GamePressure - Interview with Feargus Urquhart

Silver · May 19, 2016

GamePressure have released the full interview with Feargus Urquhart taken during the Digital Dragons conference.

I've read that Tyranny came out of the idea of Stormlands. What's the actual origin story of Tyranny?

It goes WAY back. So we had a game idea that was pitched, it was called Defiance and it was around 2008, maybe 2007. It started with that idea: "What if evil won?". So we were pitching Defiance about the same time we were doing Dungeon Siege III. There was this idea for it and it morphed into Stormlands. So it was not Stormlands itself, but ideas taken from it. And there's also an idea from Defiance that was not in Stormlands. When Josh Sawyer took over Stormlands, he said something like: "Now, let's really flesh it out", and lots of things changed about it. Then Tyranny came about, and it was really about ideas from Stormlands and ideas from Defiance, all mushed together under the umbrella of that concept of what it would feel like to have adventures in a world where evil had already won. That, I guess, is the origin story - lots of things getting mushed together. But there are ideas of characters that are in Tyranny that are from Defiance and that were not in Stormlands.

[…]

That sounds interesting! Does this have anything to do with the Unreal Engine-based prototype that you mentioned during your podcast with Game Informer?

It's funny, even our artists wanted to get good at Unreal Engine 4. But no, it is NOT a Star Wars game. What our artists did is that they created Mos Eisley in Unreal Engine 4. We think that the whole reason for it is that one of our artists, Jason Lewis, who's working on Armored Warfare and worked on Call of Duty and Medal of Honor beforehand, really wanted to create a one-million polygon Millenium Falcon. Then he just convinced a bunch of artists to build Mos Eisley around it. But there was a purpose to it, which was to learn everything about the Unreal Engine so that we could use it.

White Wolf Publishing registered Vampire Bloodlines. Would you like to work on that?

I think Vampire would be really cool, but that's the tough bit - there are so many cool things, there are so many awesome things out there. I know Tim and Leonard both loved working on it. We flirted with White Wolf long ago, right before CCP actually bought White Wolf. Mike Tinney was the president of White Wolf, and we got to know each other. What we were trying to figure out back then was whether we could take the Neverwinter 2 engine and do a Vampire or a World of Darkness game. It would be cool, not only as just a game, but also from the standpoint of people who love World of Darkness, who would then be able to go and make more World of Darkness modules and things like that. It would be cool, I've always loved Vampire, I read the books, read the novels, all kinds of that stuff.

More information.

joxer · May 19, 2016

…we were trying to figure out back then was whether we could take the Neverwinter 2 engine and do a Vampire or a World of Darkness game. It would be cool…

No it would not.
There is a reason CDP abandoned Aurora after TW1. But also there is a reason Eternity is not using Aurora, right?

azarhal · May 19, 2016

joxer said:
No it would not.
There is a reason CDP abandoned Aurora after TW1. But also there is a reason Eternity is not using Aurora, right?

He is saying right before CPP bought White Wolf. In other word, that was in early 2006, the same year NWN2 released.

We have Tim Cain working for us and Leonard Boyarsky has come to work for us recently. So I let people put two and two together.

So some sequel to a Troika game. *hint*

Archangel · May 19, 2016

Pathfinder game using updated ToEE engine?

RPGFool · May 19, 2016

Did a little digging and found Wikipedia's entry on Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura which includes the following info:

In a 2000 interview with Nextgame.it, Tim Cain announced plans for an Arcanum sequel,[28] but these plans would not come to pass—Troika Games filed for dissolution on September 30, 2005.

In September 2006, one of Arcanum's lead programmers and co-founder of Troika, Leonard Boyarsky, divulged that the studio had originally commenced work on a sequel, going by the working title of Journey to the Centre of Arcanum, which would use Valve's Source Engine. Development was curtailed by disputes between Sierra and Valve, resulting ultimately in the project being shelved.[29]

Don't know whether this is the new Obsidian project, but if so a new fantasy RPG along these lines could be a lot of fun.

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Sacred_Path · May 19, 2016

We would love to make a Fallout: New Vegas-style game or something like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, or The Witcher; we’d love to make a game like that. But if we can’t own the IP, we will make it Eternity-style, because we can usually find the money for that.

Surprising. I didn't think they'd even contemplate doing that.

RPGFool · May 19, 2016

Sacred_Path said:
Surprising. I didn't think they'd even contemplate doing that.

I think you got it right the first time; my read on what Urquhart is saying in that quote is

[Although] we would love to do a Fallout: New Vegas-style game or something like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, or The Witcher… [we don't even think about that any more since] we can’t own the IP. [Instead, we prefer] Eternity-style because [it's our IP and] we can usually find the money for that… (Edits in bold and brackets added to original Urquhart quote).

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kopija · May 19, 2016

Well, in your 20s you’re always moving, in your 30s you’re getting a little tired but you say to yourself: “I’ll get there”, and then in your 40s you figure out that you’re never going to get there. What I know now is that it’s never going to be easy, because if it’s easy, we’ll make it hard. If it gets too easy, we go: “So let’s put 17 more things in there! Oh, it’s hard now… why did we do that?”, but we’ll do it again the next time too. So I don’t think I’ll ever learn everything, I think it will always be hard, but that’s okay. It’s tiring sometimes, knowing that it’s always going to be hard, but it’s more of a reward if it’s hard.

And I thought that I am the only one doing that.

azarhal · May 19, 2016

Sacred_Path said:
Surprising. I didn't think they'd even contemplate doing that.

They talked about it a few times, Feargus even talked about it in relation to the Pillars of Eternity IP once. The problem is money, they can't finance it themselves, they won't get that money from crowdfunding and publisher probably all requires owning the IP in the end because that is what have value and not the game itself.

Now Obsidian seems to have realized that doing a 3-4 20-30 devs projects instead of one big 100 devs is more cost effective for them though.

rjshae · May 20, 2016

azarhal said:
Now Obsidian seems to have realized that doing a 3-4 20-30 devs projects instead of one big 100 devs is more cost effective for them though.

Probably safer too; if one of them flops, it likely won't kill off the company.

Dez · May 22, 2016

Indeed, its not wise to put all your eggs in one basket.

BoboTheMighty · May 22, 2016

Eh, the more eggs in one basket, the better. Obs always falls few steps short of one really successful title.
They certainly have more talent and creativity than Bioware and Bethesda.

RPGFool · May 22, 2016

Looking over this interview in depth, I was quite surprised that Obsidian has now grown to a size of "over 220 employees." Even more surprising, the majority of these are working on Obsidian's free-to-play on-line tank game Armored Warfare.

Just two years ago, in March 2014, Urquhart told Eurogamer that Obsidian staff numbered 140 employees. Hence Obsidian has grown by over 50% in just two years. And considering their their commitment to the on-line Armored Warfare MMO; well, Obsidian has really changed.

Chris Avellone said in one interview that being away from company management was refreshing. That makes a lot of sense in view of Obsidian's current size and recent growth rate. I also wonder how Obsidian's on-line MMO change of direction impacted Avellone as Armored Warfare is neither an RPG game nor is it story or dialog driven.

Still, if Obsidian has found a way to fund their RPG work via their on-line MMO, that ought to be a good thing in the end.

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Gorath · May 22, 2016

RPGFool said:
Looking over this interview in depth, I was quite surprised that Obsidian has now grown to a size of "over 220 employees." Even more surprising, the majority of these are working on Obsidian's free-to-play on-line tank game Armored Warfare.

They're taking a gamble here, but one with good prospects. The direct competition for their tank game has been growing forever. It feeds 4000+ employees now.
Assuming the game is successful enough, what Obsidian did by signing this F2P deal is either (a) securing a sizable income stream for at least a decade or (b) dressing the company up as a takeover candidate. It would be pretty normal that their publisher would at some point demand to pull development in-house, and would be willing to pay a fair price to secure full control and ongoing development of a premium product.

In that context I hope Obsidian have moved their RPG IPs into a shell company.

GamePressure - Interview with Feargus Urquhart

Silver

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