Well yes I do rate Troika quite a bit higher (was a bit of a fanboy too I guess).
That said, for todays standards they are pretty good (compare them with Bethesda i.e
).
I have much more admiration for what Bethesda is doing, considering they're working under the horrors of the publisher model and major AAA expectations. They're the ones building games. Obsidian tend to use established engines and assets, which is almost trivial in comparison, and yet they keep messing up. I know Bethesda uses the "Creation" engine - but they've done a TON of work on the technical side - and they're basically building games from scratch.
Arguably, Obsidian's most significant work on an existing engine was Neverwinter Nights 2 - and that game ran like a dog on top-end hardware for months and month. Also, they managed to mess up the editor by making construction too complex and the modding scene never took off properly as a result.
On top, they all but ignored the multiplayer aspect of NWN - which was basically the entire concept of the game.
I can't say that there are a lot that do anything more than decent and serviceable these days. Them, CDPR (which I don't really rate higher) and a couple of others here and there perhaps… Definitely not Bioware i.e …
CDPR are amazing, hands down. Frankly, I'm extremely impressed by their passion and sheer competence.
I know most of the Watch are big fans of Obsidian, and I respect that.
But I'm not as focused on archaic RPG models as most are around here, and I'm likely a bit more interested in technology than most fans of the old-school. This makes me somewhat less forgiving of lacking polish and technical glitches, something which Obsidian is (in)famous for.
But it's true, they're pretty good when it comes to writing and mechanics. They're definitely more old-school than most other non-indie developers.
*EDIT*
Oh, if we're just talking about writing - then we agree, Bethesda aren't very good at all
