Rembrandt
the artist
Can you post the source for this?
The first quote is from private Division' wiki. You can go to the outer worlds wiki and see they started development a year before private Division' came to them for publishing.
I can try to find actual quotes/articles/interviews later tonight but all signs point to the first game being an indie release mainly. It's why it's so much smaller in scope location wise and has a less than 20 hour story.
If anything, it kinda blends the line like hellblade did. It's just obsidian almost immediately got bought by MS while the game was still in development and helped out.
Less than they did with inxile/wastelands 3 that was a Kickstarter game, iirc, and now has full voice acting and shyt thanks to MS but more than We Happy Few