Obsidian Co-developing Wasteland 2 With inXile if $2.1M Milestone is Reached

Pretty big news comes to us via a press release from inXile Entertainment: if the company manages to raise at least $2.1 million through their Kickstarter drive, they’ll bring on board Obsidian Entertainment to co-develop the title. Here’s the full press release, including quotes from Fargo and Obsidian’s co-founder Chris Avellone:

inXile to collaborate with Obsidian on the design of Wasteland 2!

Newport Beach, CA – March 30, 2012 – inXile entertainment confirmed today that they have reached an agreement with award-winning RPG developer Obsidian Entertainment to collaborate on the game design and writing for their Wasteland 2 project if the funding level reaches $2,100,000. Obsidian’s Chief Creative Officer Chris Avellone will be working directly with the design team at inXile to help bring the world of Wasteland together. Avellone stated, “Wasteland is one of my favorite RPGs of all time, and when Brian asked if I wanted to work on the sequel, I jumped at the chance. While I’ve worked on Fallout 2 and Fallout: New Vegas, getting the chance to work on the spiritual successor to the Fallout franchise is a honor.” Brian Fargo added, (I have a history with the guys at Obsidian that dates back to the days of Interplay’s Black Isle studios. Together we created some of the greatest RPG’s of all time, from Fallout 1 & 2 to titles like Icewind Dale and Planescape: Torment. It is great that we now have a chance to reunite on a project like Wasteland 2.)

In addition to Chris Avellone’s help, Obsidian will be lending the experience they have in the development of RPG games and tools to inXile. Fargo believes this collaboration will allow him to focus more energy on the game, (Obsidian has an incredible library of story, dialog and design tools that they have used to create hits like Neverwinter Nights 2, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, and of course, Fallout: New Vegas. Regardless of the tech we use to develop the game, experience with these tools will help us efficiently design the game without wasting time and resources on the tools needed for development.)

Wasteland still has 17 days remaining until the Kickstarter funding ends. At this time the project has around 33,000 backers and has raised more than $1,650,000. In addition to the PC version, inXile has officially announced Mac OS X and Linux versions of Wasteland 2.

InXile is also announcing a solution for everyone who wants to back the project, but who live in a country where backing it on Kickstarter is just not possible. Fargo reports, (We want to let everyone know that we are now accepting PayPal pledges directly though the Wasteland web portal. Some of our biggest fans come from Germany and Eastern Europe, yet they have been unable to support us through the Kickstarter/Amazon pay system. We now have an alternative PayPal site set up for such gamers at Wasteland.inXile-entertainment.com.)

Details can be found on the Kickstarter site at:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2
or at:
http://wasteland.inxile-entertainment.com

About inXile Entertainment:
Founded by long-time industry veteran @BrianFargo in 2002, inXile Entertainment develops interactive entertainment software for all popular game systems, personal computers and wireless devices. The most current projects being: The Bard’s Tale for IOS and Choplifter HD. For more information about inXile Entertainment visit www.inxile-entertainment.com.

About Obsidian Entertainment:
Obsidian Entertainment is an entertainment software development company passionately dedicated to making high quality, next generation games for Windows PC and console systems. Obsidian was founded in 2003 by five game development veterans who’ve produced, programmed, and/or designed award-winning role playing games for a variety of platforms over the last 20 years. The five founders are: Feargus Urquhart, Chris Parker, Darren Monahan, Chris Avellone and Chris Jones. Obsidian Entertainment’s Web site is located at www.obsidian.net.

Fallout and Fallout: New Vegas are registered trademarks of Bethesda Softworks LLC. Wasteland is a registered trademark of inXile Entertainment. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

We sincerely hope that the milestone will be reached, since this sounds like an incredibly interesting collaboration.