Obsidian Entertainment Chipping Away At Two Original RPGs, One Licensed Game

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II was Obsidian Entertainment’s first published game. Shortly afterwards, Obsidian began working on Neverwinter Nights 2 and the now cancelled Aliens RPG. Dungeon Siege III is currently in development, but what will be their next game?

We posed that question to them during the course of our Dungeon Siege III interview.

"We are working on another licensed property right now, that has not been announced," said Feargus Urquhart, CEO of Obsidian Entertainment. "But, it’s a licensed property when we do announce it everyone is going to go ‘well, of course you had to make that game.’" Urquhart didn’t spell out the license, but he may have been referring to the Wheel of Time games, which were announced last year.

While the majority of Obsidian Entertainment’s portfolio is comprised of licensed sequels, the company is creating original properties. Alpha Protocol, released last year by Sega, was Obsidian’s first venture into new territory. "We do have two other games we are proposing right now," Urquhart revealed to Siliconera. "One that we already got to a prototype stage and both are properties we’ve come up with ourselves."

"I mean still want to… I would love to make another Star Wars game. I would love to make another Dungeon Siege game. Role playing games are all about these long histories of sequels. The Japanese RPGs are in 8th, 9th, 10s, 14s, 20s. Even the Western stuff, Skyrim is going to be V, it will be Elder Scrolls V. I always want to be working with on some RPGs with great history, but we also want to be making original stuff too."

Even though all of their published games have been RPGs, I think Obsidian Entertainment’s forte may actually be storytelling. "What if one day you woke up and said I can’t stand RPGs," I asked wondering what kind of genre Obsidian would like to infuse dialogue into.

"I frickin’ hate these things," Urquhart exclaimed before letting out a chuckle. "Hmm… what would that be? My history is I’ve made a lot of different types games. All the way from console platform games, to tile games, to a mech game, all of these different games. The first thing that comes to mind… I’m trying to think… and I would say this is me personally, not me thinking about the company or anything like that."

"I think it would be cool to make a Battlefield or Team Fortress like game. Because I think its different and I get them, to a point. I understand them as a player, but not necessarily as a game maker. But, I flirted with that when I did a mech game back in the mid-90s. I think that would be cool. I think the other game would be cool, that I would love to make, but no one would want to play anymore is I love are the Impressions Games, which were city builder games. They did a series called Caesar.. Caesar 1, 2, 3, Zeus, Pharaoh and stuff like those. And I love those games. I guess Civilization is like a city builder game as well. Those would be fun to make. Because they are different. One of the attractions is if I said, you know, ‘screw RPGs’ I would try to go fairly different. Have it be new, have it be something I have to learn and figure out."