Obsidian's Urquhart On NWN2, Fallout 3 32
Thanks to GameSpot for its interview with Obsidian Entertainment's Feargus Urquhart, as the ex-Black Isle founder talks about the formation of the Star Wars: KOTOR II developers ("I must have been at least an OK boss, or it was just Interplay almost going out of business, but of the 36 people working here at Obsidian, 18 of them are from Black Isle"), regarding updates to BioWare's engine for the 2006-due Neverwinter Nights 2 ("We are going over almost every inch of the engine to add new features and refine things that are going to stay the same. From a graphics standpoint, we are updating most of the graphics engine to support new graphical features like normal mapping"), and discusses the fate of the Fallout 3 license ("I think the team at Bethesda has their work cut out for them. This is mostly because there is almost nothing that they can do that will make the Fallout fans happy.")
Good (Score:3, Interesting)
I for one... (Score:2, Interesting)
NWN's dated engine (Score:5, Interesting)
Ultimately, the NWN engine is a textbook example of how not to develop a game. It is so backwards and kludgy I'm surprised Obsidian has agreed to subject itself to untangling the spaghetti. They have all my respect if they are able to do so, but I think they could find better ways to dedicate their resources than on this lost cause. Why do you think Bioware is writing a new Dragon Age engine after only one game instead of releasing two or three like with the Infinity Engine games?
Re:NWN's dated engine (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:NWN's dated engine (Score:2, Informative)
As for using the same engine in KOTOR and Jade Empires this is patently false. KOTOR is developed by a completely separate team and has nothing to do with NWN. Jade Empires is even a different engine than KOTOR. KOTOR was designed to be compatible with the PC and Xbox while Jade Empires' engine is des
DA is not Aurora-based (Score:1)
Re:NWN's dated engine (Score:1, Insightful)
An engine defines an application framework, not fancy graphics. Since Obsidian is using another version of Aurora for KotOR, they must know pretty well what they are getting into.
Making Fallout Fans Happy (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep the feel of the original games. Update the engine all to hell of course and give us flashy things (we like flashy things), but don't go changing the basics. The feel of the world with the whole retro 50's nuclear age motif is perfect. Don't do something strange like give it a fantasy, victorian, or God forbid 80's theme. Keep the gritty feel that the environments had. Bring us new plot devices, but make sure our old favorites (Radscorpions, mutants, slavers, Brahmin, etc.) are lurking around every corner.
Most of all, don't go dicking around with the game system too much. Fallout fans are Fallout fans because the system was so beautiful. You had really good character customization with the perks, skills, and stats. It was like playing a REAL RPG!!! I can see them trying to simplify it or automate it or something really dumb.
There's also this trend to move turn based games into real time combat. Fallout doesn't need it. It goes along with the system and how it makes it feel like you're playing a real table-top style RPG. Just because the world is twitch oriented, doesn't mean people always want their games like that. Even twitch action gamers like to calm down and strategize their combat now and again.
We want new stories. We want a flashy new engine and updated technology. Beyond that, what's so difficult to understand? If they can't understand why we like the original games in the first place, they have no reason to be building the new one.
Luckily, I think Bethesda understands and will have little problem making us happy.
Re:Making Fallout Fans Happy (Score:2)
Hell, personally I could do without much in the way of flashy things. The engine could definitely use an update, and who knows what else could be done. However, personally, if someone released a game with the same old engine, but a new story/map/weapons and such that were as good as the original games, I'd play it and be happy. That's all it'd take for me.
Re:Making Fallout Fans Happy (Score:2, Insightful)
You have no idea how right you are.
I was the biggest Warlords 2 fanboy ever (still am, I suppose) so I creamed myself when i heard about warlords 3. But they screwed up the character system.
Before it played nicely, so if you put all your points into strength, it would take more and more points to increase it. Made for more rounded characters- a max level mage could still hold his own in a fight. Now its just bog standard diablo - ge
Re:Making Fallout Fans Happy (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't see Bethesda making a simple RPG system. Morrowind's character system is considerably more complex than Fallout's, and is essentially experience-less.
On the contrary, I'm more worried about Bethesda bogging down Fallout's character system, since it's a very simple and streamlined system considering its depth.
Re:Making Fallout Fans Happy (Score:4, Insightful)
The vast majority of Fallout fans are worried about them making a *less* complex system than SPECIAL. The fact that you think it's less complex than Morrowind's character system just shows that you're very, very comfortable with SPECIAL.
-lw
Re:Making Fallout Fans Happy (Score:4, Interesting)
The only time that Fallout's system is complex is at character creation, but even then, you don't have many things to deal with: Seven (mostly) fixed stats, three main skills, and up to two additional optional traits, but just looking at the descriptions, Gifted is a win-win trait, and besides that, you just pick the one most associated with the weapons or items you want to use (pistols, meelee, drugs, etc). The rest of the choices (age, sex, name) mean very little, although sex has a greater use in Fallout 2.
Each levelup, you get a set number of points to put towards raising skills, and every third (or fourth, if you picked the Skilled trait) you get to pick a perk, which is about the most complex part of the game, but after the first three, if you through the list, you can find out pretty quickly which ones are most powerful (100% critical hit rate, lower AP usage, etc are no-brainers).
Morrowind's system, you have to pick your race, birthsign, and sex, all of which effect skills, spells, stats, and NPC reactions to various extents. Given time and work (many hours of work), you can correct for almost any shortcomming in character creation, but it drastically effects your startout. In Fallout, all the wildly different characters I've tried, the only thing that can break a new character off-the-bat is crappy perception. Then you have to pick a primary stat, ten major skills, ten minor skills, and a combat style (combat, stealth, magic), which can have anywhere from -5 to +45 effect on your skills. The class selection is pretty much like taking the pre-made characters in Fallout, and you generally get characters that are too one-sided to be effective (even moreso than in Fallout, since it's much harder to make up for shortcommings once a character is started).
You have to plan which skills you level to make sure you get the benefit in the areas you want most before each level up, or you end up making nearly no advancement. It makes the difference between finishing the game easily with a level 15 character and barely squeaking through with a level 50.
In Fallout, jumping right in without reading the manual, I made a character and progressed through the main quests and just took what looked cool at each level up as I went, and had very little problem with the game as a whole, and only restarted once five minutes in when I decided low perception probably wasn't good. You tailor your progress to the game, not to the character system. Weapons not hitting well, put the next couple levels into my gun skill.
In Morrowind, after two failed character attempts, I painfully learned that the character system comes first, and the game necessities come second. Sure, I need better armor skills or I'm going to get my ass haned to me in a can, but when I do that, I end up getting two levelups with no help in any areas except endurance, which I really don't need now that I have so much better armor. So now it takes longer for my ass to get packaged up, but I'm still dead.
Yes, Fallout's is a better system than Morrowind's in my experience, but it has far less aspects to track, and those that it does have are less important to track, and the whole thing is much more straightforward, so you can pay attention to fragging mutants and not watching numbers. I never once kept notes on a character's stats in Fallout, but I ended up using a freaking spreadsheet to make sure my Morrowind character stayed where I wanted him.
Re:Making Fallout Fans Happy (Score:4, Insightful)
Absolutely, and your post proves it! It also goes to show that you were (almost from the get-go) able to jump right into Fallout's *game* and ignore the rules. Isn't that what a great RPG is about? Not having to be a rule-jockey, but immersing yourself in the story and/or gameplay?
What you experienced in Fallout is (more or less) the same sort of thing I experienced with Morrowind; I took a little bit of time to learn the character creation interface, and then picked some skills I thought sounded good. After about ten minutes (plowing through a nearby cave), I realized I wasn't having fun. So I dropped back out and built a character based on a concept that had worked for me in the past, instead of min/maxing everything. I found the resulting Khajiit Fighter/Thief to be one of the best characters I have ever had the pleasure of gaming with.
I had the misfortune of not picking up Fallout until a year or two ago; it took me months (literally!) to find a character concept I was comfortable with. I wasn't able to hit that same niche, because with only three tagged skills, it seemed a lot more important that I got those three skills (and two gifts) "right".
Having a useless major or minor skill in Morrowind doesn't seem fatal; there's five of each, one imperfection doesn't seem like that big of a deal. But when you're working with stats that can't be changed, 3 skills that can't be untagged, and 2 gifts that can't be given back, each one seems vital.
Eventually, I just got over it and thoroughly enjoyed the game. Sometimes, that's hard to do with RPGs - be they Fallout, Morrowind, or whatever. The rules can get in the way.
-lw
Re:Making Fallout Fans Happy (Score:2)
You never played a character at 1 Intelligence did you?
Altought it doesn't break the character, it does make the game experience weird... Most subquests are blocked, Some people don't even talk to you, and , if you don't want to kill good guys, you have to take buffouts to gain certain important main quests...
It's still cool at the start of Fallout2 'tough. Eve
Re:Making Fallout Fans Happy (Score:2)
Unfortunately, pretty much true... (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, the way thins were looking, Black Isle couldn't make them happy either. I remember the rather heated feedback that Black Isle got, first when they said that Fallout 3 would have 3D graphics (although it would still take place in a 2D space like Fallou 1 and 2 did), and later when they wanted to make the combat real-time.
After that, they wanted to balance certain things. Balance is supposed to be a good thing, but the community hated it for some reason. I was stopped reading NMA-fallout.com's forums after the response to a Black Isle member mused about reducing the bonus from the Gifted trait so it would be an actual tradeoff like it was intended to be, and not a freebie.
Just about every new idea thought of - improved science skills, weapon creation/modification, decan and repair, more limited resources in the game world, even more grass on the ground brought some amount of backlash. I just don't think anything short of a remake of Fallout 1 will satisfy many of the hardcore fans.
I can think of a thousand things Bathesda can do wrong with Fallout 3, but the existing fanbase is too firmly set with the original engine. They have to realize that without renovating the game at just about every level, it won't go anywhere. An original-engine game would sell a couple hundred copies to the hardcore fans, but even the bulk of the original fanbase has moved on to more modern things. What the most vocal part of the Fallout community seems to want just isn't a viable game in 2004, especially not with the modding tools available for Fallout and Fallout 2.
Re:Unfortunately, pretty much true... (Score:2, Interesting)
\ I remember the rather heated feedback that Black Isle got,
\ first when they said that Fallout 3 would have 3D graphics
\ (although it would still take place in a 2D space like Fallout
\ 1 and 2 did), and later when they wanted to make the combat
\ real-time.
Have you played Fallout BOS for xbox? Its 3D is nothing like one
would expect, not isometric, but top down. Why did they not do
it more isometric, something akin to Warcraft 3.
As per combat real time? Why? One of the great things that
Fallo
there are no "fallout" fans.. (Score:1, Flamebait)
though in that sense who owns the fallout franchise has little to do with who does the true fallout successor game. because, hell, there is nothing that you couldn't take for free expect character and faction names in the fallouts 1 and 2. and lets face it, character names never were that important.
so all and all, wtf you need the fallout name for if
Fallout3 (Score:3, Informative)
There is a classic example of what Bethestha might face.
Ultima 7 and its followers. In the early nineties Origin released the Ultima7s (now can be played via exult [sourceforge.net]
Well in its original state the game was almost unplayable due to heavy machine requirements and bugs. Over time Origin fixed the bugs, and the game began to shine. After a few years people remembered the game better than it really was (not that it was bad it was a classic indeed) from that point on and from the point origin released the Underworlds which also connected to U7, Origin was destined to fail. First they released Ultima 8 which was quite good, but it was not another Ultima 7. They got a heavy beating, then year after year another delay. Ultima 7 became more and more nostalgic, and Origin/EA simply had to face a giant which they could not beat. Then U9 came out, buggy rushed, it got a deserved beating, although the game concepts itself were amazing and later games showed that the design can really work (The two Gothics come to my mind), Origin ran into the problem, a) that they again released a buggy game
b) that the fans expectations were so high that they never could have fullfilled it with the hardware back then or a totally different design.
The funny thing is Garriot basically was right with his design decisions, it was just the hardware and the bugs which crippled the game, together with a fan community which had over the top expectations.
I wish Bethesta good luck but if they are unlucky, they run into another U7 fiasco.
Re:Fallout3 (Score:3, Insightful)
They make a sequel and get nothing but complaints about stupid AI, poor performace, slow load times and so on. They complain about bad voice acting, unbelievable story and characters, lousy hud, actions not having any real impact on the story.
All problems that were the same or worse in the original game.
And the fans wonder why the publishers give up trying to make them happy and just release cheap mass market games using the IP.
What makes Fallout? (Score:4, Interesting)
For me, it is turnbased combat, orthagonal view, tons of side quests that make the world breath. Great atmosphere.
If they just don't change those basic concepts, they will do fine. If they want to change any of them, just give the game a different name and try to do something original.
Re:What makes Fallout? (Score:2)
Dark environment, legitimate paths for both good and evil, SPECIAL system, and turn-based combat... the most important of which is the darkness. The bomb should have crushed the human spirit. Everything else comes from this. Good and evil can easily exist in such a world because the "good" raise the people while the "evil" can continue to dominate/exploit them. The SPECIAL system is excellent, but I could handle something different. The turn-based combat is preferred
GURPS (Score:1)