Obsidian Entertainment's upcoming RPG Avowed will plunge fans new and old back into the world of Eora after an almost 7-year-long hiatus. Announced back in 2020, Avowed has gone through quite a development journey in the build-up to its long-awaited release.

It's no secret that Avowed has been in the works for some time, having undergone numerous delays. However, Obsidian's much-anticipated first-person action RPG is finally poised for a February release. To learn more about Avowed's time in the oven, Game Rant sat down with several of the game's developers—with game director Carrie Patel answering questions on development.

Avowed's Development From Day One To Today

Q: Let’s go back to day one. Can you talk about the initial “pitch” of the game and how Avowed started? Was it always going to be set in Eora and was it ever going to be isometric? When did “Pillars of Eternity” and “first-person/third-person RPG” come into play?

A: Avowed was always envisioned as a first-person (with a third-person option) action RPG that would draw from our years of RPG development and the rich worldbuilding we’d done for the Pillars of Eternity games. After working on two isometric Pillars titles (and their DLCs) one after the other, we wanted to create new adventures, explore corners of Eora that we hadn’t visited yet, and pursue a style of gameplay that combined the depth and choice focus of RPGs with the momentum and immersion of first-person action. Working with our own IP and in a world that the team knows and loves gives us the continuity to create something distinctly Obsidian and the freedom to develop experiences that are fresh to us and our players.

Q: I know Obsidian uses state codenames for its projects, but I was curious if these are random or if there is any significance, however vague.

A: We pick our state codenames based on the date of admission into the USA. Alas, there is no intentional matching of specific states to projects.

Q: What did the first week, months, and year of Avowed look like?

A: I joined the project as game director in January of 2021 during a creative pivot. We let go of several features and goals pulling us in different directions and focused on the qualities that make Obsidian RPGs memorable: an engaging, hand-crafted world with memorable characters and quests that push players to choose who their character will be.

“Building the tracks while the train is running” was our modus operandi for a lot of development. We had to be fast, flexible, and iterative, and we had to be ready to cut or alter designs, scope, and story beats quickly. It was an incredible challenge, and I’m immensely proud of the team for meeting it and of the game we’ve made together.

Q: Can you talk about the core pillars of Avowed? What are the things you sought to accomplish above all else?

A: Our pillars centered on the setting, companions, and the marriage of action gameplay and RPG mechanics. “A Weird, Wondrous Frontier” was all about bringing the Living Lands to life as a colorful, strange, and explorable world. “Stronger as a Team” meant integrating our companions with the story and the gameplay and giving them co-starring roles as part of the player’s adventure rather than as optional sidekicks. Finally, “Rooted in Pillars of Eternity” and “Moment-to-Moment Momentum” guided our balance between the lore and depth of the Pillars games on the one hand and a more fast-paced and visceral approach to combat and exploration.

How Avowed Has Changed

Q: It’s been over four years since fans saw the first trailer for Avowed. If you look at that as a dividing point, what has changed the most since before that trailer and the product that ships soon?

A: The feel, tone, and story changed significantly from the direction you see in the early cinematic trailer. If you look at that side-by-side with any of our trailers or gameplay demos since you’ll see the difference. Avowed is colorful, nuanced, and weird. There is a sense of impending threat, but it’s lurking behind colorful decay and vibrant visuals rather than a dark and grim palette.

Q: What has the last year or so of Avowed’s development looked like?

A: As a team, when you hit your stride, find the fun, and discover those seamless rhythms of working together, everything falls into place. You’ve not only figured out how to do your best work but also how to build upon your teammates’ best work. You’ve discovered the moments, combats, and quests that shine, so you work to elevate more of your game’s content to meet those high points. Time is short, but you can do so much with it when you’re clear about priorities.

At that point, we could see what was working best in the game and what we still wanted to improve a little more. We built in more moments of conflict and drama for companions, strengthened the arc for our most mysterious character, found opportunities to build more connections and consequences in content across the game, punched up the fun and flavor of the player’s response options, and iterated on combat and economy balance to create gameplay that would remain compelling throughout the player’s journey. You learn about every game as you’re developing it, and you have to continuously find opportunities to improve and build on your successes without destabilizing your foundations.

Avowed's Ties To Pillars of Eternity

Q: What were some of the lessons learned from the Pillar games’ development that directly informed Avowed? What about The Outer Worlds?

A: I learned an important creative lesson and an important production lesson from working on those games. Creatively, I learned there is great value in having a clear, on-screen antagonist to embody your themes and conflict in a character that players can love or hate. From a production standpoint, I learned that it’s good to be ruthless about cuts and to make them early. No one wants to trim areas or features from the game, but your schedule (and your bone-deep dread) will tell you when something isn’t coming together quickly enough.

As painful as it can be to cut and work around it, it’s much better to do that before you’ve invested time, resources, and love, and you’ll move on faster than you think. I’ve seen plenty of hand-wringing about cuts that feel painful in the moment, but somehow, our games and DLCs always end up with more content and a fuller experience than we think we’ll get.

Q: Pillars had a more stringent and traditional class system than Avowed’s more open-ended system. Despite this, I was curious if it was still possible to create the same sort of “player fantasy” as Pillars’ more unique classes, like the Cipher or Chanter?

A: Given the smaller party size in Avowed where you’ll have two companions plus your player character at any one time and the faster-paced approach to combat, Pillars classes that relied heavily on party buffing and support and on dealing a wide array of afflictions wouldn’t translate quite as easily to Avowed. However, between the ability trees and powers granted by unique items and gear, players can build characters that excel at crowd control, damage dealing, and tanking.

Additionally, our elemental interactions allow players to attack their enemies creatively and take advantage of their environment. You can spec into some pretty creative builds by mixing and matching between ability trees and items. Players who enjoyed playing Chanters or Ciphers in Pillars will appreciate summoning spells and items as well as spells that can immobilize and drain health from enemies.

One of my favorite “discovery” builds is Monk—players can take Iron Fists from the Fighter tree to bolster their unarmed combat, Flurry of Blows from the Ranger tree to unleash super-fast attacks, and health-boosting passives to improve their survivability.

Q: In contrast to the two Pillars games, crowdfunding played no role in Avowed. How much did this change things for development, and how big of a role did Microsoft/Xbox Game Studios play in that?

A: Crowdfunding meant that our development cycle was more publicly visible for the Pillars games—that gave us a venue to share our progress and highlights, but preparing and presenting those updates takes work, and it can be difficult for folks outside of development to grok the context of something that’s work-in-progress. The more traditional development process for Avowed has allowed us to keep our time and focus on the game itself. Microsoft and Xbox have been wonderful partners in this journey, giving us the freedom and support to make Avowed an Obsidian game in the Obsidian way.

We’ve got performance support from both The Coalition and Microsoft’s Advanced Technology Group, and Microsoft’s User Research team has given us invaluable playtesting data that helped us hone the clarity and flow of the opening hours of the game.

Q: How has community feedback, either from Pillars or since Avowed’s first trailer, influenced the game?

A: Community feedback has reinforced our push to deliver on the qualities that make Obsidian games stand out: giving the player the freedom to define their character and to bring their choices to life in gameplay, quests, and dialogue. It’s been heartening to see our community respond enthusiastically to the various options and endings of “Dawntreader,” the quest we previewed at Gamescom, and to the variety and flavor of the player’s response options. Player feedback has also helped us confirm our priorities for further development.

It’s always a challenge and a risk to show footage while you’re still in production, but a clear piece of player feedback that came out of our Developer Direct deep dive a year ago was that there was more work to do to land the moment-to-moment feel of combat. The gameplay team was actively working on enemy hit reactions and combat behaviors, and hearing that these were the improvements our players wanted to see helped us focus our efforts.

Q: Can you talk about the sound design in Avowed and what the team felt was important to achieve with it?

From Zac Simon (Senior Technical Audio Designer) and Dylan Hairston (Senior Sound Designer): When designing the audio for Avowed, we felt it was paramount to respect and pay homage to the iconic sound of the Pillars universe, but modernize it and make it work for the shift in tone and gameplay style that Avowed brings to the player.

We wanted the player to feel truly transported to another world, and our world of Eora is teeming with magic, fantastical environments, and otherworldly creatures, most of which require audio made from scratch. It was important to us to maintain the player's immersion and not only facilitate, but amplify the work that our wonderful teammates in art, gameplay, narrative, and so on have put into the game.

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