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Obsidian Entertainment working on new Wheel of Time games.....


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#1
Guest_Capt. Obvious_*

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Article is over here. I must say that I'm really, really f@cking excited right now. Yeah, Obsidian has made a few errors in the past, but at from what I'm hearing, they might even turn it into something great. 



Red Eagle Games and Obsidian Entertainment today announced they have entered into a services agreement which provides a comprehensive framework for Obsidian Entertainment to work closely with Red Eagle Games' in-house development team to create new video games for the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 based on Robert Jordan's best-selling fantasy series, The Wheel of Time."The development team at Obsidian Entertainment has demonstrated time and again that they can successfully blend storytelling with technology to craft a superior RPG game experience," said Rick Selvage, Chief Executive Officer of Red Eagle Games. "Obsidian Entertainment is the ideal development partner to help Red Eagle Games take Jordan's beloved characters from the printed page to exciting new forms of interactive media.""Obsidian Entertainment is thrilled with this opportunity to work with Red Eagle Games in developing games based upon The Wheel of Time series," said Feargus Urquhart, Chief Executive Officer of Obsidian Entertainment. "The Wheel of Time is a rich universe that lends itself to incredible gaming possibilities."Red Eagle Games was formed in 2006, and the Company plans to publish a line of video games on all major platforms, including consoles, personal computers, handheld systems and wireless devices. The Company's Wheel of Time games will be available through retail channels around the world by the Company's distribution partner, Electronic Arts. Red Eagle Games' principals Rick Selvage and Larry Mondragon are also producing a live-action motion picture based upon The Wheel of Time for Universal Pictures through their production company, Red Eagle Entertainment."Although Red Eagle Games is both a game producer and publisher, as a new company, we quickly recognized that we could benefit from supplementing small in-house technical and creative teams with a proven third party developer," said Larry Mondragon, Chief Operating Officer of Red Eagle Games. "Our alliance with Obsidian Entertainment is a perfect fit and will greatly improve the quality, cost and time-to-market for the first-generation of our Wheel of Time games.""The Wheel of Time is one of the greatest and well-received fantasy series of all time," said Chris Avellone, Chief Creative Officer of Obsidian Entertainment. "Games set in Robert Jordan's universe have the chance to deliver on the epic storylines and the complex characters that the series is known for - and this is one of Obsidian's strengths. It's a natural fit."Obsidian Entertainment was established in 2003 by a group of experienced industry veterans. With the company's first title, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II - The Sith Lords for Lucas Arts (2004, Xbox & PC), Obsidian quickly established itself as a top-tier developer of critically-acclaimed role playing games featuring strong characters, richly conceived visuals and storylines and teeming with action and adventure. Obsidian subsequently developed the Neverwinter Nights 2 game series for Atari, based upon the popular Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. Titles in this series included Neverwinter Nights 2 (2006, PC and Mac/OS X), Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer (2007, PC), and Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir (2008, PC). Obsidian is currently completing two major games for planned release during 2010, Alpha Protocol (PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, to be published by Sega) and a much-anticipated sequel in the Fallout series, Fallout: New Vegas (PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3).The details of Jordan's meticulously crafted series have captivated readers since 1990, when The Eye of the World, the first book in the series, was published. Eleven additional books, including one prequel, have since been added to the series and have consistently appeared on the New York Times Bestseller List with the last five of his novels in the series debuting at No. 1. Jordan passed away in 2007 at the age of 58, but his publisher, Tor Books, subsequently announced that a final trilogy of novels will bring his epic series to its long-awaited climax. The most recent installment in the series, entitled The Gathering Storm, was published in October of 2009 by Tor Books. The last three novels are being penned by fantasy writer Brandon Sanderson using notes, audio recordings and draft materials left with Jordan's wife and editor, Harriet Rigney.Jordan's wildly popular books have been translated into 24 languages, and have sold about 44 million copies worldwide. According to Tor Books, the publisher of The Wheel of Time novels, there are about 65,000 The Wheel of Time fan Web sites as a part of a vast global on-line fan community.About Red Eagle GamesBased in Southern California, Red Eagle Games is an independent video game company undertaking the transformation of Jordan's literary masterpiece "The Wheel of Time" into high-quality interactive gaming products for the personal computer, game consoles, mobile and wireless devices, and online play.



You will all be happy to hear that we are not planning to make a traditional “movie” game that merely recasts the picture we are currently making with Universal. Instead, we want to concentrate our development efforts on telling the other facets of The Wheel of Time story. And as you know, we have a lot to choose from– literally thousands of years of history and scores of major characters, nations, geographies and critical moments in the history of the world since the beginning of the Third Age.Thus, we have been vetting many creative ideas for game formats, including games derived from the Age of Legends, The Breaking of the World, the War of the Shadow, and even a game concept that focuses on the battle among the Forsaken to become the one and only Nae’blis. We are also looking at skill-based games that are based on the testing of the Aes Sedai for the shawl and the wielding of the many intricate sword forms that are second nature to an experienced Warder. All of this is to simply say that we are critically thinking about game design for an entire family of WOT games that are consistent and supportive of the story portrayed in the movies, but that do far more that merely retell the plotlines, characters and scenes from the films. Trust me when I say that we intend to build games that will excite the imagination of every WOT fan. We just ask that the Wheel of Time community wait to see the fruits of our labor before passing judgement on whether we have been successful in our efforts.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.Obsidian Entertainment is a highly-respected game developer with a well-deserved industry reputation for building quality action/role-playing games. By eliminating the need to recruit and manage a large internal workforce within Red Eagle Games, we expect that this new relationship with Obsidian will enable the Company to achieve substantially lower development costs, a shorter production cycle, and improve the quality of our initial video game releases.



Age of Legends? Breaking of the World? War of Shadow? I think they're really think outside the box here. I hope they turn it into something spectacular.

What are your thoughts?

#2
DarthCaine

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Bugsidian can't even complete Alpha Protocol and they're working on New Vegas, and they're already moving on to another game?

Modifié par DarthCaine, 12 février 2010 - 06:49 .


#3
Seagloom

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New Vegas will likely be entering QA phase in a few more months. Its release date is nearing so unless they plan to delay that, it has to be close to done. Besides, any successful independent developer has to have multiple projects in the pipeline or they go the way of Troika and find themselves without work; and with too little cash in reserve to stay afloat long enough to line up another project.

Not much I can say to this news. I admit I'm close to drawing my last straw with Obsidian but they're one of the few companies left releasing RPGs. I prefer their storytelling approach and I can't help root for an underdog. However, I never bothered with the Wheel of Time novels so this news doesn't elicit much excitement from me. Not until I know more about what this game is like. It's good news for Obsidian though. For once they get first crack in co-developing a licensed game.

Modifié par Seagloom, 12 février 2010 - 07:19 .


#4
Godak

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I just gamegasmed...There is no reason that this shouldn't be ab-so-lute-ly epic!

#5
Jonp382

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Never really got into Wheel of Time. It is at least reassuring to see they have no plans of making a 'movie game' though.

#6
Guest_Capt. Obvious_*

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I really hope Obsidian does the Wheel of Time justice.

#7
Valente11

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I still have faith in Obsidian. Their bugged games are much better than most rpg's out there, polished or not. It's nice to see them making something that is NOT some from of shooter. I'm getting sick of them.

#8
Godak

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Seagloom wrote...

 However, I never bothered with the Wheel of Time novels so this news doesn't elicit much excitement from me.


Start bothering. Now. You won't regret it. Posted Image

#9
Cancermeat

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I don't have high hopes for alpha protocol anymore, they need to make something good so we can take them serious.

#10
Guest_Capt. Obvious_*

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Hey, look, peoples! According to this site, the Wheel of Time series is better than A Song of Ice and Fire!

Guess you have no choice but to read it, Seagloom. Do it!

#11
Seagloom

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I may, at that. But I'll wait until A Memory of Light is released to read the whole series in its entirety. It's bad enough waiting years for each A Song of Ice and Fire book without adding another series I'll pine for on top of that. >.<

#12
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It took four years for the eleventh book to come out.



Oh yeah, and as some advice. Be careful with books 7-11; they're pretty boring.



The first three books were spectacular though. And the the climax of the 6th. book was pretty great. Yeah, books 1-6 were great. Books 7-11 were not so great. And book 12 was delightful.

#13
Vansen Elamber

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I wonder if Obsidian will get access to Jordan's research notes on the Wheel of Time. Apparently he had a library of research he had done over the years that he could refer to when he was writing a new addition to the series...that information would be very valuable to them indeed.

#14
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Well, it certainly helped Sanderson. I wonder if he'll give permission for them to use it?

#15
Vansen Elamber

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Capt. Obvious wrote...

Well, it certainly helped Sanderson. I wonder if he'll give permission for them to use it?


I think it would be Jordan's wife that would need to give the permission, and yes that is where I heard about it was when I first read on the net that Sanderson was chosen to finish The Wheel of Time series. I have to say I think Sanderson is a brilliant author in his own works and I have yet to read book 12 of the series but I am excited to get to it as soon as I get back to work in March and have the funds to add that book to my collection....

#16
Remmirath

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That could certainly be quite interesting. It would, of course, depend a lot on how they go about it, which is too early to tell.

#17
Wintermist

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I like Obsidian myself, I think they've made RPG's just as good as BioWare, and now I'll probably get stoned for saying so.

#18
Seagloom

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I think they write better plots than BioWare, to be honest. They are more comfortable telling less orthodox RPG stories. Well, except NWN2's OC. The King of Shadows plot was typical fantasy fare for the most part. Hopefully Alpha Protocol and New Vegas will be financial successes so they can finish this Wheel of Time game. It would be sad to see yet another RPG developer go under.

Modifié par Seagloom, 14 février 2010 - 01:26 .


#19
Wintermist

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Obsidian has former Blackisle people with them and I'm sure you all remember Fallout and Planescape: Torment with a warm heart.

#20
Godak

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I really hope that Alpha Protocol is awesome...It LOOKS awesome, and there's no reason that it shouldn't BE awesome, but companies can sometimes do really stupid things...



*Glares at Capcom*



Why would you make a game about flying a jetpack, but not have the jetpack until the last third of the game?!

#21
Guest_Capt. Obvious_*

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What? You talking about Dark Void? I don't know what my brother saw in that game.

#22
Godak

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Capt. Obvious wrote...

What? You talking about Dark Void? I don't know what my brother saw in that game.


Yup. Stupid, silly game. From what I gather, the demo level is pretty much the most fun you'll ever have in the entire game.

#23
Greve Y

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"The Company's Wheel of Time games will be available through retail channels around the world by the Company's distribution partner, Electronic Arts."



Does this mean that EA:s RPG division will be involved??

#24
Godak

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Only in distribution, I think.