Obsidian Entertainment

Obsidian Entertainment was founded in 2003 in California by RPG veterans, including Feargus Urquhart and Chris Avellone, drawn largely from the recently shuttered Black Isle Studios, the team behind classic computer role-playing games. From the outset, Obsidian's identity was clear: deep, reactive, choice-driven RPGs made by people steeped in the genre's history.

The studio's early years were spent building sequels to others' franchises, often under punishing deadlines. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II (2004) was ambitious and thematically daring but shipped unfinished due to time pressure, a pattern that would recur. Neverwinter Nights 2 and the darkly satirical Fallout: New Vegas (2010) followed, the latter becoming a beloved cult classic praised for its writing, branching quests, and moral complexity, widely regarded by fans as a high point of the Fallout series despite its buggy launch.

Obsidian earned a reputation as a brilliant but under-resourced studio, repeatedly making acclaimed games as a contractor at the mercy of publishers' schedules and budgets. It sought more control through crowdfunding, and Pillars of Eternity (2015) revived the isometric party-based RPG with a fan-funded campaign, giving the studio a self-owned universe and greater independence.

Stability finally arrived when Microsoft acquired Obsidian in 2018. Backed by an owner with deep pockets, the studio delivered the satirical first-person RPG The Outer Worlds (2019), the popular survival game Grounded, the whimsical Pentiment, and the fantasy RPG Avowed. Founder Chris Avellone had departed years earlier, but the studio's core RPG expertise endured.

Still active as part of Xbox Game Studios, Obsidian has transformed from a scrappy, deadline-battered contractor into a well-supported first-party developer, free at last to make the kind of dialogue-rich, consequence-heavy role-playing games its founders always championed. It remains one of the most respected RPG studios in the West.