At one point in time, Obsidian held the record for the biggest video game ever funded through Kickstarter. $3.9 million has been put into its upcoming old-school RPG Pillars of Eternity, and the company is hoping to have it released by the end of the year. With such a nearby release window, perhaps it is time to start thinking about the next big success.
In fact, it already has a plan in mind, one which Studio Boss Feargus Urquhart teased Rock, Paper, Shotgun with in an interview and said could be ready by March or April.
Rather than go full on sequel with its upcoming RPG, something Urquhart says he’d “be really surprised if we didn’t make,” he claims Obsidian would rather use the tech to make something new.
I always look at the example of what we did back at Black Isle with Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale. And then Torment on top of that. Those games used the exact same engine, but they all felt very distinct. That’s what we want to do now too, and I think that’s just gonna help us make each of those games better and better.”
Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale and Planescape: Torment. A trifecta of excellence you mention in every pitch if you want to get PC RPG fans excited for your project.
Urquhart’s ultimate dream is to create something along the lines of Skyrim, a vast open experience. It’s an ambitious and expensive idea to create through crowd funding, but not so crazy if released episodically. Or another idea is a game featuring less party management and more focus on a single character.
“Could we create 10 hours and have people pay 10 bucks? And generally, when we say 10 hours, it’s usually 15. But if we go with five episodes, then people get between 50 and 75 hours.”
Regardless of the idea, Urquhart has confirmed there are three ideas on his mind, two of which are licensed properties and only one being an original concept.
“There’s something we’re talking about that would be really cool, but it’s not an original property,” he revealed. “It’s a licensed property. But it’s not Alpha Protocol! It’s something we can still do a ton of creative stuff with, though. And then the other thing is an original property. Also, there’s a third thing that somebody approached us with, but I really don’t think that’s going to work out.”
Obsidian has been riding high on the Kickstater wave, and it is pleased to see its buddy company inExile creating similar games and doing so well. Whatever choices it makes in the coming months in regards to closing up on South Park: The Stick of Truth and delivering huge with Pillars of Eternity could have long lasting implications on the future of the team as it tries to push on to new projects.
