Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart was the guest on the latest episode of IGN Unfiltered, IGN's monthly long-form interview show. At 67 minutes long, it's a comprehensive interview that spans his entire career, and the host makes a concerted effort to try to get him to vent about some of the publisher drama Obsidian has suffered from over the years. While Feargus doesn't quite take the bait, he does as usual have some new secrets to reveal.


Did you know that:

• Van Buren was preceded by an earlier Interplay Fallout 3 project, which was quickly cancelled and turned into Icewind Dale?
• Obsidian were originally planning on developing a Dark Alliance-style isometric Star Wars action-RPG before they got Knights of the Old Republic II?
• The infamous Metacritic bonus clause in Obsidian's Fallout: New Vegas contract wasn't even added to it at their request?
• Obsidian almost got to make the sequel to Deus Ex: Human Revolution? It returned to Eidos Montreal because of "budgetary issues" and "some other games that didn't sell well" (Thief?) which had left them with no work to do.
• South Park: The Stick of Truth was originally going to include a massive treehouse area and a Paris Hilton boss battle featuring a "vag blast" attack?

Feargus also has a few things to say about Obsidian's three most well-known cancelled projects - Aliens: Crucible, Dwarfs and especially Stormlands, the Microsoft-published Xbox One launch title whose cancellation in 2012 led to massive layoffs at the studio. He's reluctant to full-throatedly castigate the publishers for these cancellations, but does admit that he thinks Sega treated Obsidian short-sightedly near the end of Aliens' development. In the case of Stormlands, Feargus ascribes its downfall primarily to the lack of a "champion" for the game at Microsoft. He also admits that he's a bit upset that Obsidian were never approached to make the South Park sequel, even though they didn't have the manpower to do it anyway.

Considering it aired in the middle of the Pillars of Eternity 2 Fig campaign, it's a bit funny that Feargus only spends a scant few minutes near the end of the interview talking about Pillars of Eternity. He does reveal that he's still thinking about the possibility of somehow crowdfunding a big open world RPG, although he's now calling it "a Fallout" rather than "a Skyrim". Take that as you will.