Another Xbox One exclusive “bites the dust”
Planned to be released alongside other Xbox One exclusives like Ryse: Son of Rome, Forza Motorsport 5 and Dead Rising 3, Obsidian’s RPG Stormlands was at described as a third person shooter possessing the gameplay finesse of The Witcher series.
The game never made it to launch day and Stormands never saw the light of day.
One of many in-game screenshots that were never released until now. Source: Eurogamer/online
In a recent interview with Eurogamer, Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart detailed his team’s experience during production, the vision for Stormlands and its relationship with Microsoft. One of the main reasons Stormlands was dealt its fate was the vision Microsoft had for the game which the software giant wanted Obsidian to integrate million-man raids with cloud computing to assist.
“We were given a proposal, the million-man raid,” Obsidian co-owner and CEO, Feargus Urquhart, told Eurogamer.
“Conceptually what came from Microsoft was this idea: imagine you’re playing The Witcher, maybe with a friend. What happens if at points in time a giant creature pops up that you can see in the distance and it’s not just popping up while you’re playing, it’s popping up for everybody who’s playing. You all rush this creature and there’s this haze around it, and as you’re all rushing through the haze the game is matchmaking you into 40-man raids who are going to fight the creature.”
According to Obsidian’s co-owner Chris Parker, Microsoft wanted to do something completely different and new with Stormlands, it started to stray away from Microsoft’s intended vision. While the idea sounded appealing at first, however, differences between Obsidian and Microsoft led to the demise of Stormlands.
“Nothing that was standard or typically accepted in video games should be taken as acceptable. It was always, ‘Try to get it up to the next level, try and figure out something different or some new way to approach it or put a different spin on it.’ Every feature it was, ‘How do we change this feature to make it better than it has ever been before?'”
Since then, Obsidian has grown to become one of the top studios of RPGs which includes Tyranny, Pillars of Eternity and the recently developed Armored Warfare which the studio has worked on the title until this year. It has since been taken over by IllFonic.
Pillars of Eternity was recently ported over to Xbox One with the release of a complete edition of the game as the studio is currently working on the sequel to the fantasy RPG announced back in January this year.
What are your thoughts following comments made by Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart over the cancelled Stormlands? Let us know in the comments section below or follow Xbox Players SA on Facebook and Twitter.
