Obsidian Promises No More Bugs with Dungeon Siege III

Greg Tito

PR for Dungeons & Dragons
Sep 29, 2005
12,070
0
0
Obsidian Promises No More Bugs with Dungeon Siege III



Having learned a few things from the outcry over bugs in Fallout: New Vegas, Obsidian is building its own engine for its next game.

Obsidian Entertainment was founded from the remnants of Black Isle Studios, who made classic CRPGs like Fallout and Baldur's Gate in the 90s. Obsidian made a few of its own classics, like Knights of the Old Republic II, Neverwinter Nights 2 and last year's Fallout: New Vegas, but these are all sequels built on the foundations and engines from other game developers. Even though the next game from the company is another sequel - Dungeon Siege III is a reboot of the franchise begun by Gas Powered Games - director Rich Taylor says that Obsidian's new custom-made engine Onyx will allow them to deliver bug-free games, a situation that he is uniquely aware of due to all of the negative attention that New Vegas received. Dungeon Siege III is due out May 31, 2011 for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

"Stability and being bug free are extremely high priorities on this project, and we actually talk about it internally constantly. The advantage here we have over, for example Fallout, is when we have a question about how something works, I walk 10 feet outside my office door and go talk to the programmer who wrote it," Taylor said.

Having Obsidian's own engine has allowed Taylor to create custom tools to aid in squashing bugs. "We actually had one of our internal tools developers spend a lot of time engineering crash reporting into the engine so internally, literally when anyone runs into a crash the game will shut down, it will generate a report, it will provide a stack dump and it will put it into a database, and we can be very diligent about tracking those things and solving them," he said. Those kinds of things were impossible to do when Obsidian was essentially borrowing someone else's code.

As a gamer himself, Taylor is sensitive to how much crashes and bugs suck. "No one wants to run into a crash. We're gamers, too. I certainly go home and like to play other games that are out there. And when you run into a crash and it disrupts your experience, that's not fun for anyone. We understand that. That's why as the project director on this game I'm very militant about us addressing the crashes and memory issues."

I don't know if Dungeon Siege III is going to be any good, but at least it seems that Taylor isn't going to stand releasing a game that's broken.

Source: Eurogamer [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-02-07-dungeon-siege-iii-more-stable-than-new-vegas-interview?page=2]

Permalink
 
Feb 13, 2008
19,430
0
0
After Treyarch's last comment, I'm finding this claim rather amusing.

Specifically: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/107631-Treyarch-Would-Love-to-Ship-a-Game-Without-Bugs
 

The Madman

New member
Dec 7, 2007
4,404
0
0
Look, I love you guys Obsidian. I have, and will continue to defend your games in every topic you're brought up in within the forums and honestly I hold you as one of my favourite developers around today. But I'll believe it when I see it! Even as a hardcore fan, bugs are sorta... well, they're your 'thing'. And not a good thing either, more like an unattractive wart on an otherwise beautiful face kinda thing.

I hope you fix it up some and improve your act a little. But I wont hold my breath... don't get me wrong, I'm sure the game'll be fun. But bug free?

We'll see...
 

Bretty

New member
Jul 15, 2008
864
0
0
Props to them giving voice to what we, their buyers have been saying for ages.

I hope this is not just lip service.
 

Godhead

Dib dib dib, dob dob dob.
May 25, 2009
1,692
0
0
If it said that Obsidian promises no more major bugs, I would be much more inclined to believe it. Even so I love Obsidian for what they can do, and will continue supporting them when I have some amount of money.
 

Danpascooch

Zombie Specialist
Apr 16, 2009
5,231
0
0
They might as well promise us the fucking moon, everything they ever released is a buggy mess and I don't believe they'll change now.
 
Apr 28, 2008
14,634
0
0
The Madman said:
Look, I love you guys Obsidian. I have, and will continue to defend your games in every topic you're brought up in within the forums and honestly I hold you as one of my favourite developers around today. But I'll believe it when I see it! Even as a hardcore fan, bugs are sorta... well, they're your 'thing'. And not a good thing either, more like an unattractive wart on an otherwise beautiful face kinda thing.

I hope you fix it up some and improve your act a little. But I wont hold my breath... don't get me wrong, I'm sure the game'll be fun. But bug free?

We'll see...
Agreed fiend. I love Obsidian to death as well for their fantastic games.

But holy shit, going from essentially producing "Buggy Games: The series" to little-to-no bugs? Well if they can do that I'll buy this game twice.
 

somonels

New member
Oct 12, 2010
1,209
0
0
I keep on getting them mixed up with Bethesda. Here's to hoping that Wheel of Time will turn out well and won't require a few cans of Raid.
 

FredTheUndead

New member
Aug 13, 2010
303
0
0
In other news:

Bethesda promises no more terrible dialogue with Elder Scrolls 5.
EA promises less shitty DRM with Mass Effect 3.
Ubisoft promises less WHAT THE FUCK endings and meaningless side bullshit for Assassin's Creed 3.
Lionhead promises less Reaver with Fable 4.
 

-Drifter-

New member
Jun 9, 2009
2,521
0
0
Using the term "bug-free games" will surely raise some eyebrows, but from what I gathered Mr. Taylor never actually said it'd be completely bug-free, just that there wouldn't be many and that it (hopefully) wouldn't crash. Not sure if I believe that, but only time will tell.
 
Sep 14, 2009
9,073
0
0
Irridium said:
The Madman said:
Look, I love you guys Obsidian. I have, and will continue to defend your games in every topic you're brought up in within the forums and honestly I hold you as one of my favourite developers around today. But I'll believe it when I see it! Even as a hardcore fan, bugs are sorta... well, they're your 'thing'. And not a good thing either, more like an unattractive wart on an otherwise beautiful face kinda thing.

I hope you fix it up some and improve your act a little. But I wont hold my breath... don't get me wrong, I'm sure the game'll be fun. But bug free?

We'll see...
Agreed fiend. I love Obsidian to death as well for their fantastic games.

But holy shit, going from essentially producing "Buggy Games: The series" to little-to-no bugs? Well if they can do that I'll buy this game twice.
agreed.

i would shell out full price twice just to appreciate them. hell i'd buy stuff if they had an apparel store (really wish they did, i bet they could make a killing selling NV clothing)
 

Lord Beautiful

New member
Aug 13, 2008
5,940
0
0
FredTheUndead said:
In other news:

Bethesda promises no more terrible dialogue with Elder Scrolls 5.
EA promises less shitty DRM with Mass Effect 3.
Ubisoft promises less WHAT THE FUCK endings and meaningless side bullshit for Assassin's Creed 3.
Lionhead promises less Reaver with Fable 4.
Hideo Kojima promises no cutscenes in the next Metal Gear.
 

Void(null)

New member
Dec 10, 2008
1,069
0
0
And the collective Gamer Community of the past 7 years simultaneously bursts out laughing.
 

maddawg IAJI

I prefer the term "Zomguard"
Feb 12, 2009
7,840
0
0
I don't think the words 'Obsidian, game and Bug free' can ever exist in a sentence before a patch is released.
 

maddawg IAJI

I prefer the term "Zomguard"
Feb 12, 2009
7,840
0
0
-Zen- said:
FredTheUndead said:
In other news:

Bethesda promises no more terrible dialogue with Elder Scrolls 5.
EA promises less shitty DRM with Mass Effect 3.
Ubisoft promises less WHAT THE FUCK endings and meaningless side bullshit for Assassin's Creed 3.
Lionhead promises less Reaver with Fable 4.
Hideo Kojima promises no cutscenes in the next Metal Gear.
And Bobby Kotick has promised to step down as head of Activison Blizzard.
 

Actual

New member
Jun 24, 2008
1,220
0
0
sheic99 said:
So, what was their excuse for Alpha Protocol?
I had to look it up, but that was using the Unreal engine, which they didn't build. It's a very widely used engine though.

At least Alpha Protocol didn't crash, it had other bugs in spades to make up for that though. It was also one of my favourite games of 2010. :)