Urquhart On Black Isle's Past, Obsidian's Future

Thanks to GameSpot for their two-part interview with Obsidian Entertainment's Feargus Urquhart, discussing his former leadership of Black Isle Studios, and his new work as a founder of Obsidian. He discusses Black Isle's creeping demise amidst the cancellation of Fallout 3 ("I would assume that they are changing Black Isle from a studio to purely a brand that they can put on certain products that are published or developed by them. Whether that's a good thing or the same thing as shutting the studio down is up to debate"), muses on the future of the RPG ("I think even the PC RPGers want to see that the games they play are easier to play"), and mentions Obsidian's plans, aside from their BioWare-engine powered, rumored but unannounced game ("We... are actively looking for a second project [and] are also starting to work on our own internal technology.")

Comments

Upcoming projects

[Anonymous Coward]

Well he's got some good talent, and a brand new development house that needs a hit game to make it. Just a suggestion, but what I think they should do is make a post-apocalyptic RPG set in Colorado. It's a bit of a niche genre, but I think it could work for them.

It should have a skill based system, and most importantly, a large variety in the dialogue and world events that respond to player choices.

While the perfect title for this game would be something like 'Fallout 3', I believe some other company owns the rights to that. Maybe 'Wasteland 4' would get past the lawyers...

Re:Creeping Demise?

[obeythefist]

Actually, RPG's have had a lot of innovation recently, mostly stemming from the rise of the D20 system. Look at the big new games in RPG's recently, Temple of Elemental Evil and Knights of the Old Republic. Both D20, both introducing new and very promising engines. Admittedly, KoTOR was held back a bit by it's console origins, but a game using that engine developed for state of the art PC hardware would be excellent, indeed.