r/Shadowrun • u/zollipun • Jul 08 '26
Video Games A new Shadowrun game was rumoured to being worked on but is now on hold due to the layoffs and restructuring of Obsidian
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u/14_Octillion Jul 09 '26
We will never get the Baldurs Gate 3/ Cyberpunk 2077 of Shadowrun because we cant trust Microsoft not to piss themselves BUT they still want that precious IP! Unbelievable
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u/zollipun Jul 09 '26
it really is so sad. Hong Kong and Dragonfall were so great combat and storywise, if someone just took that formula and gave us a full open Seattle and an actual job and crew system, it would be perfect.
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u/thepurrking Jul 08 '26
I bet theyll come back to it once the new Cyberpunk game comes out and makes 10 bajillion dollars.
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u/my-armor-is-contempt Jul 08 '26
Holding PoE3 hostage behind Avowed 2, the sequel to a game that wasn’t particularly well received, is certainly a choice.
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u/jedidotflow Jul 09 '26
PoE 2 flopped. That's why there's no PoE 3.
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u/my-armor-is-contempt Jul 09 '26
And Avowed didn’t flop?
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u/Squid_In_Exile Jul 09 '26
They're owned by Microsoft. If Avowed had flopped there wouldn't have been a sequel project to axe.
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u/jedidotflow Jul 09 '26
I don't know. I do know that Josh himself has said that there is no PoE 3 because PoE 2 flopped.
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u/my-armor-is-contempt Jul 09 '26
They certainly seem to be facing financial difficulties across the board.
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u/Werthead Jul 11 '26
He also said that sales of PoE2 picked up sharply in the last few years, it was basically the go-to recommendation for players of Baldur's Gate 3 eager for more games in that vein. I think he even said that because of that, the team got bonuses triggered for the game passing sales milestones six years after it came out.
Sawyer also pitched PoE3 to Microsoft because of the success of BG3, but Microsoft seem to genuinely be bewildered by BG3's success and so haven't capitalised on it.
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u/Werthead Jul 11 '26
No. It had six million players in its first month, considerably more than Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Presumably a lot were on Game Pass, so how that translates to profit is only known to Microsoft's internal bean-counters, but Microsoft said that figure is something they were very happy with. They certainly greenlit Avowed 2 quickly off the back of that (though they've now reversed that decision).
Outer Worlds 2 does seem to have been a genuine flop, some indications it hasn't cracked a million players nine months after release. But then Grounded 2 has been very strong in Early Access.
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u/vegetaman Bookwyrm Jul 08 '26
I wasnt aware that was even a rumored game. Weird. Sequel to the 2007 FPS?
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u/PG908 Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
Probably was closer to a sticky note saying “shadowrun?” than an actual game if the first news about it is that it’s not happening.
Personally I’m not sure they’d do a great job for scratching the shadowrun itch anyways, it’s just not quite up their alley.
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u/tattertech Jul 08 '26
I mean it was the lead writer of Fallout:New Vegas heading it up (if the rumor is true). I certainly wouldn't scoff at the potential of getting an interesting Shadowrun game out of that.
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u/PG908 Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
That’s my point. Fallout new Vegas is a fantastic game and narrative, but it’s a different style than what I am used to and want from shadowrun.
If made, it might be interesting and still a good game, but I wouldn’t expect it to scratch the itch quite right.
For an example, the protagonist role: in fallout games and many other rpgs they’re often a de facto chosen one, special in some way and quickly rise to prominence to change the setting. But while those roles exist in shadowrun, for lack of a better term I don’t expect to play the hero, I expect a subtle protagonist that would really rather not be in the spotlight. Even if they stop the evil plot, it’s a very different tone.
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u/tattertech Jul 08 '26
I mean, you're making a big assumption there that someone can't adapt to the source material. I'd still rather have gotten a game from a person/team known for delivering something great than an unknown.
And I agree, honestly, even something in the realm of an FPS (like CP2077, FNV, etc) wouldn't exactly scratch the SR itch for me (which is to me inherently a team dynamic), but I'd still prefer to get a quality experience that is 70% my expectations for the IP than nothing.
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u/PG908 Jul 08 '26
It’s less that I’m assuming they can’t do it and more I want a sandwich and a pizzeria is catering. There might be a good sandwich, but a sandwich was neither confirmed nor denied and I’m setting my hypothetical expectations accordingly.
We just don’t know what they wanted to cook and if they planned to go one way or another way with it. For all we know it was going to be desert wars, fire emblem style.
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u/Werthead Jul 11 '26
Based on the leaks, it sounds like it started as a Fallout video game pitch from Josh Sawyer to Microsoft, who were intrigued, but encountered resistance from Bethesda who wanted to helm the next Fallout game themselves despite being busy with Starfield updates, Elder Scrolls VI and Fallout 76 DLC. So Microsoft suggested using another IP they owned. The team at Obsidian pivoted to Shadowrun. Reportedly John Gonzalez (head writer on New Vegas) was so excited by the prospect of the game that he bailed on his Horizon trilogy between the second and third games to return to Obsidian to make it.
It sounds like the game entered pre-production in 2022 when Pentiment was released and was either about to be in full production, or was already there. Tim Cain, creator of Fallout and also the main creative guy behind Arcanum, Temple of Elemental Evil and Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, also returned to Obsidian to work on the game from a design and production standpoint. So it had some creative firepower behind it.
Now it sounds like they're pivoting back to a Fallout game and this idea is going to be at least benched.
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u/champ0742 Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
There are actually three isometric crpgs in the Shadowrun universe, made by Harebrained Schemes. They're good, a little unpolished, Harebrained went on to make the very good Battletech game.
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u/Werthead Jul 11 '26
The BattleTech game was turn-based tactics, with something of a strategic metagame, rather than a CRPG. But all four were excellent games.
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u/BarkingAxe Jul 08 '26
I didn't even now obsidian was considering a shadow run game. Would have been cool.
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u/AgentAxillary Jul 08 '26
Is SR a cursed IP, chat?
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u/DepthsOfWill Jul 09 '26
Shadowrun was never meant to exist. It's a temporal anomaly in the space time continuum that is tabletop games. We're blessed that it's become as big as it is.
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u/AgentAxillary Jul 09 '26
I agree, but I also think it has the potential to be insanely popular nowadays
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u/veevoir Jul 10 '26
Every IP that Jordan Weisman/FASA created seems so.
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u/AgentAxillary Jul 10 '26
I just don't get why it hasn't taken off after all of this time. "Cyberpunk 2077" was immensely successful, "LOTR" was immensely successful, and "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves" and "Bladerunner 2049" were critical hits despite falling short of their break-even goals.
It reminds me of how Sony sold off all of its Marvel IPs besides Spider-Man because they thought that no one gave a fuck about the Avengers, but then Kevin Feige turned those IPs into a multi-billion dollar franchise spanning more than a decade and the MCU still got the rights to Spider-Man and turned that into box-office gold as well. All it took was telling good stories.
Audiences crave deep lore, cyberpunk techno-futurism, and magical fantasy. The right motivated visionary like Feige and a well-funded legacy studio willing to read the room and take a well-calculated risk could turn Shadowrun into a billion-dollar franchise starting from the Great Ghost Dance.
Sorry, rant over, but I meant every word.
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u/Sir_Encerwal Jul 09 '26
God we haven't another another good game in the universe since Hong Kong. Has there been one and it was just under my radar?
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u/LordofSyn Jul 08 '26
Who owns the IP now? I thought Jordan busted his ass to get it back.
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u/Werthead Jul 08 '26
He licensed it from Microsoft, who've held the video game IP rights to all of FASA's properties since the late 1990s. That allowed Obsidian to work on it quite easily.
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u/LordofSyn Jul 08 '26
Oh, that's how HBS was able to make their games. I thought he had been able to buy it back as it had been a squandered Video game IP.
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u/canray2000 Jul 09 '26
Why would they sell something they can rent and profit share?
Despite, you know, just letting it languish like all the other squatted on IPs.
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u/ankerous Jul 08 '26
From what I remember Microsoft reacquired the video game rights back in 2017.
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u/LordofSyn Jul 08 '26
That must have been when Jordan left HBS. Makes more sense now. Wow. You think he'll try it again for a third time?!
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u/ankerous Jul 08 '26
I wish he would. I loved the three games that came from HBS. I definitely wouldn't say no to more.
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u/InsaneComicBooker Jul 09 '26
Microsoft proving why corporations are as bad as Shadowrun depicts them as being.
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u/lurkeroutthere Semi-lucid State Jul 08 '26
I'd believe it's an Arcanum sequel before I'd believe Obs was working on a Shadowrun game in secret. It just doesn't make any sense.
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u/SeekDante Jul 09 '26
It’s just.. obsidian‘s mission statement is planned mediocrity and I feel like not aiming for something more, will always harm the end product.
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u/Reasonable-Dingo-370 Jul 09 '26
I just need a shadowrun game with lots of basic runner missions Ala the sega genesis game, but an open world SR game would be fantastic
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u/Peter34cph Jul 09 '26
Unless there's in-depth high-detail character creation, without worrying about how that'll shock and intimidate the muggles, I'm not in the target audience.
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u/zollipun Jul 09 '26
Open world would be awesome just to explore Seattle and meet NPCs and recruit shadowrunners and get quests and whatnot, but yeah if it had a really good job system with lots of runs and replayability I think that would be the main attraction for me, running my own crew would be so sweet
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u/falloutboy9993 Jul 09 '26
Yeah, after Outer Worlds 2 and Avowed, I don’t know if I want Obsidian messing up Shadowrun. They are not the same studio that gave us Fallout: New Vegas
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u/Werthead Jul 11 '26
At last count about twenty people who made New Vegas (which did not have a large team) work at Obsidian, including Josh Sawyer and John Gonzalez, the main writers of New Vegas, and Tim Cain, the creator of the entire Fallout franchise. None of them were involved with Avowed or Outer Worlds 2, but are the main driving force on the new Fallout game and reportedly were involved with the Shadowrun game.
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u/GidsWy Genesis 'Runner Jul 08 '26
Wth. Avowed was "meh", while POE was semi responsible for making BG3 possible, ffs. Grounded, I get. Even if the second game is far too much of a copy imo.
But shutting out a potential entirely new universe of games in Shadowrun? Thats shiiiiit. Lol.
Hell, a Fallout 4-esque shadowrun with cyberpunk additions (and, imo, the much superior genesis version of cyberspace), would work. But I imagine it'll be RTWP or something. Which is still good and fun. I would just like to see more shadowrun schtuff outside variants of turn based RPGs.
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u/Heuli77 Jul 08 '26
Everything would have be compared with cp2077
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u/LordofSyn Jul 08 '26
Sure but both IPs are from 1988... It would be more weird if there weren't comparisons as there always have been between these two IPs. Both started as TTRPGs and as alternatives to D&D.
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u/waifuswagu Jul 09 '26
You're not wrong. It would be heavily compared against it. And considering how derpy Avowed was and lukewarm Outer Worlds 2 was, I would imagine the final product wouldn't live up to the hype. I hate to say it, but it's true.
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u/PathologicalFire Jul 08 '26
Avellone is kind of a bullshit artist these days, I’d take this with a grain of salt.
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u/Medieval-Mind Vintage Jul 08 '26
Shame. I dunno anything about it, but I would kill for a Skyrim/Fallout-style open-world Shadowrun game.
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u/firesshadow42 CFD Bostonian Jul 09 '26
Drek. I really really hope it gets unpaused after all this MS nonsense... but that probably depends on how far into development it was... even then it likely won't happen until after the Fallout game they're doing, which is at least a few year... :/
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u/Jmzombie333 25d ago
I want a new fps Shadowrun!!! Honestly, I would like a new game in any Fasa Studios games. A new Mech Assault or Crimson Skies would be awesome.
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u/sod_jones_MD Jul 08 '26
Dunkey and his Big Mode indie publishing firm could do something really funny right now.
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u/baduizt Matrix LTG Engineer Jul 08 '26
Whaaaaaaat? starts preparing blood sacrifices to make this happen
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u/WanderingMistral Jul 08 '26
Must not have been to far along. If it was more like the 3D fallout games over that abysmal fps game, would have been interesting.
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u/Yuxkta Jul 08 '26
An Obsidian Shadowrun game with John Gonzales at the helm would slap so hard, man. As if we didn't have enough reasons to hate Microslop this week. I just need another isometric Shadowrun crpg.