![]() ![]() With each subsequent generation, games have become longer and more expensive to make. It’s an exciting prospect that I don’t think enough people have picked up on.įinally, there’s the question of Xbox Game Pass. Because Grounded will be launching into early access, and the community will have a say in its finished form, Obsidian has more opportunities to experiment and see what new mechanics players love and don’t. However, if a game like Grounded didn’t arrive, then truly despised features could be inadvertently added to future titles, lowering the overall quality of the experience. By the time The Outer Worlds 2 comes out, we could easily see elements from Grounded that players took to added to the game. With Grounded, particularly because it is an early access title, Obsidian can test the waters with these new mechanics and see what players respond well to. Currently, the team is working on features that haven’t been present in an Obsidian game before, such as deepened crafting and base-building, a truly interactive environment with a simulated ecosystem, co-op and more. ![]() For example, if team Hellblade needed some help implementing co-op, or if the Project Mara team needed help making the game more accessible, members of the Bleeding Edge team could easily take what they learned from making Bleeding Edge and use it to strengthen the quality of those two games. All of these are potentially transferable skills to other future projects. It also taught them about the importance of accessibility, and they worked to make Bleeding Edge approachable to all gamers. For example, Bleeding Edge went through a long technical-alpha stage, which taught Ninja Theory a number of lessons about community engagement, involvement and infrastructure. Secondly, both of these titles, as I mentioned previously, are departures for their given studios, but the teams can learn some truly valuable lessons working on them. It is worth noting that only a maximum of 25 people worked on Bleeding Edge at full development, around 20 on the original Hellblade and double that on Hellblade 2, meaning any cost to another team is minimal. All three of these games are forging a path forward on their own, and thanks to the efforts of Ninja Theory’s management it could be made with more limited teams. In essence, this means that the team working on Bleeding Edge is not the same team working on the upcoming Hellblade 2, which in turn is not the same team working on Project Mara. This is because of how these studios are organized.Īt Ninja Theory, for example, they have shifted to an organizational structure they call Dreadnaught that allows for multiple teams to work on different projects without sacrificing quality. The absolute worst case scenario here is that they lower the reputation of the studio behind them which, I’d argue, none of these games have or will do. will have on their parent studios is minimal. I suppose I’d like to start by saying this: the negative effects games such as Bleeding Edge, Grounded, Battletoads, etc. I’d also like to outline how Obsidian and Ninja Theory’s new approach could do wonders for other studios, be they first-party or otherwise, especially in the next generation. In this article, I’d like to take you through some of the rationale, and benefits behind these decisions, as well as try to ease the minds of fans who are afraid that Microsoft may take these beloved studios on a different path. Still, the same question was raised: “Why is Obsidian making this game instead of AAA RPGs?”. Needless to say, the response too was very mixed, although perception of the game has improved as Obsidian have shown off more of their vision. It was arguably an even further departure for the studio than Bleeding Edge was for Ninja Theory, pivoting away from skill-trees, dialogue and NPCs and a solely single-player experience into a co-op survival game with deep crafting. In that case, a studio known for making high-quality RPGs and pretty much nothing else was taking a sharp left turn into new territory. This response was not too dissimilar to that of Obsidian’s Grounded.
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