Five That Fell
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In the late '80s, Interplay came out from under EA's wing and began publishing for itself; soon after, it started to publish for other developers. Then in 1997, Interplay released a pseudo-sequel to its 1988 post-apocalyptic RPG Wasteland; since EA retained the rights to Wasteland, the follow-up was set in an alternate world and renamed "Fallout". Fallout proved such an enormous success for Interplay so great was its effect that it spurred a whole new generation of computer RPGs, just as it seemed the genre had petered out that Interplay chose to spin off the internal division led by Feargus Urquhart responsible for the game.
The resulting studio, Black Isle, became soon renowned as the leading force in computer RPG design both internally and as a host for the young BioWare. The two studios began to build on each other's achievements: Baldur's Gate essentially infused Fallout with the 2nd Edition AD&D rule set, while Planescape: Torment often cited alongside Fallout as one of the best computer games of all time built on the Baldur's Gate rules and technology, to produce a sort of anti-RPG.
Through the early 2000s, Black Isle chugged along, putting out about one game a year to the Fallout/Baldur template, most of which garnered huge praise and somewhat diminishing sales. Then in December of 2003, in the midst of Interplay's financial woes and a long and ugly divorce with BioWare, Interplay abruptly laid off the studio's entire staff; to date, no official explanation has been made. A number of ex-Islers started up a new studio called Obsidian, to resume their relationship with their old chums at BioWare.
