Incline Chris Avellone Appreciation Station

[J_C]

MCA actually talks about the codex in this interview; saying that the codex helped him get a job at Larian, etc.

After his departure he bacame quite outspoken about the Codex. He mentions us (positively) quite often. It's like he was some kind up embargo during his time at Obsidian.

 

[Viata]

He should post on codex more.

 

[Lhynn]

Hes welcome at the shoutbox whenever.

 

[Sannom]

That's some selective memory right there.

KotOR2 didn't give them the Bugsidian reputation. It was one buggy release, and then NWN2 and FNV solidified it.
New Vegas was by far their buggiest game ever, with 27,000 bugs fixed by fan patches after release. And who was the director on that game? Sure, Bethesda should be blamed for poor QA, just like LucasArts should be blamed for rushing KotOR2, but FNV was much worse. The game was so buggy it cost them a bonus that made a huge difference for the company's financial health.

Bethesda should be held responsible for producing the massive bugfest that was Fallout 3, aka the basis for FNV. And by the time New Vegas came out, Obsidian's reputation for bugs was so inscribed in the sub-conscious of everyone that everyone called NV buggier than Fallout 3 despite the wrongness of that statement. But I will agree with you, KOTOR 2 wasn't the source for their reputation, that was NWN2.

Sawyer also had:
NWN2: Mild success, lower scores and more negative reviews than the first, ultimately forgotten by players if not for fan mods and MotB.

Why saddle Sawyer with NWN2 while giving a pass to Avellone for Alpha Protocol? They both inherited the projects from other directors.

 

[Fairfax]

Both get a pass, but he omitted NWN2.

Alpha Protocol was Obsidian's greatest fuck-up, and that's Chris Parker's (and the people who put him in charge) fault.

 

[Excidium II]

Alpha Protocol was Obsidian's greatest fuck-up, and that's Chris Parker's (and the people who put him in charge) fault.

Greatest fuck-up being the second best game is a funny thing.

 

[Fairfax]

Alpha Protocol was Obsidian's greatest fuck-up, and that's Chris Parker's (and the people who put him in charge) fault.

Greatest fuck-up being the second best game is a funny thing.

I wasn't even talking about the game itself, which I enjoyed. It was the greatest fuck-up because it was their first original IP and it went through development hell for 4 years, was poorly received, sold poorly and got the Aliens RPG cancelled, which hurt the company even further.
From a publisher POV, it was very risk to bet on Obsidian after that: how could they know if the project they'd fund would end up a New Vegas or an Alpha Protocol? It did a lot of damage to their reputation, and executives only care about results.

 

[Azarkon]

Metacritic user scores, which I see as the best measure of the "public":

Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer 8.8
South Park: The Stick of Truth 8.6
Fallout: New Vegas 8.5
Pillars of Eternity 8.4
Knights of the Old Republic II: Sith Lords 8.3
Alpha Protocol 7.5
Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir 7.3
Neverwinter Nights 2 6.5
Dungeon Siege 3 4.6

Chris Avellone was responsible, wholly, for one game on this list - Knights of the Old Republic II, which got a 8.3. Sawyer was wholly responsible for two: New Vegas, 8.5, and Pillars of Eternity, 8.4. The difference between the two in the role of "director" is minimal. Alpha Protocol and Neverwinter Nights 2 both had director changes in the middle of the development process, and are therefore a higher management fuck up, so we won't blame it on Avellone/Sawyer. Given this fact, we have zero evidence with which to say that Sawyer and Avellone are worse than each other when it comes to this role in the public's eyes.

What IS different, however, is that Chris was only wholly responsible for one game in ten years at Obsidian, and that game was made when they first came into existence, and had the shortest development time of all Obsidian games. What/who was responsible for that is the bigger issue for me.

 

[Fairfax]

Wholly responsible? That only applies to very few games (Undertale, for one), none of which were made by Obsidian or Black Isle. Not to mention metacritic user scores can easily be manipulated, Steam user reviews are much more accurate, and PST isn't even available there.
Also, Sawyer never had, in any of these games, a bigger role in the game's content than MCA did in PST and KotOR II. The closest thing for Sawyer was Honest Hearts. Speaking of which..
Steam user reviews for the FNV add-ons:

Dead Money: 61% (MCA)
Lonesome Road: 87% (MCA)
Old World Blues: 95% (MCA)
Honest Hearts: 83% (Sawyer)

The FNV DLCs are a better comparison between the two, as it's the same game with the same systems, same development cycle, same budget (only one of them was very limited IIRC), etc.

 

[Drax]

Lol, Lonesome Road has higher rating than Dead Money, figures.

 

[duanth123]

Lol, Lonesome Road has higher rating than Dead Money, figures.

Dead Money had a retard detector (of spirit eater mechanic caliber) in the form of it taking away your equipment and environmental hazards requiring thought.

I would imagine most people who actually played DM for more than the time it takes to rage quit preferred it to LR.

 

[Drax]

I admit it has it's flaws, but it has probably one of the the best first hour or so of world-building of any other DLC I've played.
Hell, it's better than most games I played.

 

[Beastro]

Dead Money had a retard detector (of spirit eater mechanic caliber) in the form of it taking away your equipment and environmental hazards requiring thought.

Yeah I really enjoyed it doing that, brought back a sense of survival and using what you could find.

I only wish more of NV had that and with a higher difficulty.

The only issue I had with DM as a DLC was the bug that would CTD my game if one of the zombie dudes speared me in the head.

 

[Drax]

 

[Neanderthal]

Fucking loved Dead Money, spent whole fucking game like a paranoid whore, on me knees looking for trouble but it had mechanics strapped in tight to narrative. It actually made you feel vulnerable for a change, spooked me fucking out a shitload, and made finding one o Dean's stashes a big fucking deal. I was surprised how well that birds signing could translate to language an all, almost a pity when she got her new voice. That convo wi Dean an all when he realises that you're just as clever and ruthless as him, and he fucking hates you for it and decides then and there that you've got to die, great head fucker for passing a speech check.

 

[Azarkon]

Wholly responsible? That only applies to very few games (Undertale, for one), none of which were made by Obsidian or Black Isle. Not to mention metacritic user scores can easily be manipulated, Steam user reviews are much more accurate, and PST isn't even available there.
Also, Sawyer never had, in any of these games, a bigger role in the game's content than MCA did in PST and KotOR II. The closest thing for Sawyer was Honest Hearts. Speaking of which..
Steam user reviews for the FNV add-ons:

Dead Money: 61% (MCA)
Lonesome Road: 87% (MCA)
Old World Blues: 95% (MCA)
Honest Hearts: 83% (Sawyer)

The FNV DLCs are a better comparison between the two, as it's the same game with the same systems, same development cycle, same budget (only one of them was very limited IIRC), etc.

Wholly responsible as in being the lead designer/director of the game from the start. Obviously games aren't developed by individuals except in a few cases.

I use Metacritic scores in place of Steams scores because Steam releases of Obsidian games are usually not simultaneous with actual release, so it's not that useful for deciding how the game did in the public's eyes at release.

We all of course know that Sawyer is not a writer and that his hand in the writing is lighter, but then again Chris's hand is lighter in the systems side of games too. As the topic was about Chris's games vs. Sawyer's games, I think it's fair to just look at the games they were leading from the start. But sure, the list you made works, too.

 

[Roguey]

KotOR2 didn't give them the Bugsidian reputation. It was one buggy release, and then NWN2 and FNV solidified it.

It was an uphill battle after that.

New Vegas was by far their buggiest game ever, with 27,000 bugs fixed by fan patches after release. And who was the director on that game? Sure, Bethesda should be blamed for poor QA, just like LucasArts should be blamed for rushing KotOR2, but FNV was much worse.

No it wasn't. Kotor 2's bugs were more severe on release (I'm talking xbox here, the PC port released months later fared better) and it had an incoherent mess of an ending.

The game was so buggy it cost them a bonus that made a huge difference for the company's financial health.

With Obsidian's burn rate, a one-time bonus is negligible. After all, it's a bonus.

AP: MCA joined halfway through to fix some of the mess Chris Parker had made. He wasn't director.

That happened precisely because Parker agreed with Avellone's assessment that the story needed more reactivity. Mitsoda was livid enough to quit over the producer siding with the guy with the normally-meaningless creative director title.

NWN2: Mild success, lower scores and more negative reviews than the first, ultimately forgotten by players if not for fan mods and MotB.

Josh joined the project when they were mere months away from their ship date. All he could do was triage.

XBLA RPG: cancelled.

Not Josh's project.

Icewind Dale x Planescape: Torment

The Icewind Dales had better ROIs than Planescape Torment yes (http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/54251-fallout-new-vegas/page-2#entry1014711), another point in Josh Sawyer's favor when it comes to delivering commercially and critically successful video games.

All Obsidian games have been sleeper hits though. Excluding DS3, I believe.

DS3 made money. AP is the only game of theirs to date to lose money. Even now it's a failure.

 

[Azarkon]

Mitsoda quit because Chris told him his story didn't have enough choices and consequences? I find that difficult to believe.

 

[Roguey]

Mitsoda quit because Chris told him his story didn't have enough choices and consequences? I find that difficult to believe.

 

[Azarkon]

Can't see image because at work.

And on the Icewind Dale topic - wasn't Sawyer only the lead on Icewind Dale 2? From what I recall that game had the same scores as Knights of the Old Republic 2 and Sawyer left the project in the middle.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

No it wasn't. Kotor 2's bugs were more severe on release and it had an incoherent mess of an ending.

Lol, yup. Anyone who claims that FNV was more buggy then KOTOR2, simply didn't play KOTOR2 on launch. Sure, the sheer amount of bugs in FNV had been bigger, but like with all games on Bethesda engine, 95% of bugs are unnoticable or mildly annoying at best.

KOTOR2 though? Its not just that it had bugs. The bugs were constantly IN YOUR FACE, big time. Constant crashes. Plot not making sense because of audio not playing, cut-scenes not displaying, entire dialogues missing. Impossible to finish in some circumstances because the final mission would crash no matter what you would do.

It was one of the most frustrating games I've played. And lets not forget this was in pre-Steam days, so patching wasn't as nearly easy as it is nowadays.

 

[Irenaeus II]

Mitsoda's judgement should always be called into question since he married the craziest SJW in game development and he spent the last 7 years on a shitty zombie game.

 

[Azarkon]

Yes but I also wonder why Mitsoda was brought up as a failure of Chris's considering that, at the time, the word was that his writing on Alpha Protocol was "terrible" and that's why he "quit." Now we're saying it's Chris's fault he left and that Alpha Protocol failed only because Chris criticized him?

 

[pippin]

Mitsoda claimed his version of AP was similar to Bloodlines, at least in terms of dialogue, and that he later found out they replaced it in favor of the more "fashionable" dialogue wheel. I don't know how much of the game was changed, but he mentioned that aspect in particular so I guess he's especially bothered by that detail.

DS3 made money. AP is the only game of theirs to date to lose money. Even now it's a failure.

But I still think DS3 is the least successful Obsidian game in the eyes of the public these days. Many people think AP is one of their best games, especially because you can avoid fights by talking. Funny how such a small detail makes a huge difference for a lot of people.

 

[Roguey]

Mitsoda claimed his version of AP was similar to Bloodlines, at least in terms of dialogue, and that he later found out they replaced it in favor of the more "fashionable" dialogue wheel.

You're mistaken, he was the one who created the dialogue stance system and he boasted that he did it before Mass Effect had even been announced.

But I still think DS3 is the least successful Obsidian game in the eyes of the public these days.

With the Obsidian Base (people who play RPGs primarily for story), yeah it has the least amount to offer to 'em, even though I think it's better-written and plays a lot better than NWN2.