Obsidian Entertainment Wants To Develop An Open World Skyrim-Like Game

Obsidian Entertainment, the ubiquitous RPG developer and maker of Knights of the Old Republic 2, Dungeon Siege 3, and many other role-playing games including the upcoming South Park: The Stick of Truth, has been developing Pillars of Eternity for well over a year. Pillars of Eternity, formerly known as Project Eternity, was fully funded through Kickstarter in late 2012, and is slated for release in April 2014.

The developers have stated that they plan to Kickstart another project early next year—in March or April, 2014. The game is set to be based on a licensed property. Presumably, the game will be announced once Eternity is complete.

Speaking to the folks at Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Obsidian Entertainment CEO Feargus Urquhart said that Pillars of Eternity may lead to a sequel, but that its developers would like to turn the engine they’re using to develop Eternity into a base for other titles.

“What I’m trying to figure out is how could we make something that is more like a Skyrim for PC – forget console for now – with the engine we made in Unity for Eternity? Where we are with our conversation, quest, data editors, and all of that,” said Urquhart.

“If we were careful about scope and let Chris Avellone go wild with creating a new world, more of an open world, what could we do? How much would it cost? Would it make sense for it to be episodic? Because going out there and saying, ‘We’re gonna make 100 hours of gameplay,’ everyone goes, ‘Oh my god, how could it not cost millions?’ But could we create ten hours and have people pay ten bucks? And generally when we say ten hours, it’s usually 15. But if we go with five episodes, then people get between 50 and 75 hours.”

Whatever the game may be, it sounds like Obsidian has some good ideas moving forward.

"There's something we're talking about that would be really cool, but it's not an original property," Urquhart revealed. "It's a licensed property. But it's not Alpha Protocol!

"It's something we can still do a ton of creative stuff with, though. And then the other thing is an original property. Also, there's a third thing that somebody approached us with, but I really don't think that's going to work out."

Given the fact that the studio employs more than a hundred employees, it comes as little surprise that Urquhart wants to keep his people busy on projects. Typically, when a studio doesn’t have a project waiting in the wings, many of its employees are let go—something which has happened before at Obsidian prior to their development of Pillars of Eternity.

Urquhart addressed potential claims that the studio might be pushing its luck with developing launching yet another Kickstarter-funded title, given that Pillars of Eternity has yet to be released. He explained, “We’re very grateful for what people have given us, and I don’t want to go back to the well before we’ve proven anything. That would be really lame of us. But I think we have a good idea and we’ve kind of proven things with Eternity to a point. Obviously we have a larger studio, so we actually have people to work on stuff [beforehand]. But I don’t want people to feel like we’re taking advantage of them.

“I’m happy to make Eternity, and the hope is to come up with another Kickstarter that people would be interested in. My hope is that by March or April of next year, we’ll have something we can kind of start talking to people about.”

Here’s hoping for Obsidian to land the Knights of the Old Republic license. In an exclusive interview with Gameranx, Obsidian’s Chris Avellone mentioned his team’s desire to continue work on the franchise.