Obsidian may join Wasteland 2 project

Some cool news just went up!

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/03/30/obisidian-to-co-develop-wasteland-2-on-one-condition/

If the Wasteland 2 project hits 2,1 million dollars inXile will get help from Obsidian including Planescape: Torment Mastermind Chris Avellone, to help them make the game. Now that's quite a cool proposition if you ask me.

Is this a cool incentive for getting more pledges? Many people have been worried about the know-how at inXile since the haven't produced any noteworthy games but how about Obsidan? Could these people together put together something really remakrable? Obsidian tends to be extremly good a storytelling.

But they'll just break it. BOOM.

Uh, no? Alpha Protocol is a buggy piece of shit? How is this a good idea?

Are inXile really so out of their depth that they need to bring in an outside company to break their game for them?

C'mon guys, have some faith in yourselves. You can totally fuck this up all on your own.

Let's get the fucking band back together.

Uh, no? Alpha Protocol is a buggy piece of shit? How is this a good idea?

@Napalm said:

Uh, no? Alpha Protocol is a buggy piece of shit? How is this a good idea?

because avellone is one of if not the best writer in the games industry?

also alpha protocol owns shut your mouth

alpha protocol was awesome.

I just want a shotgun and a physics engine in there, how much will that cost in donations?

@SeriouslyNow said:

@rebgav said:

Are inXile really so out of their depth that they need to bring in an outside company to break their game for them?

C'mon guys, have some faith in yourselves. You can totally fuck this up all on your own.

Outside company?? Dude, inXile and Obsidian (and some other dudes too) all used to be part of one big company. Interplay. You may have heard of them? I predicted this would happen. YAY.

That was a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time ago. The proposition that we're looking at right now is to combine the minds behind Hunted: The Demon's Forge and Dungeon Siege 3. Let that sink in for a few minutes.

@rebgav said:

@SeriouslyNow said:

@rebgav said:

Are inXile really so out of their depth that they need to bring in an outside company to break their game for them?

C'mon guys, have some faith in yourselves. You can totally fuck this up all on your own.

Outside company?? Dude, inXile and Obsidian (and some other dudes too) all used to be part of one big company. Interplay. You may have heard of them? I predicted this would happen. YAY.

That was a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time ago. The proposition that we're looking at right now is to combine the minds behind Hunted: The Demon's Forge and Dungeon Siege 3. Let that sink in for a few minutes.

pretty sure avellone did not work on dungeon siege 3

edit: he did not

The gang's back together. Oh god yes, now I have full confidence about this project. Almost tempted to give them more now. And yea, this is a huge incentive for many people who were hesitant before.

I should get Alpha Protocol.

@rebgav said:

@SeriouslyNow said:

@rebgav said:

Are inXile really so out of their depth that they need to bring in an outside company to break their game for them?

C'mon guys, have some faith in yourselves. You can totally fuck this up all on your own.

Outside company?? Dude, inXile and Obsidian (and some other dudes too) all used to be part of one big company. Interplay. You may have heard of them? I predicted this would happen. YAY.

That was a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time ago. The proposition that we're looking at right now is to combine the minds behind Hunted: The Demon's Forge and Dungeon Siege 3. Let that sink in for a few minutes.

pretty sure avellone did not work on dungeon siege 3

I'd rather see a $2M inXile game, instead of paying Obsidian to muck it up. I guess if the game turns out less than stellar, people can just use Obsidian as a scapegoat.

In the case of Alpha Protocol, even if the story is genuinely good and if it has a couple cool game mechanics, the gameplay is still flawed. It's like reading a good book but being required to have a phallic object up your rectum while doing so. Some people may have no problem with that, for me, I'll have to pass.

@Animasta said:

@Napalm said:

Uh, no? Alpha Protocol is a buggy piece of shit? How is this a good idea?

because avellone is one of if not the best writer in the games industry?

also alpha protocol owns shut your mouth

Did they patch that game of all? I've been thinking about picking it up to try out, but don't know much about its buggy state.

That doesn't sound like something I'd want if I was supporting them via kickstarter.

I mean the people who spend their money expend these guys to do the job and suddenly a rather big bunch of the excess funding gets thrown to Obsidian? Seriously?

@CrossTheAtlantic said:

@Animasta said:

@Napalm said:

Uh, no? Alpha Protocol is a buggy piece of shit? How is this a good idea?

because avellone is one of if not the best writer in the games industry?

also alpha protocol owns shut your mouth

Did they patch that game of all? I've been thinking about picking it up to try out, but don't know much about its buggy state.

I didn't have any bugs on PC myself, even when it was new, so if you're getting it for PC it's relatively stable. i don't know about consoles though

How much do I have to pay to get Supergiant Games to work on this game with inXile?

inXile, can you please just make and finish Hei$t? Thanks you

Anyone shitting on this is a complete numbskull. Chris Avellone is the best writer in the history of this medium. Bar none. Houser, Schafer, Karpyshyn, Levine, Spector... Chris Avellone. The overall plot, the fiction, the characters, the incidental stuff; it's incredibly clever and extremely well done.

If I wasn't already in for 100 dollars, I'd put more.

@rebgav said:

Are inXile really so out of their depth that they need to bring in an outside company to break their game for them?

Obsidian has their own game engine, Onyx, which did isometric very well in Dungeon Siege III. Also it saves on licensing costs and gives inXile direct access to the people who know exactly how the engine works. And Avellone & Co. have a lot of cred among old school RPG fans, and is likely to push more people on the fence (like me) into taking the plunge.

If I had spare money at the moment, I'd have upped my donation.

But this is a really good thing. Obsidian have made some really great games in the past.. Many of their recent ones have been somewhat flawed, but that's typically been because of rushed release dates and the fact they've been used as a studio to pump out quick and dirty sequels. Their writing is second to none in the industry and Alpha Protocol does the choice/consequence thing better than anything else out there too (Dungeon Siege 3 is the possible exception, that was just not a good idea).

Not to mention the fact they were part of the same company that originally created Wasteland and Fallout. If you think Obsidian are going to ruin the game, you're a moron who should not have donated money to the project to begin with.

@Brodehouse said:

Anyone shitting on this is a complete numbskull. Chris Avellone is the best writer in the history of this medium. Bar none. Houser, Schafer, Karpyshyn, Levine, Spector... Chris Avellone. The overall plot, the fiction, the characters, the incidental stuff; it's incredibly clever and extremely well done. If I wasn't already in for 100 dollars, I'd put more.

I'd feel pretty safe throwing Suda and Shu Takumi in there, but you pretty much nailed all the great western vidya writers.

Yes. I am totally down for this collaboration between people who know what old RPGs are. Sure, this will contribute to more inflated expectations of what the game will actually deliver, but the idea of Obsidian working on their own terms without publisher meddling appeals to me quite a lot.

@Napalm said:

Uh, no? Alpha Protocol is a buggy piece of shit? How is this a good idea?

Having played it thoroughly, the patched PS3 version at least, I'd say AP is neither particularly buggy or a "piece of shit". Yes, it does have some design issues and jank, but that does not make it "buggy". And yes, it makes a poor third person shooter, but that's not far from complaining that Silent Hill makes a poor brawler. The combat system works fine if you accept its peculiarities (the charged aiming, properly using your active abilites) and it's obviously intentional that Thornton will never have much success at running and gunning without using an ability like Chain Shoot or Room Sweep. The only really significant bug I encountered was the checkpointing, where reloading would sometimes screw with the alert state or revive eliminated enemies.

Amazing news! If I hadn't already pledged $300 I would definitely increase it. Although, I will most likely end up increasing it anyway.

Oh man. I'm starting to love being a backer in this more and more. It's all kind of crazy.

I'm thinking Collector's Edition now. God damn... fees to get shipment here will be immense for me.

@Funkydupe said:

Yes, I do want to fight you.

Wonderful. One big happy family making Wasteland 2. So awesome.

Now the news is up on their on Kickstarter with a piece of information that we didn´t know before. Anyone that was worried about Obsidans programmering skills dont have to worry. Obsidians part in this is writing and design, not coding, even if they are lending tools to make stuff easier for the inXile guys.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2/posts/199078?ref=activity

While the programming work will remain with us here at inXile, we are looking to use a host of tools that Obsidian has created which will help us get assets into the game faster. The faster we can implement and iterate on content, the deeper the game and the more varied choices the gamers can make.

@Dogma said:

Now the news is up on their on Kickstarter with a piece of information that we didn´t know before. Anyone that was worried about Obsidans programmering skills dont have to worry. Obsidians part in this is writing and design, not coding, even if they are lending tools to make stuff easier for the inXile guys.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2/posts/199078?ref=activity

While the programming work will remain with us here at inXile, we are looking to use a host of tools that Obsidian has created which will help us get assets into the game faster. The faster we can implement and iterate on content, the deeper the game and the more varied choices the gamers can make.

I assume this means they would be using the onyx engine from DS3 then

@Animasta: Is that a good thing? I have no knowledge about Dungeon Siege 3.

Is Onyx the graphics engine from DS3, because that game kind of looked like a cleaned up downloadable game and not a 60 dollar retail product. Then again, the buy-in point and budget for Wasteland is the same as Stacking and Costume Quest, so how much could we really expect.

@Brodehouse said:

Is Onyx the graphics engine from DS3, because that game kind of looked like a cleaned up downloadable game and not a 60 dollar retail product. Then again, the buy-in point and budget for Wasteland is the same as Stacking and Costume Quest, so how much could we really expect.

well, wasteland 2 is going to be 15 dollars innit? also oynx may not look the best, but it is hella stable (apparently)

@Animasta said:

@Brodehouse said:

Is Onyx the graphics engine from DS3, because that game kind of looked like a cleaned up downloadable game and not a 60 dollar retail product. Then again, the buy-in point and budget for Wasteland is the same as Stacking and Costume Quest, so how much could we really expect.

well, wasteland 2 is going to be 15 dollars innit? also oynx may not look the best, but it is hella stable (apparently)

Like I said "the buy-in point and budget is the same as Stacking and Costume Quest".

The only part of DS3 that I'll say looked good was the character faces. The models and the landscapes were greatly helped by the camera being a mile above them so you couldn't actually look at the relatively crap textures.

@TheHT said:

But they'll just break it. BOOM.

Sadly, yes.

@rebgav said:

It would be unrealistic to expect them to rekindle some portion of the magic which made Icewind Dale or the original Fallout games so great even if they had a more typical budget and timeframe - expecting something special out of a shoestring budget and a much shortened dev cycle seems completely crazy. I'm not suggesting that they won't or can't make a brilliant game, I'm saying that expecting it to live up to the lineage of the best games that these guys ever made is just setting yourself up for disappointment.

Personally, I'm not really that invested in Wasteland - to me this is as much about putting my money where my mouth is and supporting Obsidian, than it is hoping for a great game. That said, I believe the original Fallout had a budget of only $3 million, and a somewhat troubled development. I'd say it's not unbelievable that a carefully planned and well managed development cycle could pull off something of comparable quality with the Kickstarter funds.

To everyone who is saying Obsidian will fuck this up, the one thing Obsidian does well is writing, which is all they are being tapped to do. All the programming will remain in-house.

@Animasta: This probably won't use the Onyx engine. Tools in game development are usually separate from the game itself.

Eww. Do not want.

@President_Barackbar said:

To everyone who is saying Obsidian will fuck this up, the one thing Obsidian does well is writing, which is all they are being tapped to do. All the programming will remain in-house.

I do find it amusing that people who get hung up on the whole Obsidian = bugs thing, are seemingly oblivious to inXile's history. I had lots of fun playing through Hunted: The Demon's Forge with a friend, but that game was still kinda janky and unpolished and the story/writing was nothing special. To take it on faith that they'll be able to pull off a much more complex game on a tight budget, while simultaneously disparaging Obsidian seems rather absurd.

What's the last game that either studio had complete and total freedom of control over? 
 
I trust these minds to make something incredible without an out of touch publisher trying to fuck it up or pull funding.
 
edit: Also hasn't the game story already been written? That's what the pitch seemed to imply. Yes Avellone is great, but that particular forte seems to have already been covered.

I am so down with this after Fallout New Vegas.

I'm gonna go ahead and ignore every other busted piece of shit they released.

I'm guessing there's no physics in that engine?

@rebgav said:

That was a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time ago. The proposition that we're looking at right now is to combine the minds behind Hunted: The Demon's Forge and Dungeon Siege 3. Let that sink in for a few minutes.

Who also happen to be the same minds who made Fallout 1/2, Fallout New Vegas, blah blah blah. You know, all the games all the people funding this one love and consider better than anything that has come out since? Sure they are letting the nostalgia goggles do their thinking but that is their prerogative.

I find it far more alarming that he has almost 2 mil for this thing and half of the so called fans want it to be a top down based game with 2d sprites.

@Karkarov: What the fuck is wrong with an isometric perspective?

What's the last game that either studio had complete and total freedom of control over?   I trust these minds to make something incredible without an out of touch publisher trying to fuck it up or pull funding.  edit: Also hasn't the game story already been written? That's what the pitch seemed to imply. Yes Avellone is great, but that particular forte seems to have already been covered.