Earlier this month, Microsoft announced “the most significant restructure in Xbox history”, which is what you call it when you lay off thousands of people and cut four game studios loose. Double Fine and Compulsion Games returned to their indie roots; Ninja Theory and Undead Labs were sold off. While it seemed at first like Obsidian Entertainment had avoided the headsman’s axe, we soon found out they were also hit with plenty of layoffs of their own.
We also found out someone apparently pushed the button marked “in case of emergency get Obsidian to make a new Fallout game,” with Fallout: New Vegas director Josh Sawyer reportedly heading the project.
So a mix of good news and bad there. Online, the response has included plenty of suggestions that Obsidian “already kind of gutted all the original writers and talent that made old Obsidian games what they were” and that it wasn’t the same studio as the one that made games like the original New Vegas or Knights of the Old Republic 2.
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Brandon Adler, a game director at Obsidian, disputed these claims on LinkedIn, saying, “The number of times I’ve seen people, with no understanding of who has worked on our previous games or what they contributed, talk about how Obsidian isn’t who they used to be… is staggering. Most of the time they are not just wrong, but spreading an enormous amount of misinformation.”
As Adler explained, plenty of people in leadership roles at Obsidian are the same people now as they were in the past. “Like, literally the same people”, he wrote. “The through line from KotOR2 to our current games is pretty clear.”
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Of course, that doesn’t mean the studio hasn’t changed. “But the DNA at Obsidian is the same as it always was. The same DNA that created KotOR, New Vegas, NWN2, and Stick of Truth.”
Personally, I’m interested in whatever Obsidian does next because Pentiment was a masterpiece, and seeing people confidently declare that a new Fallout game from Obsidian would be a disaster because they personally didn’t care for The Outer Worlds 2 seems like a bit of a stretch.
Adler also noted that it has been a tough time for the studio, for the obvious reasons. “This has been an extremely difficult week at Obsidian”, he wrote. “Not only have I had to say goodbye to some amazing game developers, but I’ve had to say goodbye to some of my best friends. I truly feel for every one of them. Know that if you are looking to hire one of these former Obsidian devs, you are hiring some of the best people around – both professionally and personally.”
