I loved Pentiment, too, but I just wouldn't really compare it to New Vegas tbh. Tyranny has the whole element of building a coalition of factions and multiple endings thing going for it that makes it feel New-Vegasey to me. The comparison is probably a bit of a stretch, but it makes sense to me at least lol.
The elements that made New Vegas good were the team, the near infinite money they had, and how everyone seemed to enjoy the project. From interviews I've read with Josh Sawyer and Tess Treadwell, it seems like everything went as smooth as game production could have gone. They were never worried about deadlines or anything, despite the 18 month production time. They wanted to have more Legion territory, but otherwise the game is how they wanted it to be. So I don't know how those elements would get replicated.
Pentiment is really good though. Outer Worlds is...ok. I guess we'll see.
Obsidian has bled talent for the last fifteen years, they're not incapable of good stuff but much of the credited NV writers and staff have left.
I coped about Outer Worlds for like a year but it is sub mediocre. Given the development mess Avowed has apparently been through, and that it looks like just Skyrim, and the showcases that are all just YOU CAN MAKE CHOICES BRO TRUST ME I have worse than no hope. Plus, it's penned in for the second half of this year but they've barely shown it off, this thing is gonna launch busted.
It's like thinking Blizzard can still make games as good as WC3 (to say nothing of BW or LOD) when Blizzard can't even make games as good as WOL. When will g*mers learn that you're supposed to follow the actual developers and not the development studio?
Likely not, it will probably be a more polished Outer Worlds with the added dev time. If the writing is good, it will probably be better than Outer Worlds, but it won't reach New Vegas levels as the team is fundamentally different.
Yeah. A lot of the magic with NV was specificly crochety old leftists and fellow travellers writing the story, and I think all those guys, Cain and Avellone and Fargus or Feargus, whatever Brian's name was, aren't around. I hope the new guys can pick up the torch, no reason they can't. The original interplay guys weren't magic, just good writers with an understanding of America's culture and role in the world.
After the Outer Worlds, no. I only remember seeing one trailer a few years ago and it looked like a very generic fantasy setting as well, so I don't know what will make it unique. Maybe it will tide me over until the next Elder Scrolls, but I doubt it'll be anything more than that
after outer worlds was billed as "new vegas in outer space" only to be the most watered down version of that it could possibly be, I'm really not hoping for much. I'll see what the reviews say and might pirate it then
How much of the old Black Isle/Interplay crew is still around? That Pillars of whatever game was pretty good, mostly. Didn't land for me, but that's me. But that was like a decade ago.
Of course not, I'm sick of European-flavored settings where I can't do anything to modify the player character; and the last time they made that open, it was in service of super-mid story about space capitalism.
Hot-take: Starfield has better RPG bones than anything Bethesda has made post-Morrowind, with better quest design too. The worldbuilding and writing just sucks beyond belief.