It has been a few weeks since Obsidian Entertainment surprised the Microsoft community with the announcement of its first-person fantasy RPG Avowed. Apart from the debut trailer, there is still not much information out there about the upcoming game. Now, it appears that many players are already expecting big things for Avowed, with some hoping for it to become a spiritual successor to Skyrim, at least before The Elder Scrolls 6 releases.
Skyrim is without a doubt one of the most successful fantasy RPGs to date, which is evident with its huge fanbase who has since remained loyal to the game for nearly a decade now. However, if Obsidian truly wants to eclipse the success of Skyrim with Avowed, it must offer an even better gaming experience for players, and one way it could achieve this is to look at one feature from another popular fantasy RPG game, which is BioWare’s Dragon Age franchise.
Although the Dragon Age franchise is not as popular as Bethesda’s Skyrim, at least in longevity, it has one better feature. That’s the way it incorporates the player’s companions in the game. From Origins to Inquisition, companions in the Dragon Age franchise are just as important to the story as the player’s character. Interestingly enough, some companions in the series have since appeared in more than one game, which is something that the player’s character, apart from Hawke in Dragon Age 2, hasn’t done. This just goes to show just how important some companions are in Dragon Age to the overall plot of the franchise.
In comparison, Skyrim’s followers are not as involved in the game’s story as those in Dragon Age are. Sure, players may need to complete a specific side quest for a certain follower to have them follow the player permanently. On the other hand, there are also some companions that would only be with the player during a duration of a specific side quest. However, one thing that is lacking in these followers is a deeper connection to the player and the game’s story. While Skyrim and Dragon Age are similar games in relation to genre, their gameplay is vastly different from one another with the former favoring a true open-world experience while the other putting a heavy emphasis on the story but is still set in a semi-open world environment.
Although it is still unclear which direction Obsidian plans to take Avowed, it could still offer players an even better experience overall by adapting the more in-depth companion system of the Dragon Age franchise even if the game offers the same level of freedom as Skyrim. This way, companions won’t just serve as an extra hand in combat or as extra inventory for players to store their battle loot.
Additionally, having a deeper companion system would also allow Avowed to tell an even better story by offering personal side quests and storylines for companions that would have a bigger impact on the game’s story. Also, having a Dragon Age-level companion system in Avowed would also make romances even more meaningful should the game allow players to pursue companions.
In the end, given that Avowed is still in its early stages of development, there is no way of knowing how the game would eventually tackle the companion system, granted that it has one in the first place. Although there are many elements in Skyrim that Avowed could adapt and even improve upon, it is without a doubt that Dragon Age’s companions are vastly superior to Skyrim’s followers. If Avowed will include memorable companions in the game, then it is already slightly better than Skyrim, at least in that one aspect.
Avowed is in development for the PC and Xbox Series X.
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