While most of the survival tropes are accounted for in bright and charming variations, this is still an Obsidian game – and here, the studio insists that the most important hallmarks of its games are the worlds they let you inhabit. Grounded is not procedurally-generated. Every detail has been built by the hands of a human designer, and there's a "very crafted" story that guides you through the tech tree toward a definitive conclusion. This is a game that "still has Obsidian's soul in it," according to director and producer Adam Brennecke.
"We've been wanting to make a survival game for some time," Brennecke tells me. The small team on Grounded, currently just over a dozen people, began work in earnest after Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire launched, shortly before the Microsoft acquisition, but "we tried to get a prototype even before that point. It's a passion project for a lot of us here. We really liked the survival genre. It's really cool to innovate in that area and add our own Obsidian spice to the mix".
He continues: "Pretty much everyone on the team has worked at Obsidian for their entire careers. It's in our soul and our DNA that we make Obsidian games. I only know how to make Obsidian games. There's going to be a lot of things that you would expect in an Obsidian game in this title. We want to create not only a handcrafted world with a lot of world building and detail that you would typically find in an Obsidian title, but a rich narrative that will lead you through the story
store.steampowered.com
