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Posts posted by Fionavar
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I'm visiting OBS this week - which is most wonderful :). So, Saturday included a run along the beach in Newport. This is always an interesting journey to see the diversity of the sand denizens. From sparkly sequins to electric boarders to those who shine in non-conformity ... kind of reminds me of The Outer Worlds each visit
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Doing another play through of KOTOR II ...
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9 minutes ago, glowingskies97 said:
Thank you for reaching out and responding
You are most welcome. Sorry for the downtime - hopefully everyone can return to the backyard soon
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Thanks for this. This is a known issue and will hopefully have an update shortly.
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Thanks for this. This is a known issue and will hopefully have an update shortly.
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Thanks for this. This is a known issue and will hopefully have an update shortly.
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Hi kanisatha,
I will pass that on. The set of questions were reviewed prior to submission and finalisation in order to be able to pass on what could be short-listed. I will follow-up should there be a possibility in addressing your encouragement.
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Thanks to everyone who participated. Below you will find the Top Three Dev Questions, community member contributor, and a Dev's subsequent reply. Happy 20th Obsidian!
Q: I've seen that there is someone who's head of XBox research for Obsidian. How do the developers work with that person and their team? What are the kind of things that Obsidian can ask them/they bring to Obsidian? (Question submitted by Sannom)
QuoteA: We work with the Xbox Research Team - it's not just one person, we've worked with a few folks over the years and have dedicated people at Xbox Research for Obsidian games. Research helps to answer questions about how players play our games to improve the experience by providing their expertise in gathering and providing data through surveys or playtests. The playtests identify pain points in user interface design, analyze difficulty, and uncover if the tutorial is not teaching an essential mechanic properly. If something isn't landing as well as we hope, they offer solutions to explore and try. At a higher level, they can help gather data about what fans like about Obsidian games, aid in marketing and trailers, and even were essential in the creation of the Arachnophobia mode in Grounded. It's been great working with that team to make our game experiences better.
- Adam Brennecke (Director of Grounded)
Q: Are we ever likely to see a similar complexity of choice and consequences as done in Alpha Protocol in any future games? Or was the combined reactivity of conversations, character attitudes, the timing of when and where you met characters and mission choices too stressful, frustrating, and convoluted for testing and story writing to revisit that approach? (Question submitted by Raithe)
QuoteA: Obsidian has on several occasions looked into doing an Alpha Protocol 2 but has never gotten the opportunity. However, if we were to do it we’d pursue the same complexity and depth of player choice and its reactivity with story and characters. Which is my roundabout way of saying that if the correct game idea came along, be it AP2 or some other similar project, we’d be down to get that crazy again. It was convoluted and stressful and difficult to test, but most games are, and the end product was a super cool and a highly unique experience. I think maybe we’d put less love into the insanely extreme, unlikely outcomes (the kind our level designers wouldn’t have even knew existed if they did read the scripts) but I think we’d make it deeper and more rewarding in other ways.
The tricky part is that for all its complexity, in AP there is only just one Michael Thorton – and while it’s up to the player to truly build their own MT – he is limited in many ways. The world also consists of essentially one-off, largely linear missions, and conversations and characters are highly constrained. I won’t dive too deeply on the topic, but generally speaking, that’s a huge trade off in terms of complexity when compared to our other heavily choice and consequence based games. Those games typically allow some level of character generation and bigger broader complexity in terms of factions, NPCs, and quests, etc. These are different kinds of complexity and, at least for Obsidian, we know we can’t do both at the quality level we’d want or we’ll get ourselves in a scope-hole we can’t fill.
So yes we’d love to do another game like AP, but to do it and do it well we’d need to make a game that was much more similar to AP’s experience and less like Fallout: New Vegas or The Outer Worlds. Is that a concept we can sell? Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to since Alpha Protocol but that hasn’t stopped us from trying.
- Chris Parker (Co-Founder)
Q: You guys obviously do a lot of research on your games, given how detailed and plausible your worlds are so that even little things stick in memory, like rings considered to be tacky to use as jewelry in Tyranny or yacht's name in Alpha Protocol being a reference to cult soviet cartoon, and it's clearly more than "lets google this sh†t", so here's my question - how do you do your research? (Question submitted by bugarup)
QuoteA: Research depends on the person, but we use books, YouTube videos, academic articles on JSTOR, and even employ experts/specialists (as we did for Pentiment) when we just can’t find the answers ourselves. We know that if we get something wrong, tens of thousands of fans will let us know, so it’s in our best interest to be diligent.
- Josh Sawyer (Studio Design Director)
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We are collating winners and look forward to being in contact with those who have reached the Top Three!
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We are collating winners and look forward to being in contact with those who have reached the Top Three!
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It's closing time ... we'll follow-up with winners shortly. Thanks to all who have contributed!
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It's closing time ... we'll follow-up with winners shortly. Thanks to all who have contributed!
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17 hours ago, Ordo! said:
I don't know if we can ask questions about a specific Obsidian's game or if we need to be more general ?
You can ask whatever you want ... what excites you to imagine knowing more about?
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The Announcement is now on every landing page at the top - does this help?
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Okay trolls, denizens and gecklings, it's Obsidian's 20th anniversary and we're rolling out two new events to mark this amazing milestone! In this one, we invite you to create a meme based on the themes below. Submit them here in this thread. The Squad will then discern the top three after the event closes July 3rd. Gifts from Admin will then be rewarded to the winners of the 20th Anniversary Forum Event: Top 3 Memes.
Alpha Protocol Spies, spies never change … Armored Warfare (up until Beta) M-kills never change … Dungeon Siege III What happens in the dungeon, stays in the dungeon … Fallout New Vegas War, war never changes … Grounded What happens in the backyard, stays in the backyard … Knights of the Old Republilc II Jedi, Jedi never change … Neverwinter Nights II What happens in the Realms, stays in the Realms … Pathfinder Adventures What happens on your phone, stays on your phone … Pentiment What happens in the abbey, stays in the abbey … Pillars of Eternity Your party, your party never changes … Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire What happens in the hold, stays in the hold … South Park: The Stick of Truth What happens in the suburbs, stays in the suburbs … The Outer Worlds Corporations, corporations never change … Tyranny What happens in the spire, stays in the spire … -
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Okay trolls, denizens and gecklings, it's Obsidian's 20th anniversary and we're rolling out two new events to mark this amazing milestone! In this one, we invite you to submit the burning questions you have for Obsidian and its Devs! The Squad will then discern the top three after the event closes July 3rd. Gifts from Admin will then be rewarded to the winners of the 20th Anniversary Forum Event: Top 3 Dev Questions.
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We are aware of players not being able to log into the MP on Steam. There was an issue with an earlier Steam Update that caused this, and they have since released a new version. Please make sure your Steam is up to date and try to login again. If that doesn't work please let us know and we'll work with you to investigate this issue.
Thanks
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We are aware of players not being able to log into the MP on Steam. There was an issue with an earlier Steam Update that caused this, and they have since released a new version. Please make sure your Steam is up to date and try to login again. If that doesn't work please let us know and we'll work with you to investigate this issue.
Thanks.
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Anyone have a lead where one might acquire all six of the modules at a price that would not cost me an organ ... or two? This would be US/CAN source, the latter would be preferable
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On 3/21/2023 at 8:05 AM, Spider said:
Whenever a video is listed in a post, I only get the black image and message that I need to accept social media cookies. I've had them accepted in the past, but for some reason no longer. However the manage cookies link does nothing when clicked. This is both the one in the post itself and the one in the site footer.
I've tried with both Chrome and Firefox, with same result.
Also wondering if you have tried using Incognito/Private Window if the cookie/cache clearing does not work as per @SChin suggestion
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1 hour ago, Gfted1 said:
My wife, rightfully, shot down the idea. We have a laundry list of things that take priority over a new couch; new skylights, finish paining the house, maybe some new bamboo flooring, and the washing machine start button is a little janky.
Fair enough ... did you see one you wanted, nonetheless or was looking even cancelled?
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On 3/19/2023 at 6:33 AM, Gfted1 said:
Its going to be a GLORIOUS day in Chicago today! Sunny blue skies and temps in the high 40's! w00t. Thinking about going shopping for a new couch.
Well?
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Winter is tenaciously holding on here. We are at least 3 weeks behind where normal temps should be. At one point we were 20x colder than the norm! Today milder and I watching snow lazily float downward before taking the hound for a run ...
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Prepping for an offline day of work tomorrow. Hope to get some writing pieces done that are next to impossible to do without carving out time offline
What You've Done Today - We do not remember days, we remember moments
in Way Off-Topic
Posted
Lovely! On our wedding night, in a lake side resort, a wee mouse got stuck in the garbage can and woke us on our first night. I quietly let it go and hope the owls did not see it suddenly running free