Avowed's game director says it has plenty of missable secrets and subtle choices, shows off extended gameplay

Following its appearance at the recent Xbox Developer Direct, Obsidian has offered some fresh insight into what players will be in for when they delve into its upcoming fantasy RPG Avowed. The answers, you’ll no doubt be glad to hear, mention a lot of the stuff that people have loved in the likes of Baldur's Gate 3.

Yes, we’re now at the point at which every big RPG that comes out is inevitably going to be likened at least a little bit to Larian’s big tadpole-infested baby, especially if sounds like it’ll let people spend ages wandering around in search of things and chewing the ears off of NPCs. However, in this case it sounds like that might be warranted, even if it’s just because we don’t feel as comfortable saying non-spacey/CRPG-style things are a bit like The Outer Worlds.

In the Xbox Wire write-up that arrived alongside an Official Xbox Podcast episode featuring an extended look at the quest gameplay we saw at the Direct, Avowed’s game director Carrie Patel said that there’ll be plenty of stuff in it that you can easily miss in Eora. According to Patel, that quest itself “is entirely discoverable, which means it’s also entirely missable” as you navigate the game’s world, which is made up of open zones that are “comparable [size-wise] to The Outer Worlds areas on the larger side”.

She continued: “One of the big delights of being a developer on a game like this is creating so much for players to find, and knowing that not everybody’s going to seek it out, and not everybody’s gonna find it, but knowing that the players who do are really going to enjoy the secrets they discover.”

So, it sounds like you’d better put aside plenty of time for your first playthrough and get ready to spend plenty of time watching YouTube videos of people showing you how to get the thingymajig long before you’re supposed to get the thingymajig.

Patel also emphasised that the game’ll be something like that egomaniac’s paradise that we all crave from these kinds of RPGs, with all of the big and little choices it offers you in quests and conversations being “centred around letting the player be the main character in this setting”. I don’t know about you, but it’s the whole having virtual people subtly judge me for saying the wrong thing to them that really makes the RPG escapism tick.

If you’ve got time, it’s well worth checking out the full gameplay breakdown for a glimpse at the game’s pretty versatile and fun-looking combat, which the developers said is designed not to lock you into an “enforced class setup” in the name of encouraging variety.

Meanwhile, if you're still struggling with some of Baldur's Gate 3's big choices, make sure to check out our guides covering what to do about Yurgir and whether you shoukd evolve into an Illithid.