Avowed Gets New Trailer, But Still Has no Final Release Date

Today, during the Xbox Games Showcase 2024, Obsidian Entertainment did not announce the release date for Avowed, its first-person action RPG for PC and Xbox Series S|X, which remains slated for a generic 2024 window. However, at least we got a new trailer.

As you might recall, the game was first unveiled at the 2020 Showcase with a CGI teaser trailer highly reminiscent of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which showed a darker art style and dual wielding of spells and weapons. Indeed, it looks like that was the original pitch made by Obsidian, but the project went through a major reboot in 2021 that likely affected its release date.

The new Game Director, Carrie Patel, steered Avowed towards the studio’s traditional strengths: strong characters and dialogue-based choices and consequences. However, the scope was reduced; it is not an open world, and its size has been likened to the studio’s previous games Star Wars: Knights of The Old Republic 2 and The Outer Worlds, which require around 30 to 40 hours to be completed instead of Skyrim’s over 100.

Truth be told, a few days later after this news, another Obsidian developer wrote on a forum to clarify that Avowed would still be larger and more open than those two older games, speculating that the official information might have been shared in order to temper expectations of a massive Skyrim-like RPG.

Earlier this year, Obsidian was given a spot on the Xbox Developer Direct, where fans could finally watch several minutes of gameplay. The combat system’s flexibility was shown with players able to switch seamlessly between various weapon types and spells thanks to the customizable loadouts. The developers also provided an example of a quest where players will get the chance to decide the outcome in a major way.

As a reminder, Avowed is set in the world of Eora, previously introduced in the Pillars of Eternity games. The game will take place entirely on the remote island of the Living Lands. As an envoy of the Aedyr, the player character is sent to investigate rumors of a spreading plague. Once there, players will discover a personal connection to the Living Lands and an ancient secret that threatens to destroy everything.