Obsidian Entertainment was founded in 2003 by several employees of the soon-to-close Black Isles Studios (best known for Fallout 1 & 2 and Planescape: Torment). After such spectacular results as "Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords" and "Neverwinter Nights 2," the company moved on to original titles such as "Alpha Protocol," "Pillars of Eternity" and the highly successful "Outer Worlds and the highly successful "Outer Worlds", the company moved on to original titles such as.

Ask any fan of the studio's work, and they will tell you that these games have one thing in common, an elusive quality that makes them feel like Obsidian's work: some say it's the consistently excellent writing, of course, but there is more: Obsidian I had a turkey talk with Feargus Urquhart, co-founder of Obsidian, and at the end of the chat we got to talking about what he thought of the thread. After all, Obsidian has been around for 20 years now, is a big studio, has talent floating around, and has the equivalent of a "Ship of Theseus" problem in game development.

"Frankly, it's difficult. 'I've been doing this for 32 years. It's crazy, and it's a different generation than the developers who started today. There are people working here who weren't even born when I started this."

Part of the process is getting everyone to do their homework. When we launch a product, we basically say, okay, go play all these games, and then go play our own games, too. It may sound silly, but it's important: "Avowed" is not a "Pillars [of Eternity]" game, but everyone had to play "Pillars 1" and "Pillars 2" to understand the world. So even though the RPG system is different, [Avowed] is not going to be a turn-based, six-person party RPG, but it's going to immerse people and give them a sense of expectation about their friends, conversations, etc."

Urquhart also notes that while there is clearly turnover at Obsidian, they have managed to retain certain talent for a very long time, which creates a unique consistency across different titles.

"There is also consistency in the art, there is a consistent group that has been working here for a very long time. Dan Spitz Lee and Scott Evarts have been with me all the way back at Black Isle, where I started in 1996." Dan was a programmer on "Fallout," "Fallout 2," and "Planescape: Torment," "Stick of Truth," and "KoTOR," and is now the lead gameplay programmer on "Avowed. Then there's Scott Everts, who did layout for all levels of the original "Fallout", was the environment artist/worldbuilder for "Outer Worlds 2", and did the same for "Outer Worlds 1". There are people who remember them, though perhaps not as well as they used to.

Urquhart points out that while the studio uses third-party tools (Avowed is built using Unreal Engine 5), it also has its own tools for creating key elements of the experience, such as dialogue. He calls the dialogue tools "code," adding, "It's about helping people understand what we're trying to accomplish, and [the tools] are specifically focused on being in an RPG studio. This is because no game should imitate its predecessor. It's a lot of conversations, a lot of mistakes and, oddly enough (laughs), playing your own game."

This leads to a rather obvious question: what are the other touchstones of not only Obsidian's masterpieces that Obsidian's developers must become familiar with, but also of one of the greatest RPG studios in the world? [Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Bethesda games, Skyrim, the first Pillars game. These are first-person games, so "Dying Light" was one of the example games to get a sense of running around the world in the first-person perspective. There were probably a few others, but we had five or six games for them to play, and they were all very interesting games, and they were all very interesting games, and they were all very interesting games.

Urquhart ends up getting a little sidetracked, but it is highly illuminating. The difference is that we are looking at these from the perspective of the designer, rather than the player who is simply there to have a good time, and how meticulous Obsidian may be about what works and what doesn't.

"Over the past six months, we've done a run between the main points of interest for all of Bethesda's games, Dragon Age and that sort of thing," Urquhart said. 'To see the actual length of time it would take someone to run from this town to that cave or village. In our game, to understand those lengths of time and to make sure we didn't forget what worked, why it worked, and what didn't work.

"I think it's about looking at what we're doing as a skill and not being our own echo chamber. There are many examples out there, not just in our game, but in all games, to take what we can do to continue to do what we do well.