Obsidian must be having quite the year of late. Theirs is studio that is relatively small in the grand scheme of Video games, and yet a great deal of attention has been placed on them for late as people have held them as the last great RPG developers. (Guess we're all forgetting about Larian Studios, huh?) Recent weeks must have somewhat encouraging for the team at least, as the newest RPG 'The Outer Worlds' was met with considerable praise and love from the gaming community. People fell over themselves to compliment the studio for bringing respectability and quality back to gaming (and not throwing in oodles of Microtransactions) and even went so far as to encourage people to seek out the game as a substitute to many of the disappointing releases that we have seen these past couple of months.
Obsidian are never ones to rest on their laurels, however, and they've already got around to announcing their next game at that big Inside Xbox event that I definitely knew was happening and didn't completely miss. (Now is there a quick recap vid I can watch?) If anything, this has solidified the fact that Obsidian certainly have a working relationship with Microsoft ('The Outer Worlds' was also available on the Window's store but not Steam.) and that we could perhaps be looking at an acquisition down the line. But speculation aside, the folks at Obsidian used their time to surprise their fans by debuting a game that doesn't look anything like their past endeavours. They showed us all a first look at Grounded.
This game, as it turns out, would have made for a good entry in my 'perspective' blog a few weeks back, as it is a survival type game that takes place in that most hostile of environments, the average American's backyard. Obviously, the twist here is that the player has been shrunk down to a minuscule stature and is forced to scavenge around the backyard in order to survive against the, now relatively huge, insects and bugs that litter the world. This means that players will be expected to decapitate leaves, build homes, and put together makeshift weapons to help them survive the night. (Think 'Honey, I shrunk the kids' meets 'Minecraft'.)
As you are put in the shoes of such a tiny individual, everything you see in the world around is made extraordinary through the merits of forced perspective. A long-discarded baseball is now a monolith in the landscape, and a tiny crack in the dirt becomes a huge ravine to traverse. This gives the team plenty of space to be creative in the ways that they populate their landscape and also the kinds of creatures that will try for the player's life. Just like in the Rick Morales' movie, we've already seen players battling against giant ants with makeshift spears. (That's the players who have the spears, not the ants. That would be scary.) Of course just as with all trailers, this one had to end with a big stinger. And no, that is not a bee pun. For Grounded, Obsidian decided to shoot themselves in the foot by showing off the one thing that will ensure that I, and many others, will never touch this game with a ten foot stick. The trailer ends with a deadly battle against a huge f-off Spider, and I am officially not getting this game. Forget that noise.
At the event itself we got a closer look into this co-op survival experience by way of a Mixer livestream that showcased actual gameplay. Through this we learnt the little ways in which Obsidian want to shirk the prejudice of the 'survival genre' and deliver a game that is genuinely fun and emanates with that core Obsidian vibe. Firstly, despite the game not being an RPG, there will be something akin to buffs and debuffs in the game itself. So far, we've only seen how this works in relation to hunger and thirst. (Should you let either bar deplete it will start hurting you until you reach the brink of death.) but there will be buffs related to the gear you craft as well. Which is something I'm always a huge fan of.
Another cool little aspect they spoke about was the way in which they aim to have wildlife react throughout the game. Similar to how they wanted things to work for New Vegas, the team hoped for the wildlife to exist to their own capacity within the world they reside. This means that worker ants will search for food, bees will search for honey, so on and so forth. Essentially this means that the garden will be initially passive to your presence and that you as a player will make the choice to co-exist with the garden or raise some hell. (I'd imagine some objectives will require an antagonistic approach.) They even spoke about the possibilities of implementing a reputation system (again, similar to New Vegas) wherein the way you treat these various insect factions will effect how they treat you in kind. They even expressed a desire to implement taming and riding insects. Although they made it sound like such a feature was still just an idea at this stage.
The team chose to take a 'metroid-vania' style of approach when it came to the design to ensure that there is some narrative progression to the world and that players can be gated from reaching certain areas that they are not meant to reach yet. The example that we have been provided with so far proposes that there could be one area of the yard that is submerged in 'The haze', (weed killer) which would require players to craft some sort of rudimentary gas mask in order to traverse. This blends into their desire to ensure that this isn't, what they call, a 'forever game'. (Like one would see in games like Minecraft, Rust, and No Man's Sky) There is a definitive objective to achieve in this world and everything you work towards in in aid of that goal. (Likely the unshrinking of yourself.)
Obsidian want this world to feel alive by emphasizing that the player will not be left with just the option to harvest everything but to reach a state of harmony with the wildlife. This works with the reputation system I mentioned earlier, as well as the ways in which you manage to stay sustained. We heard the team talk about how water would gather atop of leaves that would require you to shake in order to get at the liquid. Food can be gathered from spit roasting insects, but I'd be surprised if one couldn't also find fallen berries and fruit to harvest. Players may even need to work in harmony with insects in order to face some of the threats to come, like the weather systems. (which aren't implemented yet.)
As of yet, everything is still very early in development and it's likely to stay that way for a while considering that the team working on this game only numbers 15 people. A couple of representatives revealed as much to ensure everyone that this project is not taking time away from Obsidian's big projects (whatever they may be) and their flagship RPG greatness. With that being said, I do still find myself fairly intrigued with what's on offer and am cautiously optimistic to see if this team can deliver on the things that they've promised. Honestly, if they can pull of all of these systems that they say they can, we could be looking at the birth of the future gold-standard of survival games. But until we see more it's hard to make such bold claims yet.
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