inXile is the one studio that Microsoft has acquired where I would love to see what they can do with a AAA budget. They just finished development of Wasteland 3 which was an AMAZING choice driven, and I mean choice driven RPG. And with Brian Fargo heading the studio, I cannot WAIT to see what they have in store. 

Project Cobalt appears to be that game. It's looking to be a Steampunk-style FPS RPG in a dark Victorian-era setting. That concept alone has me sold, but the concept art below really drives home what we could be looking at. The art is from inXile's concept artist, Aleksander Danilovac, and will most likely be representative of the environment style the game will have. It reminds me of Batman: Arkham City, Bioshock, and even Bloodborne. I'm assuming it'll be an open-world or at the very least, semi-open world. And inXile has already confirmed that their next game was going to using Unreal Engine 5, so the game will look amazing for sure!

With Obsidian Entertainment working on Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2, Bethesda working on Starfield and eventually ES6, Playground Games working on a new Fable, and inXile working on this project, the RPG future is bright for sure on Xbox! With Horizon: Forbidden West releasing next year along with the KOTOR: Remake, we may very well be in an RPG golden age! Well, as far as the Western RPG world is concerned lol.

I'm very interested in whatever they make as I found Wasteland 3 to be impressive. The first thing that stood out to me about that picture above, as well as the description of the game, is Dishonored. It's weird, some genres of games have become so popular that even though there are dozens of those types of games each generation, the complaints about repetitive gameplay/setting are minimal. Then we have some game styles that aren't too common, such as Victorian-era setting, yet to me, it feels redundant with Dishonored (especially now that Dishonored will also be a MS game going forward along with whatever this game is). Two different Victorian/steampunk first-person games from the same company seems... weird. I hope there are some truly distinctive parts to this game that sets it apart from the Dishonored series.

What's funny is that Brian Fargo originally was wanting to retire after Wasteland 3, but after the studio acquisition, he's now pumped and gives teases about what they're working on, and that he won't be retiring anytime soon lol. He's like a kid in the candy store again and that in and of itself is something for us to be excited about lol. 

I still miss the OG Xbox era of RPG's where you had some insane exclusives like Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind from Bethesda, KOTOR and Jade Empire from BioWare, KOTOR 2 from Obsidian, and Fable along with The Lost Chapters. Now with the RPG's in development, as well as whatever ZeniMax Online Studios is working on, we're in for a big generation! 

I was super excited about inXile when it was announced. I know it wasn’t a studio that would get a big reaction but personally I knew they make amazing titles. Wasteland 3 was great, can’t wait to see what they do next.