"Bugs are not our bugs but Bethesda's" :  http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-02-03-obsidian-why-fallout-new-vegas-crashes 
 
What do you think? I think it's more than obvious that Osbidian cannot deliver a bug-free game. Blaming others is soooo easy. 

It is pretty easy, especially when Bethesda's Fallout game had a lot of the same bugs because the engine is shitty. And because most of the betatesters were Bethesda's. So its easy and kind of accurate.

Considering that every single game they have released has been janked and buggy in some form or another, I don't think that's true. At all.

That's a totally reasonable to me.

While yes, I think Obsidian's QA usually leaves a lot to be desired, there's a reason Bethesda are using a new engine for the next Elder Scrolls game. 

" Considering that every single game they have released has been janked and buggy in some form or another, I don't think that's true. At all. "

Yeah and Alpha protocol was SEGA's fault.

Bethesda is an easy target (hello, Daggerfall!), but for the people at Obsidian of all companies to be blaming bugs on anyone else is ridiculous.

Dude, that's shitty behaviour.

" @ryanwho: Both. So it's both their faults. Bethesda for having made a janky engine, and Obsidian for being unable to do QA on a game in any reasonable timeframe. "

That is bad form, Obsidian.

" Yeah and Alpha protocol was SEGA's fault. "

" @blacklabeldomm said:

" Yeah and Alpha protocol was SEGA's fault. "

Not really.  Sega delayed the release on Alpha Protocol to give Obsidian more time to develop the game.  I hate to think of what state the game was in at the original launch date. "

" @blacklabeldomm said:

" Yeah and Alpha protocol was SEGA's fault. "

Not really.  Sega delayed the release on Alpha Protocol to give Obsidian more time to develop the game.  I hate to think of what state the game was in at the original launch date. "

" @blacklabeldomm said:

" Yeah and Alpha protocol was SEGA's fault. "

Not really.  Sega delayed the release on Alpha Protocol to give Obsidian more time to develop the game.  I hate to think of what state the game was in at the original launch date. "

It's the publisher's job to find the bugs and the developer's job to fix them. I'm sure testers were still finding stuff in the game up to when it shipped. Then again, you could playtest a game forever and still find crap, especially a big open ended RPG. Eventually you have to say it's good enough for release.

" @blacklabeldomm said:

" Yeah and Alpha protocol was SEGA's fault. "

Not really.  Sega delayed the release on Alpha Protocol to give Obsidian more time to develop the game.  I hate to think of what state the game was in at the original launch date. "

" @Hailinel said:

" @blacklabeldomm said:

" Yeah and Alpha protocol was SEGA's fault. "

Not really.  Sega delayed the release on Alpha Protocol to give Obsidian more time to develop the game.  I hate to think of what state the game was in at the original launch date. "

I think blacklabeldomm was being sarcastic there. "

" @Hailinel said:

" @blacklabeldomm said:

" Yeah and Alpha protocol was SEGA's fault. "

Not really.  Sega delayed the release on Alpha Protocol to give Obsidian more time to develop the game.  I hate to think of what state the game was in at the original launch date. "

Sarcasm bro. "

" @Hailinel said:

" @blacklabeldomm said:

" Yeah and Alpha protocol was SEGA's fault. "

Not really.  Sega delayed the release on Alpha Protocol to give Obsidian more time to develop the game.  I hate to think of what state the game was in at the original launch date. "

I'm pretty sure blacklabeldomm's comment was sarcasm. "

" @blacklabeldomm said:

" Yeah and Alpha protocol was SEGA's fault. "

Not really.  Sega delayed the release on Alpha Protocol to give Obsidian more time to develop the game.  I hate to think of what state the game was in at the original launch date. "

I don't think he was moaning but I don't think it's smart to belittle the engine of another company.  Things like this might keep Bethesda or Zenimax from looking Obsidian's way for future games.  It kind of makes them look a bit like whiners no matter how reasonable their logic is. 

" Considering that every single game they have released has been janked and buggy in some form or another, I don't think that's true. At all. "

I kind of call BS on that. I've put 150 hours into Fallout 3 (2 Xbox characters, one PS3) and I've had maybe 4 crashes. New Vegas on the other hand literally crashed 5 times in 2 hours and I wish I was kidding.
 
They can blame the engine all they want but they've worked on 4 engines so far (Odyssey, Electron, UE3 and Gamebryo) and they've still been buggy.

Thank goodness Bethesda's working on a new engine for ESV. Then again, maybe that's not a good thing.

A lot of those bugs come from a 5 years old engine that was very buggy from the begining.

I had as many, if not more, bugs in Fallout 3 as I did New Vegas. So I think it's pretty easy to blame Bethesda. They handle everything except for the actual making of the game. And even then, Obsidian was using Bethesda's engine.
 
Obsidian is just unlucky enough to have released Alpha Protocol in the state it was in beforehand.

I'll cut them some slack since the Oblivion Engine has been buggy since day one. That said, by the time the last DLC for Fallout 3 rolled out, it was a much more stable game near the end. I have to imagine there were people that they could have talked to to make sure a lot of the Fallout 3 probs did not creep up on them in NV. As much as I really like that studio, they definitely have some problems on the QA end, as shown by EVERY release they have ever had. Dungeon Siege 3, built on their own tech I think, may or may not vindicate them.

It's not cool to do that, but at the same time many of Obsidian's games are sequels, which entered development before bugs on the respective engines were ironed out.  So technically, some of the bugs probably are Bethesda's.  That's not to say that they shouldn't have fixed those bugs or be calling attention to them, it's still in poor taste.

" @blacklabeldomm said:

" Yeah and Alpha protocol was SEGA's fault. "

Not really.  Sega delayed the release on Alpha Protocol to give Obsidian more time to develop the game.  I hate to think of what state the game was in at the original launch date. "

I had about as many bugs playing F:NV as I did with FO3 and Oblivion, so I give Obsidian the pass on this one.   
Alpha Protocol kind of didn't have much excuse, though I didn't have nearly as many problems with it as other people seemed to.
 KOTOR 2 they definitely have an excuse for, though, seeing as they were forced to ship the game unfinished.
 I had a single quest scripting bug in NWN2 and the game crashed on me like once.
 
I dunno.  I find it hard to fault Obsidian too much since the quality of their writing is so far beyond any other developer these days.  So call me an apologist.

Well it is true the engine is a little on the rough side, and no matter how many patches it receive's more bugs will most likely pop up.  
I think Obsidian is right and we will really see how well they can create an engine when Dungeon Siege 3 comes out which is done on their Onyx engine.

Although the engine might not be theirs, compared to Fallout 3 and Oblivion Fallout: New Vegas is a lot worse bug-wise. And the engine had been around way longer, so it's kinda weird to blame that for New Vegas' problems.
 
By the way, anyone have the feeling that the stability has decreased since Dead Money has been released? I onbly installed it yesterday, but the game already crashed about six times - more often than in the 90 hours before that.

The engine is awful but Obsidion could have done better quality control. I had a much worse time trying to play New Vegas than I did 3. Although the DLC was totally broken to the point of nearly being unplayable.

They both release broken games so i think the arguement is moot, that said, they're both known for creating awesome games despite the jank.

What's Obsidian's reason for Alpha Protocol then?
 
I just finished New Vegas and thought it was incredibly bleeeeh. Constant performance issues and shitty design choices. Didn't enjoy the experience except for the roaming around and not focusing on story stuff. I basically it enjoyed it for being Fallout 3-2 and not New Vegas. 
 
Really looking forward to Skyrim though. Hopefully they can inject new life into the Bethesda style RPG.

Whatever,its still a great game,and the true moaners are the people complaining about the bugs -.-

"Didn't enjoy the experience except for the roaming around and not focusing on story stuff. I basically it enjoyed it for being Fallout 3-2 and not New Vegas. 

" I kind of call BS on that. I've put 150 hours into Fallout 3 (2 Xbox characters, one PS3) and I've had maybe 4 crashes. New Vegas on the other hand literally crashed 5 times in 2 hours and I wish I was kidding.  They can blame the engine all they want but they've worked on 4 engines so far (Odyssey, Electron, UE3 and Gamebryo) and they've still been buggy. "

" Yeah and Alpha protocol was SEGA's fault. "

" What's Obsidian's reason for Alpha Protocol then?  I just finished New Vegas and thought it was incredibly bleeeeh. Constant performance issues and shitty design choices. Didn't enjoy the experience except for the roaming around and not focusing on story stuff. I basically it enjoyed it for being Fallout 3-2 and not New Vegas.   Really looking forward to Skyrim though. Hopefully they can inject new life into the Bethesda style RPG. "

I think you're making accusations without proper knowledge of the situation, I mean have any of us seen the source code or know how development for this game went? There were definitely huge underlying problems with the Fallout 3 engine and I doubt Obsidian would straight-up lie about a thing like this but we just don't know the entirety of the situation.

I think its less to do with whether or not its true and it just making Obsidian look bad, bitching about other companies publicly never comes off well.

It's important to note that if you actually read the quotes in that article the guy is actually talking about the difficulties of making a game on somebody else's engine, which I think is valid. The engines Obsidian has worked with are not Unreal 3; they aren't commercially licensed and supported. Think about how buggy Fallout 3 was, and that came from a team that is very familiar with that engine. This guy isn't pointing fingers at Bethesda, he's saying there have been inherent disadvantages that came with not putting out a game on an in-house engine and that has coloured the reputation of the company a bit unfairly. 
 
I think that sounds reasonable; whether or not he is right has yet to be determined.

The article wasn't the best piece of journalism, it has been turned from a "hey we're making our own engine for Dungeon Siege 3" to, "Fallout NV Bugs weren't out fault." It is really just a complaint about using a third party engine and the associated problems. I'm no programmer, but I can't imagine that having to phone someone and try and work out a solution to a problem with the people being on different sides of the country is ideal.  Obsidian very well could have done the best job possible in the time they were given, we don't know nor are we likely to ever know.
 
Personally, I never had any major issues with New Vegas, probably 2 crashes which is less than some other RPGs I've played recently. Similar situation to Fallout 3 which crashed a couple of times, but nothing that caused me a great deal of stress. Oh and I had no bugs for me in Alpha Protocol so there is that. Not that I'm denying these games had issues, they just didn't hinder my experiences.

It's probably true. Still, Obsidian should shut the fuck up after Neverwinter Nights 2. Really.

I'm all for the old writers of Torment and Fallout. With KOTOR2, they had a reasonable explanation why that game was a mess. But so far, they're just the Troika people again.

" @Lukeweizer said:

"Didn't enjoy the experience except for the roaming around and not focusing on story stuff. I basically it enjoyed it for being Fallout 3-2 and not New Vegas. 

Wow...just...just wow.I think you might want to edit that. "

" @Tennmuerti: How about how the shooting doesn't work? Even Vinny was talking about it. You put reticule over enemy, shoot, and nothing happens.   I'm still own it and am looking forward to playing the game for the story. But doesn't mean it doesn't have issues. "

" That's total BS. Fallout 3 played a lot smoother than Fallout:New Vegas. Nut up Obsidian or shut the fuck up. "