I have heard enough about Obsidian for the time being!!

Don't get me wrong, New Vegas is a fabulous game. It is one of my absolute favourites from last gen, Is it better than Fallout 3?? I don't know I couldn't possibly decide, I love them both. In many ways NV is a superior game, the story is very interesting, possibly better than Fo3, possibly. Companions were better, new Factions, Crafting, Weapon Mods, Iron sights etc. A lot of new things went into the game which expanded on Fo3 in a big way. The addition of hardcoe mode was welcomed by many, gambling in the casinos was fun, multiple ammo types was a good addition. In short New Vegas was a success.

Now Obsidian are excellent decorators, they came in to Bethesda's House, rearranged the furniture, slapped on some new wallpapers, put a carpet down, not satisfied with that they built an extension. And what they made was awesome. I think Obsidian are great developers who have some great ideas and a good design style.

They are not 'better' than Bethesda.

They may have re-decorated very very well, but BETHESDA STILL BUILT THE HOUSE!!!!! I don't think Obsidian could have.

It's very unfair and miss-guided to say that Obsidain are better than Bethesda because NV was 'better' than Fo3, of course it was it came out after, it was built on Fo3 for Todd sake. Would it be fair to say that NV wouldn't have been as good if Beth had made it? I don't think so.

That being said I really do hope we get another Obsidian Fallout building on Fo4, the potential is utterly huge, I'd like to see what they would do with it.

Obsidian is in red numbers, I would be surprised if they survive another year before the few talented people ends up escaping out of that [censored]hole as well. Chris Avellone wasn't even an important member anymore. If Beth is stupid enough to let them touch Fallout again, we will only get the pure Josh Sawyer philosophy in the game, with nobody to stop him this time. But I think that since Obsidian considers themselves to be superior to Bethesda, the deal this time shouldn't be about Metacritic, it should be something like "yo Sawyer you say you are better than every other developer in the planet and you singlehanded created New Vegas from scratch right? well get the spin off of Fallout 4 all by yourself, we won't hand you a single asset this time, you have the same time, better hurry up".

And then cancel the game. They seem to be used to that.

They did indeed, the engine was ready for the making. Even though Obsidian had some rough publishing deals, they've been quite fortunate. They had the chance to work on Star Wars - Knights of the old Republic in an already finished engine, same goes for Neverwinter Nights and Fallout. They are great writers, but sometimes very poor developers. Weird focus during development, often broken games, bad gameplay mechanics etc. I am not sure why they are so revered, but there are a great many talented developers in that studio ofc, or was atleast. I wouldn't mind Obsidian making more Fallout, go ahead, i love New Vegas. Just don't understand why people are up in arms over it all the time.

And here was me hoping Sturges handy man skills had gotten better.

Bethesda, Obsidian, Bioware, CDPR etc. are brand names, the developers within can change and move around, but there are certain qualities associated to the brand that will set the expectations. As with any other market, brand loyalty is a thing, it will make people stick to a certain developer and automatically attach certain qualities to different developers. Even if Bethesda revived Mario Puzo as a storywriter for their next game, people would still swear that Bioware are better writers. It is just pre-conceived ideas leading to self-fulfilling expectations.

What about Konami? Are they still any good?

Does this really belong in the Fallout 4 forum?

To me that isn't even a question that needs a second's pondering. Yes. Yes it is.

It's also better than Fallout 4. I want to like Fallout 4 more, but it keeps holding me at arms' length, or just punching me in the face.

I don't know if I would say they are better than Bethesda. But they did make a better Fallout game than either of Bethesda's attempts.

Konami is a little busy burning its own house down to actually try and make good games. Phantom Pain seems to have been the last hurrah. From now on, it's all tears, fire, and pachinko machines.

Lots of sequels aren't as good as the games that came out before them. Donkey Kong Country 3, Silent Hill: Downpour, Metal Gear Solid 2, Final Fantasy XIII 1-3, Fallout 4...

Are you comparing Vanilla NV to Fo4 or the full version? Because I don't think anyone can say it isn't as good as NV yet. I think it's better already but whatever you believe, It's better to wait for more updates and DLC to claim that Fallout 4 is 'less' than New Vegas.

And I know what Konami are doing, hence my comment.

Vanilla vs vanilla in the case of Fallout 4. Game+DLC vs Game+DLC in the case of Fallout 3 (Though Fallout 3 would still lose if going head to head not comparing DLCs). DLC might change this in Fallout 4's favor. I hope it will, because as awesome as New Vegas' DLC was, I'd love to see something even better.

Bethesda really stepped up with its companions this time around. Even the ones I don't like are better than any of the ones from Fallout 3. And combat is better too, which is really good because frankly there's too much of it in the game. Unfortunately, the faction leaders didn't get the same boosts.

My comment about Konami was mostly so that you could tell that there are some things that we can agree on.

NV was good game. It was improvement compared to Fallout 3 but you wouldn't expect less from game which was basically one large mod of Fallout 3. At the same time it was buggy as hell and still is. On release half the quests were broken, weapons were unbalanced to the point that it required about 3 major patches just to make enegry and heavy weapons playable despite whole absurd concept of energy, small and heavy guns being equal. Not to forget explosives. And all because Sawyer could not write one line of plain text at the description at the character creation screen. Why the hell would anybody bother to invent and produce new technology if it offers no advantage compared to existing one?

That said, yes, if Bethesda and Obsidian agree, let Obsidian make another Fallout game, why not. More Fallout is always better then less ...Or?

Its a matter of taste. I found FONvV crafting and such didn't even begin to make up for poor world design. People go on about choices but I felt constantly hamstrung and railroaded. Obsidian's style seems to really grate on me. After KOTOR2 and FONV, they're definitely on my don't buy if they're in someone else's world list. FONV was one of the biggest disappointments I ever got in video games.

Interesting fact: the original Fallout, as well as Fallout 2, we're made by Interplay. Bethesda aquired the rights to the Fallout IP after Interplay went under, and went on to make Fallout 3. New Vegas was published by Bethesda, but was actually created by Obsidian. A bunch of the people working at Obsidian, and therefore on New Vegas, had previously worked at Interplay. So what's actually happening is that Interplay built the house, Bethesda bought it and changed the setup, then invited a studio staffed by former Interplay members to redecorate the new place.

At least, that's my understanding of how things went down.

There are plenty of these threads over in Fallout Series Discussion - no need for another one here.