Stormlands, an ambitious RPG born from the collaboration between Microsoft and Obsidian Entertainment, never saw the light of day. The game would have featured a unique “one million player raid” feature, but due to development difficulties and deadlines, the project ultimately failed.

Obsidian Entertainment has established itself as one of the most prominent developers in the video game industry. They have surprised RPG fans with award-winning projects such as Fallout: New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity. However, like most large companies, their journey has not been without its bumps; throughout their history as a studio, its members have had to deal with complicated productions, deadlines, and cancellations. In fact, the creators of Pentiment were also working on an ambitious role-playing title that would have marked a turning point in the sector. We are talking about a project called Stormlands that never saw the light of day.

In 2024, Eurogamer had the opportunity to speak with Feargus Urquhart, CEO of Obsidian Entertainment, to learn more about the story of a game that disappeared without a trace. This story begins in the early 2010s, when Microsoft was preparing for its own revolution in the field of consoles: the Xbox One, which would still take a few years to come out, was being designed as a unique device that would take advantage of the connection with the network in a way never before seen in the industry. In other words, the Redmond company was finalizing the details around a state-of-the-art device and needed video games that lived up to expectations; which led them to invest large sums of money in Obsidian.

And it is that those responsible for Fallout: New Vegas had begun to forge an RPG experience set in a world of fantasy and chaos; a project that began in 2006, but was shelved for five years. Years later, in 2011, the team had the opportunity to visit Microsoft’s offices to present the sketch of a game called Defiance; an idea that was discarded by Redmond in a matter of minutes. Even so, the developers of Obsidian took advantage of the moment to publicize the existence of that title on which they had been working for five years. That role-playing adventure that, from then on, became known as Stormlands.

The RPG That Was Going to Have a ‘Raid’ of “a Million Players”

Because, yes, Microsoft did not take long to approve the development of Stormlands after meeting again with Obsidian to test a demo. And we are talking about an adventure set in an exciting and chaotic world of storms; a weather phenomenon that, in turn, had some influence on the magic used by the player. Among other things, the project was being designed to be a third-person RPG with “super action” battles, as Urquhart described in the interview with Eurogamer. In fact, the combat was going to be similar to what we would see years later in The Witcher 3, but with companions who could use unique abilities.

“In the end, we would come up with some kind of clever editing that would send everyone who fought an edited, personalized video of their participation in the raid” (Feargus Urquhart).

But the most curious thing about Stormlands was a feature suggested by Microsoft: “They gave us a proposal, the million-player raid,” said the CEO of Obsidian in the talk. “Conceptually, what came from Microsoft was this idea: imagine you’re playing The Witcher, maybe with a friend. What if, at some point, a giant creature appears that you can see in the distance; And not only does it appear while you’re playing, but it appears to everyone who is playing. Everyone runs towards this creature and there’s a fog around it, and, while everyone runs through the fog, the game matches you in raids of 40 players who are going to fight the creature.” Obviously, the initiative was not exactly designed to host a million users in the same incursion, but the Redmond company used these words to suggest it to Obsidian Entertainment.

And the idea, already ambitious, was completed with a unique cinematic for each user: “Then you fight against it, but, while you face the creature, all the footage is saved in the cloud. Then, at the end, we would come up with some kind of clever editing that would send everyone who fought an edited, personalized video of their participation in the raid. That is what they proposed to us.” Unfortunately, all the ideas related to Stormlands ended up stored in different drawers of the Obsidian offices due to a cluster of problems that acted as an unstoppable snowball.

Stormlands faced a series of obstacles that, together, were totally insurmountable for Obsidian. First, the team had to use its own graphics engine because Xbox One didn’t have Unreal Engine 4 at the time; technology that worked well for some things, but required development in others. Second, Obsidian’s lack of experience in producing multiplayer experiences complicated the Stormlands project. And finally, the title could not afford a single delay. After all, it had been agreed with Microsoft that it would be a launch RPG for Xbox One.

At first, Microsoft wanted to inject more funds and employees into Obsidian to alleviate the situation; a strategy that doesn’t always work in the field of video game development. “Sometimes adding more people to something doesn’t mean it’s going to be done faster,” added Chris Parker, vice president of development at Obsidian, in the chat with Eurogamer. “It will really be more complicated, more people walking the wrong way.” And, with the passage of time and the lack of significant progress, Microsoft ended up canceling Stormlands.

But this wasn’t the definitive end for the storm-action RPG. As the CEO of Obsidian indicated in the interview, the team did everything possible to carry out the work done so far by turning it into the Fallen project. “We made a presentation to Ubisoft, to 2K, to everyone,” Urquhart continued. “A lot of people we’d already introduced Stormlands to, and it was a challenge to repeat the presentation of a game that had been canceled. It makes sense, why host a game that another publisher canceled?” No publisher took the step and Fallen was discarded, but Obsidian again took some of his ideas to make a demo to Paradox; a meeting that, this time, would give rise to a new video game. Tyranny, released in 2014.

Despite the bumps in development and the cancellation of the RPG, the relationship between Obsidian and Microsoft was not affected. In fact, the Redmond company took out the wallet to buy the parents of Fallout: New Vegas in 2018; an operation that, since then, has given birth to games such as Pentiment, Grounded or the next Avowed. And what happened to Stormlands? Currently, the only thing that remains of this game is a demo to which Eurogamer has had access and some images that allow us to glimpse the fantastic of its world. Otherwise, all the ideas and sketches around the project have been kept forever in Obsidian’s offices.

Source: 3djuegos