Creative director Leonard Boyarsky has revealed that “it was quite a shock” when Microsoft purchased Obsidian Entertainment in 2018.
This information was disclosed by Boyarsky during an interview with Edge Magazine. If you’re interested in Obsidian Entertainment’s games, you can check out our other articles here.
Leonard Boyarsky: Obsidian Was In Quite a Shock When Being Acquired by Microsoft
August 10, 2025 – Speaking with Edge Magazine, creative director Leonard Boyarsky remembers “it was quite a shock” when Microsoft purchased Obsidian Entertainment in 2018.
“We went to work at Obsidian,” Boyarsky said. “And halfway through a game about corporations running everything, a giant corporation bought our studio.”
According to Boyarsky, Microsoft’s acquisition didn’t and hasn’t impacted Obsidian Entertainment’s creative freedom at all.
“Unfortunately, power corrupting [people] has always been an issue in humanity, and I don’t think it’s going to change anytime soon,” said Boyarsky. “We want to focus on stuff that’s much more universal, and less specifically tied to our time.”
On the other hand, Boyarsky revealed that while he and fellow Fallout creator Tim Cain never intended The Outer Worlds to become a franchise, their ambitions were grander from the word go.
“We established the world, but we had a much smaller slice of it,” Boyarsky says. “That was always my plan, if we were fortunate to make a sequel: go much bigger and deeper.”
Boyarsky added, “Because it was so much smaller and our time and resources were so much more restricted, we had to make a lot of decisions where we were making things shorter and easier to digest. In a lot of ways, The Outer Worlds 2 delivers on the fantasy we had when we started the first game.”
Delving deeper into that fantasy, Boyarsky noted that it’s important for Obsidian Entertainment to ensure the world and story remain compelling without overshadowing the moment-to-moment experience players play through.
“The heart of it, always, for me, has been the story, the world, and the narrative – and it’s very important that the story doesn’t get in the way of the player having a great experience with their character,” Boyarsky says. “I don’t think that changes with the technology.”
The Outer Worlds 2 will be released on PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC (Steam, Microsoft Store) on October 30, 2025. The game will also be available on Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass.
