It seems that theMicrosoft’s acquisition of Obsidian and the consequent “economic tranquility” deriving from this (if we can speak of tranquility, considering the thousands of dismissals recorded in the last two years) have brought benefits to Avowedwhich in this way was able to remain single player without the necessary additions to push more on a wider audience.
In the last episode of the documentary published to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the team, the developers of Obsidian talk about Avowed and the origins of the new RPG arriving this year on PC and Xbox, also talking about how the project has been revised once the studio was acquired by Microsoft.
The issue also confirms the fact that Avowed, at least in terms of design, was evidently already in the developers’ thoughts before the acquisition of Obsidian, which took place in 2018, despite the game being officially presented only a few years later.
The multiplayer made it more attractive to other publishers
Obsidian boss Feargus Urquhart reportedly initially pushed to make the project as as attractive as possible to publisherswhich at the time (as probably today) resulted in the need to include multiplayer elements.
This was the idea to make the game “interesting for publishers”, but this changed after the Microsoft acquisition.
“One of the things I insisted on a lot was that Avowed would be multiplayer, and I kept doing that for a long time. Ultimately it was a bad decision to keep pushing,” Urquhart explained, “The reason I did it is that when we were still independent, and we had to sell the project to publishers, this would have been more interesting for publishers, according to industry standards. And when you ask for 60, 70, 80 million you have to have something interesting to talk about. Multiplayer came from this necessity.”
Once the acquisition was completed, Obsidian no longer needed to find the support of a publisher. Although obviously decisions on projects must pass through Microsoft, this seems to have granted a certain creative freedom to Obsidian, which was able to structure Avowed as a Single player RPG classic style, in the style of the team.
Avowed returned to show itself on video during the Xbox Games Showcase and also in a subsequent in-depth video, while recently possible indications have emerged on how long the game lasts.
