This is despite running at 120 FPS previously. While it’s not the biggest issue, especially since Pentiment isn’t the most graphically intense title, it is conspicuous. Fortunately, Obsidian design director revealed that the mode’s absence on Xbox Series X is a bug. It will be available again in the game’s next patch.

Stay tuned for when the patch goes live, and check out our review for Pentiment here. Microsoft is bringing three more titles to other platforms in the coming months, namely Hi-Fi Rush and Sea of Thieves on PS5 and Grounded for PS4, PS5 and Nintendo Switch.

120fps will be enabled for XBOX in the next patch. It being disabled is just a bug.

— Josh Sawyer (@jesawyer) February 26, 2024

Unlike The Outer Worlds and the upcoming Avowed, Pentiment is a 2D side-scrolling adventure RPG. It sees players controlling artist Andreas Maler in 16th Century Upper Bavaria as he becomes entangled in various murders. Collecting evidence and testimonies is key, as you investigate the townsfolk and eventually narrow down who the killer is.

Depending on the decisions made and even the skills chosen for Andreas, each mystery can play out differently. Pentiment plays out over 25 years, with various conspiracies and historical events also occurring. It also features an unorthodox art style in keeping with the aesthetic at the time.

Pentiment is also available for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC – check out our review. A PS5 version was also rumored, so stay tuned for more updates.

When asked whether a potential sequel to Pentiment would be called Palimpsest, Sawyer revealed that Palimpsest was the original non-working title for the game.

“The original non-working title of Pentiment actually was Palimpsest,” said Sawyer. “Microsoft legal sensed potential difficulty with securing that name so I renamed it to Pentiment.”

“And no, I have no plans to make any sort of sequel, spiritual or otherwise, for Pentiment,” he continued. “I always intended it as a stand alone story. It may inspire ideas (hopefully not just for me!) in the future, but I’m happy with where we’ve left it.”

Originally released back in November, Pentiment takes place in 16th century Bavaria. The game puts players into the shoes of artist Andreas Maler in the midst of the world being in social unrest. Interestingly, alongside the game’s release, Sawyer had also released a recommended reading list to get players ready for Pentiment.

For more details about the narrative adventure game, you can check out our review. Pentiment is available on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

And to be fair, going in, Microsoft was well positioned – far better positioned than they have been in years. The Series X is undeniably the more powerful console. Xbox has been doing great on the services front, with Game Pass especially being a home run. And on the games front, we had reason to be optimistic – after all, Microsoft had gone on a heck of an acquisition spree a few years ago, and tripled the size of their first party roster. And they got themselves some big names! Double Fine, Ninja Theory, Obsidian… surely with these new studios, as well as the long awaited Halo Infinite, which promised to be a back to basics bold reinvention of the once beloved IP, they would be comfortably positioned to at the very least have a show that met expectations – if not outright exceeded them.

And, yet again, Microsoft fumbled. It’s become a pattern with the company to be able to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory at this point. Time and time again, Microsoft seems to be on the verge of greatness, and then decides to turn back and walk away. And it’s getting impossible to justify these missteps anymore, really hard to keep making excuses.

Let’s start at the absolute, most basic level: one big reason that May’s Inside Xbox got so much criticism was that in spite of promising “next generation gameplay” footage, actual gameplay was scarce in that show. Most of the trailers we saw were CG or in-engine targets. The backlash was severe, and Microsoft admitted they had mismanaged expectations, promising to do better on this front going forward. Spoiler: they did not. Actual gameplay footage was an endangered species during this show. Outside of Halo Infinite, there was very little meaningful gameplay footage shared at all, in fact.

We’ll get back to Infinite in a moment, so let’s talk about everything else first. We saw a short trailer for a new Forza game. No gameplay footage. Not out this year. We saw State of Decay 3 announced, again, with no gameplay footage, and no announced release window. Everwild, Rare’s fascinating new game, was also shown off – with no gameplay footage, and no announced release window. Which makes total sense, because even Rare doesn’t know what the basic mechanics of Everwild are yet, as they admitted in an interview with Video Game Chronicles. So that one’s probably not coming for years – maybe not even until the end of the generation.

We got to see Avowed, and I have to be honest, this one really excites me on a personal level. I’ve wanted a new Elder Scrolls style fantasy RPG for a very long time now, and with The Elder Scrolls 6 nowhere in sight for now, and Skyrim finally beginning to show its age, the prospect of a new game in that vein, and by Obsidian no less, is one of the most hype inducing things I can imagine. Except, of course, we didn’t really get to see any gameplay footage. Or a release window. Psychonauts 2, delayed to next year. Hellblade 2, just a passing mention, with the confirmation the game takes place in Iceland. And then there was Fable.

We’ve wanted a new Fable game for a really long time now. It’s a fan favorite series, and it’s been dormant for a decade now. And given that the last two Fable releases were the Kinect-only The Journey and the hugely disappointing Fable 3, it’s been even longer since the last good one (you’d have to go all the way back to Fable 2 for that). And this game has been rumored for a really long time now. An open world Fable game by Playground Games, the folks behind Forza Horizon. We’ve been hearing about Playground’s new open world RPG project since 2017, when the release of Horizon: Zero Dawn demonstrated to Phil Spencer that there is still a market for singleplayer games (why it took that long for this realization, I can’t say, but this isn’t the time to get into that). So surely this game would have a meaty showing, something for fans to chew on, maybe some gameplay footage, or even an in-engine glimpse at the world and- Haha, nope. It was a short CG trailer, that confirmed the new Fable game, and that was it. No gameplay footage. No release window.

This is a broader pattern, as you’ve probably caught on to by now, and it’s an issue on a lot of levels. The most fundamental problem is, if you have all these games that have no release window attached to them, and no gameplay to show, then they are nowhere near release. Most of these games, at least the most interesting seeming ones, like Everworld or Avowed or Fable, are probably late 2022, early 2023 at the soonest. Which means that the Xbox Series X’s slate of exclusive first party content for the first year after launch seems dire.

In and of itself, this doesn’t have to be an issue. The PS4 and Xbox One both sucked on the first party front for a year or so after release, only starting to pick up the slack in 2015. But that’s exactly the thing – both consoles were doing poorly with exclusives back then, so neither had a disadvantage. This isn’t that – Sony seems to have stacked the PS5 with major exclusives, at least console exclusives, starting right from launch. So Series X needs to match the PS5 on that, especially since Microsoft, unlike Sony or Nintendo, needs to establish that its console will have enough compelling exclusive content to be worth buying into for. And Series X isn’t doing that. As far as big exclusives go, the buck starts, and ends, with Halo Infinite.

So, Halo Infinite. Halo‘s big return. The 2018 teaser has become legendary, for how gorgeous it looked, and for its promise of a new, reinvented Halo game that realized the vision of the original. And Halo Infinite is confirmed to be a Series X launch game. So this had the potential to be Microsoft’s Breath of the Wild moment, except, as seems to be endemic to the Xbox division right now for some reason, they have fumbled on the execution.

Look, I think Halo Infinite looks good. I like the idea of a more open Halo, and I think the series’ core gameplay loop is incredibly fun, fun enough to rope me back in. But that’s really all Halo Infinite looks like – more Halo. Except in a bigger sandbox now. There’s no major gameplay reinvention like Zelda or God of War, it is the exact same Halo game as before, but in a bigger play area. And amidst all of this, it looks… not that impressive.

Again, I don’t think it looks bad. It looks pretty good if put against the average current generation game – but it’s not a current generation game, it’s a next generation title. Not just any next generation title, the flagship title for the most powerful next generation console. A lot was riding on Halo Infinite, for so many reasons: it’s the big return of Halo, and the game that can hopefully make the IP as big in the mainstream as it once used to be. It’s the premier launch game for Xbox Series X. It’s the only meaningful major exclusive for Xbox Series X for the foreseeable future. And also, if ever there was a game that could justify Microsoft’s cross-generation support strategy, this was it. If Halo Infinite had delivered, it would have been so much easier to believe Phil Spencer when he says that having to make games for Xbox One won’t hold back Series X games.

But Infinite didn’t deliver. Again, not to say it was bad. It looks cool. But it looks like more Halo. It’s preaching to the choir. It’s not winning any new converts, not bringing in new or lapsed fans to expand the reach (heh) of the series like God of War or Breath of the Wild did. And it certainly does not look like a next generation game at all. Some of its screenshots, in fact, look shockingly bad (the game does admittedly look better in motion). And the information 343 Industries has shared since the show – it’s a “platform for ten years”, new stories will be “told within Halo Infinite“, it won’t even have raytracing (a basic next generation feature) at launch – only deflate the hype further (especially when you realize that the 2013 Xbox One hardware will provide the base for the next ten years of Halo. Sigh).

I’m not even angry at this point, I’m just disappointed. I wanted Xbox to come out swinging. I wanted to love Halo and Fable again. I want Microsoft to be a strong player, and keep Sony and Nintendo on their toes. But they are not doing the most important thing they need to as a gaming platform holder. They are doing great with hardware, sure, and services, fantastic. But they are, time and time again, failing with games, and games are ultimately what matters, not hardware, not services. And if there’s one thing today’s Xbox show demonstrated, it’s that, Halo notwithstanding, Xbox won’t have those kinds of games for a while. 

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

With the number of titles – like Borderlands 3 – that are becoming exclusive or timed exclusive to the Epic Games Store for PC, it’s interesting to see how consumers are reacting. Though many blame Epic Games, especially since it’s not saying “no” to such deals, the decision does very much fall on publishers of those games as well. Take The Outer Worlds, Obsidian Entertainment’s upcoming first person RPG, which is exclusive for one year to the Epic Games Store and Windows Store on PC.

After showcasing some new gameplay at PAX East, director of communications Mikey Dowling fielded questions about the game. Dowling started off about the Epic Games Store exclusivity and said, “I just wanted to say one question that maybe, if you’ve messaged me on Instagram, or Facebook, or Twitter, or text me, or DMed me – any kind of thing – about the Epic Games Store. We just wanted to let you know that our Private Division partners are fantastic and we love working with them. It’s a decision that they made for the game.

“We’re just excited to be working on the game with them, and we want to just talk about this awesome game that you just saw.”

The Outer Worlds will be coming to Steam, but in 2020. In the meantime, it will launch for Xbox One and PS4 along with PC later this year. Thus far, we’ve learned that the game will have a survival mode called “Supernova” and a linear story with playtime that can vary between 15 to 40 hours. Stay tuned for more details on it in the coming months.

Remember when Take-Two’s CEO talked about the Epic Games Store, and putting their games on that storefront, noting that they want to be where the consumers are, and not the other way around? So, funny story. The Outer Worlds – which is being published by Private Division, a Take-Two owned publishing label – is going to be exclusive to the Epic Games Store at launch, Epic announced at their GDC keynote today.

The Obsidian Twitter account later clarified that it will also be coming to the Windows Store at launch—but those will be the only two PC stores it is available on for the first 12 months after its release. The two that PC gamers hate the most, I am sure they are thrilled about this.

Nevertheless, as we have seen, it seems that in spite of the very vocal complaints that Epic Game Store exclusivity seems to generate, actual sales aren’t affected by the move at all—so you can see why developers and publishers don’t see any harm in continuing to do it.

The Outer Worlds launches on PC, PS4, and Xbox One later this year.

The Outer Worlds will be available on the Windows Store at launch as well. Other platforms will be available 12 months later.

— Obsidian (@Obsidian) March 20, 2019

Microsoft has been on a rampage of acquiring developers to boost up its portfolio of studios over the last year or so, but arguably its most notable purchase came when it added Obsidian to its lineup of first party developers. While we had had rumors of this happening in the lead up to the official announcement, it was still a surprising move. Obsidian is a beloved developer behind some of the most iconic RPGs in recent memory, so it definitely stood out as a big purchase for Microsoft and Xbox.

However, why did Obsidian decide to get acquired at all? With Pillars of Eternity having done well, and Obsidian having a deal with Take-Two’s Private Division for the upcoming The Outer Worlds, why did they decide to go with Microsoft in the long term? Speaking to Game Informer, Obsidian’s CEO Feargus Urquhart discussed why the company joined forces with Microsoft, noting that it came out of a desire for financial security and the resources needed for them to make the kinds of games they want to make.

“As a company we had to make a decision- when you’re running a business, it’s a little bit all about money,” he said. “We have a 160, 170 people, and we’re thinking about this in early 2018–where do we go? How do we do this? If we want $40, 50, 60, 70 million to make the next big game, where do we get it? And we go to publishers, and we’ve talked to a lot of publishers through the years, but it’s harder and harder as an independent developer, there’s fewer and fewer of us—I guess now one less.

“So a part of it we really had to think about: do we change the company? Do we not try to make these big RPGs? Do we do whatever we can to get these publishers to fund us? Do we go and get an investment from a company, or do we look at getting acquired? And we started [2018] not really knowing which way we would go, and of course it ended up with an acquisition by Microsoft. But it was to be able to do what we set out to do 15 years ago.”

Microsoft’s acquisitions in the past haven’t always gone well, but I do hope that with Phil Spencer at the helm, things will be different this time. Obsidian has often had rotten luck with publishers and its games underperforming, and I truly hope that this acquisition by Microsoft brings them the financial and creative security they need to continue doing what they do best.

The Outer Worlds is the next big RPG from Obsidian, the RPG masters who delivered us Pillars of Eternity, Fallout: New Vegas, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II. What I’m trying to say is, these folks are known for being the best in class with the RPGs they provide, which include actual role playing, and choices with actual meaningful divergence in their consequences.

Nonetheless, The Outer Worlds’ larger story will be linear and predetermined, the developers revealed to Game Informer. But don’t worry—co-director Tim Cain confirmed that there’s enough room for players to mess around with choice and consequence with everything that happens in between.

“Our story structures look like footballs, where there are all these points that everybody will pass through,” he said. “[When you get the power regulator for your ship] — did you work with people? Did you buy it? There’s more than one of them out there, so which one did you take? How did you handle the people who were using it? We try to arrange our story by thinking about the points all players are going to pass through, but then we try to remember what the context was so that things change to reflect the choice you made. […] We don’t demand that those dramatic points play out in any specific way.”

He also talked about trying to handle morality in the game—which the game achieves precisely by not having a morality system. Rather, the player is presented with choices that are squarely in the realm of being grey, with many “evil” decisions often having good side effects, and vice versa.

“It’s not ‘Here’s the good choice, here’s the bad one.’ Instead, it’s like, ‘You could this or this. This will cause X, this will cause Y. You decide what you care about.’ What if the more evil choice has an obviously better outcome? What if more people are saved by the evil choice? But it’s evil! But the result is better! Is it a worse choice? I don’t know if you can solve morality with arithmetic, but there are some things in the game where you’re like, ‘I am not sure if this is bad.’”

That sounds great—it’s the kind of thing that made The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt so compelling back in 2015, and the kind of thing very few developers have managed to nail properly ever. The Outer Worlds will launch on PS4, Xbox One, and PC this year. If you’re interested in learning more about it, check out Obsidian’s statement on how long the game will take to complete, or what they feel about the comparisons their game evokes with Fallout 76.

Fallout 76 already had faced immense player backlash upon launch, owing to a bevy of problems that simply seem to be getting worse with time, and a game that seems singularly ill-suited to what the Fallout brand had originally been known for. And then came Obsidian’s reveal trailer for The Outer Worlds, their upcoming RPG which seems a lot like what fans would want from a modern Fallout game, and which cheekily said “from the creators of the original Fallout and Fallout New Vegas”, the best received games in the series yet (from fans, at the very least).

But the statement wasn’t meant as a jab at Bethesda, nor does Obsidian like people using The Outer Worlds to hate on them, or on Fallout 76. Speaking to Game Informer, Obsidian’s CEO Feargus Urquhart said that Obsidian hadn’t even known Fallout 76 was in development when they started work on The Outer Worlds, and also said that Bethesda’s choice of direction for the series is every bit valid.

“People even said things about our trailer: ‘Oh man, just slamming it home to Bethesda!’ because we said the original creators of Fallout and makers of Fallout: New Vegas. We have storyboards from July that said that,” he said. “I have no ill will for Bethesda, I love playing Fallout games… We’re not fighting for the same dollars.”

“This isn’t meant to be negative – it can probably be taken as negative. We really enjoyed making Fallout: New Vegas and people really enjoy Fallout: New Vegas,” Urquhart continued. “Bethesda is looking to take the Fallout brand in a different direction. There’s nothing right or wrong about that. That’s their choice. They own it, they get to do what they want with it. But in our mind, there are people that enjoy where Fallout was. That is what we wanted to do with The Outer Worlds, to give people that. And you know what? Maybe that’s a bad decision from the standpoint of the number of people that will buy it. I don’t know… People seem to really enjoy what Fallout: New Vegas was, so let’s give them an experience that’s as similar as we can to that.”

It is, on the whole, a good reminder that fans can sometimes read too much into things, and get extremely vicious with their comparisons. While Fallout 76 continues to have its fair share of problems, hopefully Bethesda will keep at it, and bring it to whatever their original vision for it was intended to be.

Obsidian was behind Fallout: New Vegas, the follow-up to Fallout 3, which is often regarded as the best game in the franchise, at least in its modern rendition. A lot of that comes down to its exceptionally strong writing and great quests, which make it, in many ways, the truest 3D realization of the original Fallout games that we have received. Which makes sense in its own way, since Obsidian is made up, in large part, by those same folks who brought us Fallout and Fallout 2 to begin with.

Many fans have been hoping for a follow-up from Obsidian as a result, especially since Bethesda is widely perceived to have dropped the ball with Fallout 4. That expectation may have gone up even more when recently, Bethesda said that they wouldn’t be against outsourcing one of their games in the future again. However, a new Fallout game from Obsidian may not happen.

Responding to a fan on Twitter, Obsidian stated that the likelihood of their working on a new Fallout game is “very doubtful”. Which is a shame, especially because Bethesda’s next Fallout game is Fallout 76, a multiplayer shooter that doesn’t even have NPCs (at least of the human variety), let alone the kind of finely sculpted dialog that has won New Vegas legions of fans everywhere.

On the other hand, maybe this is because Obsidian will soon reportedly be bought out by Microsoft, and won’t be able to work on third party projects from there on…

pic.twitter.com/mcYLxr8CYb

— Obsidian (@Obsidian) October 16, 2018