What makes an Obsidian game? For the RPG specialists, it feels like there’s that one thing. The hard-to-grasp quality that elevates an Obsidian joint from good to great. It’s impossible to qualify with words, and even the fans don’t always know when they’re playing one until they stop and think. But what is it, and what are its ingredients?
To find out, I’ve gone to the top. PC Gamer sat down with Obsidian co-founder Feargus Urquhart to talk about the glue that holds all of the developer’s games together, and the common thread that makes an Obsidian game feel like an Obsidian game.
“You go outside the studio to talk to the fans, and it really is kind of philosophically broad,” Urquhart says. “Lots of different things. But we feel there’s a consistency, too. When I asked people at the studio what defines what we do, everybody was like, ‘The writing and the witty banter,’ and that’s not even it.”
Urquhart believes part of the Obsidian consistency is baked into the company’s culture. He suggests that as a dev starts a project, they should all sit down and play the old Obsidian and BioWare games – not necessarily as research, but more to get a sense of the world and the expectations for companions and conversations.
But Urquhart is aware of the turnover at Obsidian and, from the game development equivalent of the Ship of Theseus problem, how you define an Obsidian game if the team is constantly changing?
“I’ll tell you, there’s turnover,” Urquhart says. “I don’t want to give anyone the sense that it’s—it is turnover. But at the same time, we don’t change this constant thing, we don’t fire our writers. We keep writers. We have had turnover, but we’ve retained a lot of talent for a very long time.
“There’s a consistency there. Even though there’s turnover, and everyone’s sort of going, ‘But Obsidian’s not…’ – it’s like, no, we are, because we have all this talent that’s been there forever. We have all these games, and I would say there’s still a certain consistent look, a consistent feel. And it’s not a style. It’s a look.”
This is the point where Urquhart mentions the art team, and there’s a clearly defined style through almost every Obsidian game.
“We don’t have realistic graphics, we don’t have cartoon graphics,” Urquhart says. “There’s a very specific look, and that’s a style that’s been built over the years a lot by our art director and the entire art team. And that, I would say, is a big ingredient in there.”
So that’s the art, what about the rest? “There will be certain writing, dialogue and style in the story, and that’s old Obsidian and BioWare,” Urquhart says. “The genre choices, the combat mechanics, that has changed, but there was Pillars of Eternity and a kind of look and aesthetics that was still there, and Tyranny, and then a little Dark Stone game, a hidden gem…”
Kotaku editor Erik Kain spoilt the reveal of Obsidian’s next game, Avowed, in a feature for this very website. But, in the interest of full disclosure, I spoiled the end of Dragon Age 3: Arren’s End long before that. So here’s the reveal that I spoiled: your mage protagonist, and their companion, are indeed mages.