Slashdot Mirror
BioWare Teams Up With Ex-Black Isle Boss
Thanks to several readers for pointing out the Yahoo-hosted press release announcing a development relationship between BioWare Corp. and Obsidian Entertainment, notable because Obsidian is headed by Feargus Urquhart, ex-head of Interplay's Black Isle Studios, and someone who helped bring Icewind Dale and Planetscape:Torment to life, as well as working with BioWare to publish the Baldur's Gate series. Urquhart commented that "A collaboration with BioWare gives Obsidian the opportunity to explore development projects on established game franchises with proven technology and brand loyalty from the fan community."
Oh please God, let this be so! :) Well, since Cain isn't in the alliance, maybe they'll call it "Nuclear Aftermath" or "Post-Apoc" or something like that. Come ON, we've been dying for some RPGs that ain't fantasy-based!
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
From what I understand, Obsidian is very strong on the dev and game design end of things. They are not, however, very strong in distribution, marketing and supply chain management. Bioware has partnered with the big boys (Microsoft et al) and has shown the ability to market and distribute its titles. The combination of these two companies should (hopefully) mean that we will get edgy, indy style games into a more mainstream distribution channel.
We are Pentium of Borg. Division is futile. You will be approximated.
I just finished this awesome game, and I'm praying for a sequel. Even though the sales wernt that great, I hope that there is enough of a fan base to warrent a new game in this great universe.
It would definitely be interesting to see what they are planning to work on in the near future. BioWare and Black Isle have each put forth some very impressive games under the D&D license. Maybe a more faithful rendition of the 3rd Ed (or now 3.5th Ed) rules is in the cards.
From the looks of it, though, Obsidian is working on web page design.
You've heard about Greyhawk: Temple of Elemental Evil, right? It's supposed to be using the 3.5 edition rules very faithfully. Faithfully as in being unapologetically turn-based, the way the D&D rules are meant to work, which is something of a rarity in 2003. More at Gamespot and IGN.
Disclaimer: I work at one of the companies involved, though my work isn't related to the project.
Having played most of the games by black isle (Fallout series, Balder's Gate series, Neverwinter nights) and I seriously think they've lost something. Fallout and its sequel were terrific for their stress of doing things outside combat to earn experience, and only about half the game was even combat related. Steadily, they've lost this. Neverwinter nights, although terrific graphically, was little more than a diablo sequel using the D&D engine. Sure, there's a couple scattered characters that you can persuade and a couple locks to pick, but it's no longer possible to go through the game as a character not specializing in combat (try playing through as a bard=)) nor are there really multiple ways to complete most quests. To make it even more blatant, they tweaked the D&D experience system to allow more combat with less experience (you only get 14% of what you noramlly would). In contrast, in Fallout 2, you could beat both the first and the last bosses in fallout 2 without taking part in fighting if your intelligence and speech were good enough. It wouldn't suprise me if the next game skipped the ability to choose dialogue options (which were largely pointless in neverwinter nights anyway), and marketed it as a good looking 3D hack'n'slash.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Since when is Star Wars not fantasy based? Not to flame, but are you psycho enough to think that light sabers and blasters and the force are anything less than fantasy? Hmm interesting.
Trust Your Technolust
Is post apocalyptic strictly, the weapons are fake but for the most part realistic. There are mutants, but it all strives to make you think this sort of thing could actually happen. So I would say that in this context at least fantasy is anything that doesn't aim for realism. However, I would also say that Star Wars is fantasy regardless of the context. Sorry if I was a jerk in the previous post.
Trust Your Technolust