The big news that’s at least partially Obsidian-related this week is the release of the Wasteland 2 Vision Document. Obsidian Entertainment will, of course, be lending some development firepower to inXile Entertainment. And based on this, it’s a very promising-sounding project for them to be helping out with:

RPGs haven’t kept pace with time — they’ve regressed and even worse, taken pride in less role-playing than before. Important elements have been lost over time, sacrificed to technology, art constraints, voice-over expenses, and multi-platform console constraints. Wasteland 2 has no such limitations, it brings these RPG elements back, takes them out of the attic, and makes them part of gameplay again.

True RPGs allow options, allow you to make fundamental choices in customization and character creation, and most importantly, allow you to role-play and make your impact in a living world and see the consequences around you.

And by consequence, we don’t mean token one-node lip service, we mean reactions, even a chain of reactions that builds over the course of the game. Even simple RPG elements such as the ability to write your own character’s bio (frequently lost in the console generation), importing your own portraits of your characters that you like better than what a developer gives you, to larger, more important goals such as tactical combat and extended options to approach battles and fights.

In Wasteland 2, these RPG mechanics are there to be discovered all over again…

Click the link above to check out the full document, as well as a few pieces of concept and research art.

Meanwhile, over at the RPG Codex, Obsidian’s Josh Sawyer sat down alongside the Codex to interview Arnold Hendrick about Darklands. Sawyer also contributed some retrospective commentary about the game.

Now, let’s move on to Bethesda. I missed covering them yesterday when Pocket had some late-evening kittens, and there’s been a fair bit of news related to them over the last seven days.

The latest patch for Skyrim — version 1.6 — has been released for both Xbox and PC, bringing mounted combat (among other things) to the game.

And of course, the Dawnguard beta has kicked off; beta invites have been sent out to a tiny handful of players (approximately 1% of applicants received invites).

A handful of previews have also been released, along with a video interview with Matt Carofano, the expansion’s lead artist. If you’re playing the game on Xbox, you should also find some new clothing is now available for your avatar.

Now here’s something that should relieve…well…some of you: The Elder Scrolls Online is not all that World of Warcrafty. That said, it is also more of an MMORPG than an Elder Scrolls game, as far as such things are defined. But: will it redefine the MMO space? It sounds like it aims to try, and Zenimax Online certainly has their fair share of confidence in the game.

A handful of previews and interviews concerning the game have come out in the last week, along with still yet more previews and interviews. The game got a lot of publicity at E3, and continues to do so in the wake of the exposition.

Which brings us at last to Dishonored, the upcoming bit of what-really-looks-like-awesome from Arkane Studios. Bethesda are evidently quite stoked for the game (which they’re publishing); their booth at E3 was decked out in Dishonored-related props. Check out these screenshots if you haven’t yet taken a look at anything related to the game; it looks gorgeous and the gameplay seems highly promising. The game is also apparently quite breakable, but in a good way.

Finally, don’t miss Wil Wheaton’s interview with Todd Howard: