"Launching on PS5 effectively makes this our second launch": Obsidian legend Chris Parker talks Grounded 2 and its massive Into the Abyss update

Grounded 2 is approaching a meaningful destination on its journey through early access. August 11 marks the launch of a massive new content update, with 'Into the Abyss' opening up the pond for exploration in Brookhollow Park. The community is also expanding, with PS5 players entering the action just as developers Obsidian Entertainment and Eidos Montreal push the survival game to version 0.5. It's going to be a big year for Grounded 2. To learn more about it, and to better understand the challenges of building such a complex project, we sat down with Obsidian legend and Grounded 2 game director Chris Parker.

We spoke this time last year to get into the reveal of Grounded 2. How have you found the last 12 months, as your game moved through the first stages of early access?

Chris Parker, game director: Getting Grounded 2 into early access was a hurdle. But we got it out there and the community has been totally behind it. They loved it, but they also played through all of the content quickly and have been asking when we were going to give them more. So for us on the development side, at both Obsidian and Eidos, our focus has been on getting this done. We've had three major updates since then.

Every time that we think we're done we can take a breath – just one breath, that's all you get, and then we keep going. At the same time, we're constantly processing all the community feedback, and trying with love to figure out how we do as much of it as we can, while recognizing that we can't possibly do all of it. And now we're on the cusp of releasing the largest content update that we've done. It's bigger than Garden, and to be launching on PlayStation 5 effectively makes this our second launch, right? We had the early access launch before, but this is like doing it all over again this summer.

Obsidian has always been very proud of its ability to co-develop Grounded 2 with Eidos, how have you found that collaboration throughout early access?

Chris Parker: I'm the one who has been working with Eidos the longest, because I launched the project with them back when it was in its infancy. They've always been great, but what's interesting about our relationship is that it's not just that we're professional or that we all care deeply about this franchise, but it's that we've learned to continually work together better, and to be stronger as a team over time.

There were a lot of times, getting into early access with the early access of the game, that we had some struggles. We would butt heads on some things, but we would ultimately figure out what the best solution for the game would be and move on. Those things occur less and less often now. What's far more likely to happen is that Eidos comes and pitches something to us, like the story for the pond, and I will just plus-one that with them. Then I'll suggest something and they get excited and plus-one that.

And then at some point, of course, we'll be out of scope and we have to pull it all back again. But it's because we built Grounded 2 into a good place together, everybody is super jazzed about it. We're ready to get in there and make this thing. Ultimately, we just keep getting better at doing this together.

Grounded 2 coming to PS5 feels like a pretty significant milestone?

Chris Parker: Releasing Grounded 2 on PlayStation 5 is huge for us. Obviously, we've been working on it for a while, it's coming out on August 11, and we didn't have the opportunity with Grounded 1 to do this with the PlayStation community. The PS4 and PS5 versions came out a year after 1.0 was released. So almost from day one, we knew that it would be truly amazing to expand the community and include PS5 users.

Getting here and being able to realize that ambition is awesome. Now we have our fingers crossed that PS5 players do want to come into the community, and that they are as genuinely interested in the development of this game as the existing community already is. I think they will, because the Grounded 2 community is super healthy, so we're just excited. It's going to be fun!

Xbox announced it's reinvesting in console exclusivity. Is this something you think about during development, or do you just want your game in as many hands as possible?

Chris Parker: As a game developer, what I want is for the most amount of players to love my game on their platform, whatever that might be. I'm going to put a lot of work into this thing, I'm going to put my heart into it – so I want you to love and enjoy it too. Ultimately, that's it. So there are other people above my pay grade that might have other opinions about what needs to happen with all that. It's not up to me. I'm just going to give it to as many people as I can. And for Grounded 2, I'm just super excited that this time around I get to pull PlayStation 5 players in with me. That's a great thing.

Grounded 2 has enjoyed a strong first year, but how are you thinking about that roadmap moving forward?

Chris Parker: From day one of this project, we had a pretty good idea of how big the park was going to be and a rough idea of how we were going to cut it. We had a solid idea of how many weapons there were going to be and how our weapon tiers were going to work. But the first hurdle was to distill all of that down to get the game into early access – a foundational level of all that stuff, just enough to build everything else on. So then the next steps were to add to the Garden. And I'll be honest with you, our original ambition for the Garden was too big, we had to scale them down a bit, and that content came out stronger as a result.

So yeah, we have ideas for the future, but the most important thing for us right now is the Into the Abyss update that's coming to PS5 and all other platforms on August 11. It's a huge content update with multiple biomes in it, there's a new buggy joining the group, we're bringing back swimming as a gameplay experience, and we're offering some other things that you can do while you're underwater too. We'll be talking about all that later.

How do you balance the need to release big content updates with the demands of a vocal, passionate community?

Chris Parker: A lot of the things that we focus on outside of the big content updates – new regions of the park, bosses, that sort of thing – are things for the community. They are actually more carefully planned, where we see things the community wants and try to deliver that. Custom Game is a good example of that, which is coming back in the 0.5 update. We always wanted to bring it back, but we were like, whatever, we'll bring it back whenever. And the community has been like, 'No, for real guys, we want Custom Game back; come on, give it to us!'

So we talked to Eidos, we did some finagling with the schedules, and we freed up resources to bring Custom Game back sooner. It won't be quite as robust as it was in Grounded 1 at first, but we are getting the big pieces in place and then we'll continue to add to it. So part of our roadmap is looking at something like Custom Game and understanding when we want to finish it, right? We want to do more with buggy progression; we got the first bit of it in with the 'Beat the Heat' update, but when are we going to finish it? So a lot of our roadmap is really about taking something that we have in the game, asking the community what they think about it, and us understanding if they want us to take it further.

Grounded 2 doesn't have a clear 1.0 release date, but it's expected to be on the 2027 gaming release calendar. The 'Into the Abyss' update is coming August 11 to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X.