# Feargus Urquhart - Maker: Game designer - Houses: Interplay Productions, Black Isle Studios, Obsidian Entertainment - Canonical: https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/feargus-urquhart/ > The Interplay tester who built Black Isle Studios, shepherded Fallout, Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment to market, then founded Obsidian Entertainment and kept the classic CRPG alive for three decades. **Why it matters:** Urquhart ran the Interplay RPG division that published the late-1990s CRPG renaissance, then led Obsidian from contract developer to crowdfunded Pillars of Eternity and a place inside Microsoft. ## Quick answers **Who is Feargus Urquhart?** The Interplay tester who built Black Isle Studios, shepherded Fallout, Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment to market, then founded Obsidian Entertainment and kept the classic CRPG alive for three decades. **What is Feargus Urquhart known for?** Feargus Urquhart is best known for Planescape: Torment, Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Pillars of Eternity. **Why does Feargus Urquhart matter to fantasy and games?** Urquhart ran the Interplay RPG division that published the late-1990s CRPG renaissance, then led Obsidian from contract developer to crowdfunded Pillars of Eternity and a place inside Microsoft. ## Life Feargus Urquhart is a Scottish-American game developer whose name, and whose studio's name, point back to Scotland. His career has been spent almost entirely in Southern California's Orange County, first at [Interplay Productions](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/interplay/) in Irvine, the company [Brian Fargo](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/brian-fargo/) had built on *The Bard's Tale* and *Wasteland*, and then at the studio he co-founded nearby. ## Work Urquhart began at Interplay in the early 1990s as a tester; his first credits include *The Bard's Tale Construction Set* (1991), a follow-up to [The Bard's Tale](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/the-bards-tale/), and *Out of This World* (1992). He moved quickly into design, writing and production, working as producer on games such as *Rock n' Roll Racing* (1994) and *Blackthorne* (1995). By 1996 he was heading Interplay's internal role-playing division, which he named [Black Isle Studios](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/black-isle-studios/) after the Black Isle peninsula in Scotland. Over the next few years Black Isle, and the external RPGs it oversaw, produced one of the richest runs in computer-game history. Urquhart was division director on *Fallout* (1997), was designer and producer as well as division director on *Fallout 2* (1998), and supervised Interplay's publishing of BioWare's [Baldur's Gate](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/baldurs-gate/) (1998). Seeing what BioWare's Infinity Engine could do, and under pressure from above to use Interplay's [Planescape](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/planescape/) license, he asked [Chris Avellone](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/chris-avellone/) to lead the project that became [Planescape: Torment](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/planescape-torment/) (1999). He then put a team to work on [Icewind Dale](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/icewind-dale/) (2000), a dungeon-focused Forgotten Realms game on the same engine, followed by *Icewind Dale II* (2002). In 1999 IGN's RPG Vault made him the first winner of its Unsung Hero of the Year award, noting that he was quick to deflect credit onto his teams. Interplay's finances deteriorated at the turn of the century. Black Isle's in-house fantasy project *Torn* was cancelled in 2001, and as Interplay's troubles mounted, Urquhart left in frustration in 2003. On June 12, 2003, he co-founded [Obsidian Entertainment](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/obsidian-entertainment/) with Avellone, Chris Parker, Darren Monahan and Chris Jones. Interplay laid off the whole of Black Isle that December, and *Baldur's Gate III: The Black Hound* was cancelled with it. Obsidian spent its first decade as a contract developer, often making sequels to other studios' hits: *Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords* (2004), *Neverwinter Nights 2* (2006), *Fallout: New Vegas* (2010) and *Dungeon Siege III* (2011), along with its own *Alpha Protocol* (2010). Cancelled publisher projects brought the company close to collapse more than once, most seriously in 2012. That year, at designer [Josh Sawyer](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/josh-sawyer/)'s urging, Obsidian turned to Kickstarter with a return to the Infinity Engine style: [Pillars of Eternity](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/pillars-of-eternity/), funded by more than $3.9 million in pledges in 2012 and released in 2015, followed by *Tyranny* (2016) and *Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire* (2018). In November 2018 Microsoft acquired Obsidian, which became part of what is now Xbox Game Studios. As studio head Urquhart has since overseen a widening slate: *The Outer Worlds* (2019), *Grounded* (2020), *Pentiment* (2022), and, in 2025, *Avowed*, on which he was executive producer, *Grounded 2* and *The Outer Worlds 2*. ## Legacy Urquhart's gift has been less that of a single auteur than of a builder of rooms where others could make their best work. Black Isle under his direction gave Avellone, Sawyer and many others the room to make games of unusual ambition, and Obsidian carried that culture forward through two decades of contracts, crises and reinvention. The Infinity Engine lineage he helped cultivate runs from Baldur's Gate and Torment through Pillars of Eternity to the renewed appetite for party-based RPGs that culminated in [Baldur's Gate 3](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/baldurs-gate-3/). For visitors to this museum, he is the steady hand behind the curtain of the [Collapse & Renaissance: Cards, Vampires & Baldur's Gate](https://www.lanternhall.org/chronicle/collapse-and-renaissance/): the division chief who helped the CRPG come back to life and then kept the lights on for its descendants. ## Facts - He started at [Interplay Productions](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/interplay/) as a game tester, with an early credit on The Bard's Tale Construction Set (1991). - He named [Black Isle Studios](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/black-isle-studios/) after the Black Isle in Scotland, the country of his ancestry. - As division director he oversaw Fallout (1997), [Baldur's Gate](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/baldurs-gate/) (1998), [Planescape: Torment](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/planescape-torment/) (1999) and [Icewind Dale](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/icewind-dale/) (2000). - In 1999 IGN's RPG Vault gave him its first Unsung Hero of the Year award. - He co-founded [Obsidian Entertainment](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/obsidian-entertainment/) on June 12, 2003, with Chris Avellone, Chris Parker, Darren Monahan and Chris Jones. - Microsoft acquired Obsidian in November 2018. ## Sources and further reading - [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feargus_Urquhart) - [Wikipedia: Black Isle Studios](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Isle_Studios) - [Wikipedia: Obsidian Entertainment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsidian_Entertainment) --- From The Lantern Hall (https://www.lanternhall.org/), a museum of fantasy literature and roleplaying games.