For any artistic endeavor there are a couple factors that can make any project significantly
more difficult.
Usually, these are: time constraints, a lack of creative freedom, and budgetary limitations.
Each one of these can make a film, novel, painting, or yes, even a video game, significantly
more difficult to create, or at the very least, release in a quality state.
Each of these can exist for very significant reasons.
Sometimes there is significant doubt as to whether or not a project will be able to create
a return on investment.
So, managers keep budgets very low and avoid taking excessive risks.
Sometimes, when licensing an intellectual property, there is reason to believe that
the licensee will take too many liberties or will undo all of the progress that was
made over years of work by the originator.
As a result, the original creator will often place serious restrictions on what is and
isn’t allowed within their IP and will strictly supervise everything going on with the project
throughout its life span.
And, lastly, sometimes with a licensed property the title holder will have several games lined
up down the pipeline.
They’re only licensing the IP out because there’s a lot of money on the table.
Think of what happened with Warner Brother’s and Arkham Origins.
According to the developers, the ONLY reason that game was made was to cash grab the money
left on the table between Rocksteady releases.
Seriously, look it up, they openly said that.
When this type of thing happens, you’ll see the party that owns the license place
strict schedules down; stating that the game has to be done and released by X date otherwise
the project will be abandoned because it might step on the toes of the next “official entry.”
Now if you’re listening carefully, you’ll notice that these three examples of difficulties
that can be placed on a company while developing a game are all related.
They weren’t just random selections from my expansive catalogue of complaints.
That’s right, all of these were at play with Fallout New Vegas.
Now I love New Vegas more than Brick Loves Lamp, and if you’ve followed this channel
for a while, you’ll know that.
I did a critique of the game and it was actually responsible for introducing me to the beauty
of Open World RPGs.
Now, this isn’t a video on how much I love New Vegas or how it shaped my gaming tastes
and preferences, but I do want you to know this moving forward because I’m a TRANSPARENT
YOUTUBER WHO CARES ABOUT MY VIEWERS.
I mean it’s also because I started typing this sentence out and didn’t want to erase
anything…
I mean I DO care about you guys, I’m just saying that this part of the video is here
because I’m lazy and you know what this is a tangen-
New Vegas had a lot going against it.
Now, I’ve done a lot of digging and I’ve tried to find who’s idea it was to license
the game out from under Bethesda’s nose.
I’ve watched a ton of interviews and read (UGH) a lot of them too.
The thing is, Bethesda Games Studios execs and producers, get really weird whenever New
Vegas is brought up.
It’s really weird actually.
It’s like when you run into someone from years ago and you know that their old friend
made it big in Hollywood, so you ask them “how’s Jason?” and they don’t want
to talk about it because deep down they know they’re a failure in comparison…
Yeah…
In case you’re wondering I was talking about Jason Momoa.
He lived here in Fort Collins a few years back before he made it big.
He lived literally 450 feet from where I am currently recording this video and he waited
tables a Bissetti’s.
An Italian restaurant in Old Town fort Collins that just closed down last fall…
This is another tangent- New Vegas is the black sheep of the Fallout
family.
Not because it did anything wrong but because it did so much right.
Bethesda Game Studios released Fallout 3 to critical acclaim and people loved it.
But soon after the head honcho’s at BGS’s parent company, Zenimax, determined that because
it was going to be around 7 years between Fallout releases, they would try to capitalize
on the popularity by licensing the game out to another studio, Obsidian Entertainment,
a prominent developer of RPGs that was facing some hard financial times and was eager to
work on the project.
The crazy thing about this, is that they were given the money to pay their employees and
get the game out, but they were only given 18 months to develop the game; start to finish.
Everything, from writing to coding to voice acting to polish had to take place in this
timeframe.
Contrast that with the roughly 4 years the Bethesda spent on Fallout 3.
Now they had some help, the engine for instance was just copied over from FO3 as it was deemed
“good ‘nough” for New Vegas.
But they didn’t shorten or limit the scope of the project due to this constraint.
They had a limited time frame, Zenimax and BGS breathing down their backs, and beyond
all of this their budget was highly constrained.
But despite all of this, they decided to go bigger than anyone thought possible or reasonable.
Instead of making their outline small and easily achievable within these constraints
they made everything bigger: There are more characters, multiple factions, multiple endings,
and there were over 65k lines of dialogue in New Vegas compared to around 40k in Fallout
3.
They refined the inventory system, the rendering system to allow for broader color, new assets
specific to the Mojave, and they apparently had to even tweak the way the engine handled
multiple lighting sources because the New Vegas strip was so bright and had so many
lights that the old engine wasn’t able to properly handle it.
The point is, this is where you can see the type of developers that worked at Obsidian
at this time.
They didn’t take the easy route, the safe route, or even the smart route, but they took
the one that they knew was going to create the best game at the end of the day for players.
But this over ambition would come back to bite them after release…
You see, in the gaming industry, when licensing an IP, it’s common to set a bar that the
developer should shoot for; usually a review score average.
Zenimax did just that with New Vegas.
They told Obsidian that they would pay them one flat sum for developing the game, and
any extra royalties or bonuses would only be paid out if the game received over an 85
on meta critic.
If they failed to get this score, they would only get the initial payment and all royalties
and extra sales revenue would go to Bethesda and Zenimax.
Needless to say that Obsidian needed those royalties, they were a decently sized studio
by the end of the project and needed some form of sustained income to keep everyone
employed…
Well, the game launched on October 19th, 2010 and by November 8th just a few weeks after
launch, they had sold over 5 million copies.
That’s INSANE.
Players loved the game and couldn’t get enough of it…
But Metacritic scores are not determined by players but by journalists…
And the journalists had some issues with the game.
Remember I said their over ambition was gunna come back to bite them?
It did.
All of New Vegas’ problems can be surmised with one word: Khaleesi.
Nah, I’m just kidding.
I wanted to get her in the video somehow and this is the only way I could think of…
Yeah, she’s a dragon…
Anyway the actual problem had to do with something Khaleesi eats: bugs.
No, I don’t think it was a stretch…
Obsidian had pushed so hard (giggity) for the game to be expansive the engine had become
stretched too thin and couldn’t keep up with their ambition.
Reports of game breaking bugs came within hours of the game launching.
People were reporting corrupted save files.
Clipping into and through the map.
Broken quests, items that didn’t load, dialogue that wouldn’t play, animations that were
broken, areas of the map not rendering correctly, the list goes on.
Furthermore, on the PS3, the game was basically unplayable in the late game because of a save
file problem with the engine.
Basically the later the game went on the longer the save file because and the engine, for
what ever reason, would inversely correlate its frame rate to the length of the save file.
The longer the save file, the slower the frame rate; after 40 hours of play, your framerate
would be in the single digits and there was nothing you could do.
And as far as I can find, there was never a patch for this because it was an engine
issue.
The game was just broken on PS3.
Now, patches came, and the experience did get better for most players, and because the
game at the core was so good, players were willing to overlook the issues and focus on
the positives, which is why, by 2015, the game had sold 11.6 million copies.
However, reviewers were reviewing the game as it was on launch day which, in their defense,
was pretty poor.
But even with that in mind the game scored pretty well and most reviewers recommended
the game with the major caveat of technical issues.
Euro gamer’s review stated: "Obsidian has created a totally compelling
world and its frustrations pale into insignificance compared to the immersive, obsessive experience
on offer.
Just like the scorched scenery that provides its epic backdrop, New Vegas is huge and sprawling,
sometimes gaudy, even downright ugly at times – but always effortlessly, shamelessly entertaining."
Giving it a 9/10.
But, despite those that loved the game underneath the bugs, I’m sure you saw this coming,
they scored an 84 on metacritic…
One point away from the needed 85.
As a result, their contract was not fulfilled and they did not receive an extra slice of
the over $300 million in revenue that was generated in the first 3 weeks of the game’s
release.
Obsidian went along, trying to sign deals with Microsoft in 2011, but the deal would
inevitably fail and the studio would be forced to lay off 30 people in 2012.
Now it’s not all sad news, Microsoft recently went back to Obsidian and bought them out,
securing everyone’s jobs and their creative freedom.
In fact, their next release is fast approaching and it looks to be a doozy.
But more specifically, the point of this video is to celebrate the game and remember just
how fantastic it is.
Despite all of the horrific bugs, the time constraints, the budget constraints, the owning
studio breathing down their necks, and many other difficulties, Obsidian was able to release
a game that people are still playing to this day and that many players consider to be one
of the best RPGs ever released.
They did some incredible work with literally everything going against them and they created
a game that many cherish to this day.
Where a lesser studio would have taken the road more travelled, they turned and chose
to embrace the difficulties, expectations, and pressures.
They didn’t settle for mediocrity or even “average,” but rather chased exceptionalism.
And you know what, that’s just what they achieved: exceptionalism.
Without a doubt, Fallout: New Vegas Did Something Incredible.