Talking to the former Fallout 76 lead about their new studio and occult RPG Wyrdsong

Jeff Gardiner, a Bethesda veteran of 15 years and most recently the project lead on Fallout 76, has announced a new studio and open-world occult RPG with it.

The studio is Something Wicked Games and the project is Wyrdsong, pronounced “weirdsong”, or at least that’s how Gardiner pronounced it on a phone call to me. It’s going to be set in Portugal around the forming of the Knights Templar.

Something Wicked was co-founded with Obsidian veteran Charles Staples in April this year, who led design on Outer Worlds. And the studio is funded by NetEase courtesy of a $13.2m “seed” investment, which means it’s not all the money Something Wicked will need but a wadge to get going with.

The aim is to go pretty big, then – to do the sort of single-player, open-world RPG you’d expect from Gardiner’s and Staples’ backgrounds. It’s a game Gardiner says will have around 70 people working on it, once they staff up from 13, and is still years away – there’s no date attached to it nor do they want to put one on.

In other words, it’s super-early in the development process. This announcement is as much to alert people to the existence of Something Wicked Games, and attract talent there, as much as anything else. All there is to see of Wyrdsong is an animated trailer with a limited amount of artwork, but which exudes a dark and ominous atmosphere – the kind of thing they’re going for in the game.