‘It’s the year of Obsidian’: The Outer Wilds 2 game director says the studio isn’t worried about releasing another RPG in the same year as Avowed
2025 is a busy year for Obsidian. The studio launched the well-received first-person fantasy RPG Avowed in February. Grounded 2, the sequel to its “honey-I-shrunk-the-kids” survival game, arrives in July. And in October, Obsidian’s revisiting its satirical space sci-fi setting with The Outer Wilds 2.
You might reasonably expect that its packed release schedule would cause concerns about sales cannibalization, but according to Outer Wilds 2 game director Brandon Adler, the studio isn’t troubled by having to compete with itself.
In an interview with PC Gamer during SGF 2025, Adler said that initially, after the release schedule had been decreed from on high—presumably when the decision was made to delay Avowed to from November 2024 to February 2025—it provoked internal conversations among Obsidian staff. “Yeah, we talked about that,” Adler said. “Like, ‘Two big RPGs in the same year. What does that actually mean for us? What does that mean for how people are going to view us?'”
Ultimately, though, Adler said the timing actually worked pretty well.
“We found out a few months before everyone else did in terms of when [the games] were actually going to ship,” Adler said. “And I think it was a good use of time, because it added a lot of awesome polish to Avowed. The more the merrier. It’s the year of Obsidian.”
With Grounded 2 joining the pair of RPGs for an Obsidian hat trick, Adler says the release timing has become a point of pride for the studio. “I don’t remember any studio that’s put out like, three titles like that in the way that we have,” Adler said. “And that’s something for us to be proud of.”
From the sounds of it, though, it doesn’t sound like The Outer Worlds 2 release date was entirely coincidental. “It’s funny, there was a line that didn’t go in the dev direct that I made about GTA 6,” Adler said. “They’re a behemoth, and that would be a thing. But also we’re a different audience, right? It’s not exactly a crossover. So, would we have adjusted? Who can say?”
The Outer Worlds 2 launches on October 29.
