Even though it hasn’t received much attention, Obsidian Entertainment’s Avowed is one of Xbox’s major exclusives. Set in the same world as Pillars of Eternity, specifically the Living Lands, it sees the player as an envoy of the Aedyr Empire, investigating a mysterious plague.
While the focus is on companions and systemic elements with no class restrictions, there have been several changes throughout development. The developer was originally intent on making this their Skyrim before focusing on more “confined” stories. The final part of its 20th Anniversary documentary also revealed that the project was co-op focused early on.
CEO Feargus Urquhart said he pushed for Avowed to be multiplayer and “kept on that for a long time.” It was when the studio was still independent, and he felt it was “a more interesting game to publishers.” However, due to being too focused on co-op, the team changed its pipelines, how it wrote conversations and more, not focusing on what it was good at.
Urquhart realized this was the “wrong decision”, and Avowed became a single-player RPG. It releases in 2024 for Xbox Series X/S and PC, and is comparable in size to The Outer Worlds and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2. Stay tuned for more details.