Obsidian, the studio behind The Outer Worlds and Pillars of Eternity, is looking to hire some fresh blood for an upcoming project. While they have multiple projects in development right now, including an Outer Worlds sequel and a new first-person RPG called Avowed, the most likely candidate for the new hire seems to be its Disco Elysium-inspired murder mystery game. This deduction is based on what we know about the in development games and what the job listing is asking for.
Josh Sawyer, the studio design director for Obsidian, posted a link to the job listing on Twitter. In the post, Sawyer announces that the studio is “looking for a 2D animator for a Unity project”. While not a lot of information is given in the tweet, he does note that candidates who have “Spine familiarity” are a big plus. He then links to the official posting for the job, which goes into further detail about the responsibilities and requirements for the position.
Over on Reddit, several sleuths dissected the job listing and concluded that the 2D animator will be working on Pentiment, a murder-mystery RPG inspired by Disco Elysium that is currently in development. The biggest piece of evidence for this is the mention of Spine in the ad. Looking at the other games that Obsidian has in production, both Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2 will run on the Unreal Engine. While Pillars of Eternity is a 2D RPG, those games utilize Unity for animation. This leaves Pentiment as the best option for a game running off Spine, a 2D animation software.
While not a lot is known about Pentiment at the moment, we do know that Sawyer will be at the helm. The game will focus on a 16th-century investigator who is looking into a grisly murder set against the backdrop of the Renaissance. Focusing on narrative, the title will also be made by a rather small team to give it a more “indie” feeling.
Of course, nothing has been confirmed or denied quite yet. Still, it is likely that whoever gets the position will be spending a lot of time diving into the murder of a Renaissance individual.