Black Isle Studios

Black Isle Studios is a developer.

Black Isle Studios was an American development studio founded in 1996 and officially dissolved in late 2003 due to the financial troubles of its parent company, Interplay Entertainment. The studio's headquarters were located in Irvine, California, and Feargus Urquhart was one of its leading figures.

Aside from the more action-oriented Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance series, Black Isle Studios was best known for creating classic isometric cRPGs set in post-apocalyptic (Fallout 2) or fantasy worlds (Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader, Planescape: Torment, the Icewind Dale series). Obsidian Entertainment, founded by Feargus Urquhart after Black Isle's dissolution, also remained faithful to this genre.

History

In 1996, Feargus Urquhart established Black Isle Studios as a division of Interplay Entertainment, an American company specializing in video game development and publishing. Two years later, it officially adopted the name, which was inspired by a Scottish peninsula - Urquhart's homeland. Many of Black Isle Studios' developers had worked on the original Fallout, but the sequel is regarded as the studio's first official release. During the game's development, disagreements with Interplay led some of the studio's employees to leave and establish their own company, Troika Games.

In the following years, the Black Isle Studios team made a significant contribution to the development of computer cRPGs, collaborating with BioWare on the first two installments of the renowned Baldur's Gate series, and later creating their own productions with a similar atmosphere, such as Planescape: Torment and the Icewind Dale series. Because of Interplay's worsening financial situation, titles like Torn and Stonekeep 2: Godmaker were never released. The studio's last project was the second game in the console sub-series, Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, which launched in 2004.

On December 8th, 2003, Black Isle Studios was closed and all employees were laid off, halting work on future projects such as Baldur's Gate III: The Black Hound, Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance III, and the original version of Fallout 3, later developed by Bethesda Game Studios in 2008. Most of the former Black Isle Studios employees continued their careers at Obsidian Entertainment, a studio founded by Feargus Urquhart.

In August 2012, nearly nine years after its closure, Interplay chose to revive the studio, keeping just two original members: Mark O'Green and Chris Taylor (not the Chris Taylor from Gas Powered Games). The first game from the reformed Black Isle Studios was Project V13, designed as a spiritual successor to the canceled Fallout Online. The game was never released, and despite the launch of a new Black Isle Studios website indicating a return to RPG development, the studio's future remains unclear.