Obsidian is increasingly positioning itself to take over Bethesda’s spot in the open-world first-person RPG market. First, Obsidian released The Outer Worlds, a sci-fi satire that clearly posed itself as the spiritual successor to the Fallout franchise. Next, the developer announced Avowed, a first-person fantasy game that both the studio and its fans are hoping could be the next Skyrim.
However, although Obsidian has a great track record, The Outer Worlds shows that there’s still one key story trick from Bethesda that the developer will need to keep in mind if it’s going to provide the same open-world fantasy experience as The Elder Scrolls with Avowed.
Skyrim isn’t known for its main story, as it’s known for its world. This can be said of most of the series, where the Elder Scrolls games’ settings carry almost all of their immersive weight. The story is barely developed by the game itself, but the setting provides enough light roleplaying opportunities and exploration that the player can imagine their character’s internal journey and relationships in the world.
A big factor in this and the replayability of Skyrim is the huge variety of races the player can pick from in the opening, and the great deal of character customization within them. Though the world isn’t very reactive to some of the more alien choices like the Khajiit or Argonians as might make sense, they still provide some unique roleplaying opportunities on the part of the player. Unlike more character-driven games like The Witcher 3, however, the extent of that roleplaying relies very much on the player themself.
Skyrim gives absolutely no reason why the player was crossing the Skyrim-Cyrodiil border, and its absolutely right not to do so. Aside from momentarily being caught in an Imperial ambush, the game establishes nothing about the player or their backstory in the introduction. A player who wants to play as an Altmer spy who got caught in the wrong place and wrong time has as much legitimacy as a Dark Elf attempting to reach family in Windhelm or a Nord trying to escape Skyrim‘s Civil War only to be dragged back in the other direction.
The Outer Worlds has a far more specific introduction than Skyrim. The player is one of the colonists frozen aboard the ship The Hope, and is rescued by a rogue scientist who believes that they can help unfreeze the remaining passengers. It’s a good story hook, but there are a few reasons a story that prescriptive won’t work as well for an open-world fantasy like Avowed.
In Skyrim, the story doesn’t prioritize the main quest until the player slays their first dragon and absorbs its soul. This gives players who don’t want to play Skyrim‘s main quest – or want to roleplay more before doing it – an easy out to go and explore the world of Skyrim without it feeling like they are ignoring the coming apocalypse. In The Outer Worlds, on the other hand, the obligation to help the frozen colonists hangs over the player for the entire game and limits their ability to roleplay as anyone with any backstory.
Furthermore, while the player character’s personality is a blank slate in The Outer Worlds, it is established that they are a particularly skilled individual who was frozen aboard The Hope for years longer than intended. This is too prescriptive a backstory to provide the same breadth of roleplaying opportunities as The Elder Scrolls, even if it means the story has more depth, as demonstrated in The Outer Worlds‘ endings.
Obsidian has been able to pull off a blank-slate protagonist in the past. The only thing established about The Courier from Fallout: New Vegas is that they took a job to deliver a platinum chip that went wrong and were shot in the head. The game gives the player total control over their backstory and just as much reason to seek out revenge as it does for them to count themselves lucky and head out to the horizon in the opposite direction.
Avowed needs to provide exactly that breadth of opportunity. All of the Kith races from Pillars of Eternity need to be playable, and the opening should introduce the world without railroading the PC onto the main quest. It is only by leaving the player character completely up to the player’s imagination that huge open-world games where the player character is a blank slate are able to work without exposing their own lack of depth, allowing the players to totally immerse themselves in the setting.
Avowed is in development for PC and Xbox Series X.
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