Each platform has their exclusives, but usually PlayStation has the staple on the RPG market. Team Xbox had one particular RPG exclusive lined up that had many Microsoft fans excited, only to later find out it was cancelled. Now we have a look into the reason behind the cancellation of Stormlands.
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Thanks to an ongoing project covering the popular developer, Eurogamer sat down with Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart to uncover more about the would-be project:
“We were given a proposal, the million-man raid,” Obsidian co-owner and CEO, Feargus Urquhart, tells me. “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.”
The project sounds incredibly promising, set up to be a third-person action RPG with similar mechanics to that of Fallout: New Vegas, and action compared to that of The Witcher series. So why was it cancelled?
Apparently the idea kept snowballing into a bigger, and bigger, and bigger idea. Microsoft wanted it to be “the best”, bigger than anything out there. That ambition led to many hands in the pot, letting the original vision bleed out into something almost unrecognizable.
“Sometimes adding people to something doesn’t mean it’s going to get done any faster,” said Chris Parker, “It’s actually just going to be more complicated, more people running down the wrong path.”
Eventually, the team got the call from Microsoft in 2012 of an official cancellation notice. And just like that, Stormlands was no more. The change in direction did push for other creative endeavours, what they dubbed the “Summer of Proposals.” That lead into popular titles such as Tyranny and the upcoming Pillars of Eternity 2, so all is well that ends well.
The full interview, and one wild, emotional roller-coaster of a ride, can be found here.
