Obsidian wishes people would stop using The Outer Worlds to knock Fallout 76 - Sensationalist Headlines

https://www.pcgamer.com/obsidian-wishes-people-would-stop-using-the-outer-worlds-to-knock-fallout-76/ "It's disheartening when your game is used to tear down another game. They're excited because your game is going to show up another game," Cain said.

Yeah, I don't see the need to drag another game into it. Fallout 76 is enough of a cesspit on its own to warrant such utter mockery.

To be honest, with the way Bethesda treated Obsidian developers after Fallout New Vegas, it's entirely deserved.

Fallout 76 is such a clusterfuck that I forgot The Outer Worlds existed.

I mean, when their very first trailer baits the idea that they made the most well received Fallouts, it kind of invites comparison. Not saying it's justified, though.

Eh, I'll say it is. I mean, I get where he's coming from- game developers don't have the sort of venomous rivalry that fans assign to their franchises, so when a peer flops hard it's not a cause for celebration, it's a cause for sympathy for the hard-working people who got screwed by higher-level decisions and may soon be out of a job. But it's easy to have that perspective when you're not being constantly goaded to drop $60, pre-order, buy the special collector's edition. If you deliver a shitty product that exploits the goodwill of your fans, you really can't be surprised when people are going to compare your game to one that looks a lot better. Like, people wouldn't be using The Outer Worlds to knock Fallout 76 if it had been a free-to-play game with low expectations and no fanfare. Instead it was a full-priced product with months of hype continuing on a well-known franchise, of course people are disappointed and of course they're going to compare to a better-looking game to articulate their disappointment. They can't reasonably expect us to pat Bethesda on the back and say 'good job buddy, you tried, we're gonna go play this other game that definitely isn't comparable to yours.'

They probably don't actually wish this. But saying they do is good PR.

We could compare it to a literal fresh pile of dog shit instead.

In an interview with Obsidian's CEO and Co-Director, they were asked what he feels about people using The Outer Worlds to attack Bethesda's Fallout 76. His answer was "it is disheartening when your game is used to tear down another game. [...] We're not making this to make anybody not want to play something else." "No one sets out to make a bad game, people spend years of their lives, and just, in very difficult circumstances, having to put everything they have in their games and have those games come out and not do well, is a crushing experience." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqeEfcg_AaQ God forbid these folks have some empathy and let the media spin their words to add more fuel.

Obsidian is everything that Bethesda will never be

That's why Obsidian is being the bigger man.

Agreed. The Outer World is a great game and deserves to stand on it's own merits. The internet turning it into some big dickwaving contest is embarrassing. Hell they way people took the reveal trailer saying "from the original creators of fallout and fallout new vegas" as some kind of jab at Bethesda instead of... you know... a statement of fact was cringy as hell.

I get what they are saying, people within the industry will always have a different perspective than the end users, and are far more likely to empathise with other people working in the games industry. But at the same time, I think this really is one of those times where "alright mate, it's just a joke" is actually a valid response. While Obsidian have stated multiple times that they didn't intentionally bide their time and wait for Bethesda to screw up the Fallout series so bad even their most dedicated fans felt alienated before releasing a new sci-fi RPG to show them up- By pure coincidence, that's still kinda what ended up happening. Fallout fans have been growing increasingly dissatisfied with Bethesda's mediocre efforts for a long time, lots of us have kinda been looking around wondering when a good time to jump ship and ditch the series for something else will come along. Then, just as Bethesda were getting an avalanche of negative PR for what is popularly considered their worst effort yet- Obsidian, the studio behind the most well received entries in the series, announces a new game prominently featuring all of the elements that Bethesda has worked to shave off the Fallout series in recent years. While I can acknowledge that this wasn't some clever scheme on Obsidian's part to destroy Bethesda with RPG elements and decent writing - ultimately they are showing Bethesda up in the eyes of a lot of disgruntled fans. And that's honestly pretty funny. It's cathartic to see Bethesda's cynical approach to making games backfire on them, and I don't think it's really necessary for Obsidian to have orchestrated and revelled in the whole affair for it to be humorous.

The fact people are unwilling to get past it and look up to Outer Worlds as a game with its own merits, or up to Obsidian as an actual team instead of "those guys who did a better job than Bethesda" is dumb, childish and insulting to the devs who are busting their ass trying to make something from scratch. You didn't like the video game. Cool. Get over it, move on, stop shoving your rancid cynicism onto other developers who do not want anything to do with your vitriol.

Considering some at Obsidian and even ex Obsidian peeps (like Chris Avellone) actually seem to like what Bethesda has done with the Fallout franchise with 3 and 4, yeah. The Outer Worlds is not Obsidian's act of revenge for getting screwed over on the Metacritic bonus for New Vegas, it's just an RPG that Tim Cain has had in his head for many years and has finally had the chance to make into reality. Coming just on the heels of Fallout 76 is just a coincidence, especially since the game has been in development before Fallout 76 was even revealed. The only thing Fallout 76 should be used for is a learning tool for the industry as a whole, consumers included. I especially hope Bethesda has learned some lessons regarding it. That being said, I mostly mean that towards the higher ups that are probably responsible for letting Bethesda games ship with absurd amounts of the same bugs for more than a decade at this point. Some blame goes to the devs, yes, but I'm pretty sure not every developer at Bethesda is a "lazy asshole" that is completely fine with their games being so buggy for so long.

If anything, The Outer Worlds will probably make me more forgiving towards Bethesda in the long run. Part of what made the lame and watered down direction of the Fallout franchise so annoying for me personally was the idea that it was all we were getting. If the guys behind the original Fallout games are putting out RPGs again, then why bother being disappointed or frustrated with whatever Bethesda has to offer, when you could just go and play something from developers that actually are catering to players like you with their vision for their games?. If Fallout 5 comes out and it's just more of the same, Who cares? there will probably be an Outer Worlds 2 in the works by then. And hey, if we are really lucky, Bethesda might learn a thing or two from the Fallout 76 backlash and actually put some effort into their next Fallout title- so that's two decent sci-fi RPG series to enjoy as opposed to just the one painfully mediocre one.

Why assume those are mutually exclusive? I can evaluate a game based on it's own merits and Obsidian as a serious developer while also kicking Bethesda in the balls.

I still don't get it. They have New Vegas, a game universally acclaimed as better than any of the main Bethesda Fallouts, but they still go "nah lets make a game void of literaly everything that made New Vegas good, and... thats it. do that and ship it!"

76 was an experiment. Bethesda was dipping their toes in the same water as Destiny and other pseudo-MMOs but without giving the teams involved enough time or resources to accomplish such a goal, and that is why it failed. Call me an optimist, but I doubt they deliberately wanted to release an unfinished product because they figured their previous games were buggy messes and thought their fans wouldn’t care one way or the other, but because they wanted to strike while the iron was hot all while trying to do it in the same time frame they gave to Obsidian with New Vegas.

But they didn't treat them poorly? Its internet myth that bethesda "hates" obsidian. Several key devs who worked on new vegas have stated they have no hard feelings for bethesda and they have never received any negativity from them. And that metacritic contract thing doesnt bother them. They still got paid, and they have said the metacritic bonus wouldn't have saved them from some financial issues that happened later. I think Josh Sawyer was the one who said that the metacritic thing was just a part of the contract and thats just how buisiness goes in the industry. And he also said that the short development time wasn't really bethesda's fault as their initial scope for new vegas was just too big to begin with. Bethesda was looking for a small short spin off and instead they decided to make something bigger anyways. In the end we got one of the greatest games ever made that completely blows anything bethesda has done with fallout out of the water. Everyone at obsidian seems rather satisfied with the game now also.

The simple answer is that Bethesda don't seem interested in catering to the people who hold New Vegas up as the ideal a Fallout game should strive for. Fallout 76 started development just before the Battle Royale boom, when both Micro-transactions and online crafting survival games with zombies were two of the current market trends everyone wanted a slice of. Bethesda doesn't want the acclaim of old school Fallout fans, they want mass market appeal and an audience who will engage in additional player spending. I wholeheartedly believe that Fallout 76 would have been a Fallout 4 spin on the BR genre had it begun development a little later. It's part of the reason I found the flop of Fallout 76 so amusing, It has the same energy as the Battlefront 2 lootbox controversy. It's funny to see a company get too caught up in cynical motivations that they can't see past the giant dollar signs and realise they are just going to piss everyone off.

New Vegas being considered better than Fallout 3 is an opinion that came long after New Vegas had come out. At release it was considered both by reviewers and consumers to be a worse game than the original and people frequently criticized it's pace, glitches, new mechanics and story for some reason. It's only in retrospect people reevaluated the game and came to the conclusion that it's better than Fallout 3.

Nah, people thought it was better than F3 from its release. I know because I was one of those people, and I wasn't alone.

I was also one of those people, and I had a lot of friends who enthusiastically agreed with me. but I also had a lot of friends who described it as "Overpriced Fallout 3 dlc" and didn't bother getting more than an hour into the game because it was "confusing and complicated". A lot of them have since changed their opinion on the game after reinstalling it and giving it another go, but it's not exactly a shocking revelation that more complex RPGs don't jive as well with more casual players.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I mean. Obviously there where people who loved New Vegas more at launch but the general opinion online both from reviewers and general consumers was that Fallout 3 was the better game, most people who liked NW better at launch where old school Fallout fans or people who where RPG enthusiasts.

This comment came from developers who, unlike publishers, have humanity. They have nothing against the people who worked on 76.