Obsidian Entertainment - Partners with Red Eagle on new Wheel of Time series

[Gokyabgu]

Someone who has a license and wants to make an RPG, first finds Obsidian. Lucas Arts went to Obsidian with Star Wars license, Atari with D&D license, Sega with Alien, Bethesda with Fallout and now this. I have no complaint. though. Obsidian's is a well business model to make A quality, big budget RPGs. Long live Obsidian.

 

[Gokyabgu]

Didn't they make a shooter game based on this a long, long time ago? Vaguely remember playing a demo.

I remember that. I have the cds still. It's not a brainless shooter. It has some puzzles and a spell system. Also, it has been made with Unreal 1 engine and was published in 2000. It's graphics was ahead of its time. I remember especially the architecture was magnificent. You can easily run the game on a netbook now.

 

[Gokyabgu]

From the press release it sounds like Obsidian might just be providing tech/know-how. But it's not clear, much like the genre of games isn't clear.

But more work for Obsidian = good.

This reminds me the case with Lionheart. Black Isle was more an advisor than a producer. In the end, we had a promising game which was good in the first half, but screwed in the second.

 

[Malk]

I hope this won't affect (in a bad way) New Vegas and Alpha Protocol.

 

[Brother None]

Some clarification on the division of labour. Obsidian provides majority of tech, knowhow and devs, Red Eagle has a core dev team with creative oversight.

I hope this won't affect (in a bad way) New Vegas and Alpha Protocol.

I'd think it doesn't. But with the relationship between Sega and Obsidian somewhat sour, and New Vegas being a relatively small project, it's good for Obsidian to get more projects.

 

[Dhruin]

From the press release it sounds like Obsidian might just be providing tech/know-how. But it's not clear, much like the genre of games isn't clear.

But more work for Obsidian = good.

It isn't clear but it seems to me Obsidian is doing the majority of the development.

I would also like to make one additional clarification. We are not licensing our WOT development rights and stepping back from the process of building these video games. Quite to the contrary, Red Eagle Games will have an internal development team of its own. However, rather than staffing up a 200 person studio from scratch, we decided some time ago that for our first games it would be far more prudent to hire a small in-house team (e.g. positions such as Art Director, Game Designer, Story Writer, Software Architect, Quality Assurance Director, etc.) and rely on a third party developer to provide the majority of developers and their associated overhead and infrastructure. In this way, we will be providing technical and creative direction to our external developer.

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/53041/Obsidian-Entertainment-Developing-New-Wheel-Of-Time-Titles

As they say, Red Eagle will provide "direction" but it seems Obsidian will do the heavy lifting.

Edit: Oops, somehow missed your clarification. Oh, well.

 

[Gorath]

Good news for Obsidian. It will keep them liquid for quite some time.

 

[Maylander]

Thank you for all the additional information. This certainly sounds like a very interesting project. As mentioned before, the "stand" and "weaving" system during combat in Wheel of Time could turn out quite well in a game setting.

Also, Wheel of Time has many interesting factions and locations. I've always wondered why noone managed to set good games in that setting.

Hopefully, they will make a story that has very little to do with the books - perhaps meeting some of the main characters, sure, but the players should not take part in the main story of the books in my opinion. Perhaps similar to the way Drizzt was handled in BG1-2, where you bump into him and help him with a small quest (and he helps you in return later on if you ask him), but nothing major.

 

[Corwin]

I'd really like to see the film concept come to fruition.

 

[Acleacius]

Extremely good news, Congradulations Obsidian!

Really liked WoT game for what it was, the first FPS with depth, character development and most of all professional actors, writers and music. Each character Legend made in WoT had more depth than the whole game of most FPS att.

Hell, the high quality WoT was the beginning of depth of character, acting and music that has lead to games like ME. True it seems ME can't get gameplay down but production and story are top notch impressive for any game much less a FPS.

Also WoT is extremely challenging at highest difficulty, if you like a hair pulling challenge as resource management is tough. Think most WoT book fans were scared away at the thought of some of the stories about how all the White Cloaks could/did use magic, which of course isn't true.