Avowed is Obsidian Entertainment’s upcoming first-person fantasy RPG. After the studio seemed to take on Bethesda and the Fallout franchise directly with its RPG The Outer Worlds, Obsidian’s new game sets its sights on The Elder Scrolls.
However, Avowed will have to be far more than “Skyrim 2” in order to succeed in a vastly different landscape to the one The Elder Scrolls 5 was released in and the standards it set. Avowed will have to distinguish itself, but luckily, there’s some ways Obsidian might be able to pull that off.
Avowed returns Obsidian fans to the world of Eora from the studio’s two Pillars of Eternity games, though like Fallout before it the franchise’s isometric top-down viewpoint will be swapped out for an Elder Scrolls’-esque first-person perspective. Not only is Avowed also a fantasy, but certain aspects like the lost Engwithan civilization and its vast underground ruins are particularly reminiscent of Skyrim’s Dwemer among other similarities.
Avowed is likely, in part, relying on its superficial similarities with The Elder Scrolls as part of its plan for success. After all, since The Elder Scrolls 6 was announced back in 2018 there have been almost no updates on the project apart from Todd Howard’s claim that the game will make extensive use of procedural generation. Both Skyrim and Oblivion also used procedural generation to some extent, so even that reveal doesn’t tell fans much. With Bethesda’s Starfield, a new IP, set for release before The Elder Scrolls 6, fans could be in for a long wait.
Bethesda has also damaged its reputation in the last few years, particularly with the release of Fallout 76 which even Howard himself described as having “let a lot of people down,” putting Obsidian in a great position to snap up some of the larger studio’s share in the market. However, Avowed can’t just recreate The Elder Scrolls if it wants to be truly successful.
For Avowed to cement its place as a top-tier RPG as gaming enters the next generation, the game will need to deliver on some of the promises that past open-world RPGs have failed to realize, but which have often been used as selling points. Dynamic AI which feel like they live their own lives, for example, was promoted as an Elder Scrolls feature all the way back in Oblivion, and when the game released it quickly became apparent that the NPCs were far more scripted and less reactive than the marketing had suggested despite the game’s success.
Avowed could take the opportunity to address some of the biggest criticisms of Skyrim. It’s possible in Skyrim, for example, to become the faction leader of almost every major group in the land, and yet not only will very few NPCs notice, the player themself rarely has the opportunity to mention their accomplishments.
Avowed could include battles which surpass those in Skyrim’s Civil War, which were reduced to parties the size of raiding bands. That didn’t strike too many players as odd – after all, cities like Whiterun were very small in-game, so taking them over with a small force made more sense. However, Avowed could also deliver on cities and towns which feel realistically sized like the ones in The Witcher 3, as opposed to Skyrim’s cities which sometimes had as few as 20 residents.
Avowed could also take advantage of its setting. The game will be set in the Living Lands, described as a “lawless land where communities band together, fall apart, and fight petty wars with each other constantly.” A frontier setting is a great opportunity for a more dynamic faction system where groups can build settlements, expand their territory, take over and rule other cities, and so on. It could even include a Fallout 4-style town-building mechanic where players can begin to build their own communities.
Skyrim’s followers leave a lot to be desired in terms of personality, with many sharing the same default lines and few having their own quests or stories. Even later Bethesda games like Fallout 4 and companions like Nick Valentine have far more compelling stories than Skyrim’s followers. If the characters in Pillars of Eternity are anything to go by, players may be in luck, and Avowed could easily get the jump on The Elder Scrolls 6 by throwing players into a large open world which doesn’t sacrifice non-player character depth.
Combat will need to be as intuitive as Skyrim’s, but could certainly be tightened up significantly. There are plenty of Skyrim mods which the developers of Avowed could look at to see how gamers have made Skyrim’s combat, which often devolves into a war of attrition, more exciting. Magic, similarly, could be a far more rewarding skill to learn than in Skyrim, where every character starts the game with some basic spells like Heal while simply learning new spells via books.
One aspect of The Elder Scrolls formula that Avowed should not change, however, is the level of roleplaying freedom the games afford their players. Skyrim players can escape Helgen and simply never complete the main quest, never becoming the Dragonborn. Their backstory is left completely up to the player’s imagination, giving them the ability to roleplay as whoever they want.
It may be tempting for Avowed to establish more about its player character in pursuit of a more character-driven story. However, if the game is going to take the most successful parts of Skyrim while stepping out from its shadow, that weight should really be carried more by the NPCs while players are given enough variety in terms of both origins and dialog options to engage with scripted characters in interesting ways. There are still many details about Avowed which have yet to be announced. It remains unclear which direction Obsidian will be going with, but one thing is for certain: by taking on The Elder Scrolls, Avowed takes on high risks, and the possibility of even greater rewards.
Avowed is in development for PC and Xbox Series X.
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