Its always wise to keep expectations in check but comparing this to Outer Worlds doesn’t make much sense
OW was marketed from day 1 as a AA game with a much smaller team than what Avowed has and IIRC Avowed was a big reason why they decided to pull the trigger on Obsidian
A team of Obsidian’s quality finally getting a big budget, time and resources is very exciting, not sure how it can be compared to OW in scope
I think people expecting something on the scale of Elder Scrolls will be disappointed because lets be real, there’s pretty much nobody in the gaming space that does what BGS do, not even Rockstar create worlds like BGS! But it’s not like it has to be either Elder Scrolls or OW in scale, there’s plenty of inbetween
After the comparisons to The Outer Worlds and the specific comment about leaning towards Mass Effect… I would say either the game has a strong focus on companions, or Jez is completely off base with his info.
Open world is an interesting prospect with Obsidian. It’s not their typical mode of working… but their one open world RPG is one of the all-time classics of the genre. I’d personally love to see them take another crack at it.
It’s not specifically geared for open worlds, yes, but games like Days Gone have shown it can be done and you also have Redfall, which is going to be open world as well.
I can see where you’re coming from in a way, but at the same time Obsidian this time around has Xbox money to spend, Klobrille called it Obsidian unleashed, the list of details by Sponger show what an ambitious project this is and those details are pretty much confirmed to be in line with what Klobrille heard and Jez too.
If it truly will rival Skyrim in terms of world size remains to be seen, but it sure as hell will be a whole lot bigger than ToW in many ways I’m sure.
I would be fine with this too. I mean Dragon Age Inquisition is hub based and that game had Hinterlands and holy that was large. But I keep going back to what Sponger said…fully open world. We’ll probably learn by next E3, or maybe even as soon as December.
Nah, that will only delay it. I’m sure Obsidian will make something great that looks great and plays great. I’m especially curious about the combat, man I want to see it.
I don’t think it needs to aim to be a bigger world than an Elder Scrolls game, or even the same size. There’s nothing wrong with some WRPGs being tighter, more contained experiences.
Obsidian is not as big as Bethesda and Xbox has Bethesda now so they don’t need Obsidian to try and be that. I’d be happy with a dense world full of content and a shorter run time than a relatively small team trying to make a massive game and overshooting.
I just want them to make the game they want to make now that they have the funds needed to do it justice. I’m a big fan of the world Obsidian created in Pillars 1 & 2 and can’t wait to see what they do with it.
I was actively searching for this because I remembered he commented on it. The Creation Engine isn’t the prettiest and has issues but it’s damn good at making open world games.
Things are improved under UE5, but earlier versions of UE4 required rework on IO subsystem as well as being careful in the size of your zones and how objects ripple to other other objects.
I’ve posted it a few times, but not sure if it was here. So I’m going to do a flat out copy paste of my posts from B3D and elsewhere below.
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Here’s what I can say publicly without getting anyone in trouble for Days Gone.
There was extensive rework done on the engine for that. What they pulled off is nothing short of amazing. If you want to see what an open world UE4 game is like without that level of effort, look no further than Ark: Survival Evolved.
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In UE, if you load in 1 object, it ripples out and loads in everything it references, which ripples out and loads in everything they reference, ad infinitum. This is why there are Zones defined in games using UE. Even before any of that is a concern, the engine’s reading is done at such a remedial way, like it was done by an intern with no concern for any real world performance.
And Days Gone has an entirely rewritten IO subsystem. A year before Days Gone release (maybe even earlier), Developer on the game spent many a time venting about the rework required while we gamed online.
One of the big patches for the game ReCore had them do a drastic patching of the game loading system, to cut minutes off their load time.
I think the only game that has not rewritten the I/O subsystem is ARK: Survival Evolved. And you can tell somewhat by the insanely long loading times or the severe hitching when moving through the game.
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It’s pretty much Data Bloat and Object Management and being forced to load everything that object refers to, and everything those other objects refer to, and so on and so forth. In addition to that, there is then garbage collection that has to happen on objects as they go out of scope. That is if they ever go out of scope. Needless to say, the loading and unloading of objects has been a hassle in the past.
One of the patches from the UE 4.25 patch notes indicates how they flattened the properties of objects, which should ease memory pressure. Maybe they were able to solve the object reference chain issue as well, like keep it as an Object # lookup and not be forced to load in that object immediately, and only load the referred to object if the Property is used.
I did not, but a person I used to game with nightly for years on end did. They still work at Sony Bend Studios. It’s been a while since I gamed with them because our schedules conflict.
omg - what a hassle. Recursive loading of dependent objects ad infinitum is crazy. It is standard large scale programming, but cannot work well in cases like this.
that was large. But I keep going back to what Sponger said…fully open world. We’ll probably learn by next E3, or maybe even as soon as December.