Month: August 2019

The challenge with the whole “Developer Appreciation Week” is that I have been doing these posts for quite some time. The folks that would immediately come to mind from my ever present fixation on MMORPGs have already been written about, likely more than once. So instead we are going to mine the well of my memories and start talking about studios that I really like the work of, that are maybe not as flashy as a Blizzard Entertainment or a Bioware. First up today is Obsidian Entertainment, which is going to have a bit of a twisting path considering I am also going to talk a bit about Black Isle the studio that largely became Obsidian.

The Black Isle Years

Interplay was one of those juggernaut studios of my adolescent and teen years. The division I wound up becoming most connected to however was Black Isle Studios. The whole publisher/developer relationship becomes a bit hazy at times but they danced a lovely duet with Bioware for some years during the creation of Baldur’s Gate and the follow on properties. However the two games I am going to write about specifically are as far as I am aware are firmly in the camp of Black Isle Studios.

I am largely going to commit the sin of lumping Fallout 1 and 2 together for these purposes given that they are the offerings developed by Black Isle and the only two of the early PC games that I really claim. I have no clue what was going on with Tactics, nor do I really grok the console Brotherhood of Steel game. To say I was enamored with this game and its universe is a bit of an understatement. This came out when I was in college and I am pretty sure I ditched a few classes to play just a little bit more of it. I was on board with pretty much everything about this game, and imprinted extremely hard on it. I spent hours roaming the desert looking for one more secret.

Another game that I imprinted extremely hard on was Planescape Torment, which I did not play until way after it had released. One of my good friends burned through PC games extremely quickly, and he used to sell me an entire document box full of games for $50 as he was trying to clear out space. Planescape Torment was in one of these boxes and I played the hell out of it, with it even managing to pull me away from Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot which had become my nightly fare at the time. There was just something about the world building and the characters that hooked me. I was never really a huge fan of the Planescape setting, but after seeing the potential as exposed through Torment… I remember going out on Ebay and buying the old boxed set to read up more on it.

Rise of Obsidian Entertainment

With the bankruptcy of Interplay in 2003, Black Isle as we knew it was dissolved. Effectively two companies branched out from Interplay. The first was Troika Games in 1998 founded by Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky and Jason Anderson. The second was Obsidian Games in 2003 founded by Feargus Urquhart, Chis Avellone, Chris Parker, Darren Monahan and Chris Jones. Obsidian is effectively the continuation of Black Isle under a different name, adopting a similar white on black logo style and another name that more or less means “Black”.

I loved the reboot of the Fallout universe by Bethesda games, though I had always wondered what exactly Van Buren would have ended up looking like. All of the work that has leaked out over the years seems as though it would have taken a vastly different direction, and in truth I think Fallout did well to make the leap to a 3D open world engine. Fallout New Vegas however really is the ultimate version of this, bringing in all of the rich world building and attention to detail from the 2D game into the 3D realm.

New Vegas has one of the best openings of a fallout game, and as far as the overarching flow… it is one of the few times I actually care about the main plot. In Fallout 3 I n ever cared about meeting up with my father, and in Fallout 4 I absolutely did not give a flying fuck about getting that toddler back… but in New Vegas I wanted to find the man who shot me. I was invested in the story of the world in a way I have never been in one of the Bethesda outings. It is because of this that I will likely always list New Vegas as my favorite Fallout game.

An Obsidian game that I feel is criminally underrated is Tyranny. It came out in 2016 and represents a slightly different spin on the classic PC RPG. Instead of playing the hero you are effectively playing the enforcer of an evil overlord who has taken over all of the world but the territory you are sent to claim. You are sent there to deliver the Edict of Execution… that either you will resolve the surrender of the territory peacefully within 8 days or everyone in the entire region including yourself will be killed.

This is a good primer for what sort of game you are about to be playing. At every step there is choice, and these choices when chained together end up making vastly different play through experiences. Each decision has weight and with it you are effectively carving out your own destiny, in what is otherwise a relatively short game. I think it took me about 16 hours in my first play-through, and in subsequent play-thoughs significantly less. However each time has felt fresh and new which is something few games can really pull off.

Another game that I feel is deeply underrated is Skyforge, an Action MMORPG that Obsidian worked with the Allods team to create. The world is somewhat nonsense, but nonetheless lovingly crafted as you are effectively a God that has risen after the death of your previous incarnation. You use your powers to help the people fight off alien incursions, in what is effectively a Mission and Lobby based MMORPG. I find it deeply enjoyable when you play it with a controller especially, and slightly less so with a mouse and keyboard. From an MMO and RPG aspect it seems extremely simple, and I am guessing that Obsidian was largely involved in setting the world in motion, and occasionally with Story Arcs. Regardless it is a fun game that Obsidian had a hand in so I am mentioning it.

The Microsoft Era

In November of 2018, Obsidian Entertainment was acquired by Microsoft in its recent grab to start locking down studios for exclusives. As such we are entering yet another phase in the life of this constantly morphing studio. So far it seems like Microsoft has been an excellent steward of the companies it has snatched up. Another favorite of my Undead Labs seemingly has had an excellent and productive relationship under the yoke. So I am hoping that Obsidian can get all of the resources it needs to similarly succeed.

The game I am looking forward to that is just around the corner is The Outer Worlds slotted to release on October 25th. Everything I have seen about this game makes it seem like Obsidian is effectively creating a new IP based on a very familiar Fallout style game. My first impressions were… what if Fallout were actually a Firefly-esc Wild West in Outer Space type game. The few gameplay sessions I have watched make me think that it is going to bring the same sort of weighty decision making, each time giving you an option to resolve something peaceably or to just wade in guns blazing… and ultimately have to deal with those circumstances later.

I have watched enough to know I will be picking this up, but I am largely avoiding much coverage for fear of seeing too much. I want the experiences I have in this game to be fresh and new and not reminiscent of something I once saw in an E3 demo. Secretly I am hoping that we are going to be getting something that can rival my memories of New Vegas. However if I just get 20-30 hours of enjoyment out of it I will be super happy.

This week is themed “Developer Appreciation Week” which was something that Scarybooster started some years back, and I decided needed to be continued. The idea was to write a post about some game developer that you really appreciate, but I am going to take this post in a different direction. Over the weekend Dragonray from Azerothian Life made a YouTube Creator appreciation post. So I am going to do something in a very similar vein and spin off an appreciation of content creators post for my very first post of Developer Appreciation Week, since in many cases YouTube content creators enhance our enjoyment of gaming experiences.

Alpha Investments

Alpha Investments vacillates back and forth between an deeply informative source of information and a comedy channel depending on the day. Often times it feels like a guilty pleasure, but I absolutely love putting one of the box opening videos on in the background while I am doing something else. The informative side however shines through with videos like the one I chose to link that is fairly recent talking about a Black Lotus scam on Ebay. While I am more aligned to cracking a bunch of packs and the only real “investing” I am doing is sitting on a bunch of old cards, I find them a deeply enjoyable experience.

Spawn Wave

Spawn Wave really is two shows in one. Each morning you have a news video that is released and ready to watch by the time I am up and around, and I find these extremely informative on what is going on in gaming. You also get a recap video each weekend summarizing the biggest events of the week which is extremely nice. The other side of the channel is where he breaks down hardware often times fixing or modding it… or in the case of the above video comparing the “new” joycons to the original joycons to help determine if the new red box revision system is worth picking up if you have an existing one. It was also one of the Spawn Wave videos that convinced me that I could in fact take apart one of my controllers and mod it with Xbox Pro Controller style magnetic thumb sticks.

Mesa Sean

I linked one of his “Xursday” videos because really this is how I first got engaged in the channel. I follow a bunch of Destiny/Destiny2 YouTubers but I latched onto Mesa for his personality. Many players flaunt just how good they are, and Mesa on the other hand often times shows video clips of times when he screwed up massively. Because of this he feels like the Destiny player that represents everyone, not just the terribly skilled. Even when I have not been playing the game I watch his news videos to keep tabs on when I should return, and it was ultimately one of his Solstice of Heroes videos that got me to come back to the game.

Fact Fiend – With Karl Smallwood

I have no idea at all how I originally stumbled on one of these videos, but it is a criminally underrated channel. The core shtick is that this guy Karl drinks something often times alcoholic while deep diving into facts about a specific subject that he personally finds interesting. There is a lot of back and forth between him, the camera crew, and anyone who happens to be on “set” while filming. There is also a tradition of a lot of purposefully bad green-screen work where he often times purposefully finds shirts that are going to interact with the screen as well. It is part PBS Documentary and part Pub Crawl.

Bon Appétit – Gourmet Makes

Another channel that I have no clue how I started watching, but I love it and I will cut you if you say otherwise. Claire and Brad are so great, and I specifically love the Gourmet Makes series where Claire attempts to make a better version of a industrialized snack. I linked the Ferrero Rocher video specifically because like often times is the case… things go a little off the rails along the way. Also I love Ferrero Rocher so that might be part of it as well. I can’t even remember the first one of these that I watched, and now I have found myself watching other videos they have done along the way. Claire and Brad however are still my favorites, and especially the chemistry when they are interacting.

Modern Vintage Gamer

This is a relatively new channel for me, but I have found myself digging back into the back catalog and watching a bunch of older videos. The concept behind the channel is the creator was deeply involved in the Xbox Homebrew scene and is still involved in porting various emulators to new platforms. The most interesting series for me personally is when he deep dives into how a console DRM was broken and explains exactly how that particular copy protection scheme worked. There are also retro style console reviews, but really it is the DRM videos that get me to click through as I also was involved in some of the scenes during that era.

Emmy Made in Japan

Hello My Beautiful Lovelies! Emmy is adorable full stop. Again I have no clue how I wound up watching my first one of these videos but I am hooked on her style of cooking video. Particularly I find the “Hard Times” series interesting as she explores various depression era recipes or similar that come from times of food insecurity. She has a really wide variety of videos and I really appreciate when she focuses in on a tradition that I have never heard of, like one involving cooking baked potatoes in pine rosin? Am I going to do any of the things? Probably not… but I like finding out new tidbits of information.

Strange Parts

I linked what is probably the quintessential Strange Parts video, or at least the one I know without a doubt tipped me off to this channel. He went about the process of procuring all of the parts to make his very own iPhone in the tech markets of Shenzhen China. Since then I have watched a number of videos as he roams around the markets looking for this or that, and has even managed to explore a bunch of factory complexes. Largely I find them interesting for the sheer scale of industrialization that is modern China and he serves as an excellent window from which to explore it.

Gaijin Hunter

Gaijin Hunter is my favorite of the Monster Hunter YouTuber, because firstly he is super approachable while at the same time being insanely skilled. There are a lot that started covering monster hunter during Monster Hunter World, and that is fine… that is the game that got me into the series. However Gaijin has been capturing footage for the older games and goes into detail about various monsters and strategies to fight them. So while you might start with a YouTube like Arekkz you eventually graduate in wanting to learn from someone like Gaijin.

This Does Not Compute

Another Tech/Oddware Youtuber is This Does Not Compute. Again I have no clue how I first stumbled onto his channel, but I like the thoughtful pace as he dives into various technology related topics. I think maybe it was something on Bitcoin that first caused me to stumble onto the videos, but I have stayed for older technology explorations and various after market retro consoles. He has done a number of videos on backlight mods to mobile handhelds and the like, something that I might want to do at some point. The channel feels very much like listening to NPR, and I mean that in the best of possible ways as someone who listens to pretty much nothing but NPR in my vehicle.

Malukah

She doesn’t post anywhere near as often as she once did, but when I see a new video show up in my subscriptions I always click through and listen. I linked to Beauty of Dawn which was the End Credits song from Elder Scrolls Online and still something that I love listening to. Malu is such a cool person and I love listening to her original takes on game worlds through song.

Swtorista

Each time I come back to Star Wars the Old Republic I wind up on this channel and lean heavily on the videos as a way of catching back up and figuring out what I should be doing to experience the brand new content. I linked one of the videos from “The Academy” series where she compiles a bunch of information into a summary of a specific thing. This one for example is what to do at level 70, and covers a bunch of the “end game” items available in the game. I also greatly appreciate all of the cosmetic videos where she focuses on a subject like “best jedi robes” or something like that.

In Closing

So I am quickly realizing… that I could probably keep doing this all day long…. and really need to wrap things up. Destiny was really the game that got me to start engaging in YouTube, because there really was not a blog presence that was available to find information. Traditionally I had focused on a mixture of blogs and WoWHead style game information sites to mine data. However of late I have noticed a lot of communities never really coalesce around written word, and you wind up having to mine a lot of content from videos. Once indoctrinated into that world however, I have apparently branched out significantly and could easily fill two or three more of these posts.