Obsidian Entertainment’s upcoming RPG Avowed is one of the most hotly anticipated titles for the Xbox Series X. However, while fans know it will be set in Obsidian’s Pillars of Eternity universe, very few details have come to light about the game’s story, hero, or villain.
However, there are hints in the trailer and from the world of Pillars of Eternity that could indicate that one character will be playing a major role in Avowed. While the true nature of the game’s villain has yet to be revealed, fans are already making the connections to one of Pillars of Eternity’s strangest figures: Woedica.
Woedica is one of the gods in the world of Avowed. Like all of the gods, she was created by an ancient civilization known as the Engwithans. These people designed the gods from “ideals, and an ideal on its own is a grotesque and vicious thing.” In Pillars of Eternity, she is allies with Scaen the Quiet Slave, who is the god of resentment, rebellion, and secret hatred, demonstrating the flip-side of Woedica’s strict adherence to hierarchical “justice.”
In Woedica’s case, the ideals core to the goddess are justice, oaths, law, promises, rightful rulership, and hierarchies. Like all of the gods of Avowed, Woedica’s idealistic origins create both opportunities for good and for great evil. While Woedica, for example, is the goddess of justice, she is also the goddess associated with strict authoritarianism as a result. Depending on who in the Pillars of Eternity universe the player asks, she is referred to as The Exiled Queen, The Burned Queen, the Oathbinder, or The Strangler.
Though all the gods are based upon isolated ideals, Woedica is also associated with idealism itself and the dark side of dreaming of a peaceful but strictly ordered universe. The phrase “when Woedica takes back her throne” is used among the Kith races of Pillars of Eternity to refer to events that would only take place in a universe where all justice has been restored, including Woedica taking her place once again as the Queen of the gods, which she was for a time before they overthrew her.
For now, the Avowed teaser trailer is all fans have to go on in their attempts to figure out the story. However, there are some great reasons to assume that Woedica could be featured heavily in the game. For a start, the trailer mentions war’s ability to turn “heroes into queens and kings.” Woedica is the goddess of rightful rule, and therefore would likely be involved in this process, with the original heroes who founded their dynasties being more rightful in their rule than their descendants who inherited leadership.
The voice in the trailer continues, saying that “now our oaths are lost.” Woedica is the goddess of oaths, making it seem likely that those original dynasty-founders either made some sort of explicit bargain with the goddess, or that in a metaphorical sense the failure of those dynasties to remain worthy of the kingdoms they rule is a betrayal of the oath their ancestors made. Either way, it is the player protagonist who “must face the monsters our sins have born.”
It seems very likely that even if Woedica is not the direct villain in Avowed, that all the talk of broken oaths, kings and queens, and of sin is meant in some way to hint at her involvement in punishing the kingdoms of Eora. Even if she is not directly involved, the Kith races in Avowed will likely associate their suffering with Woedica, and some will likely be tempted to rationalize that, in some terrible way, justice is being restored. In that case it will likely remain up to the player to decide whether Woedica’s form of justice is truly desirable, or whether a new path distinct from the old hierarchies can be forged.
Avowed is in development for PC and Xbox Series X.
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