Adding highly requested mounts to the newly announced Grounded 2 was such an undertaking that Obsidian had to rethink the way the game's world works.
The sequel was announced at the Xbox Games Showcase during Summer Game Fest 2025, and GamesRadar+ spoke with Obsidian co-founder Chris Parker, who's also game director on Grounded 2.
Mountable bugs have been a hot request since the launch of the first Grounded in 2022, so it's natural that Parker and co. are keen on hyping them in the path to Grounded 2's July 29 release date. Apparently, the mechanics of making rideable mounts clash somewhat with the original Grounded's world design, and thus a new approach was needed for the sequel.
"[Mounts were] something we wanted to do with the first game," Parker said. "When you add a feature like that into a game, it kind of changes a little bit of everything about the world that you're creating. And so in order for us to do that correctly, we basically were like, 'We're gonna rethink how the world works. We're gonna think how to make this sort of an integral feature within the game.'"
I can definitely see how mounts would've been a tricky thing to implement in the original Grounded given just how much is happening on-screen and how much potential there is for players to get stuck, and I'm curious to see how the sequel clears those barriers.
One thing that'll help is a map that's several times bigger than the original game's map, not to mention a world design that's been purpose-built for mounts from the get-go. For what it's worth, we went hands on with Grounded 2 during SGF and found the mounts to be one of the highlights.
Grounded 2 will follow its survival game predecessor's early access window, but the downside is "the game's not done and it's out to the world," which makes for horrifying bugs like this reverse face
