giving me the opportunity to decrease the number of their employees without negative consequences. The point being is that the presence of this battle highlighted another essential aspect of the story - the relationships with the factions, where each of them was reasonable enough not to be killed on sight, unlike, for example, the Legion in Fallout: New Vegas or the Systems Alliance in Mass Effect (not an Obsidian game, and the damn faction was impossible to leave, while the game itself was extremely pro-military).
    And, most importantly, there were dialogues with the companions on the way to Eothas, reflecting the bonds built with the party. It also was great that the romantic interest did not lessen or overshadow the friendships with the other party members, while the fact that all of the possible romances were bisexual successfully avoided cis-heteronormativity and made the story more immersive and engaging for the LGBTQ+ gamers.
    Thus, Ukaizo defied the combat-first (not an unjustified approach, since providing a satisfying and  interactive combat system, while still challenging, is significantly easier than satisfying and interactive dialogues) aspect of many CPRGs where the last location is a long mind-numbing gauntlet of battles and the boss, whom you have come to kill anyway, monologuing for an hour - the dialogues with both bosses and Eothas were skippable and/or possible to minimise. I also loved how in PoE1 it was possible to kill Thaos without listening to him, since the information you needed was much more satisfying to take from his corpse.
    I see Obsidian as one of the best RPG developers whose games I have played. I think it is important to explore the conventions and subvert the expectations of the genre in order to make more unique and memorable art, while supporting it being sustainable (system requirements and development costs), accessible (fully rebindable controls and saving at will), inclusive, and DRM-free, because video games are both art and a product and it is crucial to acknowledge and support both of these aspects.  
     
  7. Fionavar

    Life of a Gamer

    By Fionavar,


    Community Blog
    Since this is a "history" post, I'll start with the oldest stuff first and work my way towards the current time, here and now on the Obsidian boards 😊
    I often deny having owned a gaming console and that is technically correct. But... long unrelated story, I grew up with relatives who were "junkies" (heroin addicts) and they would often rob stores and homes for things to sell for mere pittances at times to finance their addiction. One day, the oldest showed up at my parents place (my mother, for reasons, had become their legal guardian) with a Pong gaming console they had stolen somewhere and no fence would take it off their hands. The original Pong console was among my first video gaming experience in the mid 70's. It was my parents though, not mine.
    (I would have loved to put an image of the console here, but I honestly do not remember what it looked like 50 years ago)
    Other sources of video gaming at the time was the arcade machines a various convenience stores and grill bars. Some were electronic, some were part mechanical, part electronic. I particularly remember a "Duck Hunt" game, where several layers of glass were used to create the sense of depth and a single glass plate was used to reflect a flying duck from a TV screen hidden out of sight. The shotgun was mounted to a stick that was effectively a big joystick. No fancy electronics at all. Other places had more modern games like Galaxy Invaders... I spent a fortune in coins on those machines.
    Jump forwards almost a decade, 1983
    I was convinced I was going to end up studying biology after high school... until my dad came home with three page advertising pamphlet for the Commodore 64. It was so colourful and impressive looking. It used an elephant to symbolize the humongous memory it had (even though only 38k turned out to be available to the user in the end). I managed to raise the money for my machine of dreams as well as the associated tape recorder and two games. A game on tape called "Beach Head" and a cartridge called "International Soccer". First two games I ever bought with my own money. Never mind that programming the C64 got me hooked on software development and an impromptu career change, the games changed my life too, spending much of my free time playing games on the old "Bread Box" (Danish nick name for the C64).

    US Gold was a major publisher int he 80's and the football game? It took almost 10 years before a better game of its kind came out.

    Another decade later
    I raised the money for a Commodore Amiga 4000 and a hard drive. Gaming now became almost an art form. Bear in mind, in the early 90's, the Amiga completely outperformed contemporary desktop PC's, with the latters CGA graphics and built in tweeter for sound. Never mind the operating system, where MS only caught up with Windows 8 or thereabouts. But the games... sooo many, soo good.
    On the C64, I developed a love for strategy games and role playing games. SSI gold games, the Ultimas etc. were not just nostalgia, they were state of the art as each individual title came out. So many strategy games too, it was like paradise for a gamer like me.
    The Amiga added better graphics and real music to many titles. And they just kept coming for the next decade. This is where I almost get to the point...
    (skipping a list featuring literally a decade and hundreds of Amiga games here)
    Some of the newer PC games in the late 1990’s looked interesting and I could run them on a PC Emulator. One title in particular stunned with its atmosphere (because I'm a child of the Cold War and the end of the worlds was always present), the demo for a game called "Fallout" had me completely hooked. I bought the full game and... it didn't want to run on my PC emulator (even though the official demo did).

    Life as a PC gamer
    Building myself a PC, my first gaming experiences on it was Interplay’s Fallout. More games followed and Fallout together with the first Tomb Raider were my standout memories from the late 90's. Then I ran into a game from the now established Black Isle Studio called Baldurs Gate 2 (yes, I missed the first one) and I spent the next 12 months, day and night playing the heck out of that game, to the detriment of the rest of my life pretty much. Fallout 2 happened, I ended up buying Baldurs Gate 1 too, completing it a few times, nothing like the time I invested in BG2 though. Still, I took note of the name Bioware as well as Black Isle.
    That thing called Obsidian
    I was active on the internet too at the time, but I had little interest in this thing called "Forums" (some newfangled sofware that was probably going to die out in a year or two, so why bother?). Usenet was where things happened and many discussion groups (especially the alt groups like alt.games.interplay) were completely unmoderated. Calling it the wild west is being nice to it.
    Usenet died the slow death of entropy and forums stayed. By the time I had convinced myself to join the Interplay forums, Interplay de facto folded. At least, it ceased to exist as the Interplay I knew. That's when I heard about this "successor company" called Obsidian Entertainment which had plans for opening up a forum. Still not the fastest tool in the shed, it took me a fortnight to sign up. Despite being somewhat of a troll at times and getting into fistfights at times, I ended up as a moderator. Much to my own surprise honestly. I suppose the thinking at the time was something along the lines of using a troll to catch a troll.
    The discussion subject at the time was "Project Delaware", resulting on all sorts of crazy speculations and wishful thinking (and doom saying). Knights of the Old Republic 2 arrived and... good game with awful ending is the best way I can summarize it.

    An understatement of course, as the ending was completely missing for various reason...
    Neverwinter Nights 2 followed and was slightly less buggy the Kotor2 had been, but not flawless. The DLC's however...
    Mask of the Betrayer in particular brings back fond memories of a game I might not otherwise remember.
    The Sequel Maker
    Obsidian was developing a reputation of making buggy sequels to Bioware games that were all 132% perfect... at least if you were to believe the most critical voices. Of course, there is a lot more to how such thing happen, but gamers are a weird bunch, often prone to tunnel vision and confirmation bias, congregating towards echo chambers. Especially when it comes to likes and dislikes of games.
    Fallout New Vegas managed the impossible, convince a lot of people that Obsidian could actually make great games, that weren't necessarily direct sequels to existing games. It is probably also the only Obsidian game I feel like coming back to again and again, despite it's age. I know Outer Worlds offers a lot corporate humour and a feeling of living in dystopia, but something about the post nuclear setting just strikes a nerve because of my age (growing up during the cold war, expecting the end of the world every day). Playing through scenarios where humanity survives said war feels good I suppose?

    Still here 
    Obsidian is no longer known in the business as the "buggy sequel" maker, but as a world builder, story creator and the maker of interesting characters.

    Like Obsidian, I’m still here.
    Still enjoying video games 40+ years later, still having a preference for crpg's and turn based strategy games. There are many more Obsidian games I could mention (take a look at the forum!) and would have loved to spend time on, but those are the ones that stuck out for me...
    -Gorth
     
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