RETRO FUTURISM

How Obsidian Entertainment is studying its past to chart a future among the stars

- BY NIALL O'DONOGHUE

To recount the history of Obsidian Entertainment is, in many ways, to tell the story of modern roleplaying games. Cast an eye across its back catalogue and you'll find games including Knights Of The Old Republic II, Fallout: New Vegas and Pillars Of Eternity. Examine its roots, meanwhile, and you'll see the fingerprints of its founders on Interplay classics such as Fallout. For all of this lineage, though, 2025 feels like a marquee year for the company. Grounded 2 and The Outer Worlds 2 both represent direct sequels to in-house IPs, while the release of Avowed in February marked a continuation of the Eora universe established in Pillars Of Eternity. The studio that came up by standing on the shoulders of giants such as Bethesda and LucasArts is now carving its own path forward, creating its own sandboxes rather than expanding upon worlds created by others.

Much has changed since those early days: the studio now boasts a headcount of nearly 300 following its acquisition by Microsoft in 2018. Indeed, our hands-on time with The Outer Worlds 2 revolves around the new, whether in the form of refined gunplay, expanded stealth systems or newfangled gadgets. But alongside these mechanical improvements we find a studio driven by a desire to actualise dreams forged during teenage D&D sessions, in an attempt to refine the fundamentals established by its founders over two decades ago.

"The heart of it, always, for me, has been the story, the world and the narrative, and it's very important that the story doesn't get in the way of the player having a great experience with their character," The Outer Worlds 2 creative director Leonard Boyarsky tells us. "I don't think that changes with the technology."