Pure Sophistry was very fortunate to talk to Feargus Urquhart- CEO of Obsidian Entertainment on their new Kickstarter Game- "Project Eternity" Feargus answers the tough questions and provides amazing insight into the video game industry:
Here's an Except: "If we listened to everyone Project Eternity would be a Japanese turn-based dating sim with insect people."
"The Seville-based (Spain) indie games developer QUICKFIRE GAMES are today very proud and happy to announce that their the tactical rpg “Prelude Dark Pain“, is now fully funded via Kickstarter." - Jonas Ek, TGG.
In a new live stream, Josh Sawyer discussed the possibility of a Pillars of Eternity Tactics game and the challenges it could pose.
Video game development is extremely hard. So much can go wrong. With that in mind, Obsidian Entertainment is the gold standard that nails the RPGs it's known for while also delivering experimental games that people love. They may be one of the most underrated teams in gaming right now.
I dunno i might give that to insomniac honestly. Their output quantity and quality are insane, and all with no crunch!
You can't just make the claim that a studio is the 'gold standard for game development' without providing evidence to support such a claim. Is it judged on the quality of the recent output measured by metacritic scores, or is judged on the output frequency, or is judged by sales?
Recent titles are The Outer Worlds, Grounded, Pentiment and soon to be released Avowed. Are they grounds for calling Obsidian 'the gold standard of game development'?
Not even close. There are much better studios, like Insomniac, Fromsoftware, and Capcom in general ( If i'm allowed to mention a publisher).
I'd delve more into the legacy of the studio, since this is a PS-centric site afterall and anything no-PS is written off, without much thought. (They are well revered within the PC RPG fan base {some of the PC folks here might agree}, but 'gold-standard' might be a stretch ... but the studio's legendary in its own rights)
TBH, they are the former Black Isle Studio nearly as a whole. Just the name changed after Interplay's financial troubles.
They were responsible for the OG Fallout(s) and published BioWare's Baldur's Gate(s) plus developed famous RPG series like Icewind Dale and Planescape.
Later they'd go on to develop the best 3D Fallout i.e New Vegas (within a crushingly short dev time period), sequel to BioWare's famous RPGs i.e KOTOR and Neverwinter Nights.
As well as the Pillars of Eternity series (Avowed being its part).
The games, imho, that dents the gold-standard of Obsidian is the experimental Alpha Protocol, which needed more dev time and Dungeon Siege III.
So, yeah ... Insomniac's better at being at the Gold standard podium or even MachineGames from the rival camp but Insomniac has its own niche. And if you gotta praise Larian just for Baldur's Gate 3, you gotta know where it started it all.
Peace.
The proof is in the games, they literally exist. We play them every year or so. Why are you acting like that's some information we have to dig up?
They're all bangers and there are statements from a few developers saying that they do not have crunch time at insomnia games.
So it seems that they are not only highly productive, but they're able to do that with an insanely high production quality, lots of creativity, very quickly and the developers are crunch free
Obsidian is damn good. Amazing! Even but I wouldn't put them on the same tier as insomniac production quality just isn't there
Lol! Obsidian Entertainment aren't even on my top 10 list of greatest game developers! Plus nevered even played or had interest in any of their games, So how can they even be considered the golden standard??
Idk if I'd call Obsidian the gold standard, but I do appreciate that while they work on large projects they still give their devs freedom to experiment with smaller stuff like Pentiment. I feel like a lot of AAA studios would benefit from using smaller projects like a breather between huge releases. It would probably help cut down on industry-wide burnout which has caused so many devs to leave AAA for the indie/AA scenes.
I don't know how someone arrived at this claim.
Obisidian is just about above average.
IMO insomniac are the best studio in the world alongside from software. Look at how much sony paid for Insomniac and the games they have released so far generating billions. Spiderman, Ratchet and clank, Spiderman MM, spiderman 2 and soon wolverine along with spiderman 3 in development
Spiderman generate billions not ratchet & clank, not resistance, lol defintely not sunset over drive.
From are critical darlings, but pretty much everything they release is a mess technically.
I would go with Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio (yakuza games) or Atlus. RGG relases 1 to 3 quality games a year and last year atlus released P3R, SMTVengence and Metaphor. And most of these games are polished at launch.
SEGA and Capcom been throwing bangers for a while. I'm on Metaphor right now and can't wait to play Mai Shiranui in Feb
RGG is top tier for sure. Incredible games and good output. They've also figured out how to more effectively use open worlds by reusing their cities and building on them, really utilizing every nook and cranny across the games.
Must see for Obsidian fans
I hope this reaches the level of Mask of the Betrayer.....Obsidian's greatest feat IMO.....