{"id":828818,"date":"2025-02-21T20:11:58","date_gmt":"2025-02-22T02:11:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/21\/avowed-was-originally-pitched-as-skyrim-destiny\/"},"modified":"2025-02-21T20:11:58","modified_gmt":"2025-02-22T02:11:58","slug":"avowed-was-originally-pitched-as-skyrim-destiny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/21\/avowed-was-originally-pitched-as-skyrim-destiny\/","title":{"rendered":"Avowed Was Originally Pitched As Skyrim + Destiny"},"content":{"rendered":"

Entertainment <\/p>\n

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Obsidian Entertainment\u2019s Avowed<\/em><\/a><\/span> <\/em>is a wonderful single-player RPG featuring large fantasy zones to explore and chatty companions. But that wasn\u2019t always the plan. In fact, it was originally designed as an online game similar to Destiny<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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Suggested Reading<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n
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The Week In Games: A Rebirth, A Remake, And A Remaster<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Suggested Reading<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n

According to a new Bloomberg <\/em>article<\/a><\/span>, Avowed<\/em><\/a><\/span>\u2014out now on Xbox, PC, and Game Pass\u2014started life back in 2018 as something the then-independent Obsidian could present to prospective buyers. The game was planned to be the Fallout: New Vegas <\/em>and Pillars of Eternity<\/em> studio\u2019s magnum opus and was going to be an online fantasy RPG mashing together Destiny<\/em> and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. <\/em>The ambitious pitch called for players to adventure together online in a huge open world. Later in 2018<\/a><\/span>, Microsoft bought Obsidian and work continued on Avowed<\/em>. But the game struggled to come together, and by the time Xbox announced Avowed <\/em>publicly in 2020<\/a><\/span>, Obsidian had cut the multiplayer out entirely. <\/p>\n

Then in January 2021, Obsidian scrapped that version of the game, which had been in development for two years. Carrie Patel took over as director and she implemented two big changes. The first was to focus more on the world and lore of Pillars of Eternity<\/em>, and the second was to replace the Skyrim<\/em>-like open world with large \u201czones.\u201d This was the same approach used in The Outer Worlds,<\/em> Obsidian\u2019s sci-fi RPG from 2019, and it helped the team build different, varied locales and skip over a ton of technical hurdles. <\/p>\n

\u201cWith any game you think, \u2018OK, we can\u2019t climb every mountain \u2014 which ones are really worth the effort for us?\u2019\u201d Patel told Bloomberg<\/em>. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew from The Outer Worlds<\/em> that we could build a really great game with \u2018open zones,\u2019 and that also adds some advantages in terms of letting you really theme your areas more distinctly and intentionally, and provide a sense of progression as the player\u2019s going from one environment to the next.\u201d <\/p>\n

All that hard work and the messy development cycle, including multiple vertical slices and reboots, paid off in the end, as Avowed<\/em><\/a><\/span> <\/em>has received near-universal praise from critics and has proved a hit for Xbox\u2019s Game Pass service. <\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like I\u2019ve learned so much over the past four years that I wish I\u2019d known at the start of this process,\u201d admitted Patel. \u201cIt\u2019s definitely been a job where the highs are really high and the lows are really low.\u201d <\/p>\n

As for what\u2019s next? Patel says she\u2019d \u201clove\u201d to do more with the Avowed <\/em>team in the Pillars of Eternity<\/em> world. But for now, Obsidian won\u2019t say what\u2019s next for the Xbox workhorse studio<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Zack Zwiezen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Obsidian Entertainment\u2019s Avowed is a wonderful single-player RPG featuring large fantasy zones to explore and chatty companions. But that wasn\u2019t always the plan. In fact, it was originally designed as an online game similar to Destiny. Suggested Reading The Week In Games: A Rebirth, A Remake, And A Remaster Suggested Reading According to a new<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":828819,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[120658,1798,26424],"tags":[120657,13838],"class_list":{"0":"post-828818","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-avowed","8":"category-entertainment","9":"category-originally","10":"tag-avowed","11":"tag-originally"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=828818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/828819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=828818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=828818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=828818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}