Obsidian Does it Again

[krellen]

Releasing buggy games for the day-one purchasers to play test seems dangerous and irresponsible for a company.

I'm just wondering if there has ever been a game released in the past, oh, ten years that did not have at least a few people complaining about the "OMG BROKEN BUG" in the game?

Bugs in released software are pretty standard, and not just in the gaming industry. Microsoft's infamous for it; have you ever been an early adopter of a Microsoft product?

 

[UnravThreads]

However Bethesda cannot be blamed for this. According to the Brink developers, Bethesda is "hands off" with its publishing, meaning it lets the devs do their thing without interference. This is a failure by Obsidian, and nobody else. Yes the engine does have its bugs, but this save thing is just inexcusable.

Bethesda, as a publisher, have a responsibility to test the games they publish. Yes, the developer has to test it, but so do Bethesda (And I believe it would also have to be tested by Sony and Microsoft for it to be certified by them, and I also think Valve would have to test it before putting it on Steam).

It cannot have gone through four/five lots of testing without the more prevalent bugs turning up, so I would guess there's something strange going on.

 

[Arawn.Chernobog]

It's the spawn of Bethesda and Obsidian, glitch-land 2000 was expected.

 

[JediMB]

As soon as I saw that Obsidian was working on the next installment of my beloved Fallout, I knew I had to take the "wait and see" approach.

You're aware of that Obsidian Entertainment was formed from the remnants of the Black Isle Studios, right? The people who created the Fallout series to begin with?

 

[Ghengis John]

I've been playing for about 13 hours and I've only encountered one bug. There's a guy guarding a door. He says "pay me 100 caps and you can go in." I pay him the caps, he then says "I can't guarantee your safety in there, good luck." Then as soon as I use the door he tries to murder me as though I hadn't just paid for entry. Considering he was evil anyhow this wasn't really an issue. I killed him and gained some karma. I could pick-pocket him for his key if i were so inclined. In any event, I think they made a far more refined and nuanced game. The improvements they've made make me feel like I'm playing an actual fallout and the "slap in the face" to me was the game that hit shelves called "fallout 3". As much as I enjoyed it and as much time as I spent with it it didn't "feel" like fallout 3. This is fallout 3. That other... "thing" was a buggy mess too. How quickly you forget constant save and crash bugs, floating trees and talking corpses. On PC Fallout 3 was released with a memory leak that assured a crash. I could play for all of 5 minutes before it would go down. New Vegas as it is seems fine to me. I love what they did with speech now. I hated that it was a useless skill so long as you didn't mind reloading a roll, now there's a minimum check. Maybe I'd be more up in arms if I was having some people's problems but as it stands I guess I'm one of the lucky ones. The game I'm now playing will probably be the game you can play in a couple months. It's a lot of fun. I feel like saying this though I'm about to run into a bug mountain so I'll try to be respectful. Also, don't sweat 16,0000 caps.

 

[Piecewise]

Honestly, I've got the 360 version and haven't had a lick of trouble with it. It froze once (after I played for something like 7 hours) and the sky turned green, but these were both easily fixed (restart and quick travel respectively) and caused me no problems. Me thinks this bug problem is blown out of proportion by people who don't actually have the game.

 

[Smoochy]

To all the people that basically say 'It's Obsidian, don't buy it because you know it's buggy'.
Imagine you're a gamer, but not as hardcore to tell the difference between different developers, or know the stories behind them.
You see Fallout New Vegas, and you thoroughly enjoyed Fallout 3. You're not looking who developed it (because you can't remember) and the name Obsidian doesn't ring any bells. You buy it and you expect a similar experience, only to lose all your progress to the save-bug, or other game-breaking bugs.

A lot (if not the majority) of gamers do not know a lot about the game industry. Simply stating that 'they should have known' because it's an Obsidian game, or an Oblivion-engine game isn't valid. You know, I know, but a lot of people don't.

 

[teebeeohh]

for some reason i really like obsidian games despite the bugs. standard gameplay and boring mechanics or graphics(Im talking to you generic brown shooter) cant be fixed, but bugs.

on the other hand i also defended kids who were bullied in school

 

[Snowalker]

I think everyone had pre-conceived ideas that this game would be buggy, so if any found any bugs AT ALL, they were going to crucify this game. Thats my opinion on all the hate for this game.

 

[glenbruton]

I've had ONE crash in eighteen hours+ of fallout vegas. No quest bugs. So for me its a perfectly fine game.

 

[Rhokk]

This is why I don't bother buying games for my computer anymore. My console version of New Vegas works perfectly fine. There are no saved game issues, and though the load times are sometimes excessive, I can always install it on my Xbox to reduce those.

I never have to worry that a game's not going to work on my Xbox without having to purchase a new video card, or something similar. The only disadvantage I can see is not being able to partake of all the awesome user generated content that gets released, but even that's not very important to me. Back when I tried to use all the Oblivion addons I wanted I could never get them all to work together nicely anyway.

 

[raankh]

Honestly, I've got the 360 version and haven't had a lick of trouble with it. It froze once (after I played for something like 7 hours) and the sky turned green, but these were both easily fixed (restart and quick travel respectively) and caused me no problems. Me thinks this bug problem is blown out of proportion by people who don't actually have the game.

This is completetly off-topic, and I quoted you just to get your attention; but being a complete Kusanagi fanboi, I can't but note your awesome avatar! Awesome, dude!

OnT:

The problem with QA is that it's expensive and only drives quality up, not quantity. You don't release more games by doing QA, in fact you release less. It's also difficult to find statistics that can prove to management that quality pays off. If you have a professional QA team, some of your products are going to be rejected, not because they have to many glitches but because the software as a whole just doesn't work. I can only speak from the perspective of someone who develops distributed real-time software, but the principles of software development are the same. A good QA team in a game company should also be asking questions about target audiences and such.

It's hard enough getting QA taken seriously in the general software industry, so I can imagine getting serious QA in the extremely hectic and sometimes haphazard world of entertainment is nigh on impossible. Something as complex as a full open game world with non-linear progression is likely never going to be tested sufficiently -- you'll need to model the entire software in order for QA to have something manageable to work with. It's definitely doable, but apparently it isn't worth it from a business perspective.

That's no excuse for the programmers who have ignored their pride as craftsmen and released broken games; I can't say anything about Fallout Las Vegas (having been so thoroughly disgusted with F3) but there are just sooo many other examples out there .....

Apparently, it's a sound business decision because this downward trend has gone on for a long time, while the market has continued to expand (ie, earnings are going up).

 

[Archaon6044]

HAH! you think YOU have it bad when you lose saves? my copy dosn't even work! i run the launcher just fine, it configuires settings to High because i have a good machine, then i press play, it runs for 5 seconds and crashes out. again, and again and agin, and there is no fix anywhere in the forums that i've read that's been able to fix it

 

[tehweave]

This is why I didn't buy fallout new vegas as soon as it came out. I bought fallout 3 about a year after it came out, and all the major glitches were gone. I really want to like NV, but I also know how glitches can ruin a game.

Fallout3 had this weird glitch that caused my game to crash every time I was in that town on the bridge (the one under attack of the 'family...' can't remember the name.). And I stopped playing for a good few months until a patch came out fixing it.

So, Obsidian and Bethesda, once patch 1.5 or something comes out (maybe 4 of 5 patches down the road) I'll buy and play the game. Good luck fixing the glitches.

 

[Kurokami]

After having watched the Spoiler Warning episodes that covered FO3 I was wondering whether you'd have anything to say about New Vegas.
I'm almost considering buying this but honestly these huge amounts of bugs are unacceptable, you have a Q&A people, you have programmers, have them work together, hell DELAY THE GAME WHILE YOU FIX IT. Valve may always release really late but atleast their games don't tend to be horribly broken, unlike anything by Bethesda or Obsidian apparently. Its suprisingly the two companies even continue to have anything of a reputation.

Awesome games, and New Vegas (apperantly) apart I've never had a problem with bugs, what's surprising about it?

(Edited amazing for surprising, I thought that was your wording, sorry)

 

[Scrythe]

As soon as I saw that Obsidian was working on the next installment of my beloved Fallout, I knew I had to take the "wait and see" approach.

You're aware of that Obsidian Entertainment was formed from the remnants of the Black Isle Studios, right? The people who created the Fallout series to begin with?

Yeah, remnants. It's still not Black Isle.

It still doesn't change the fact that they have a track record of never finishing a fucking game.

 

[thenamelessloser]

I know it only relates to early on in the article, but at least Star Wars KOTOR II had a better ending than Fallout 3...

 

[Drejer43]

16000 bottle cap!!
if I had that much in fallout 3, then money would never be a problem.

 

[PurpleSkull]

Wow I really can't believe the amount of people here bitching about the game and saying it's a shit game just because of the bugs. This game was better than Fallout 3 in every way.

The writing is superior, the general storylines are more believable and less stupid. There are more weapons and unique weapons are actually unique. Intelligent super mutants like they should be. More companions who have their own quests and backstories. An improved crafting system that expands to all different kinds of items. Much more likeable characters with very different personalities. An expansive area to travel and discover. Way more factions. More perks, that actually do something instead of the stupid "increase (skill) by X points". A more difficult skill progression that requires you to choose what kind of player you are and makes it impossible to be a "jack-of-all-trades". Hardcore mode that makes the game much more immmersive and challenging. The ability to finish the main quest with just speech.

Oh and one of the best parts; a fantastic voice actor roster with more than triple the amount there were in Fallout 3, and all of which have skill that allows them to change their voice instead of use the same voice over and over again. Now not every second character has the exact same voice, even if they're voiced by the same person, and the actual voices themselves are far superier.

And all of you are bitching about bugs. Tsk Tsk Tsk. It's a shame to see such a great and intelligent game go to waste on people who are crying because they saw a rock pop in or the game crashed which happens on heaps of other games.

No one is ever going to read comments so far behind, but i have to say that i agree with you in all points except that the Mainstory in Fallout 3 was not believable. I would even say the mainstory in New Vegas is a bit weaker. I mean, why can't the legion not just swim acros the river and ambush the NCR, cutting them off from the dam entirely and then just starve them out of there instead of relying on a frontal assault...which even failed once before.

I played this game for about 4 days now and so far i didn't encounter serious bugs except for one broken quest and the broken animal vs animal fight in the Thorn.