![]() This is more a first person game so Dying Light was one of the example games, just to kind of get a sense for running around the world in first person. "For Avowed, weirdly, it is go play BioWare games," said Urquhart, "go play Dragon Age, play Mass Effect, play Bethesda games, play Skyrim, go play the original Pillars games. As well as the Obsidian classics that Obsidian developers have to become familiar with, what are the other touchstones for one of the greatest RPG studios in the world? Which leads to a rather obvious question. ![]() And so what are the things you should change? Lots of conversations, and mistakes, and weirdly playing your own games." It's still hard, because also every game should not mimic the last game. He calls the dialogue tools a "cord" that "help people understand what we try to accomplish and specifically focused on being an RPG studio. Urquhart goes on to make the point that while the studio uses third-party tools (Avowed will be built using Unreal Engine 5) it also has its own tools for creating key elements of the experience, like dialogue. And we have a core of people who do remember, maybe not as well as we used to, but do remember." Then you have Scott Everts who laid out every single level in the original Fallout and is an environment artist/world builder on Outer Worlds 2, and did the same thing on Outer Worlds 1. And Dan has been a programmer on Fallout and Fallout 2 and Planescape: Torment and Stick of Truth and KoTOR, and is now lead gameplay programmer on Avowed. ![]() "There are two people I talk about all the time that wish I would never mention their names-but Dan Spitz Lee and Scott Everts-I worked with all the way back to Black Isle when I started in 1996. "We also have a consistency of the art, there's a consistent group of people that have worked here for a very long time," said Urquhart. Urquhart also points out that, while Obsidian obviously has turnover, it has managed to retain certain talent for a very long time, which creates its own consistency across different titles. So even though the RPG system is different, not gonna be a turn-based six-player party RPG, it immerses people and then they get the sense for the expectations for companions and conversations and things like that." And while Avowed is not a Pillars game, one of the things that everybody had to do is go play Pillars 1 and 2, to get a sense for the world. "It sounds silly, like why should we have our people play our own games? But it's important, and so we do. "When we're starting up a product we basically say, all right, go play all these games, and even play our own games," said Urquhart. One part of the process is making everyone do their homework. We're more generations, you know, and I have people that work here that were not born when I started." It's crazy, and so we're more than one generation from developers that are starting today. "I just bluntly say it's hard," said Urquhart. After all, Obsidian's been around for 20 years now, it's a big studio, talent comes and goes, and you have the game development equivalent of the Ship of Theseus problem: What makes an Obsidian game an Obsidian game? ![]() Following the announcement of the studio's next project, the excellent-looking Avowed, we sat down with Obsidian co-founder Feargus Urquhart to talk turkey and, towards the end of the chat, thoughts turned to what he made of this thread. Obsidian's early years were spent working on sequels to other company's games, often with spectacular results like Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords and Neverwinter Nights 2, before it moved onto original titles like Alpha Protocol, Pillars of Eternity, and the very successful Outer Worlds.Īsk any fan of the studio's work and they'll tell you there's a common thread between these games, a hard-to-grasp quality that makes it feel like an Obsidian joint: Some just put it down to the consistently excellent writing, of course, but it's much more than that. Obsidian Entertainment was founded in 2003 by several employees of the soon-to-be-shuttered Black Isles Studios (best-known for Fallout 1 & 2 and Planescape: Torment). ![]() What makes an Obsidian game? Playing tonnes of old Obsidian (and BioWare) games In an exclusive interview with PC Gamer, Feargus Urquhart says keeping a studio's spirit alive means everyone doing their homework. ![]()
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