Report: Obsidian considered 'sci-fi Skyrim' RPG Backspace
Obsidian Entertainment once had a sci-fi game in development, built using the Skyrim engine and that game's "Radiant AI" system. Dubbed Backspace, the project was in development at Obsidian in early 2011, Kotaku sources claim. Obsidian boss Feargus Urquhart confirmed the studio could possibly come back to the idea in the future.
The Backspace design document describes "simple time travel" and combat similar to Skyrim, "but slightly faster since there is no concept of blocking." It calls for a game that is a mixture between Mass Effect, Borderlands and System Shock 2. Players would navigate between various worlds, linked together by one massive space station.
"Backspace was a project concept that we neither cancelled nor greenlit," Urquhart told Kotaku. "We had some great people work on the idea for Backspace for a bit of time and then moved them off to other projects as opportunities came up. We've been around for ten years now and have had a bunch of great ideas that we still have sitting around that we may be able to return to in the future."
Obsidian Entertainment has a lot of irons in the fire at the moment, including South Park: The Stick of Truth for publisher Ubisoft and Project Eternity, a Kickstarter campaign that yielded $3.9 million for the development studio to create a PC-only isometric dungeon crawler similar to Baldur's Gate.
