Since it was acquired in 2018, Obsidian has been prolific, releasing a half-dozen titles, including last year’s trio: the trippy fantasy role-playing game Avowed, the survival game Grounded 2 and the dystopian sci-fi RPG The Outer Worlds 2. (Some other studios within Microsoft haven’t released a single game in that period.) While Grounded 2 was a big hit, the disappointing results from the other two have led Obsidian to “think a lot about how much we put into the games, how much we spend on them, how long they take,” Urquhart says. Both Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2 were in development for more than six years, inflating their production costs and the company’s financial expectations. One of Urquhart’s missions is to cut down development timelines to three or four years per title.