I've loved Obsidian ever since those guys were working for the Black Isle subdivision of Interplay (together with the Troika crew, who sadly seem to have left crpg gaming after Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines). They've always been horribly buggy, even in their Interplay days, but it's a matter of taste - bugs get fixed, but bad writing stays bad forever (and greater writing, world design and characters stay brilliant once said bugs are fixed). None of Bioware's 'epic' story events have come to Black Isle/Obsidian's greatest:
- The Nameless One's eventual meeting with Ravel, where she finally points out to what should be obvious by now: your curse, the symbol of Torment, isn't a curse upon you - it's upon everyone who loves and cares about you. One by one she takes your companions apart from their most vulnerable aspects, taunting Dakkon for having dedicated his life to freeing his people from slavery, only to became an oath-bound slave to the Nameless One, pointing out that by 'freeing' Nordrom you've condemned him to a half-life, no longer robot, but never able to be human, reviled by both species, that everything monstrous in Ignus and Vhaliour is through your own cruelty, that Annah's schoolgirl crush on you is going to be her own form of eternal torment, and that Morte, the wisecracking fun guy whose never lost for words finally...loses his cool, just for the briefest of moments, as she mocks his use of comedy to mask his self-loathing. Great end to the 3rd part of a 5 part game;
- The eventual meeting with Myrkul in Mask of the Betrayer, where the dead god lies untouchable, laughing at the world for the suffering he has inflicted upon it by the events of his final terrible curse...only to realise that you ARE that curse in its current manifestation, finally come full circle to meet its maker, and salivating at the idea of how much more power (translate: new abilities) you might get if you decide to devour an entire dead god
If you like a certain sort of dark, but not emo, writing with a wickedly black comic streak, then Obsidian wins by virtue of there simply being no other competitors in that section of the market.
BUT having gone on that pro-Obsidian rant, no, I do not want them to make TES. TES has always been Bethesda's baby. A lot of folks were upset when Bethesda got the FO licence instead of Obsidian - it really was Obsidian's baby, in terms of the staff who worked on the original games. But frankly, Bethesda manned up and did the right thing by the fans of FO1 and 2, by allowing Obsidian to show what they could have done if they had the opportunity to make FO3 continuing their version of the lore (i.e. BoS as insular decaying and outright cold-blooded organisation, anything - even ultimate tyranny - being better than the horror that is wasteland anarchy (c/f FO3 where there's no option to declare that dictatorship under the Enclave is better than anarchy - in the original FO setting you didn't always get the chance to side with the bad guys, but anarchy was always the worst option, as it meant humanity devolving Mad Max 2/3 style).
So Obsidian got to do 'their' FO3, continuing the stories of the towns and factions that began in FO1. Each of the major players (bar Caesor's) had evolved over the series, starting as tiny gangs of raiders, or two-bit trading hubs in FO1, forming a series of alternate state models in FO2 (only for the Enclave to arrive half-way through the game, moving in as though nothing had changed in the past 200 years, blasting the place apart just as humanity is patching itself together), and eventually the giant but inefficient behemoth states and drug-added tribes in FO3, whose decadedence again threatened to undermine all the progress that had been made.
It did an excellent job of providing a conclusion to the original series, and Bethesda showed a fuckload more sympathy for the fans who wanted something closer to the originals in tone, than the many posters who derided us as whiners. In return, they got a hell of a lot of respect from people who formally detested Bethesda as 'the guys that stole Fallout'.
Obsidian taking over TES would be wrong for all the same reasons that the FO1-2 fans applied to Bethesda's FO3, and frankly, the only way of resolving the issue would be to allow Bethesda to make their own TES:NV (or equivalent), to give the dedicated fans 'their version'.
In summary, I'm grateful that Bethesda allowed us old-time Fallout fans to see a 'true to the originals' FO game made using the FO3 engine, to bring the series finished in the manner that its original authors intended. But from here, I'd much rather see Obsidian move on to other things - they're not big enough to self-publish, which means that the quality of their games vary massively with the parameters of the project that the publisher agrees to. If the publishers tells them to make a streamlined action game, then that's what they have to make. But every now and then, they get a project that gives them the freedom to focus on what they do best, and in those games they weave some serious magic. TES, on the other hand, should be with Bethesda, as it always has been.
- The Nameless One's eventual meeting with Ravel, where she finally points out to what should be obvious by now: your curse, the symbol of Torment, isn't a curse upon you - it's upon everyone who loves and cares about you. One by one she takes your companions apart from their most vulnerable aspects, taunting Dakkon for having dedicated his life to freeing his people from slavery, only to became an oath-bound slave to the Nameless One, pointing out that by 'freeing' Nordrom you've condemned him to a half-life, no longer robot, but never able to be human, reviled by both species, that everything monstrous in Ignus and Vhaliour is through your own cruelty, that Annah's schoolgirl crush on you is going to be her own form of eternal torment, and that Morte, the wisecracking fun guy whose never lost for words finally...loses his cool, just for the briefest of moments, as she mocks his use of comedy to mask his self-loathing. Great end to the 3rd part of a 5 part game;
- The eventual meeting with Myrkul in Mask of the Betrayer, where the dead god lies untouchable, laughing at the world for the suffering he has inflicted upon it by the events of his final terrible curse...only to realise that you ARE that curse in its current manifestation, finally come full circle to meet its maker, and salivating at the idea of how much more power (translate: new abilities) you might get if you decide to devour an entire dead god
If you like a certain sort of dark, but not emo, writing with a wickedly black comic streak, then Obsidian wins by virtue of there simply being no other competitors in that section of the market.
BUT having gone on that pro-Obsidian rant, no, I do not want them to make TES. TES has always been Bethesda's baby. A lot of folks were upset when Bethesda got the FO licence instead of Obsidian - it really was Obsidian's baby, in terms of the staff who worked on the original games. But frankly, Bethesda manned up and did the right thing by the fans of FO1 and 2, by allowing Obsidian to show what they could have done if they had the opportunity to make FO3 continuing their version of the lore (i.e. BoS as insular decaying and outright cold-blooded organisation, anything - even ultimate tyranny - being better than the horror that is wasteland anarchy (c/f FO3 where there's no option to declare that dictatorship under the Enclave is better than anarchy - in the original FO setting you didn't always get the chance to side with the bad guys, but anarchy was always the worst option, as it meant humanity devolving Mad Max 2/3 style).
So Obsidian got to do 'their' FO3, continuing the stories of the towns and factions that began in FO1. Each of the major players (bar Caesor's) had evolved over the series, starting as tiny gangs of raiders, or two-bit trading hubs in FO1, forming a series of alternate state models in FO2 (only for the Enclave to arrive half-way through the game, moving in as though nothing had changed in the past 200 years, blasting the place apart just as humanity is patching itself together), and eventually the giant but inefficient behemoth states and drug-added tribes in FO3, whose decadedence again threatened to undermine all the progress that had been made.
It did an excellent job of providing a conclusion to the original series, and Bethesda showed a fuckload more sympathy for the fans who wanted something closer to the originals in tone, than the many posters who derided us as whiners. In return, they got a hell of a lot of respect from people who formally detested Bethesda as 'the guys that stole Fallout'.
Obsidian taking over TES would be wrong for all the same reasons that the FO1-2 fans applied to Bethesda's FO3, and frankly, the only way of resolving the issue would be to allow Bethesda to make their own TES:NV (or equivalent), to give the dedicated fans 'their version'.
In summary, I'm grateful that Bethesda allowed us old-time Fallout fans to see a 'true to the originals' FO game made using the FO3 engine, to bring the series finished in the manner that its original authors intended. But from here, I'd much rather see Obsidian move on to other things - they're not big enough to self-publish, which means that the quality of their games vary massively with the parameters of the project that the publisher agrees to. If the publishers tells them to make a streamlined action game, then that's what they have to make. But every now and then, they get a project that gives them the freedom to focus on what they do best, and in those games they weave some serious magic. TES, on the other hand, should be with Bethesda, as it always has been.
