Obsidian Entertainment has proven to be a productive developer in the past number of years, with an increasing ability to juggle several projects at once. Obsidian has a long history of making RPG games, and its current projects prove there isn’t any slowing down the Microsoft Games Studios developer. Most of the company’s current projects are public knowledge, with one secret project and another large game that has been shrouded in mystery.
Obsidian originally found success with its first game, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 – The Sith Lords in 2004. The developer was founded by former members of Black Isle Studios who already had a wealth of experience in developing RPGs, having worked on series such as Icewind Dale and Fallout. To this day, the developer has mostly kept its projects within its RPG roots, but it has experimented with other genres and styles of role-playing experiences over the years. Its current slate of games represents a mixture of its role-playing expertise and some new directions for the company.
The second and final Outer Worlds DLC, Murder on Eridanos, is set to arrive sometime before the end of the current fiscal year. This means that the expansion should be in the hands of players before April 1, 2021. The story of the expansion revolves around a character known as Halcyon Helen, the star of an in-universe show called Terror on Monarch. Helen is looking to go on a final adventure and looks set to be a solid follow-up to the first expansion, Peril on Gorgon.
With the release of Murder on Eridanos, Obsidian can move on and reassign its resources to the several other projects it has in the works, with at least one of them being large in scope. The Outer Worlds was a huge success for the company, and there is a chance that Obsidian will look to follow-up with a sequel at some point.
Grounded stands out among the list of current projects at Obsidian Entertainment, as it has technically already been released but just in Early Access. It’s a survival RPG where players embody a person who has been shrunk and must survive the terror of creatures like bees and spiders in a backyard. Grounded is in early access and has already seen several updates with new content, and this looks set to continue for some time. The unique game has resonated well with gamers and critics alike and will likely be a big focus for Obsidian going forward until and probably after it has received a full release.
With the support of The Outer Worlds winding down, it’s easy to imagine that Grounded will receive some additional development support as it edges closer to moving past early access. Grounded’s community has exceeded 5 million players which could help ensure a long and exciting future. While there is certainly a sizeable scale to consider here, Grounded is arguably not the biggest project in the works at Obsidian Entertainment right now.
Announced in July 2020, Avowed is a first-person action-RPG that’s coming at an unspecified date, and it looks set to be one of Obsidian’s largest projects ever. Avowed was immediately compared to Skyrim, thanks to its fantasy setting and first-person perspective, but Obsidian have a large well to draw from to make it stand out as a more unique title. The game is a spin-off of Obsidian’s RPG series Pillars of Eternity, and it’s set in the same world. Where Pillars is a classic throwback RPG, Avowed is very much set to take a more action-orientated spin on the world of Eora.
There are few known details about the game, but the reveal trailer did show it’s going to be a first-person action-RPG where players will be able to wield traditional weapons in addition to magic. With the title being set in the world of Eora, there’s a wide variety of locations it can be, set in and conflicts for players to resolve. Avowed is reportedly set in The Living Lands, a frontier rife with lawlessness and petty warring, so it should be interesting for players to see where their protagonist fits into the equation in this troubled place.
While Avowed is undoubtedly a huge undertaking, Obsidian Entertainment somehow has another project in the works that could be equal to the scale of Avowed, if not greater. Josh Sawyer, design director at Obsidian Entertainment, took to Twitter in August 2020 and noted in no uncertain terms that he’s directing his own project and that the project isn’t Avowed. Josh Sawyer worked on the Icewind Dale and Neverwinter Nights series early in his career. More recently, he was responsible for pitching Pillars of Eternity which saw the company get out of a tight financial spot, and went on to direct the two games in that series. He’s perhaps most well-known for directing Fallout: New Vegas, a fan-favorite entry in the post-apocalyptic RPG series.
There have been no hints as to what this project is, but it’s not hard to imagine Josh Sawyer returning to the Pillars of Eternity series in light of Avowed. Additionally, The Outer Worlds is a successful new IP for the company, so it would make sense for Obsidian to follow it up at some point down the line. Perhaps the most popular and sought-after theory is that Obsidian is making Fallout: New Vegas 2, which has been rumored ever since Microsoft began its Bethesda acquisition.
Obsidian has become an extremely productive developer with several projects in the pipeline at the moment. While some of these games are unlikely to be released for a few years, many fans are excited about what the studio has in store for the gaming industry. Since Microsoft bought Obsidian, it seems that the team has been ramping up development, and with Microsft behind them, it seems as though it has more resources accessible to them than ever before.
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