Although it was a complicated year for the game industry, 2020 still had a few pretty big game announcements. One of those announcements was Avowed. It's a new RPG in the works at Obsidian Entertainment, a studio famous for its contributions to the RPG genre. Avowed takes place in the world of Pillars of Eternity, one of the RPGs that gave Obsidian its reputation, so fans already know they're in for a treat. Even though Obsidian isn't saying much about Avowed, fans have a lot of reasons to get excited, considering Obsidian's consistent track record of delivering on IPs new and old.
Avowed fans have gone without updates long enough to accept that no news is good news. However, Obsidian isn't staying completely quiet. At E3 2021, it appeared in Microsoft's conference to reveal The Outer Worlds 2. Fans of Obsidian's recent spacefaring RPG wanted a sequel, and now they've got it. As exciting as the game is for fans of The Outer Worlds, though, it raises questions about where Obsidian's priorities lie. It doesn't seem to be in a rush to get Avowed done if it's willing to also make something as important as an Outer Worlds sequel in the meantime. Is Obsidian hurting Avowed by putting The Outer Worlds 2 in the spotlight?
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Avowed was never the only game on Obsidian's plate. In fact, it got announced back to back with Obsidian's charming survival game Grounded, where players take the roles of kids mysterious shrunken down to the size of an insect, forcing them to fight to survive in their own backyards. Grounded is doing well for itself so far, earning fans in early access while receiving regular updates from Obsidian. While it's a charming project that could go far, Grounded doesn't seem nearly as ambitious as Avowed could be,so it never really seemed like an obstacle to Avowed's development.
The Outer Worlds 2, in contrast, throws everything up in the air. The first Outer Worlds was already a bold RPG. Obsidian set out to craft a world with almost no essential NPCs, giving players an incredible level of liberty in how they played the game. It also worked hard to establish The Outer Worlds' companions as beloved characters and to flesh out a totally unique solar system serving as the game's setting. Obsidian earned quite a few awards for its efforts on The Outer Worlds, so it's no surprise that it wants to make a sequel.
The problem with the sequel's confirmation is the context of Avowed. The Outer Worlds 2 will surely be of the same detailed scope as the first game, if not even more intensely detailed. Obsidian now has an enthusiastic Outer Worlds fanbase that wants to see one game blossom into a franchise. With that in mind, how does Obsidian plan on distributing its resources between these two games while also continuing to account for Grounded? What does Obsidian's timeline for development look like with so many influential and hotly demanded games on its hands?
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Obsidian's decision to move forward with The Outer Worlds 2 with Avowed already in the works suggests a few possibilities. One is that Avowed is even farther away than fans expect. With no release date on either of the two games, it's a little hard to say which is supposed to release first. One might expect it to be Avowed, but that's not necessarily true. Avowed has a lot more adapting from its source material to do than The Outer Worlds 2 does. Whereas Avowed is taking Pillars of Eternity into a different RPG style, The Outer Worlds 2 is almost certainly just a direct follow-up to the first game. Obsidian's plan might be to quickly get Outer Worlds 2 out before Avowed, which seems like it could lead to development conflicts and inefficiency.
Alternatively, The Outer Worlds 2 might be very far away, scheduled to release somewhere after Avowed. Obsidian is no stranger to the industry trend of announcing games well before launch, as Avowed itself proves. Even if that's the case, it could still slow down Avowed because it doesn't seem to be near completion. Avowed could be the first to suffer if Obsidian starts shuffling around developers and resources while getting ready for The Outer Worlds 2 well before that sequel plans to release.
The bottom line is that developing both of these RPGs at the same time puts Obsidian under a lot of duress. A lot of eyes are on both Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2. Obsidian may have put itself and its games in a dangerous position by trying to develop them simultaneously. Between the two, Avowed seems the most likely to suffer because it's presumably been in the worlds for longer than The Outer Worlds 2. If the game is nearing the finish line, it's at risk of stumbling during its crucial final development steps because of Obsidian's additional works.
What makes this situation particularly difficult to read into is how quiet Obsidian has been about Avowed. Fans were optimistic that Avowed would show up at Microsoft's E3 2021 showcase since it'd been a full year since the game got revealed. On the contrary, The Outer Worlds 2 was Obsidian's big announcement, rather than a new Avowed trailer giving fans a better picture of the game. Although there are some rumors that Avowed is pretty nearly finished, its absence from Microsoft's showcase doesn't inspire much confidence that it's coming out anytime soon.
The Outer Worlds 2 is definitely a good thing. It's a fantastic opportunity for Obsidian to keep perfecting the first game's best elements while fixing criticisms toward character animation and combat. Hopefully, it doesn't come at the cost of Avowed's development, though. After all, there's plenty of demand and excitement for Avowedtoo. When it got announced, fans were looking forward to it as one of the Xbox Series X's potential heavy-hitting exclusive games. It could and should still be that influential exclusive game that players expected, so long as Obsidian treads carefully around The Outer Worlds 2's development. Obsidian is a talented studio, but any person and any studio can get overambitious, so it had better be mindful of its plans.
Avowed is in development for PC and Xbox Series X/S.
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