When Avowed was first unveiled back at the Xbox summer showcase of 2021, a dark and moody CGI trailer of burning arrows and fantasy spell-and-sword dual wielding – all from the studio behind the likes of Pillars of Eternity and Fallout: New Vegas – positioned it as something of a first-party Skyrim for Xbox.
In the years since however, it’s become increasingly clear that’s simply not the game we should now expect from Avowed. It’s bright and colourful, it’s seemingly dialogue-heavy, and as we learned in further explanations of the game’s combat it is, if anything, only quite loosely an RPG. As Avowed’s director, Carrie Patel, put it to Eurogamer last year after a slightly unconvincing first demo of its combat, “the reference point we’ve been trying to point people to is The Outer Worlds.”
Since then, things have been a little quiet on the Avowed front, but over the weekend Xbox showed another trailer, this time with emphasis on the game’s overarching story – though again it was a little light on anything truly new. Thankfully, we also had a short roundtable interview with Carrie Patel again after the showcase ended, who spoke alongside the game’s art director Matt Hansen and was able to outline just a little more of what we can expect.