Oh yay, let's RUSH IT!
What could possibly go wrong?!
this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2024
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This is Bethesda. Either they rush and it releases riddled with bugs or they don't rush and it still releases riddled with bugs.
Bethesda, Bethesda never changes...
Everything and then some.
They will absolutely release it full of bugs and further exacerbate their current problems. Their console sales are plummeting, I just read. This is undoubtedly a response to that. Trying to capitalize on the hype surrounding the franchise right now, so they’ll squeeze the developers super hard, put out a shitty product, and then will scratch their heads and blame the customer.
Okay, gotta say, if Obsidian would be the ones to do it, as article suggests, then I'm interested.
Imagine an Obsidian fallout if they had a decent amount of dev time
So, context for those not familiar is that Fallout: New Vegas had a limited development period.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallout%3A_New_Vegas
The game had a somewhat short development cycle of 18 months.
You forgot the best part where despite the insanely short dev time, a big part of their payment was tied to the game's metascore some time after release. They missed the mark by 1 point (out of 100), and didn't even get a fraction of the sum as a result.
I think that was recently proven false. Still, the guys at Obsidian did an amazing job pumping out one of the best games of all time in a year and a half.
JE Sawyer made a mod for the game after it was released. That's as close to more dev time as it gets.
I don't know how much of the Fallout: New Vegas group is still there. Fallout: New Vegas was done 15 years ago.
But the (mainline) series has also had successful games done by different studios. Fallout was Black Isle. Fallout 2 was Black Isle -- with the leads from the first game having left to join Troika. Fallout 3 was Bethesda. Fallout: New Vegas was Obsidian. Fallout 4 was Bethesda. Fallout 76 was Bethesda.
I figure that if there have been that many handoffs done successfully, they can probably manage to do another.
Here's a list of credits for Fallout: New Vegas:
https://www.mobygames.com/game/48717/fallout-new-vegas/credits/windows/
Obsidian was purchased by Microsoft, so both Bethesda and Obsidian are under that umbrella.
Looking at some of it:
Project Lead: J.E. Sawyer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Sawyer
He last did Penitment in 2022 at Obsidian.
Executive Producer: Lawrence Liberty. Looks like he's doing other things, last being Marvel Snap.
Producer: Mikey Dowling. He last did Inkulinati at Obsidian in 2023.
Producer: Jason Fader. His last credit is the Fallout: New Vegas DLC Lonesome Road, so I doubt that he's around.
Producer: Matt Singh. Last credited on Fallout: New Vegas, so probably not around.
Producer: Tess Treadwell. Last credited on South Park: The Stick of Truth in 2014, so probably not around.
Additional Production: Brandon Adler. He was credited with "Additional System Design" on Pillars of Eternity II at Obsidian, with some playtesting elsewhere after that. Might be around.
Addition's Production: Matt Rorie. No credits since Fallout: New Vegas in 2010, probably out of the picture.
Lead Artist: Joseph A. Sanabria. Last credited with Armikrog in 2015, so he's probably out of the picture.
Concept Artist/Vault Boy Artist: Brian Menze. Last credited with The Outer Worlds at Obsidian in 2019, so he might still be around.
World Building Expert: Scott Everts. Ditto.
User Interface Artist: Jason Sereno. Last credited on New Tales From the Borderlands from Gearbox in 2022, so he's probably elsewhere.
Character Artist: Daniel Alpert. Last credited for Pemitent at Obsidian, so probably available.
Character Artist: Aaron Brown. Last credited for Planescape: Torment -- Enhanced Edition at Beamdog, so he's probably elsewhere.
Character Artist: Kevin Manning. Last credited for Red Faction: Guerrilla - Re-Mars-tered at Volition in 2018, so he's elsewhere and may out of the game.
Environment Artist: Cochey Cantu. Last credited for LEGO 2k Drive at Visual Concepts Entertainment in 2023, so he's probably elsewhere.
Artist: Roger Chang. Last credited on Marvel Spider-Man 2 at Insomiac in 2023, so he's probably elsewhere.
I dunno. I'm not gonna go through the whole list, but I'd say from that sample that while there are still a number of Fallout: New Vegas people around at Obsidian, approximately 2/3rds are elsewhere.
EDIT: It does look like two of the three Troika guys from Fallout 1, Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky, are at Obsidian as well. The third, Jason Anderson, is at inXile, which Microsoft also acquired, and has done at least some work on the Wasteland series there (the series that inspired Fallout originally).
EDIT 2: And Ron Perlman, the narrator for Fallout: New Vegas, appears to still be doing voice acting projects for various movies and games, though he's 74 and I dunno how much more work he's got left in him.
You forget the fact that if Obsidian were given the keys to Fallout again, I doubt they’d have much trouble enticing back the critical talent they would want back from FO:NV. Heck, who wouldn’t want to jump back into the series and do right by it given the fandom that has just come on board and the fandom still rooting for NV all these years later.
Well they’re still making good games that fit the same vibe like Outer Worlds. So the talent is definitely still there.
I wasn't actually a huge fan of The Outer Worlds, didn't really click for me. I mean, yeah, it's got a lot of similar elements to the Fallout series, but it's got some important stuff missing that's part of what makes Fallout interesting for me. It wasn't terrible, but it just wasn't Fallout for me...kinda felt like I was slogging through the thing.
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Not much to stumble on in the world outside the cities. Fallout tended to work by having one constantly "stumble across" things in the world, kinda kept up a seamless flow of new things happening. I'll add that I think that the lack of this is part of what some people didn't like with Starfield -- one can run into things when jumping into a system, but feels more artificial and "gamey".
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It's technically open-world, but there's little reason to backtrack. I played it in mostly linear fashion.
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The perks are a big part of Fallout for me, the interesting character-building. You can choose neat things that interact and substantially change how one plays. The Outer Worlds perks are nearly all minor stat tweaks.
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Aside from the handful of science weapons, most of the weapons in The Outer Worlds play in pretty much the same way, aren't that memorable. Maybe one gets a slight buff relative to the other. Not a lot of interesting characteristics or story around them the way there is, say, Ratslayer.
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I realize that this is subjective, but Fallout has historically had moments that the designers made impressive and memorable to me, where one said "wow" the first time through. For me, some were Liberty Prime being activated and the subsequent mission in Fallout 3, maybe the Brotherhood of Steel airships arriving in Fallout 4, or the godrays shining through the gratings at ArcJet Systems in the A Call To Arms mission. There wasn't really a point where The Outer Worlds did that for me. Everything felt more-or-less like what I'd expect in the runup to the mission, didn't really have "wow" moments.
There were some things that I liked about The Outer Worlds relative to the Fallout series:
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I found it to be pretty stable and bug-free. Fallout has improved recently, and if one counts it, Starfield was quite good, but historically, the whole series has often had a lot of bugs, especially at release.
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There were story-altering choices. Not quite as much as Fallout: New Vegas, but more than, say, Fallout 76.
Obsidian is currently developing Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2 so it's rather unlikely they'll work on another Fallout installment.
Microsoft (who clearly smelled the money after seeing the show's popularity and related games sells hike) could have someone remake New Vegas. Just let it not be Virtuos...
And most importantly, I hope TES6 and the next Fallout are not Xbox exclusives...
And most importantly, I hope TES6 and the next Fallout are not Xbox exclusives...
I'd assume that they're gonna come out for the PC as well, at least.
EDIT: Wikipedia lists the platforms for TES6 as Windows and Xbox, and says that it won't come out for other platforms:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls_VI
The game's exclusivity to Windows and Xbox consoles has since been repeatedly confirmed.
I'm assuming that, absent Microsoft specifically trying to go out of their way to block it, which I'm not aware of them having a history of with their other titles, that the Windows binaries will also run on Linux via Proton.
Yeah, I meant console exclusive. I'm only interested in playing it on Playstation. TES6 and Starfield were announced as ~~Xbox~~ "Microsoft platforms exclusives" but there's nothing a quarterly report could not turn around.
https://xboxera.com/2024/02/04/exclusive-microsoft-plans-starfield-launch-for-playstation-5/
https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/microsoft-boss-more-xbox-games-playstation-ps5-nintendo-switch/
A good fallout NV remake would be welcome
If talking to an NPC doesn't catapult them 500 meters into the air, we're not having a good time.
As tradition with 3d Bethesda games.
Bethesda games are so big that it would be basically impossible for them to be bugfree if they didnt have like 5 years worth of just bugfixing.
I feel like that falls into three camps:
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Stability issues. That's really from the engine or similar, not the scripts. Starfield did well here. Fallout: New Vegas tended to have problems that accumulated for me over the course of a given game.
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Performance issues. Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 4 both took increasingly longer to load the further into the game one was. I don't recall Fallout 76 or Starfield doing this. Up until Starfield, the 3D games had various situations where one could see graphical artifacts.
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Scripting issues, weird interactions between quests, etc. That's been a problem for the whole Fallout series, including the isometric games -- lots of scripts that can interact in weird ways. I even managed to break one Starfield mission last time I played, though fortunately could recover by restoring an earlier save, and that's been pretty solid.
I would love a New Vegas 2/Fallout 5 developped by Obsidian, or even a New Vegas Remake/Remaster.
I'm down with Bethesda using up the end of Howards career for fallout. Anything to get new blood into the company for ESVI
"End of Howard's career"?
Yeah he's said that the next elder scrolls game will be his last.
It's rare for Western game devs to be in the game until they're 75.
What was the name of that vampire hunting game from Arkham again?
So maybe don't do a mainline Fallout title. Have a post-apocalyptic city-building game, or some Fallout Adventure spinoff with a more linear story. Don't hire nine women for a one-month baby.