David Goldfarb, whose credits include working on Battlefield with DICE, and later leading the development of Payday 2, has announced a new indie studio called The Outsiders, and has revealed that the fledgling studio will be working on an RPG.
Goldfarb confirmed to Eurogamer that he's been working on the concept for some time, and eventually turned to fellow studio co-founder Ben Cousins for assistance. Cousins is known advocate of free-to-play, but Goldfarb says that people shouldn't assume that means anything in relation to the studio's first game, a title that he acknowledges will be his "first real stab" at making an RPG.
"I've done it kind of informally at a lot of places I've worked... to much chagrin," he said. "I have a certain way of working that's not the best way... it's just how it is. So now at least it's in the right context I'm doing this. I've loved RPGs all my life and have been shoehorning elements of them into games I've made over the years with lesser or more success. This is an opportunity, anyway."
The Payday 2 game director also talked about creating a game with a flexible narrative, not dissimilar to the ideas recently discussed by Bioshock creator Ken Levine.
"I have another way I want to try and do that. But I think it won't be a game of cut scenes," he said. "If the guys at Naughty Dog want to go do that-and they're superb at what they craft-then that's awesome. I would rather find the stories that exist in... people use the sports analogy a lot, but when you play Madden, for example. The dream is to combine some of that with some of this."