Life is crammed with paths not taken. Careers unpursued, loves unrequited, video games based mostly on large media properties unmade. Video games like Obsidian’s tackle Rick and Morty, for example, which studio boss Fergus Urquhart casually talked about was deliberate by the corporate throughout a current interview with NME (opens in new tab).
Exactly what the sport would have been is frustratingly undetailed within the interview itself, however we do know that it ended up shelved as soon as Obsidian acquired purchased by Microsoft (opens in new tab) and that it was one in every of many large licences the studio hoped to show into video games. The studio was additionally pitching a Strolling Lifeless RPG and a recreation based mostly on the truth present Cops (opens in new tab) earlier than Microsoft scooped it up, though publishers “could not get their heads round” that final one. In one other interview, we even heard that the studio had plans for a recreation based mostly on James Cameron’s Avatar (opens in new tab).
I’ll think about that no matter Obsidian had in thoughts for Rick and Morty, it will have been considerably near the work it did on South Park: The Stick of Reality: A parodic RPG that recreated the artwork type of its supply materials to seize the vibe of the present. It is in all probability for the very best that it did not come to go, although, given the imbroglio that now surrounds sequence creator Justin Roiland, who was charged with felony home violence (opens in new tab)and false imprisonment in 2020.
If something, Urquhart’s tales of Obsidian’s stalled tasks solely serve to spotlight simply how a lot the studio has modified in the previous few years. It was once a type of mercenary studio, selecting up different folks’s sequence—Star Wars, Fallout, South Park, and so forth—and making some extremely good (some would possibly say the very best) video games with them. Its makes an attempt to kickstart its personal properties by no means actually took off, as Tyranny (opens in new tab) and Alpha Protocol (opens in new tab) can attest (even when each these video games are glorious).
However now the corporate has extra sequence of its personal than you may depend, and so they’re well-regarded too. Obsidian does not should pitch video games set in different folks’s worlds when it may do no matter it needs with the likes of Grounded, Avowed (based mostly in Pillars of Eternity’s world of Eora), The Outer Worlds, and Pentiment. Despite the fact that two of these video games aren’t traditional Obsidian-style RPGs, Urquhart instructed NME that he does not really feel like he is “being restricted” by Microsoft, and that the corporate’s nonetheless doing “all of the loopy stuff [it’s] all the time achieved”. But it surely’s clear that the studio’s current success has given it room to experiment, and with issues it truly owns in addition.
Nonetheless, Fallout: New Vegas 2 would not go amiss. Simply saying.
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