South Park: The Game announced

It's South Park, and despite a shaky middle patch the series is really funny lately. Trey and Matt are writing/voicing everything, so they're totally committed to the project. And Obsidian is at the helm, arguably the last proper big budget RPG developer on the planet.

It's a recipe for fun that I look forward to eating.

But why would you want to play grindy rehashed weaboo crap over and over?

I don't really know what COD has to do with this.

Given Obsidian is composed of staff who worked on the original two Fallout games, and Bethesda is not, should we accuse Bethesda of 'copying' then? Because, you know, they didn't invent Fallout, and regardless of what they did they bought the IP and rode off it.

It's called a publisher. Publishers fund their projects, and publishers often commission them to make games. Here's why; publishers like to play it safe with existing, popular franchises, and when their main studios are busy on other projects they tend to farm them out to others who seem like the best fit. Obsidian was chosen for their experience in making RPGs, and because much of Bethesda's stuff was gearing up on Skyrim (and, I suspect, pre-production of Fallout 4).

Obsidian probably would love to make their own IPs. Bit Alpha Protocol bombed, and this isn't possible without backing of a publisher to pay your wages. We're in a generation where it is arguably harder than ever before for developers to start financially risky investments into new ips.

I don't know man. You seem to be painting Obsidian as vultures who pick at the corpses of popular IPs then ride off their success. Like, they just went and made New Vegas and went "LOL HERE RELEASE IT" then made a quid. Last I heard the company wasn't really doing too hot financially so I don't think they're doing a good job of riding off other's success, and the only reason they work on existing IPs is because they acquire contracts the publisher is farming out.

If it wasn't them, it would be someone else.

I don't really know what you mean here. Nobody said you weren't, so it just sounds like your contesting opposition by playing the victim. By all means say what you want, but expect others to do the same.

Back when Interplay was going bottoms up and was selling off all IPs, Fallout had a few groups shaking their wallets hoping to land the rights. Troika wanted it, because they considered it 'their baby', as the three founders of that company (Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky and Jason Anderson) had created Fallout, and in Jason's case also worked on Fallout 2 while at Interplay. They didn't have money to win the bidding war and so they lost.

Had they got it, we probably would have got a more traditional Fallout. Instead Bethesda, or Zenimax I suppose, had a bigger bank balance and they won, so the rights for the mainline games went to them.

I don't think Obsidian was bidding, but as a studio they're mostly composed of ex-Interplay and ex-BioWare staff, with many of the leads having spent time on Fallout, Fallout 2, PlaneScape: Torment, and Buldur's Gate. The reason they get so much recognition in the industry is because they've had their hands in some of the founding PC RPGS that have served as influence for basically everything that has come since.

I assume this is largely why Bethesda wanted Obsidian to work on it. I know Obsidian were happy to be back on the franchise that they're own staff had worked on long before Bethesda, so they no doubt jumped at the offer. If given total freedom they probably would have done their own thing, but Bethesda wouldn't have been interested in starting from scratch, and they would have been expected to use Gamebryo and the same base gameplay foundations that Bethesda had set up with Fallout 3.

You and others don't have to like it, but a lot of people who were disappointed with Fallout 3 (myself included) found something in New Vegas, bugs and all, that was reminiscent of the style and atmosphere of Fallout and Fallout 2, so they must have had their finger on some kind of pulse that resonated with many old school fans.

Funnily enough, Tim Cain (producer, lead designer and programmer of Fallout, who as said also worked at Troika) is now working temporarily at Obsidian on an undisclosed projected. Could be this as far as I know, or maybe the Wheel of Time RPG they've been working on forever. Or something else entirely.

There's a little bit of random history trivia. THE MORE YOU KNOW.