Obsidian Mailbag

Shamus Young

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Jul 7, 2008
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Obsidian Mailbag

Shamus responds to the many gripes about his gripes with Obsidian and Fallout New Vegas.

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Towowo2

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Feb 6, 2009
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Regardless of platform it seems each version has a wide array of bugs. My personal favorite? The black screen of death. Not sure if it's present on the PC or PS3 versions though.
 

Cade the Imperfect

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Mar 29, 2008
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I think its sad Shamus even had to write out this Article. He only originally pointed out commonly known and occurring flaws and voiced his opinion on it. Personally i saw no wrong in that, people need to understand what is being said before they jump in with all the hate
 

Therumancer

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Nov 28, 2007
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I've said mixed things about New Vegas here and there, both defending it and speaking against it in various regards as I felt it was appropriate.

I will however say that I think that your overlooking the role the Publisher can play in all of this. I suspect that Obsidian likes the push the envelope with content quite a bit, and then when the publisher sees what they have produced goes "OMG, noes you can't do that" and forces them to roll out the censorship and rebuild portions of the game close to release.

This is however apparently not the case with "New Vegas", but I do think it was a factor with "Neverwinter Nights 2" and some of their other games. Atari in paticular seems to be a group of prudes, I keep looking at "Troika" and "Temple Of Elemental Evil" as an example of why things probably go wrong when they deal with real RPG developers who are serious about making M rated games.

I don't think you should dismiss the fire that has been thrown at their publishers before is all.

Also one reason why I won't defend them is that the "Gamebryo" engine has been around for three games now. Oblivion, Fallout 3, and New Vegas have all suffered pretty buggy releases, and truthfully by the third game I would have expected a pretty clean game. The only thing I can think of is that Bethesda just handed them the engine and didn't give them any information on how to use it or kill the bugs they found, and that compounded with the fact that Obsidian was building a deeper game which compounded the bugs.
 

archvile93

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Sep 2, 2009
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You forgot to mention in regards to inherriting a buggy engine that they should've seen those engine related bugs coming and headed them off.
 

Vestsao

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Aug 24, 2009
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This only edifies one of the most prominent arguments against PC gaming. The substantial diversification in PC hardware ensures that developers have a difficult time developing games which will adequately run. You'll have a game which has a particular error with one graphics card and runs smooth as butter on another graphics card.
 

Rad Party God

Party like it's 2010!
Feb 23, 2010
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Unfortunately, I'm on your wagon Shamus. Last week, I could've tell you that the game is awesome and there are not many bugs to worry about. I was dead wrong. My mother board died on me, not because of playing NV mind you, and I bought a new, similar one, because I didn't want to upgrade, I wanted to keep playing with my computer as it was before.

At the lack of enough knowdelage and a little disadvantage of using more than 1 hard drive disk, I was forced to format my comp with a fresh Win7 install.

Fortunately, all my Steam games are stored on the other HDD and I didn't need to format it or redownload the games again and I wanted to keep playing New Vegas.

As buggy as it is, Steam Cloud and all it's problems with this game in particular, I had high hopes that my old saves were still there... to my surprise, a new patch came disabling Steam Cloud and for the moment, until Steam Cloud is re-enabled and it doesn't screw up with my saves, I've lost 20 to 22 hours of gaming... and I was still choosing between helping the NCR or the Legion...

Right now, I don't have any desire to keep playing NV, because a big test is coming in the next week, and because I lost a good portion of the game. Until the game is properly fixed and the test is over next week, I won't be playing NV any time soon.
 

mjc0961

YOU'RE a pie chart.
Nov 30, 2009
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I didn't experience any of the "problems" you supposedly had. The game ran great for me!

So... are the rest of us lying? Are these thousands of irritated gamers part of some vast conspiracy to make Obsidian look bad, just because?

As I said last week, PC hardware is a complex business and I'm sympathetic to the effort it takes to get things running on all of those different machines. If you're not one of the affected people, then rejoice and enjoy your game. But if you want me to enjoy the game then you need to mail me your computer, because it doesn't work right on this one.
I love you right now Shamus. I hate that "it worked fine for me!" crap when you discuss problems with games, as if I'm supposed to say "Okay, I am no longer annoyed that it's not working for me" when people say it worked for them.
 

CitySquirrel

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Jun 1, 2010
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I had a roommate once who got very angry with me when I talked about the enormous failure that was Windows ME. He apparently had it and had experienced no problems, and took at as a personal attack when I mentioned that it has systematically self destructed on my first computer and the computers of countless others.

This is entirely related to the topic at hand.
 
Nov 5, 2007
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I only say "it worked for me" so I can show how lucky I am compared to others. It's like winning at the lottery!

Also, it's really time Bethesda gets a new engine out.
 

Nifty

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Sep 30, 2008
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Right behind you, Shamus.

There's nothing wrong with expecting a big developer working on a AAA title to actually deliver a final product which WORKS.

I've been able to get around a couple of my issues thanks to community fixes because I'm on a PC but I dread to think what it's like for a console owner.
 

gring

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Sep 14, 2010
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im actually very glad you are keeping this going. this is a very real problem, and even in the "open letter to game makers" article, i saw the same exact crap.

"well it runs great for me so theres obviously nothing wrong with the game..." and of course all the other things you responded to. its just silly.

but the truth is, its just the internet. theres always SOMEONE taking the devils advocate. ALWAYS. no matter what you say, theres someone else who will disagree just for the sake of disagreeing.

like when L4D2 was announced, and people were saying "well what about all the free updates and modding programs that were promised before launch, which was the reason i bought the game in the first place?" and people responded with "SHUT UP, I WILL BUY DAY 1!!" no, i will not shut up, but thanks, since this is an actual problem because it was extremely misleading.

this happens all the time, any time anyone makes any complaint, theres always a troll saying something totally illogical to try to shut that person down. just look at the people who make complaints right now about the female worgen models on the wow forums, or just their lack of lore in general, etc.

sorry, im rambling. but i just wanted to say that you have my support, as my computer is basically caving in on itself at this point from playing fallout new vegas. 50 hours of gameplay and somewhere around 40 crashes (most requiring a full reboot), and bugs... oooh lordy are there bugs. i've had to at several quests where i just go on a rampage and kill everyone as they are so bugged and broken that its the only way to complete them. and thats weak because my character was supposed to be a "good" character. ive had to justify it by telling myself that my character suffers from split personality disorder and schizophrenia and tends to black out and go on rampages and kill everyone in sight. oh wait, thats me developing those things from simply playing this bugged out piece of crap. WHOOPSY!!

edit: just wanted to add that i did a clean install of windows and am using brand new drivers, as i foresaw what would happen with this game, as the same problems occurred with oblivion and fallout 3. i wanted as much of an advantage as i could get, so much for that. and its not like drivers or windows are affecting in game bugs, that's just the programming/game engine.
 

Exterminas

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Sep 22, 2009
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I said that the game ran flawlessly at my PC. I wasn't trying to accuse people who claimed the opposite of lying. I was trying to help reflect the game's reality in a more realistic way. Thousands of people bougth the game. Only the ones who expierence bugs, go to forums and complain, which generates a too negative image of the situation of a whole and makes them believe that they will definately expierence a buggy game.
Which they won't.
I haven't.
 

Dectilon

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Sep 20, 2007
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You could've just typed out: "You're idiots. ALL of you." and called it a day. It's not always the right choice, but in this case I think it applies.
 

Altorin

Jack of No Trades
May 16, 2008
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There are no bugs that can compare to the Ballistic Stage Coach I encountered in Red Dead Redemption.

All the stagecoaches in the game were shaking like they were in an earthquake, and then when outside armadillo, I actually saw a stagecoach launch into the air and fly around like a deflating balloon.
 

PurePareidolia

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Nov 26, 2008
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Exterminas said:
I said that the game ran flawlessly at my PC. I wasn't trying to accuse people who claimed the opposite of lying. I was trying to help reflect the game's reality in a more realistic way. Thousands of people bougth the game. Only the ones who expierence bugs, go to forums and complain, which generates a too negative image of the situation of a whole and makes them believe that they will definately expierence a buggy game.
Which they won't.
I haven't.
Agreed. I've managed to have the game running smoother and with less bugs than Fallout 3. Maybe it's the update patches, maybe it's my particular hardware configuration or some sort of instinctive thing where I know gamebyro bugs and how to avoid them, but that doesn't really matter. Of course it doesn't mean that nobody else had problems or that the game's perfect and released in fine working order. The fact it eats anyone's save games or dies on anyone is still justifiable cause to call Obsidian out because dammit this time they have no excuse - known technology, a supportive publisher, an entire game using mostly the same mechanics to tell them what to do or not to do and most of their additions were hacked into existing frameworks anyway. There should not be an excuse for releasing a buggy game, especially when in every interview they insist they play through it all the time.
 
Apr 28, 2008
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Shamus, never stop pointing out the flaws. People need to see them.

If people keep ignoring flaws, they'll stay there.

It doesn't matter the price of the object. Whether its free or thousands of dollars. Nothing deserves to escape criticism. Thats how they get better. You point out the flaws, the maker takes them in and tries not to repeat them, resulting in a better whatever he's building.

You pay $50-$60 dollars for games. More if your in other countries. You have a right to point out any and every flaw you find.