Back in the day, Obsidian's upcoming Skyrim-like (but not Skyrim) RPG, Avowed, was going to feature multiplayer. You could have taken a companion or two and wandered around Eora, but wait a minute, that doesn't sound like Obsidian.

So the idea was almost certainly abandoned for good, and Avowed became the thorough single-player experience we saw in the showcase. However, in a recent chat with Windows Central, Obsidian sheds a little more light on the decision to go solo, especially in light of the huge success of Baldur's Gate 3 (and its co-op mode).

"Finding a way to build multiplayer while playing to our strengths as a studio was a huge challenge creatively and technically," said game director Carrie Patel. what Obsidian does best, as you might guess, is "a really solid campaign and critical path story" that allows players to "make impactful decisions while (simultaneously) shaping the world and the characters around them."

These are all things Obsidian excels at, and while the developers "built the systems necessary to support multiplayer, designing content, conversations, and everything else that makes it work," continuing to excel at them was not feasible It was decided. So multiplayer was dropped altogether.

As I say, it's the right move, but it does make one wonder what the secret sauce is that allows Larian to pull off a massive, sprawling RPG with a multiplayer mode that is allegedly so much fun. Obsidian has an answer for that too: Larian Studios team has created a great RPG with "Baldur's Gate 3" and has years of experience with "Divinity": they also have years of experience working on "Divinity: Original Sin," building multiplayer within a really robust RPG framework. He has years of experience in the work.

So the difference between Obsidian and Larian, at least as far as multiplayer is concerned, is simply experience. Nevertheless, now that they have developed "Grounded," perhaps the studio will start experimenting more with multiplayer. Perhaps "Pillars of Eternity 3" (which, let's believe, could really happen) will see a squad of Watchers jump ship. A man can dream.