Obsidian Entertainment’s future looks secure, what with them having joined Xbox Game Studios. Their next game, The Outer Worlds, is nearing its launch, but it looks like the studio is already looking to the future and gearing up to begin working on its next game. As spotted by PC Gamer, Obsidian has posted several job ads on LinkedIn that mention their next game.
Job ads for the positions of UI Programmer and Graphics Programmer both mention “our next world class RPG”, which will be developed using Unreal Engine. Several other listings also directly mention the new project, with Obsidian calling it “our next great RPG” in the listing for User Interface Artist, and mentioning that it’s going to be “a high profile role-playing game” in the ad for the Character Animator position.
Some other job listings mention some other interesting thing. In the listing for Lead Narrative Designer, Obsidian calls the project “our next great multi-platform RPG”. Microsoft has said in the past that it would be open to letting its first party studios make multiplatform titles, but it’s more than likely that this is just referring to the game being made for both PC and Xbox (most likely Xbox Scarlett and not Xbox One, if development on the game is in early stages).
The listing for Combat Designer is also quite interesting, as it mentions “first-person melee combat gameplay” that is described as ” fun, visceral, and epic”, and involving “the main character, AI characters, and gameplay objects across varied encounter types.” For starters, that obviously confirms that it’s going to be another first person game. More importantly though, the focus on melee combat also suggests that it might be a fantasy-setting game rather than one that involves shooting guns.
Finally, there’s also a listing for the position of Network Programmer, which makes direct mention of multiplayer gameplay. This is interesting, of course, because Obsidian has always primarily been a single player-focused studio. It should be curious to see how they implement multiplayer gameplay in their next title in light of that, and how much of a focus that aspect ends up being.
Obsidian Entertainment have recently said that they have plans to turn The Outer Worlds into a franchise, which is something that Microsoft themselves have echoed as well. That said, it seems unlikely that they will already be moving on to development of a sequel when the first game isn’t even out yet. In all likeliness, this is something entirely new. Whatever it is, the added resources they will have at their disposal thanks to Microsoft are bound to help with the development.
For the time being, Obsidian’s The Outer Worlds is out on October 25 for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC, and will also be launching for the Nintendo Switch later.
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