Fallout: New Vegas and Outer Worlds developer Obsidian Entertainment originally promised the upcoming RPG a cooperative multiplayer game before returning to its single-player route.
Say this A film based on television To mark Obsidian’s 20th anniversary, studio head and founder Feargus Urquhart admitted he was wrong after pushing for Avowed multiplayer.
“One of the things that really drove me was that Avoid was going to be a multiplayer game, and I’ve held that for a long time,” he said. “I know it was a bad decision to push him in the end.”
Development lead Justin Brits previously said in the documentary that Obsidian showed Microsoft early in the acquisition process, and while Urquhart didn’t specifically mention Microsoft, he made it clear that the multiplayer mode offered great value.
“If you’re asking for $50, $60, $70 million, you have to have something interesting to talk about. Multiplayer makes it interesting.”
“When we were independent and I sold it, it was a much more attractive game for publishers,” he said. “And when you’re asking $50, $60, $70 million, you’ve got to have something interesting to talk about. It’s interesting to take it to multiplayer. That was the idea, it’s almost like peanut butter and chocolate, and when you put it together it’s like Either, “Wow, sure It is intriguing.
Forcing a multiplayer project into a studio known for its single-player games created many problems for Obsidian, as it essentially had to relearn every aspect of game development.
“We’ve been very collaborative and very focused on changing how our pipelines work, the way we write conversations and the way we complete tasks,” says Pritsch. “We didn’t focus on the things we excel at. And so we focused on the game, basically to refocus and make sure at the end of the day it’s obsidian and not something else.”
Obsidian’s initial focus on multiplayer echoes the recent controversy surrounding Xbox Games Studios developer Arcane. Known for single-player games like Dishonored, Arkane developed the co-op multiplayer game Redfall, which received rave reviews earlier this year.
Zenimax’s parent company insisted on a multiplayer focus, which caused countless problems, and 70% of the staff who worked on single-player hunting left the company by the end of Redfall’s development. According to reports, Arcane was doing so poorly that, despite their two-year tenure on Redfall at the time of the Xbox acquisition, staff hoped it could be relaunched as a single-player game or scrapped altogether.
Avowed stays true to its Obsidian roots and despite being set in the same universe as Pillars of Eternity, the developer wants to make the world and universe more accessible this time around.
“What’s exciting and scary at the same time about taking on this role in AVOID is that it’s an IP I’m familiar with, but it’s a different approach for us,” said Kari Patel, game director.
“Knowing exactly how much we want to withdraw from the 1st pillar and [sequel] Deadfire, and then how do we make this game more accessible to a larger audience that may have played the Infinity Engine games and never played any of the original Pillars games? How do we stay true to this IP, but how do we create a more accessible experience for a wider audience? “
Only time will tell if Obsidian can achieve this goal as players know when the game is released in 2024. No specific release date has been announced, although Obsidian did release a new trailer for Avod in June.
Relatively little is known about the game, though it will feature destructible environments and be similar in shape to Skyrim’s Outer Worlds.
Ryan Dinsdale is a freelance reporter for IGN. He would talk about The Witcher all day.
