Obsidian has published a documentary on the making of Pillars of Eternity - and it's well worth a watch.
The video, below, discusses how the studio behind Fallout: New Vegas and the recently-released Tyranny almost closed down following the cancellation of a big-budget Xbox One exclusive launch game.
That Xbox One game was an RPG called Stormlands. When it was cancelled in 2012, Obsidian had to lay off 30 people. In the video, Obsidian's Josh Sawyer, Adam Brennecke and Feargus Urquhart talk candidly about the impact the layoffs had on the studio at the time.
With no project for staff to work on, Obsidian faced disaster. The studio tried to re-pitch a re-jigged version of Stormlands to publishers, but it was clear its heart wasn't in it, so badly burnt were staff from its cancellation.
That's where the idea for doing a Kickstarter - and Pillars of Eternity - came in. It was a move that paid off. On Kickstarter, just under 74,000 backers pledged just shy of $4m to the old-school RPG project. When the game came out in March 2015, it was a huge success. Obsidian was saved.
The video, which Obsidian had released to Kickstarter backers only but is now available to watch on YouTube for the first time, is particularly interesting for anyone interested in the reality of independent video game development. And its release is well-timed; it looks like the studio is teasing an announcement set for this week.
Pillars of Eternity 2, perhaps?
I think Obsidian has Bethesda/Zenimax to blame for being broke. These guys should be doing fallout games. Bethesda should just focus on ES. Sigh... at least they survived and got a happy ending. HD remaster of Fallout New Vegas should be done imo. (similar to Skyrim)
Also interesting that it was the Xbone game cancellation that almost killed them. That is why people should be scared of companies like Platinum being affected negatively by Scalebound being cancelled at the last minute. When high profile titles with big team lose job and all the work goes to waste they can't say they did anything for the 3 years to show people when they look for a new job can they? The game never got to be seen/criticised for the public to know if it was good or shit work. We will never know how shit the game was thanks to cancellations. Knowing if something is shit lets the future employer decide how much trust to give the team the next time they are given money to work on future game. And the positive effect this has on the industry is it forces them to adapt to the trends instead of laying back and taking things easy. (failure can make them tougher/smarter/wiser etc so they can focus on important things that will create success not just care about getting money - the money has to make more money so even better games can be made that top the last ones or you end up not existing)
"A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad." -Shigeru Miyamoto
No. You should be reviewing the console exclusives like Gravity Rush 2 not hanging around threads about companies that almost died because you kept buying EA games instead of Obsidian rpgs which causes the game industry to become less diverse in the types of games that exist. People like you only buy the top ten EB games best sellers. Get off your bum and actually help the little guys by reviewing low profile things so they can put food on the table or else the games they make get cancelled and end up being pirated on pc instead as unfinished demo because nobody heard of them. (and by that time they are forced to make licensed crap)
Lack of Hype for Scalebound = death of the project. Death of big project means no more money to make games. No money to make games means they have to beg the fans for money. Fans then ruin those games by suggesting crap that makes the games suck. Then the second vidoegame crash comes and nintendo has to save the game industry again. If even a portion of the attention games like Pokemon Go get went to the little-known titles, we wouldn't have this problem of only getting sequels to well known franchises by big publishers who spend gazillion dollars on marketing instead of quality checking the games.
Instead of talking about witcher 3 which is hyped to shit everywhere, why aren't you reviewing stuff like Technomancer?
You are hurting the small people/
"A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad." -Shigeru Miyamoto