A Special Announcement From Obsidian

[Bokishi]

We gonna be force moved to Xbox forums now?

[SonicMage117]

We gonna be force moved to Xbox forums now?

It's quite possible, members of the forum stating their disappointment with the buyout and sieze of support certainly leaves little reason for Micr0bsidian to care about leaving the forums here up, or finding any reason to anyway.

 

If it takes money to keep a forum up, well, right now they're basically paying for internet randoms to tell them how dangerous Microsoft is, and other things that they couldn't care less about. I wouldn't blame them or Microsoft for making the call as we as a community are just dead weight right now, a nagging wife at the ankle of Obsidian's heel. Desperation has an ugly face and we are getting uglier by the second

Edited November 12, 2018 by SonicMage117

[HoonDing]

FreeCell 2020 by Obsidian.

[Malcador]

Msybe they can make a sequel AP, their greatest game

[Uburian]

Even the hardest stones break down eventually under the unrelenting tide.

 

As an artist and creator, it has always been saddening for me to watch great independent developers being swallowed by big corporations, i could even say that at this point i'm getting used to it, but in this case, it is really gut wrenching. 

 

I Will always remember the people of Obsidian for creating some of the best stories, characters and adventures that i have experienced in my gaming life. They have proved multiple times with their hard work, at least for me, that video games can be way more than mere pieces of entertainment, while still being enjoyed by a wide audience. That defiance against mediocrity, their audacity to try to create truly interesting stories that are not afraid of themselves, is what i respected the most about the company. Their games might not have been perfect, but they had character and soul (no pun intended), things severely laking in todays media.

 

If anything, Obsidian's story should serve us as a reminder of the many perils that surround independent artistic and cultural creation (a reality that i personally understand very well), as well as of the value of said independent creation, essential for the wellbeing of culture and society as a whole.

 

Regarding the future of what now is a new subsidiary of Microsoft, i can only hope that things turn out better than i expect them to, both for the company and Obsidian fans alike.

 

Good luck to the developers.

[esyvjrt]

M oving from GoG to Torrent

[floyd ryan]

Just don't become the next Bioware. Other than that, congrats! 

[Vaeliorin]

Not really sure how to feel about this until I see what Obsidian is putting out 2-3 years down the line.  Pretty certain I won't be buying a console, and have never used the Windows Store, so I don't really have an opinion on that.

 

Hopefully it doesn't destroy the company, the forums, or what I liked about their games.

[quadphonics]

 Well looks like I won't be touching another obsidian game for as long as I live now that Microsoft is bought the company cuz honestly Microsoft is a s*** company wouldn't touch them with the f****** 10FT POLE looks like RPGs isometric as we know it pretty much s*** the bed and will not be existing much longer obsidian you were very f****** stupid in allowing this to happen and unfortunately you'll be losing a s*** ton of customers including myself.

[SonicMage117]

LOL

 

They'll lose thousands of loyal customers and gain hundreds of thousands of loyal customers (if not millions). They're not worried about losing anyone here who calls themselves a faithful customer because they'll be making tons more money from making games on Xbox, that doesn't make the games bad either, just not the cup if tea which the forumites here care to play.

[Chairchucker]

 Well looks like I won't be touching another obsidian game for as long as I live now that Microsoft is bought the company cuz honestly Microsoft is a s*** company wouldn't touch them with the f****** 10FT POLE looks like RPGs isometric as we know it pretty much s*** the bed and will not be existing much longer obsidian you were very f****** stupid in allowing this to happen and unfortunately you'll be losing a s*** ton of customers including myself.

I suspect that if they had that amount of customers, they wouldn't have been in the financial situation where this was a necessary move.

[Woolie Wool]

Is anyone really surprised? The first thing I thought when it finally dawned on me how huge Pillars of Eternity II was, was "There is no way they could have possibly made money on this." The fans wanted bigger, the fans wanted better, and Obsidian gave the fans, including myself, exactly what we wanted. The biggest, baddest, most complicatedest Infinity-style RPG ever. A game nobody but us wanted.

 

PoE2 is huge, huge, huge. I'm 30 hours in and I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of it. I ignored all the backer updates I received after pledging because I didn't want to know anything going in, and the sheer enormity of it blew me away. This feels almost Skyrimian in its breadth and content-richness, and that costs a huge amount of money, while drawing the potential length well past 150 hours and exacerbating the reputation that large CRPGs have of being scary and overbearing, which is further exacerbated by the fact that Obsidian have to tolerate RPGCodex and their legions of trolls, Trump cultists, and white supremacists because they donate and nobody outside the CRPG community was ever going to give a **** about this game. This is a game that was made for us, and only us. Made according to the specifications of a crowdfunding campaign that sold us our every desire, with little backer content bits to reflect our own vanity back at us. It turns out Infinity Engine/PoE nerds are (a) not even close to numerous enough to fund the promised game, and (b) unwilling to compromise for the sake of "casuals". I mean, that was the whole point of this whole crowdfunding thing, right? To make games that the fans want and make a profit? Funny, it looks we forgot that whole "making a profit" bit somewhere.

 

 

And for a focused, linear, and above all modest game like the first Pillars of Eternity. But now we've "made it", we showed those AAAs and we're going to make a game that will blow everyone away. But we instead we got a baroque game, a niche product with a big-boy budget. It doesn't matter whose fault it is or which games journalism conspiracy is true or salacious rumors that would fail a difficulty 2 Bluff check. Pillars of Eternity II is a game too expensive to fund on the backs of CRPG nerds but seldom considers the needs and wishes of people who aren't CRPG nerds, except when it does the job so poorly it actually makes the problem worse. Let's talk about the mechanics.

 

For all its attempts to be fair and balanced and not screw you over for bad build decisions, the sheer number of mechanics and status effects and stats and systems makes the Infinity Engine look sleek and streamlined, if not exactly elegant. Not to mention that a lot of the people who played Baldur's Gate also played Dungeons and Dragons (which was huge at the time), while the people going into PoE2 have no such luxury. The micro-balancing with all the soft counters and clever trickery makes it more difficult to play on a truly expert level than an Infinity Engine game, so Easy and Classic are mushy and dumbed-down and basically let you coast, while the harder difficulties require you to learn far more obscure rules, some of which are virtually undocumented, than someone throwing themselves upon the rocks of Baldur's Gate 1 for the first time. However, the system is also less exploitable than the Infinity Engine, so there is also less reward for putting in above the minimum effort. So PoE2's game system is exceedingly complex, strongly favors PoE1 veterans over everyone else, hides information from the player, has too many rules, is easy to coast on by with, hard to play well, and won't ever give you the satisfaction you get from the sort of gambits even a mediocre Infinity Engine player can pull off.

 

Backstab instakills out of the shadows? Can't do that. Pre-buffing? Too OP. Contingencies? We'll have an ordinary spell that namedrops Contingency and pretend it's the same thing. Summoning? Nope. Incredibly powerful sword wrested from a lich's cold dead fingers? It's sure as hell not going to be as good as Daystar was in BG2. Even the simplest crafting (aside from food) requires money, just to make it less attractive. Fortunately there is a lot less of it now, and a lot more of the talking and plotting and loredumping, which is generally good if playing it a bit safe. But Eora is also a much more "out there" world than Forgotten Realms, and the comfy old Arthurian, chivalric, etc. tropes and themes no longer apply. Nor, unlike the similarly complex world of The Elder Scrolls, is it based (however loosely and occasionally disrespectfully) on archetypes from other cultures and mythologies--in fact it seems to strive towards the total obliteration of everything ready-made. Bhaal and Elf Jesus the Nerevarine is immediately relatable in a way that Eothas and friends are not.

 

Why did this happen? Because we wanted it. We wanted more. More. More. More. Pillars of Eternity was good, so Bigger Pillars of More Eternity will be more good. The incentive structures of the crowdfunding model (stretch goals, etc.) encourage and exacerbate this mentality. A pirate ship! Many pirate ships! Pirate ship battles! New Vegas style politics with intersecting schemes by several power players! A reputation system underneath that makes New Vegas' implementation look primitive! Webs of intrigue! Webs of treachery! Webs of adultery and relationship drama! Voice acting for almost everybody with lines! Half-hearted commentary on colonization that pulls all its punches to avoid making white people feel bad and angering the RPGCodex crowd who gave us a big chunk of our budget! It had everything except a workable business model.

 

Hardcore CRPGs are not competitive on a big budget, and they never will be. There's a reason this game put Obsidian's future in jeopardy and the guy behind the Avernum series has been able to crank game after game through thick and thin, for over 20 years. If the Infinity-style RPG has a future it will involve smaller, simpler games with less elaborate graphics, less voice acting, and a much lower budget. A game with production values more similar to PoE1, Wasteland 2, or even Siege of Dragonspear. But that's what we wanted. We wanted big. We got big.

 

And perhaps, in the long run, lost big. Nerds never have been good at business.

[Marceror]

LOL

 

They'll lose thousands of loyal customers and gain hundreds of thousands of loyal customers (if not millions). They're not worried about losing anyone here who calls themselves a faithful customer because they'll be making tons more money from making games on Xbox, that doesn't make the games bad either, just not the cup if tea which the forumites here care to play.

Loyalty is hard to come by, and by no means guaranteed. They may indeed gain a lot of new customers, but whether or not there will be a remotely comparable loyalty... again, such is hard to come by.

[Hassat Hunter]

 

LOL

 

They'll lose thousands of loyal customers and gain hundreds of thousands of loyal customers (if not millions). They're not worried about losing anyone here who calls themselves a faithful customer because they'll be making tons more money from making games on Xbox, that doesn't make the games bad either, just not the cup if tea which the forumites here care to play.

Loyalty is hard to come by, and by no means guaranteed. They may indeed gain a lot of new customers, but whether or not there will be a remotely comparable loyalty... again, such is hard to come by.

 

*cough cough* STAR WARS *cough cough*

Signed: A former hard-core fan of Star Wars.

 

Going for a new fanbase over the backs of your perfectly fine existing fanbase rarely works out.

[Chairchucker]

*cough cough* STAR WARS *cough cough*

Signed: A former hard-core fan of Star Wars.

 

Going for a new fanbase over the backs of your perfectly fine existing fanbase rarely works out.

Yeah, nobody hates a franchise like a fan of that franchise.

 

(New Star Wars rules BTW.)

[Meshugger]

Lots of things have happened since the time I read that the same guys who made Planescape:Torment are going make a sequel Knights of the Old Republic, and i signed up to see what the fuzz is all about.

 

Best of luck in the future.

[TMZuk]

Well, goodbye to independence, quality and maturity.

 

And hello to kidstuff, rushed development and dull AAA-games. It was fun knowing you, but considering the monstrosity you are joining, I'm rather certain you'll go the way of Bioware.

 

Thanks for all the good games.

[Hassat Hunter]

 

*cough cough* STAR WARS *cough cough*

Signed: A former hard-core fan of Star Wars.

 

Going for a new fanbase over the backs of your perfectly fine existing fanbase rarely works out.

Yeah, nobody hates a franchise like a fan of that franchise.

 

(New Star Wars rules BTW.)

 

Nothing like trading 2 billions from pre-existing fans for that promising NEW market of 400 million from people like you.

Can't help but think about that when people glee about "new markets of massive untapped potential"

Edited November 13, 2018 by Hassat Hunter

[Flouride]

 Well looks like I won't be touching another obsidian game for as long as I live now that Microsoft is bought the company cuz honestly Microsoft is a s*** company wouldn't touch them with the f****** 10FT POLE looks like RPGs isometric as we know it pretty much s*** the bed and will not be existing much longer obsidian you were very f****** stupid in allowing this to happen and unfortunately you'll be losing a s*** ton of customers including myself.

 

No offence, but idiots like you are the reason why companies that get bought often fail. No wonder studios get closed when they can't make any profit. When their loyal fans go and cry in the corner and stop buying the products,

 

[Chilloutman]

 

 Well looks like I won't be touching another obsidian game for as long as I live now that Microsoft is bought the company cuz honestly Microsoft is a s*** company wouldn't touch them with the f****** 10FT POLE looks like RPGs isometric as we know it pretty much s*** the bed and will not be existing much longer obsidian you were very f****** stupid in allowing this to happen and unfortunately you'll be losing a s*** ton of customers including myself.

 

No offence, but idiots like you are the reason why companies that get bought often fail. No wonder studios get closed when they can't make any profit. When their loyal fans go and cry in the corner and stop buying the products,

 

 

What are you talking about? If someone makes burgers I like and go there to eat suddenly switch to vegan stuff I should just blindly follow? What is this corporate slavery mentality?? Noone going to  leave Obs if they keep producing cRPGs as we all love, if they start working on XBox exclusives and sell stuff through Windows Store than I am sorry but I can vote with my wallet

[Insolentius]

 

 Well looks like I won't be touching another obsidian game for as long as I live now that Microsoft is bought the company cuz honestly Microsoft is a s*** company wouldn't touch them with the f****** 10FT POLE looks like RPGs isometric as we know it pretty much s*** the bed and will not be existing much longer obsidian you were very f****** stupid in allowing this to happen and unfortunately you'll be losing a s*** ton of customers including myself.

 

No offence, but idiots like you are the reason why companies that get bought often fail. No wonder studios get closed when they can't make any profit. When their loyal fans go and cry in the corner and stop buying the products,

 

We don't owe anything to those companies once they're acquired by soulless titans like Microsoft, EA, or ActiBlizz. Should we keep buying their products regardless of their type, genre and quality solely because of 'loyalty'? Why would I buy some GaaS MMO-lite shooter from Obsidian if I despise those games? Why would I remain a loyal customer if Obsidian allows their new overlords to arbitrarily force exclusivity in terms of operating systems and/or digital platforms?

 

If you're a r/hailcorporate kind of guy, don't call other people 'idiots' just because they don't fall for the same crap as you.

[Aeryx]

As someone who played Neverwinter Nights 2, Fallout: NV, bought and backed PoE 1 and 2, I am very disappointed at this news. I've always thought of Obsidian as one of the greatest remaining gaming companies around. This is why I have alwyas supported their kickstarter projects. Knowing how corporate culture works, I know for a fact that the quality of games from Obsidian will now diminish and begin to focus more on monetization and bad business practices. Forget about PS4 and Windows 7, it's now GFWL and XBOX. PC players will now have to deal with console menus and substandard ports. Here's how things can possibly happen:

1.) Obsidian stocks will soar in value early on. More jobs in the company will open.

2.) The corporate culture from the top of Microsoft , over the years, will begin to trickle down on Obsidian.
3.) Obsidian will stop the use of crowdfunding to fund its games.

4.) Obsidian will stop publishing on Steam, GoG and non-Microsoft platforms. Only GFWL in Windows 10 and XBOX One, alienating its PC fanbase.

5.) Intrusive DRM will be present on all Obsidian games for PC. Including Denuvo.

6.) There will be a slow but gradual shift from making quality single player games to "live services" with MMO-style multiplayer elements.

7.) Quality games ready on release will be the lesser focus. The greater focus will be on monetization of the latest Obsidian "live services". Expect the entry of microtransactions, lootboxes, card packs and other recurring revenue streams.
8.) Obsidian will be weaponized against Sony, PS4 and other consoles. It will be the priority, not PC gaming and certainly not time-consuming quality gaming development.
9.)  There will be more political correctness and SJW elements in Obsidian games. There will be less interesting adult and mature stories that have depth.
10.) Future Obsidian releases will be dumbed down to appeal to the masses of XBOX One players who do not have the skill, maturity and attention span of more mature PC and console players. This is done to appeal to a broader audience.
11.) More focus on mobile gaming.

12.) Because Obsidian is now owned by Microsoft, they will no longer be allowed to take development jobs from other publishers (i.e. no more Fallout: NV 2 from Bethesda)

13.) Stake, shareholders and profits will be the priority. Not quality games and certainly not the gamers.

14.) The titles that make the most money will be prioritized, not the titles that fans ask for.

15.) Eventually, Faergus and the geniuses at Obsidian will leave the company because their creative vision will be discarded to accelerate product development. Anybody who doesn't agree with constant revenue streams and milking the fanbase will be let go of.

16.) Obsidian will be developing games that are not its specialization (i.e. not story-driven).

17.) Pillars of Eternity 3 will be released. It will have much less depth, scope, quality, and length than Pillars of Eternity 2, which will be remember by fans as the greatest Pillars of Eternity game, just like Dragon Age Origins was for the Dragon Age series.
18.) Obsidian becomes like Bioware.
19.) Obsidian will either separate from Microsoft or go the way of Ensemble, Fasa Studios and Lionhead.

Edited November 13, 2018 by Aeryx

[Flouride]

 

What are you talking about? If someone makes burgers I like and go there to eat suddenly switch to vegan stuff I should just blindly follow? What is this corporate slavery mentality?? Noone going to  leave Obs if they keep producing cRPGs as we all love, if they start working on XBox exclusives and sell stuff through Windows Store than I am sorry but I can vote with my wallet

 

 

That's the thing. You don't know what kind of games Obsidian will make in the future. You are presuming and making assumptions.

 

If WIndows Store actually gets better, is it really a bad option for Steam? Should Valve have the whole PC marketplace for themselves?

[FlintlockJazz]

Well, congratulations I hope. Unless this was a sudden aggressive takeover in which case damn. I hope you all understand that I will be watching very carefully from now on, thought Bioware would stay the same after being bought by EA and we all know how that turned out, so a bit wary to be honest. Hope it will be to the benefit of all, though I won't be buying anything on Windows Store and so hope you keep selling on GOG and Steam. 

 

Both InXile and Obsidian being bought up at the same time? Either its Microsoft giving good deals to the pair of them and them working together somehow helped or they both got caught out by something (pretty sure I recall it being corporate shenanigans resulting in Bioware being bought by EA not Bioware actually choosing to sell out, but we'll never know for sure). Whats gonna happen with Fig now though? I can't see them still running things on there while being owned by massively funded company like Microsoft...

Edited November 13, 2018 by FlintlockJazz

[Flouride]

We don't owe anything to those companies once they're acquired by soulless titans like Microsoft, EA, or ActiBlizz. Should we keep buying their products regardless of their type, genre and quality solely because of 'loyalty'? Why would I buy some GaaS MMO-lite shooter from Obsidian if I despise those games? Why would I remain a loyal customer if Obsidian allows their new overlords to arbitrarily force exclusivity in terms of operating systems and/or digital platforms?

 

 

If you're a r/hailcorporate kind of guy, don't call other people 'idiots' just because they don't fall for the same crap as you.

 

 

Yes, you don't owe them anything. Just like they don't owe you or me anything.

 

I just don't get it, why people are always so quick to throw in the towel and renounce themselves from buying any games from a company. Before you've seen any actual proof of their new games being MMO-lites or bad shooters with a long ass plot.

If this purchase had happened 5 years ago, I would be saddened as well. However with Gamepass MS needs games that aren't all the same shooter with different plot and setting. That's why I'm willing to wait it out and see what happens. Instead of crying all over the internet about corporate greed.