Almost a year has passed Xbox and developer Obsidian Entertainment released Grounded 2 — the sequel to the studio’s original co-op survival game that shrinks you down to the size of a bug and transforms everyday suburban environments into vast open worlds — on Xbox, PC and Early Access Xbox Game Pass.
Since then, Obsidian (with co-development support from Eidos-Montréal) has released three major updates for the game, with a fourth – Into the Abyss, a water-themed patch that adds the Pond area – scheduled for release on August 11. At the same time, Grounded 2 is also coming. PS5invites a network of new players to join the gaming community.
It’s worth noting that the first Grounded, on the other hand, didn’t get a PS5 release until 2024, which came two years after the title left Early Access and was fully launched in 2022 with the 1.0 update.
Indeed, it’s no exaggeration to say that Obsidian has been working hard enough on the foundations of Grounded 2 to make it a bigger, deeper experience, and I recently found an interview with game director Chris Parker where he talked about its development, the journey to PS5, and Into the Abyss.
“Every time we think we’re done, we can take a breather—you just take one breath, and then we keep going. At the same time, we’re constantly reviewing all the community feedback and lovingly trying to figure out how we do it as best we can, knowing we can’t do it all,” Parker said. GamesRadar+. “Now we’re about to release the biggest content update we’ve ever done. It’s even bigger than Garden (The Toxic Tangle update), and launching on PlayStation 5 makes this our second launch, right? We’ve started early access before, but it’s like doing it all over again this summer.”
Parker noted that Obsidian and Eidos initially “struggled a bit” when working together on Grounded 2, but “eventually they’ll figure out what’s the best solution for the game and move on.”
“These things happen less and less now. What’s more likely to happen is that Eidos will come and offer us something, like a story for a pond, and I’ll go over it with them. Then I’ll come up with something and they’ll be excited and that’s it,” he added.
As for the game coming to PS5, Parker said “there are other people above my pay grade who might have other ideas about what’s going to happen with all of this.” Xbox’s new push and return to exclusives it started with that The clockwork revolution and Gears of War: E-Day. “As a game developer, all I want is for the most players to love my game on their platform, no matter what.”
He added that “we have ideas for the future” regarding Grounded 2’s roadmap, but made it clear that shipping the Into the Abyss update alongside PS5 availability is Obsidian’s priority right now. “It’s a huge content update with lots of biomes, a new cart that joins the party, we’re bringing back swimming as a gameplay experience, and we’re offering a bunch of other things you can do while you’re underwater. We’ll talk about all of that later.”
Discussions of exclusivity aside, I think it’s great to see that Grounded 2’s game director is excited to welcome a new community of players to the open-world survival game, and that Obsidian and Eidos have teamed up as co-developers to collaborate both enthusiastically and effectively on the title. This makes me even more interested in checking out The Cliff later this summer.
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