Xbox Game Studios leak offers early details of Obsidian and Compulsion games

An Xbox Games Studio leak has revealed details on two upcoming exclusives.

The new game projects in the works at Pillars of Eternity and Grounded studio Obsidian and We Happy Few studio Compulsion Games are outlined in a recent Windows Central report. The two projects are apparently codenamed Pentiment and Midnight, and while it looks like official reveals for either may still be a way off, the report goes into a fair bit of detail about their general concepts.

Pentiment is apparently the new Obsidian game being led by Fallout: New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire director Josh Sawyer: players control an investigator in 16th century Europe who is looking into a "grisly murder." It sounds like Pentiment will take some cues from Disco Elysium as it presents a non-combat-oriented RPG tale, with a branching narrative shaped by whom you accuse and the consequences of those accusations. It's reportedly set to launch sometime in 2022.

Midnight will be Compulsion's first game as an Xbox studio, and it sounds like it has ambition to match: it's apparently a third-person action game set in a dark fantasy world inspired by American southern gothic literature - but there are also mutated harpies and other strange beasts you wouldn't normally find in, say, a Cormac McCarthy novel. It's meant to be a coming-of-age story and an exclusively single-player experience, and the report says it may be due for a reveal or even launch in the next couple of years.

While it grabbed headlines at the time, the real fruits of Microsoft's recent game studio shopping spree will be revealed in the next few years - and if this leak is anything to go by, we have a lot to look forward to.

See what else Microsoft and its partners have cooking with our look ahead at upcoming Xbox Series X games.