Avowed is going to have some tough RPG competition on the next-gen of consoles. Cyberpunk 2077 and The Elder Scrolls 6 will both be vying for the first-person open-world RPG market, but Obsidian does have one key way to get ahead.
Obsidian’s work on Fallout: New Vegas demonstrates one way that Avowed can distinguish itself. It’s a feature included in New Vegas that some of the most popular Skyrim mods have tuned to a fine craft, and it’s one the developers’ next game should have at launch if it wants to fly and not to flop: survival/hardcore modes.
Games like Skyrim and the first-person Fallout games were never known for their depth, and that’s not why fans fell in love with the games. The greatest strength of the genre was the breadth of its world and the utter freedom that it gave players to make their own story within it, prescribing no backstory and making the main quest as unobtrusive as possible.
Some of the most exciting parts about Skyrim and New Vegas were experiencing the scale of the world when much of it was still mostly unknown, spelunking into caves to find hidden treasure or overcoming parties of bandits on the roads.On top of that, Fallout: New Vegas included a Hardcore Mode which introduced survival elements like water, food, and rest to make them even more realizstic.
One mod which became immensely popular for Skyrim was Frostfall, which ascribed different warmth and coverage values to all the clothes across Skyrim and made the player have to factor in warmth, camping, and other survival aspects into the game on their journey. Eventually, a survival mode did come to the base game in one of Skyrim‘s many special editions, but it was not there at launch.
This complemented the base game fantastically. Early adventures like climbing up the mountain by Riverwood to get the Golden Claw from Bleak Falls Barrow suddenly became far more intimidating, as players at the top of the mountain needed to make sure they’re brought the right supplies with them to avoid passing out from exposure. Travelling from Riverwood to nearby towns like Falkreath turned from simple journeys where the player could aim for the map marker and sprint in that direction into hikes which needed to be planned.
While some players might worry this could make exploring the game world burdensome, it encourages far more exploration. Other adventures often sprung up along the way when players were given greater incentive to hide in caves at night or to avoid bad weather. It is unlikely Bethesda will include survival in TES6 at launch, especially considering the modding community it has built up, giving Avowed a unique advantage if it includes this feature on its console release.
If Avowed is going to make its world the main character of the story as the studio did in New Vegas, that world needs to feel intimidating. Replicating the real size of a fantasy country is impossible on current engines without procedurally generating environments, and to make the setting of Avowed feel huge, Avowed needs to include a Survival Mode in the game at launch.
Avowed should expand upon the survival system the team began developing for Fallout: New Vegas to include Frostfall’s use of weather dynamics, clothing, heat, wetness, exposure, and night, all of which factor in to the PC’s comfort level. The game should also look to Skyrim mods like Mythical Ages to revamp weather and to make the climate seem like a more realistic adversary, making a sunny day all the sweeter.
Obsidian is facing tough competition for Avowed and needs to distinguish itself. Avowed should include Survival Mode at launch to provide all players with a unique experience, one which Skyrim’s modding community has demonstrated complements the fantasy formula and which Obsidian’s team has shown themselves capable of with New Vegas. Otherwise, Avowed may never be able to live up to Skyrim’s legacy or step out of its shadow if Obsidian doesn’t take some chances.
Avowed is in development for PC and Xbox Series X.
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