Obsidian explains Grounded 2 was born from technical limitations of the Xbox One: "This is our opportunity to build the world from the ground up"

While Avowed was one of this year's best RPGs, and The Outer Worlds 2 is set to be one of Xbox's biggest games later this year (if its focus in the Xbox Games Showcase is anything to go by), Obsidian Entertainment can't seem to stop the grind. During the Summer Game Fest event, it was confirmed that Grounded 2 will be joining the roster of upcoming Obsidian games, and it's coming in just over a month on July 29.

Speaking to GamesRadar+, Obsidian co-founder and Grounded 2 director Chris Parker explains why the sequel happened, as opposed to building on the original game. "Grounded worked on Xbox One, it was very hard to continue working on that platform and continue to expand the world and do everything that we wanted to do. And so there's that sort of technical limitation." This explains why the game is launching exclusively for Xbox Series X|S and PC.

Granted, Parker admits it would've been theoretically possible to deal with the technical limitations, but "there were just things that we wanted to do that I think the original team couldn't accomplish, just because the way that they designed the world didn't work for it."

Ultimately, Parker said that this fresh start will allow the game to be supported for even longer, while keeping with the ambitions of the studio. "When we started Grounded 2 it was like, hey, this is our opportunity to build the world from the ground up and kind of give it the legs you're talking about, so that we can continue to add into it, support it, not just through early access, but beyond that as well."

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