Following the announcement that Grounded would enter the early access phase (on both PC and Xbox One) on July 28th, Obsidian also livestreamed about 44 minutes of fresh gameplay with commentary from some of the developers. IGN recorded the whole thing and you may now rewatch it in the video below.

　　Microsoft also published a brief video interview with Game Director Adam Brennecke (whom we interviewed last month), where he shared a bit more about the game.

　　At Obsidian, we're really well known for creating awesome storylines, and with Grounded, we want to expand on how we tell stories. I've always wanted to make a survival game. And one thing that we're doing with Grounded is playing a lot of survival games and looking at the genre as a whole to see where we can improve. First, we have environmental storytelling. We want to tell the story through the places that you're visiting, and do it through the artwork and the atmosphere of the areas that you're exploring. That's all handcrafted. We spend a lot of time talking about the tiny little details of why is this thing in the yard in the first place, who put it here, depending on the materials that the things are made out of, how they're placed, what's the purpose of this thing? We want to make all these details where it's actually a place that feels lived in and it feels alive.

　　In the trailer, you've heard a voice and that's our robot buddy, Burgle. Burgle is your buddy and your pal, and he guides you through the adventure. And he's also just the NPC that you can talk to you if you get lost, if you need some help.

　　In the trailer, you notice that we do hint at that there's something else going on in the yard. And we do have secrets and layers to discover. There is some evil force in the yard and you'll discover who they are and what they're up to throughout the story and the adventure. Not only can you play Grounded in multiplayer, and it's a great multiplayer experience, you can also play in single player, we want to support all different types of players. So if you want to be the player who crafts armor and armors up and goes to the adventure, you can do that. If you want to play a stealthy player, you can do that. If you want to just go destroy everything and build up a arsenal of weaponry, you can do that as well.

　　What's really exciting to me is that this is just the start of the journey. When we launch in game preview, the storyline's not going to be finished. I have tons of ideas, I know the team has tons of ideas. I'm sure the community will have tons of ideas on how to make this game the best game that can possibly be. Let us know how you feel about it, what you what you're jazzed about and we'll work with you and work with the community to see where the storyline goes from here.