Obsidian Entertainment, the developer behind Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire and other RPG smash hits, has been known to release games with a few bugs at launch. According to design director Josh Sawyer, however, those issues aren't the fault of the studio as much as they're the product of publisher deadlines that condense development time and restrict planning.
Obsidian Entertainment is one of the best western RPG studios in the world, with a games library that not only includes the critically-renowned Deadfire but also what is arguably the best modern Fallout ever released in New Vegas. Despite the obvious pedigree of many of the company's best titles, however, their largest releases—those where publishers were directly involved in development and production—have often been launched with several game-breaking bugs and glitches that are eventually patched out after player testing. That's widely been accepted as a by-product of the scale and ambition in games like the ones Obsidian Entertainment is known for releasing, but there may be a simpler explanation: unrealistic expectations.
According to Sawyer, who published his thoughts on his personal Tumblr account (remember that website?), the problem with Obsidian games is not necessarily the complexity of the releases so much as the company's ability to prioritize polishing titles and addressing their major issues in coding. Sawyer was asked about the QA process behind games like Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, and responded with a well-reasoned discussion on why the studio has developed a reputation for buggy games:
"We're not total idiots. We know that we have a reputation for buggy games. And while some of that is endemic to making big, complicated RPGs with thousands of different ways through them, it's still within our power to reduce bugs on our end with more time. When it's a publisher's choice, that ability (or priority) can be taken away from us."
Sawyer also points out some strong evidence for his case, suggesting that the games that the company has had more control over have tended to have more stable releases:
"With Pillars 1 and Deadfire, we were the ultimate arbiters of our ship date. In both cases, when it came down to the wire, we decided to push back the release of the game by a few months. That can make a huge difference."
Obsidian is currently working on The Outer Worlds, another ambitious RPG set in a sci-fi environment that will release later this year on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. The Outer Worlds will be published by Take-Two label Private Division, so it remains to be seen how Sawyer and the rest of Obsidian Entertainment will be given agency over the game's launch date and relative quality when it comes to bugs. The Outer Worlds has some serious hype behind it, though, and the quality advertised within early looks at it will certainly make it so that its publisher would like to avoid any delays if possible.
Sawyer's discussion on the mixture of ambition and publisher demands that can create bugs in major releases is a welcome one, as the transparency certainly opens the floor to more discussion regarding the topic. Should publishers be held more accountable for the state of games when they're released? It certainly feels that way with Anthem and Battlefield V as recent reminders of what can happen to good development studios who are rushed on their games, and perhaps we're seeing a shift in the rhetoric surrounding these processes thanks to those high-profile failures. If nothing else, industry members are feeling more comfortable discussing them, which is a good thing overall.
Source: Josh Sawyer/Tumblr