Note: This is not directly related to features inside of an upcoming fallout game, so please do not lock this and move it into th Fallout 4 thread.


So, I read somewhere that after F:NV Bethesda fired some members of the Obsidian team. At first I was mad, because I very much preferred certain aspects of Obsidian's Fallout to Bethesda's, but then I remembered that almost all of the anger over NV was due to bugs and crashes, so they probably only fired Obsidian's programmers. I see no reason for them to fire the writers and creative producers of the Obsidian team, and hope they recognize the talent of the people on that team.

So best case scenario, Obsidian writers/artists and Bethesda programmers, because Bethesda does seem to make smooth games. It would be bad if they just scrapped most of the Obsidian team and didn't salvage the good parts, and worst case scenario there is a nuclear holocaust and the fallout series never continues.

Thoughts?

It's not Bethesdas responsibility to fire anyone from Obsidian. The layoffs were a result of a poor financial situation, partly due to Bethesda preventing the bonus for reaching 85 metacritic score for New Vegas (it only hit 84), and Obsidian not getting any royalties from New Vegas (as per their contract - IIRC).

Also, Bethesda was responsible for the QA testing of New Vegas (along with the timescale to develope the game), so even if they owned Obsidian it'd not really be in their rights to simply sack Obsidian programmers when they themseves failed in the QA department.

In any case, as for your suggestion, I'd say best scenario would be Obsidian writing and designing Fallout 4 wholesale (quests, gameplay mechanics, all of it) and Bethesda simply building the world, putting things together, as per Obsidian's design.

What UnDeCafindeed said.

Edit: Best would be Obsidian doing everything with at least two years to develop and produce the game. Bethesda and Obsidian doing the QA testing and Bethesda does the publishing.

New Vegas was only given what a couple months short of a year for development? Obsidian kicked ass with it. All the things Obsidian wanted to do for New Vegas, but couldn't due to such an unrealistic development timetable makes me sad. If only they were given at least six more months.

Worst case scenario would be something similar to Skyrim. Not even so much in the writing department as in the.....well everything.

Biggest issue probably being: Go play Fallout 3, then go play Skyrim. Running into the same random encounter twice in Fallout 3? Extremely hard to do and only a couple can even repeat. Skyrim? Jesus Christ they repeat all day.
While poor writing is bad, I simply CANNOT play Skyrim because of VERY EASY to fix issues that....sadly weren't. Things like how the NPCs greet you and what counts as a "greeting," repeating random encounters, random encounters or NPC interactions that literally have no triggers attached to them (assassins hunting you down, the Thalmor hating you because you're level 8+ (yes, this is the actual trigger))....

I agree with the OP that obsidian should do the writing and bethesda more or less everything else. HOWEVER, this doesn't mean i want skyrim with guns and obsidian writing. I'd prefer it if bethesda took a few hints from this forum and made a few improvements, even if the main issue with people seems to be the writing from what i've seen. Not many people aside from the rather vocal hard-core dino minority seems to have the sentiment that FO3 gameplay mechanics were enough to ruin the experience. Many obviously felt as though the mechanics were great based on reviews both from critics and peers (just look at metacritic ffs). Now i suppose one could argue that mechanics such as real-time play and VATS isn't true to the series or whatever, but things change, just as how the fallout universe changes, and more people enjoy FO3 than FO1. again you can say that that's because most people have never played FO1, but i wouldn't bet money on that statement, and neither is bethesda apparently. Even obsidian didn't really stray from the FO3 formula aside from traits and better factions/writing. The core gameplay was still the same.

long story short, if i could get FO3 with obsidian writing/faction choices,and a setting in chicago, then that would be amazing imo. and willow. idc if she's a NV mod, she is the number one efficient/effective/overall best companion i've had in any of the fallouts i've played imo.

Not true. There are differences in the core game mechanics.

Another strong suit of Obsidian that's often shadowed by the obvious writing advantage is the overall balance the game provides. SPECIAL, Traits, skills, weapons and armor-wise. Bethesda simply doesn't do this in their games.

Agreed(actually I'd personally like a complete restart in the approach of the series without Bethesda, not using the new games as a basis, but that isn't gonna happen).

Considering that most of the poor reviews were simply due to the game breaking bugs the game had on release, it is Bethesda's doing that Obsidian missed the Metacritic score since they did the QA testing, so essentially Beth screwed Obsidian out of their bonus.
(for that matter I had more game crashes with F3 than NV)
Also, in reply to FaintShadow, while the core gameplay was obviously still the same in NV, the numerous small improvements in game mechanics made major improvement in terms of gameplay.

Im going to say that i was VERY disapponted with feedside, hoover dam and the strip.. im not going to bother motioning the writing... were all here because nv shook us to our core philosophy. svcks but i rather obsidion just get better programmers / designers Not artisy, art is fine... hoping bethesda happens to stumble onto this thread

o and ps: IM ON A IPHONE

Who would have guessed it, I agree with Undecaf, styles, and Long knife!

No, it will just in reality not in simulation

Lol the bugs were due to a little thing called Gamebryo. Asthough Fallout 3 AND Skyrim weren't buggy as hell. No, please no Bioware anything for the love of God.

i'm pretty sure that's actually the second or third best scenario. i'd like to be able to live my life in first-person though, it's just difficult sometimes trying to live your life in a isometric view

Well then you should find another game because Fallout is an RPG first.

Best case: "So we've contacted the guys at Obsidian......"

Worst case: "We saw a huge positive reaction to many of the features in Skyrim......."

Nice, supposedly a lot of things in skyrim were posted as suggestions in these forums. Blame them.

This sums up my feelings exactly.

Haha this is exactly what i'm scared of. Especially if its Todd Howard and his damn Speech skill. I don't want to say it, but I think this will happen. There's no reason for them not to, because in the eyes of Bethesda Skyrim was a sweeping success.

Yeah I have no doubt Fallout 4 will be just Skyrim with Guns, Skyrim was too big of a success for Beth to not just copy everything about it for Fallout 4.

Best case scenario they look at the forums, take the most creative ideas, feature Obsidian as their writing staff (give them plenty of time), and try to make Fallout as separate fro TES and unique as possible.

I hate you!!!!!

And we know from the past that Bethesda won't try and do something new, cause that almost made them bankrupt last time.

New Vegas was something new for Bethesda. By that I mean they went out and got Obsidian to make a Fallout game for them. It was pretty much a win win for Bethesda. If New Vegas was a total flop they could have just said "well it wasn't our fault it was Obsidian's." Then they could have wiped their hands and walked away. But since it was a huge success and made Bethesda tons of cash, they can say "we had faith in Obsidian the whole time and you should thank us for going out on a limb by hiring them."

And then they can hire them again to make their next game, so it wont be totally one sided and [censored] up like Bethesdas last Fallout game lmao!

You mean bethesdas only fallout game.

Lol you know Fallout had its first fallout game by Interplay and they still did a better job on it, theres no execuse for poor writing.