The game industry is built on the backs of a wide range of studio types, from small indie developers to independent AAA studios to in-house developers under the likes of Microsoft and Sony. One company that's managed to travel through multiple of these categories is Obsidian Entertainment, the masterful developer of RPGs responsible for such games as Fallout: New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity. Obsidian has long been hailed as a talented studio thanks to games like these, and it keeps delivering new games that capture the imagination of fans. That's why it's a big deal that Obsidian is still going places.
Obsidian's status recently underwent a pretty major change. Although it was once an independent studio, Microsoft acquired it in 2018, right in the middle of the development of The Outer Worlds. Obsidian hasn't lost any momentum thanks to this change of ownership, though; if anything, it seems like Obsidian is ramping up development. Fans of the studio have a lot to look forward to over the next couple years, between Avowed and Grounded. Based on how many projects Obsidian is stacking up, it's also possible that it's planning even more new games with the help of its new parent company.
The Bright Future of Grounded
One major Obsidian project is actually already accessible. Grounded went into early access in July 2020, and Obsidian has been supporting it aggressively ever since. Grounded is a new take on a familiar premise: the player characters are children who've mysteriously been shrunken down, and now have to fight insects much larger than them to survive. Although Grounded looked strong from the beginning, Obsidian consistently comes up with good additions to the game, like new buildings for players to create and a koi pond offering a tense and beautiful new way to engage with the microscopic world.
A lot of talk around Grounded involves what it means for future games. It seems to be a good testing ground for things like enemy AI, as Obsidian creates intelligent enemies in the game's wide range of bugs and other animals. Obsidian isn't generally known for survival games like Grounded, either, so the positive feedback it's received on the game bodes well for further Obsidian experiments. Grounded is teaching Obsidian a lot that it can potentially use. While current Grounded updates are focused on polishing the game, odds seem good that even when the game officially launches, Obsidian will have more large-scale updates and additions to offer its player base.
Obsidian's RPG Talents and Avowed
Grounded is Obsidian's big potential release for 2021, but the studio's next step is public too. In the same showcase that Grounded was revealed, Obsidian and Microsoft announced Avowed, a new RPG set in the Pillars of Eternity universe. Although Obsidian has said next to nothing about Avowed since then, knowing the setting of the game has gone a long way in helping fans get an image of the game. There's tons of Pillars of Eternity lore already in place that'll surely inform the game, no matter what the story is or how the gameplay differs from the games that precede it.
Although Grounded is a solid game, people are excited for Avowed because it's much closer to the genre of game that people know Obsidian is best at. Fallout: New Vegas is frequently held up as one of the best entries in the Fallout franchise, but the RPG wasn't developed internally at Bethesda -- Obsidian made it. That's only the most famous of Obsidian's credits, too. Microsoft is poised to talk a lot about its internally developed games over the summer, so it's getting likelier and likelier that Avowed won't be such a mystery for long.
Potential Surprises from Obsidian
Even though Obsidian is in the middle of developing two games, it could easily surprise fans with new announcements over the summer at venues like E3. For example, many are wondering if the follow-up to The Outer Worlds is right around the corner. The Outer Worlds, a very successful sci-fi RPG from the studio, came out just a couple years ago and got followed up with a couple equally popular DLCs. Although the game's ending doesn't beg for a sequel, it also leaves a rich foundation for one. It certainly has a big enough following for Obsidian to justify a sequel, too.
Obsidian could just as easily come up with something even more surprising. A recent job listing from Obsidian revealed that it's starting work on an unannounced project supposedly set in an open world, which could mean The Outer Worlds 2, or it could mean something completely different. In fact, since Obsidian has been establishing quite a few new IPs in the form of Grounded and The Outer Worlds lately, it seems pretty likely that the studio has another big idea that it wants to explore.
Now that it's under Microsoft's wing, it's in a good window of time to experiment and get the most of Microsoft's support. These years of trying new ideas will inform what Obsidian creates in the future and give Microsoft a better picture of what to expect out of this new working relationship.
Obsidian has had a rocky history, sometimes needing to crowdfund its games to get their development started. Now it's in a very different place with Microsoft's help. Frankly, it's great to see someone as influential in the game industry as Microsoft acknowledging what Obsidian is capable of and giving it a much greater level of stability to help develop its games.
Obsidian fans should get excited about the state of the studio. It's determined to push out a lot of new projects, and experimental ones like that. The Outer Worlds' incredible claim that no NPC has to live for players to beat the game proves that Obsidian wants to try bold new things. Obsidian's future isn't just packed with new games; it's packed with new ideas that'll help Obsidian grow as a studio.