Obsidian Entertainment - "We Wish New Vegas Wasn't Glitchy"

Dhruin

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NowGamer is running an interview excerpt from Play Magazine, with Obsidian's Feargus Urquhart commenting on their reputation for buggy games:
"I think it's fair and unfair at the same time, because in the same conversation that I hear how buggy KOTOR and Alpha Protocol were, I also hear how great they were," Urquhart explains when asked about Obsidian's reputation.
"Now in the case of Fallout: New Vegas, we made a gigantic game, and I'm proud with what we were able to do but I wish it wasn't as glitchy when it came out. The criticisms people had are fair but it's difficult to get a game the size of New Vegas bug free. But that's an excuse and it doesn't matter when someone's paid $60 for a game. It's something we need to work on."
More information.
 
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I loved Feargie while he was BIS CEO.
I respected him because he explained to the whole f. community many things including how Interplay vetoed him on Descent and stuff. F stands for fine. He never lied nor kept silent, he communicated with all of us who played and enjoyed BIS games. He cared for us, and not just for our money.

And I love him and respect him even more now.
 
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I waited for Fallout 3 until they released a complete edition, and I'm waiting for this one as well. But is it still buggy? Or have it's issues been addressed with patches etc.? If I didn't particularly like Fallout 3, am I likely to feel the same about New Vegas?
 
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The engine itself is buggy and nothing can totally fix it. Maybe you will be lucky, maybe not. That's why some people could never play and some others never had a glitch. The DS series was pretty stable, so hopefully this one will be. Not that I am dying for another DS but it's better than anything else on the horizon.
 
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Since it is Obsidian's own engine for Dungeon Siege 3 you can't determine whether or not it will be buggy based upon the relative unbuggyness of the first 2 games.

PS. I am one of the people that never encountered any bugs (except very minor ones) since Fallout: New Vegas came out.
 
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Since it is Obsidian's own engine for Dungeon Siege 3 you can't determine whether or not it will be buggy based upon the relative unbuggyness of the first 2 games.

PS. I am one of the people that never encountered any bugs (except very minor ones) since Fallout: New Vegas came out.

Oh I didn't realize they had their own engine in the works though I should have inferred that from his comments.

That's a good thing, though. Maybe in the future they will be able to release some original IP stuff with their own tech.
 
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I had far fewer problems with FO:NV than I had with the original Fallout 3. Having said that, I also only began playing it a couple months post-launch, so I can't comment on any release issues.

It's understandable but unfortunate that Obsidian has this buggy game reputation. They are practically the only AAA game developer I still respect and if they iron out their Quality Assurance, they'll only be better.
 
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I also didn't have many problems with the game. A few glitches here or there and that was it. Most of them involved bark scorpions getting stuck in the ground, but I could count on my hand the number of times that happened.

Before the patch my major issue was a huge slow down when encountering many human hostiles. That was easily fixed before the patch though and it ran as smooth as silk after that.

I think most of the problems and complaining came from the console versions of the game. I read those were pretty bad, but as for me I didn't have any problems. Even when I I loaded a few mods it still ran perfectly.
 
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I have learned that large RPG's are buggy, and should we want more of them we should also accept this.
 
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It was the 360 version that was outright broken from what I understand. The PC version had the normal Bethesda engine issues but nothing much worse than that. I never had any problems personally. The PC version also got a day-one patch that took over a week to come out on consoles as I understand it.
 
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I only had that strange fpsdrop bug that was somehow related to DX9 and rendering water. They fixed that pretty quickly and after that I could play without a problem.
 
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Glad to see he's being honest about it.

That said, it's easy for him to talk about New Vegas - because it was a smash. It's also a game where it's more forgivable to have flaws, given the engine that's already flawed - and the size of the game that's almost impossible to release glitch-free.

But what he should have dealt with, in my opinion, is why games like Alpha Protocol had to be so glitchy. Compared with FO:NV - it's a small game, with relatively few things to go wrong. Yet, it was shock full of little quirks and glitches. Not just that, but it was also pretty rough in terms of the visual appeal - and especially the animations.

Naturally, the full interview might cast some light on the issue.

But it's no biggie - and I still love their work.

Here's hoping that Dungeon Siege 3 isn't a sign of the kind of games they're going to do from now on.
 
I had the misfortune of having some broken quests and the brotherhood vault being destroyed when I never went there yet. Now I have gun clipping issues with the new
patch. Envy those who never had problems it seems every patch messes something up.
 
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I waited for Fallout 3 until they released a complete edition, and I'm waiting for this one as well. But is it still buggy? Or have it's issues been addressed with patches etc.? If I didn't particularly like Fallout 3, am I likely to feel the same about New Vegas?

Is the game buggy ?

No(on PC)It benefits fully patched Fallout3 , thats two years of patches.
But if you are nitpicking, you will find a bug or two.


Should you get the game ?

It is only one of top 10 RPGs of all times. Easily stands toe to toe with original Fallouts ( even NMA said so) and it has humongous amount of gameplay.

But if you really disliked Fallout 3. Its based on same engine so the general feeling is the same.
 
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I have no problems with an open world game of FNV's caliber being buggy on release. I'd be surprised if it wasn't. It all comes down to if you want to play polished turds or flawed gems.
 
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I waited for Fallout 3 until they released a complete edition, and I'm waiting for this one as well. But is it still buggy? Or have it's issues been addressed with patches etc.? If I didn't particularly like Fallout 3, am I likely to feel the same about New Vegas?

First, let me say that New Vegas is a superb cRPG and anyone who can stand the Fallout 3 engine should most definitely play it, no question about it.

However, there are bugs and glitches still, even with the newest patch. Some are pretty minor, but there are few bigger ones too (mostly concerning quest triggers failing to fire or quest specific dialogue options missing) and some random crashes every now and then. That said, I don't think you should wait for further patches, though. The game is stable enough now to make playing it a reasonably fuss-free experience. Also there are no guarantees there will be further official patches, so waiting for one could very well be futile.

Some bugs/glitches I've noticed on my recent play-through of New Vegas (patched to v1.3) on PC (Win7) with minimal mods (see footnote) are:

- Two quests suffering from missing dialogue options. First was resolved by redoing the the quest several times (no biggie as it was a very short quest) and the second resolved itself once I completed a different quest by that same quest-giver.

- Creatures with more than four legs (namely giant ants and scorpions) are nearly always glitched in their movement, especially on slopes. Either they are sunk inside the ground or oriented completely wrong (walking on their heads). SOmetimes this makes them unkillable or stuck.

- Items or NPCs hovering 20cm off the ground, at times even higher. NPCs usually settle down after moving a bit, items when you bump into them.

- Corpses disappearing or becoming embedded in the ground (half-buried), making them unlootable.

- Companion pathfinding having serious brain farts, usually on most inopportune moments, like sneaking on a group of enemies only to have your companion run past them and back to you, training them all on your lap (thanks!).

- The engine's handling of Havoc physics is still as bugged as it was back in Oblivion. Presonal favorite: Corpse physics suddenly going berserk and making the corpse fly across the room or collapse under the ground level and spasm endlessly there. Had a few nice scares because of this - sudden zombie attacks, that aren't.

- Random crashes now and then, which mostly just drop me back to desktop, but sometimes result in hard freezes. (Remember to save your game often!)

Footnote: The mods I'm running are a UI mod making the UI text smaller (I'd consider this essential to all PC players), a mod allowing bottling of water (good for Hardcore mode) and a mod adding extra/missing ammo crafting recipes (if you enjoy crafting). That's all.
 
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Well put. That just about covers the remaining issues.

Long time ago I read that devs don't have much say about when the game is going to be released. I mean, releasing a game involves multiple phases, and they have to collaborate with several parties and agree on dates, or deadlines, by which things get done. Devs have to meet the deadlines, or risk all the other phases get delayed. Games come on media, or DVDs. The workshops or factories that produce these DVDs have a timetable, since they have other games and software to burn on DVDs as well. You don't just cough up 1,000,000 copies of a game and call it a day. So at the very least, devs have to fight the clock to meet the demands of the DVD creation process, or delay the production until the next cycle. Of course, this messes things up with the DVD-plant because the next customer (company) in line might not have its product (their software) ready.

Anyway, I think that when Mr. Urquhart wished "New Vegas wasn't so buggy", he means that they would've had more time to develop the game, to iron out bugs. I'm guessing they were so close to their deadline that they didn't want to delay it to next cycle. They probably considered it but decided "Screw it, it might be rough around the edges but not bad enough to justify messing the timetable. The people down the line depend on us. We'll start working on the patches now."

Of course, this is all just speculation but… just my 2 cents.
 
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Thanks for the info people. :) I'm still going to wait for a complete edition (all dlc included) before I buy it, but it's firmly on the shopping list now.
 
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