Obsidian surprised us by announcing a sequel to shrunken-player backyard survival game Grounded earlier this summer. We assumed that Grounded, released in 2022 after two years in early access, had more years of live development ahead of it, which is often the case for multiplayer survival games like it. But that was never apparently the intention for Grounded.
Executive producer Marcus Morgan told me in an interview that Obsidian always intended Grounded to have a beginning, a middle and an end. “When we began Grounded 1, there was always this idea that there would be a close to Grounded 1,” he said. “Obviously there’s survival games like Ark, which are kind of ever expanding, or Minecraft, which are big platforms that are expanding. But a lot of our touch-points for Grounded 1 came from The Forest or Subnautica. So when we were making Grounded 1, we knew there would be a beginning and a middle and an end to the game, in terms of the story we wanted to tell.”
The unexpected success of Grounded shook these plans a little – “it took off way more than we could have ever imagined,” he said – but an end to the story did eventually come, at which point the studio knew it wanted to do more but also knew it couldn’t realise the ideas within the game’s existing framework.
Mainly, Obsidian wanted to implement mounts, or “buggies” as Obsidian is now calling them – insects like ants that you can ride around on. “The reason we didn’t actually have [mounts] in Grounded 1 was because the world and the space wasn’t designed to actually have mounts,” Morgan explained to me. To enable them, then, Obsidian moved the playing space from a confined backyard to a much larger park, while also taking the new-game opportunity to move to Unreal Engine 5 and implement other feature ideas as well.
I’m currently playing Grounded 2 ahead of its 29th July early access release so I’ll tell you more about those new ideas and how successful, or not, they are when the embargo lifts on the same day. But to return to my point: that beginning, middle and end structure has remained – it has carried over to Grounded 2. In fact, Obsidian not only knows where it could end but where, excitingly, a third game could follow on from it.
While talking about the original plan for Grounded, Morgan said this: “At first it was like, ‘We’ll just make Grounded.’ There’s not the, ‘Well maybe we’ll have a trilogy.’ Like, we hope, but that’s not where we started.” I pressed him on this mention of a trilogy and he said, “That was just me speaking aspirationally.”
Then he added: “I don’t know whether or not it’s Grounded 2 or a Grounded trilogy, but I will say we absolutely have ideas and stories and expansions and features that we would want to go for. Whether that continues to expand Grounded 2 or whether that is going to Grounded 3… I want to start with Grounded 2 because that’s not even launched yet and I’ve got to get my mind around that. But we do have more, there’s more in our hearts and souls, even beyond where we see Grounded 2 going throughout early access. We do have more that we hope people want to see and play. It’s in our hearts.”
Another surprising thing about Grounded 2’s development is that it’s been shared. Grounded 1 was made entirely at Obsidian, but Grounded 2 has been co-developed with Embracer-owned studio Eidos Montreal. Morgan told me Obsidian sought the partnership, being, as it was, rather busy making both Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2, which are both 2025 games.
“We knew we wanted to make Grounded 2 and we knew we were going to need help expanding and building on that,” he said, “so we actually went out, like, ‘Okay, where can we go find co-development help that shares similar sensibilities and has a passion and a love for the game?’ There wasn’t a lot of pressure or rush for it, we just wanted to find the right partner.” And Eidos was apparently it.
There are actually more people working on Grounded 2 at Eidos than at Obsidian, he said, but assured me that “a significant number of people” are working on the game at Obsidian, including the original Grounded team, and that the project was being led from there.
“I know this is gonna sound corny but sincerely it is a cooperative way of developing things,” he said. We, as Obsidian, as the creators of the IP, obviously have a very strong point of view about ‘what is Grounded’ and what fits, what doesn’t. There’s some weighting on our side in the same way that when we used to make games for other folks, like Fallout: New Vegas or [Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2], there were the IP holders there.
“But Eidos has been empowered a lot and also just brings a lot to the table with regards to their ownership and filling the game, so I would say it’s shared. I don’t know if we really think about it as who’s officially in charge? Like, if you wanted to put a stamp on it, it’s Obsidian, because it’s our game. But Eidos is just as much of an owner and just as much of a contributor to it. We are just one team. We might be in two different studios but we’re the Grounded team. That’s how we do it.”
Grounded 2 will launch in early access on 29th July, at which point, I’ll be able to share fuller thoughts on the game. Note that Grounded 1 will continue to exist even when this game comes out, by the way – Obsidian is a big believer in game preservation and has no plans to sunset that older game. Content updates will stop, but maintenance will continue.
