Obsidian Entertainment and Its Reputation for Masterful Yet Buggy RPGs

With Obsidian Entertainment now owned by Microsoft and working on its own massive open-world RPG Avowed, this PC Gamer article looks back at the studio’s early years and humble origins when it was known for its great ideas and the not so great execution of those ideas.

Here’s a couple paragraphs to get you started:

In many ways, Knights of the Old Republic 2 set the template for Obsidian’s run of troubled, yet inspired, RPGs. It delivered as a sequel to BioWare’s epic story, while rejecting the black-and-white morality of the Force in favour of a nuance that felt subversive in the Star Wars universe.

Yet it also felt rushed, because it was: from the moment of signing the contract, Obsidian was given 15 months to make the game happen. Particularly galling was an extension the studio believed it had secured—only to later be told the game had to come out for Christmas 2004 after all. The team cut a whole planet, stripped back its branching ending, and sucked it up. With the mould set, Obsidian became the studio publishers went to for RPG sequels on a tight budget. Neverwinter Nights 2, Fallout: New Vegas, Dungeon Siege 3—all were accomplished but compromised. In tandem, the developer developed a reputation for first-class storytelling and runaway bugs, the latter of which it has only lately begun to shake.