Last week, we finally got a proper look at Obsidian’s new role-playing game Avowed. It was one of the handful of exclusive Xbox games at the Developer Direct, so the spotlight was searingly on it. But while there were things I was encouraged by – I really liked the otherworldly, colourful setting – there were other things I was less convinced about, and a bit confused about. Because for all it was billed as a deep dive, this showing, I didn’t come away with a solid sense of what we’ll do in the game besides fight, so when Obsidian offered me a chance to talk to Avowed game director Carrie Patel and gameplay director Gabe Paramo afterwards, to clear a few things up, I took it.
Avowed is the first-person RPG set in the same world as Obsidian’s Pillars of Eternity series, Eora, but which plays very differently. The Pillars series is a real-time-with-pause, traditional CRPG, played from an isometric viewpoint. Avowed, on the other hand, pulls you right into the character’s body to see through their eyes, meaning you’ll both see and experience Eora in a completely new way.
However, something worth stressing is that while the world of Eora is the same for the Pillars series and the Avowed games, their specific settings within that world don’t overlap at all. As game director Carrie Patel explains to me – she who has worked all through the Pillars series of games, by the way, so knows them very well – Avowed takes place on an island continent called the Living Lands, which is far, far away from the Eastern Reach and its nearby archipelago where the Pillars games take place. There’s a huge amount of ocean in between.
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