Obsidian Entertainment has held an interesting position in the RPG industry for decades. Developing acclaimed RPG sequels like Knights of the Old Republic 2 and Fallout: New Vegas, the studio has been known for creating some of the best roleplaying experiences in gaming, while often struggling financially compared to its larger competition.
However, the next-gen consoles could be Obsidian Entertainment’s time to shine. While other major RPG studios find themselves in a time of immense uncertainly, Obsidian’s recent and upcoming projects indicate that the studio could be in a great place to survive a turbulent time in the industry.
The Chaotic Competition
The futures of three major RPG studios are currently in question. BioWare, Bethesda, and CD Projekt Red have now all released games which have faced immediate public backlash and damaged the studios’ reputations. Here’s a break down of each of these major RPG studios and the problems they’ve faced over the last few years.
BioWare released Mass Effect: Andromeda in 2017. The game was plagued by animation bugs – not only had the last Mass Effect been handed off to BioWare’s secondary and now defunct Montreal studio, but producer EA insisted that developers work in its new Frostbite Engine.
The Frostbite Engine proved extremely troublesome, especially for animators. Not only did Mass Effect: Andromeda’s story and new player character struggle to live up to the original Mass Effect trilogy and Commander Shepard, but the title’s bug-filled launch left many fans disappointed.
Since then, BioWare appears to be focusing on returning to its strongest core IP. The Mass Effect: Legendary Edition will remaster the original three Mass Effect games, while BioWare’s showing at The Game Awards 2020 included a trailer for the next installment in the Mass Effect series that strongly implied a return to the Milky Way and potentially even Shepard as the player character.
It’s among the more stable paths for BioWare to go down, but reviving Mass Effect is not particularly adventurous. While the remasters are likely to be a safer bet, the next Mass Effect game could also risk pushing fans further away if its story is unable to live up to the original trilogy and is seen as undermining it. The creative director on the original Mass Effect trilogy, Casey Hudson, recently left BioWare, so whether or not Mass Effect will be the key to the studio’s revived success is less certain than it might have been a year ago.
Bethesda is going down a totally new path. Starfield will be Bethesda’s first new RPG IP in over two decades. From leaked images the game appears to be a space exploration RPG. Bethesda has confirmed that Starfield will be released before The Elder Scrolls 6. There hasn’t been much news on The Elder Scrolls 6 since the teaser released back in 2018. At the time, it was speculated that the TES trailer was brought out early to deflect criticism aimed at Fallout 76, which was announced at the same time.
Like Anthem, Fallout 76 was a disappointing foray into multiplayer for the acclaimed RPG studio. Even Bethesda’s Todd Howard recently described Fallout 76 as a “let down.” It’s been nearly 10 years since Skyrim released, and Bethesda has spent a lot of its good will in that decade. The studio will be hoping that Starfield is a success, but for a developer known for its two main franchises, whether or not Bethesda can branch out now remains unclear.
The final huge Western RPG developer, CD Projekt Red, appeared to have the brightest future of the major RPG studios, kicking off the next gen with the launch of Cyberpunk 2077, an RPG that had been hyped up by fans and developers alike for over eight years since its announcement. CD Projekt Red was known in the early part of the last decade for its pro-consumer practices, but the development of Cyberpunk caused many fans to question the developers’ ethics.
The company was criticized for going back on its promise to avoid “crunch time,” instead making developers work extremely long hours as the game approached release. This caused more comments to come forward, including one former CD Projekt Red employee who reportedly earned just $430 per month during the development of The Witcher 3.
To top things off, Cyberpunk 2077 released with so many bugs that just a week on from its launch there have been flurried and sometimes conflicting messages about Cyberpunk refunds, especially for those who bought the new game on the old generation of consoles. In short, three of the biggest RPG developers in the west have damaged their reputations among fans in the last few years.
Obsidian's Shot
Obsidian Entertainment isn’t known for blockbuster games. Fallout: New Vegas was critically acclaimed among fans, and even that nearly led to the studio’s bankruptcy when the game’s 84 Metacritic score lost the developers a bonus from Bethesda that depended on an 85/100. Recently, the studio has returned to isometric RPGs with the Pillars of Eternity games, as well as smaller projects like backyard survival game Grounded.
Obsidian has returned to the first-person RPG format for modest successes like The Outer Worlds, and plans to return again with Avowed, a first-person fantasy RPG in the vein of The Elder Scrolls. Avowed will take the universe set up in Pillars of Eternity, and hopes to move it to a more financially viable format.
Obsidian may not take the lead at a time when mainstream RPG gaming is in boom, but its smaller, less hyped projects may be the studio’s salvation at a time when other developers have taken huge blows to their reputations. Avowed may not even help take the genre into the next-generation, and yet by delivering a relatively standard take on the Elder Scrolls formula, could come out ahead at a time when Bethesda is being remarkably quiet about its most famous IP.
Even the fact that Avowed will be a PC and Xbox exclusive is made less problematic by the increasing likelihood that future Bethesda projects could be Xbox exclusives as well. If the last few years have proven anything in the RPG industry, it’s that the future is uncertain. However, as gaming eases into the next generation, Obsidian may be in a great spot for a big comeback.
Avowed is in development for PC and Xbox Series X.