Obsidian vs. Bethesda: Budget and Autonomy in Design?

[Anarchosyn]

I stumbled across this on another forum and, despite my general good nature and charm, felt a flash of anger:

I am pretty sure Bethesda had oversight over almost everything. It wouldn't surprise me if the script came from someone working at Zenimax or Bethesda. I'd also imagine some staff were working at/with Obsidian for the first 6 months as well helping transition them into the tools.

He then went on to say that this brilliant bit of deduction came from the $10-30 million dollar budget FONV was saddled with and Zenimax's reluctance to give carte blanche to developers with a track record such as Obsidian.

Now, I don't doubt that Bethesda had some veto power over decisions in this game. However, I felt annoyed that people would minimize the contributions of Obsidian and give Bethesda the accolades for any positive developments which stemmed from New Vegas.

My question is this: Does anybody know any solid information regarding the degree of autonomy in design or budget for New Vegas? Somebody around here made a vague comment about New Vegas being done on a small budget but no amount of creative googling brought any figures up.

Just curious.

p.s. I'm aware of the Van Buren parallels in New Vegas and used that as evidence that Obsidian should get the credit for the overall story arch (though, to my knowledge, only a player in said arch and not the arch itself came from Van Buren). Still, on the off chance I stumble across this view again I'd like to be better prepared.

 

[Brother None]

I doubt anyone has solid information in that. Those contracts are usually kept indoors and Bethesda is very protective about information.

What Some Wanker (his real name?) wrote sounds fairly unlikely, and counters Obsidian/Bethesda's own comments on it (which had Obsidian handing in an outline to Bethesda as per usual). That Bethesda had oversight is obvious, how much of it is impossible to tell. I'm pretty sure there were some Bethesda dev/producers working in cooperation, whether they were at Obsidian's office I dunno. It'd not be particularly meaningful if they were.

"I'm pretty sure" indeed. Sound like speculative gumball.

 

[Little Robot]

I have seen a grand total of one reference to Fallout 3 so far in the game (the Wasteland Survival Guide book), so if Bethesda really was pulling the strings I'd imagine there'd be way more hooks into Fallout 3 than that.

Really? You've gotten far enough to find a Wasteland Survival Guide and you haven't found the [spoiler:81da73b248]eyebot? Everything about that thing is a big FO3 reference-- sometimes when someone talks to you it unlocks FO3 Enclave recordings.[/spoiler:81da73b248]

 

[Deon]

ACtually, eyebots are a direct flashback to Fallout 2 where we saw an enclave base full of tem (and other robots). So I don't think it's a FO3 reference.

[spoiler:7cab241e5d]One may argue that they were not used as flying radios, it's something invented by Bethesda for FO3, but their primary role was detection, which is represented by a perk you recieve from E-DE, so it's more of a Fallout 2 reference still[/spoiler:7cab241e5d]

 

[Gaddes]

I have seen a grand total of one reference to Fallout 3 so far in the game (the Wasteland Survival Guide book), so if Bethesda really was pulling the strings I'd imagine there'd be way more hooks into Fallout 3 than that.

A Vault 101 Jumpsuit is in the game as well. How it got to the west coast, I haven't the foggiest.

 

[Briosafreak]

Those are fanboy silliness ramblings, it's bogus. Whoever wrote that doesn't have a clue of what is he talking about.

 

[Lexx]

Well, the Floating Eyes from Fallout 1 / 2 have been security robots. The Fallout 3 ones look more like scouts. So I think it's ok to see them not as a reimagination, but a different type of them.