Grounded 2 arrived in Early Access just three years after the first game hit 1.0. The surprise sequel caught many fans off-guard. Why make a new game instead of just updating the older one? And how did Obsidian Entertainment develop Grounded 2 so quickly, launching its Early Access version the same year it will have shipped two massive RPGs in Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2? The answer has a lot to do with Deus Ex and Guardians of the Galaxy maker Eidos Montreal.
The veteran AAA studio isn’t just a co-developer on Grounded 2, it turns out. “The majority of the heavy lifting is done in Eidos Montreal,” Obsidian game director Chris Parker recently told Polygon. “We have a core group of people here [at Obsidian], primarily the folks that worked on Grounded, of course. And then there’s folks like me, acting as game director, who are working day in and day out with Eidos. The artists and designers and engineers, the vast majority are at Eidos Montreal.”
That’s not to say that both teams didn’t work closely together. There was constant cross collaboration according to Eidos creative director Justin Vazquez, including big build reviews every few months and alignment on the sequel’s emphasis on narrative and Early Access scope. “Grounded is Obsidian’s IP,” he told Polygon. “It’s their baby, and we are here to work with them to help grow the franchise together. The point isn’t for us to grab it and just run wild with it, so we collaborate on everything on the highest level of ideas and the lowest level. There isn’t anything that isn’t being touched by both studios to ensure that we are delivering the best experience for our players on Grounded 2.”
As for why make Grounded 2 in the first place, both developers pointed to technical limitations of the Xbox One and the desire to push the ambitiousness of the series following the success of Grounded 1. It’s also clear that, while currently much smaller than the previous game, which hit version 1.4 last year, Grounded 2 is a lot more streamlined and approachable. The rough edges have really been sanded down without sacrificing much in the way of RPG crafting depth. It also just looks a lot more detailed and vibrant visually. Grounded 2 has already hit 3 million players across Xbox and PC (it’s available through Game Pass on both).
All of that suggests that Microsoft’s gambit of having Obsidian essentially outsource much of the sequel to an outside studio has paid off. It helps that Grounded was made with Unreal Engine rather than a set of in-house proprietary tools. Does this mean that Microsoft can find partnerships to help speed up development of its other franchises as well. The company revealed last year that Halo would also be moving to UE5, with more information on the future of that series coming in October. With rumors also circulating of possibly multiple new Fallout games in development as well, what are the odds that Obsidian or Bethesda could work with an outside studio on one of them next? After Bethesda successfully partnered with Virtuos on the UE5 Oblivion remaster, a similar eventual update to Fallout 3 seems all but inevitable.
These efforts don’t always bear fruit. Microsoft also canceled Perfect Dark this year, which was a collaboration between the smaller first-party team at the now defunct Initiative and Crystal Dynamics. But the pipeline that delivered Grounded 2, at least the Early Access version of it, seems like one that could potentially limit some of the ever-lengthening lead times between new games in the increasing number of Microsoft exclusive-franchises that have resulted from industry consolidation.
