Well here is something logical.:)

It's only a letter of intent to buy from Microsoft.

It really doesn't mean anything other than "Yeah, we might be interested in buying your company". The terms still have to be hammered out and agreed to by both parties.

Whats interesting though is Obsidian is looking to sell.

To be honest I willing to give them (MS) benefit of a doubt. They are a different company in these last two years, at least in the programming world.

Fix'd

While I agree some are overreacting, I think calling it a win win is a bit too optimistic. Unless you’re only looking at it financially.

I can’t see Microsoft giving them a blank check and telling them to continue making old school infinity engine style games.

Losing an old school rpg developer is a loss to me.

But hey, I could be wrong large corporations purchasing small old school rpg developers has worked out great in the past.

Right bioware?…… bioware?…….. hello? ;)

Oh, that old "EA is responsible for the change in Bioware - even though games like the console exclusive Jade Empire was released years before the take-over myth" ;)

Nah, the good doctors wanted a change in direction and a wider audience which is why they went for consoles after NWN - and EA taking over was just another result of that.

That said, there's a difference between something likely being a win-win and then being a sure thing.

As for Obsidian, I live on planet Earth - where they made games like Armored Protocol, Dungeon Siege 3 and South Park.

To me, they were never just "old-school RPG developers" - but I know many have a very strong affection for them.

If I'm wrong and Obsidian starts making Battle Royale shooters - I'll be right here owning up to that.

Until then, however, I believe this whole thing is just a rumour as of yet.

While I often feel like I must be an alien, I too live on planet earth.:lol:

I’m actually not a huge obsidian fan, but I’d still like to see them continue to make IE type games as they’re aren’t a lot of developers doing that.

My trepidation is more based on a lack of faith I’m MS than affection obsidian.

Trust me, I want to be wrong. If the financial backing of MS allowed obsidian to make more modern IE type games ala DA:O that’d be great.

Only time will tell though and it’s only rumors at the moment. We can revisit this if it happens and we see what kind of games the develop. Then one of us will get the grand pleasure of saying I told you so. :lol:

Yeah, let’s see :)

I don’t think Obsidian ever intended to make IE type games exclusively forever, regardless of where the funds come from.

But I’d certainly be surprised if they never make another or similarly old-school CRPG just because they’re bought by some suit. They’re known for doing a certain thing, so you’d be a very strange suit if you paid them to do another thing, unless they failed repeatedly.

If they do get swallowed by the great, gaping maw of MS, I hope they are able to finish a competent and enjoyable POE III before succumbing to the inevitable decline. I kinda like the series.

MS can gobble down Obsy, good riddance. MS can eat Larian as well!

I don't like the idea, but then I'm not a fan of MS in any respect. Years ago, around the start of 3D games, I owned a Mac and played the Marathon games by Bungie. For the time, they were very good games and then MS bought them and I tried Halo. Yuck… everything that made the Marathons kind of interesting and quirky was replaced by generic whatever's for more mass appeal.

I cannot imagine this would result in Obisidian continuing to make games I'd like to play.

But I hope I'm wrong if it actually occurs.

Remains to be seen if they keep fishing funding from crowdfunding or if they turn away from that. Could be a major defeat for crowdfunding.

"Poor Yorick, I knew him, Horatio."

Microsoft is not much better, imho, than EA.
They merely don't have the same amount of hate like EA, only in the OS area.

Wow. Being a fan since BG was announced (tho, I was at first worried it was going to be too mainstream LOL haha), I can understand the nostalgia, but Pillars 1 and 2 are both very solid RPGs that beat most anything released in the void after the death of Troika. Sure, it's not perfect, but anyone not wearing them nostalgia beer goggles would see that none of the infinity games were perfect either, and that BG1 itself was a big change from what most of us were used to in RPGs.

Big difference was the internet wasn't so popular and mainstream (and cynical) that people would attack anything remotely new and different. I've seen people say the Pillars 2 is garbage compared to 1, I've seen the opposite, hell, I've seen ppl say both are trash. If you want to, you can find fault in absolutely ANY game ever made. Planescape: Torment is always lauded as best RPG evah by 5 x more people than the number of sales of both the original and rerelease versions. I doubt I could have found another person with a P:T box (upon release) for a 100 square miles despite living in a metropolis. Point being, that games get much "better" the farther we get from their release. A small vocal group of RPG gamers seem to hate almost anything new, and there is no appeasing someone that has no desire to be appeased. If you released P:T today, the same people who add it to their top 10 lists (not all, but most) would trash it terribly.

For those that hate Pillars of Eternity 1 more than anything released by EA or Ubisoft in recent memory, why is it? I can point out why I love it, but I've only read a couple weird reasons like people angry that magic users need a decent strength stat, which is pure nit picking of biblical proportions. I've read that it's boring, which I can fire right back at the entire genre and most of the IE games easy. I want a honest, non-biased, nostalgia-free breakdown of why it's so bad that people would rather play all the great western RPGs released by Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Activision, Microsoft, Sony etc instead.

PS 1: (For those that don't know) Dragon Age: Origins is not an Infinity Engine game… there are exactly 5 of them FYI.

PS 2: The O/S fears are strange to me, and I learned computers using fucking MS DOS. No one was ever bothered to upgrade and move on from DOS, Windows 3.1, Win '95, Win '98, Win 2000… until we hit Win XP, and we get a violently vocal group refusing to move past it. I've tried all the new Windows O/S to come out since (apart from Vista) and am perfectly happy saying 10 (if you deselect the tracking shit) is a good improvement and has yet to eat my brains. It reminds me of the IE nostalgia fears people have.

PS 3: I'm not irrationally afraid of MS turning everything into a Gears of War spin-off or anything. I've been around long enough to know when small dev studios get bought by large publishers with a singular focus (make your stock holders happy) something beautiful and important gets lost in the mix. Sure, in Bioware's case, they started going console with KotOR, but it's the studio's ability to choose what and how they work. If it came down to the studio shuttering, or being bought, there is no question, but I prefer the games coming out of there to what they might be asked politely to make instead. Of course, I could be wrong, and it could be the very best thing for them. I'm not psychic, just going on past patterns.

I will be an even bigger win for Feargus's kids ;)

I think I need to bring up again that MS has a habit of letting those companies they acquire go if they don't work out. They're not like EA who swallow whole everything they devour along the way.

If this were to happen, would do you think would be the chances of JE Sawyer jumping ship and starting his own studio, perhaps the working on the historical CRPG he's mentioned several times?

That's something I'd pledge to if he took it to kickstarter or fig.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker *winkwink* ;)

Even those that aren't huge fans of Obsidian anymore, such as me, really wouldn't want to see this happen. At least we get a playable game now every so often, that would cease immediately if this acquisition happened.

Maybe or maybe having someone more competent than Urghart in charge would give us better games.

I can see MS releasing the studio and letting them fend for themselves and keep the IP. Didn't this happen with Fable, Dungeon Siege, and Shadowrun?