Avowed is one of the most exciting action RPG titles released in recent years, and it would be great to see it get a sequel. I really enjoyed my playthrough of Avowed, and it has quickly become one of my favorite titles. That said, if Obsidian decides to move ahead with an Avowed 2, I have a few things I’d like to see the sequel do a bit differently. There are also some elements from the first game that I think would need to come back, but in a slightly different way to make the sequel feel fresh.

Avowed is a great follow-up to the Pillars of Eternity games, and the series maps well onto the action RPG genre. That said, having played Pillars of Eternity, there are some elements from those games that I think would greatly improve an Avowed sequel. It might be easier for the Avowed team to include some new mechanics that they likely had to leave out of the first game since they were building it from the ground up. With Avowed as a solid base, a sequel could likely expand its scope in multiple ways.

Avowed 2 Should Explore More Of The Living Lands

Avowed Teases Unexplored Regions

One thing an Avowed sequel should definitely do is let us explore more of the Living Lands. Looking at the map of the region in Avowed, and seeing all the parts of it we didn’t get to visit feels almost like a promise that the game designers had ideas for more regions to explore. While these could potentially be visited in future DLC, a full sequel to Avowed would let each new region have the same depth and impact on the main story as the ones in the first game.

Eora is a big world, so it wouldn’t be unheard of for an Avowed sequel to also take place in a completely different part of the map than the Living Lands. While it would make it easier for the developers to incorporate choices from the first game if players were far from the Living Lands, it would still be a shame not to explore more of the region before the series branched out to other parts of the world. Seeing the region’s future shaped by Avowed’s many choices would also be an impressive feat for the game to tout.

Avowed’s Next Protagonist Should Be More Customizable

Avowed’s Character Creator Was Limited

If Avowed 2 follows the same model as the Pillars of Eternity games, then players would take on the role of the Envoy again in the sequel. However, I think it would be nice if the protagonist of the next game allowed for more flexibility in their creation and backstory. Although this would mean a new protagonist, it would allow Avowed to have as wide a range of possible characters as the Pillars games.

Players have to be a Godlike in Avowed, and they can only be a human or elf Godlike. It would be nice if Avowed 2 had a protagonist that could be any of the kith in the region, be that Aumaua like Kai, or Orlan like Yatzli. Having a different protagonist could also allow for a wider range of backstories. Instead of having to be an envoy from Aedyr, players could choose a background that best fits the type of character they wanted to role-play as.

Avowed 2 Should Add More Classes From Pillars Of Eternity

Avowed 2 Can Build On The Existing Classes To Add More Complexity

It makes perfect sense that Avowed couldn’t just include every class from the Pillars of Eternity games as they were. Some skills wouldn’t perfectly translate into the new style of game, and it would have been difficult for Obsidian to try and include everything in the first game. However, now that Avowed has a strong base, it might be possible for a sequel to expand on the class options from the first game. That said, it should keep the same style of class building as Avowed.

I wouldn’t want to see Avowed 2 lock characters into a class. I like the flexibility of the first game, and the ability to respec on the fly. That said, it would be nice to get another skill tree or maybe two to add some more variety to the classes. While Avowed includes shades of classes like Monks, Barbarians, and Rogues in its current builds, it would be nice to get another tree for casters, or even something unique like a Druid tree that allows players to turn into animals (which also seems like it would fit Avowed’s nature themes).

Avowed 2 Needs To Ditch The Bears And Get New Enemies

Avowed’s Enemy Variety Left Something To Be Desired

Avowed succeeds in a lot of areas, but enemy variety isn’t one of them. Every region of the map throws some combination of bears, beetles, spiders, and Xaurips at you, with the only region-specific enemy being the Maegfolc who appear primarily in the Garden. While the different regions of the Living Lands are nicely differentiated by their biomes and the culture of the people living there, the world feels a bit flatter when you see the same types of creatures everywhere.

Avowed 2 should include a wider variety of enemies, and attempt to restrict different types of enemies to different parts of the map. This would help the Living Lands feel more like a real place and less like a video game world populated with reskinned versions of the same enemy types. It could also help Avowed 2 pay off some of the environmental storytelling set up in the first game.

An Avowed Sequel Should Deliver On The Promise Of Massive Creatures

Avowed’s Environment Hints At The Existence Of Cool Creatures We Never See

There are several visual cues in Avowed that the Living Lands are (or at least were) home to some massive creatures. One of the most obvious is the Leviathan skeleton hanging over the marketplace in Thirdborn, but this is far from the only one. Another good example is the massive skeleton near the Watcher’s Mirror in Dawnshore that appears to belong to some sort of dragon. There are also Xaurip drawings of dragons on the rock walls in Shatterscarp.

After seeing these hints at the types of creatures that lived in the Living Lands, I got excited, wondering if I might run into some of them. Unfortunately, these elements were more an indication of the region’s past than its present. I’d love to see that change in a sequel to Avowed, and get a chance to encounter a dragon or some other massive creature in the Living Lands.

Avowed 2 Should Respect Choices Made In The First Game

Avowed 2 Can’t Risk Cheapening The First Game’s Story

Choice plays a major role in Avowed, and any sequel should honor the choices the player made in the first game. It would be a shame if the first game presented you with so many ways to shape your experience, only for a subsequent game to settle on one canon ending. This would also mean the replayability for both games would build on one another, as players would have even more possible outcomes to explore.

Now, I know this is potentially a big ask. When I spoke to some of Avowed's devlopers, they made it clear that there needed to be a limit on how far certain choices branched out, otherwise the game would never get finished. One possible solution could be taking a cue from a previous Obsidian game, Knights of the Old Republic 2. The game introduced a new protagonist from its predecessor and led you on a tangential path that was only lightly affected by the events of the first game.

This model would allow Avowed 2 to honor player choice, while not presenting an overwhelming amount of work for incorporating Avowed’s many different endings into a sequel. That said, if an Avowed sequel did manage to follow the first game’s protagonist and honor all the choices made, it would be impressive. Possibly impressive enough to help market the game with that as a selling point.

Avowed 2 Needs A Fresh Batch Of Companions

Avowed’s Companions Were Closely Tied To The Regions From The First Game

Avowed’s companions all have unique personalities and elevate the game’s story through the relationships you can form with them, but it would be hard for a sequel to reach the same emotional heights if it used the same companions as the first game. All four companions experience a lot of personal growth throughout the campaign, and bringing them back would risk them not having much to do. Just look at how each subsequent Star Wars movie struggled to find things to do with Han Solo after his character arc had been completed.

Avowed’s companions also had close personal ties to the regions you were exploring. Kai spent a lot of time in Thirdborn, Giatta and Marius grew up in Fior and Solace Keep respectively, and Yatzli was studying the Godless in the Living Lands. New companions would allow Avowed 2 to introduce characters who have similarly strong ties to the new regions you’re exploring, helping both with exposition and creating a stronger emotional connection to each location.

Avowed 2 Should Be As Flexible With Item Upgrades As Avowed Is With Skills

Avowed Allowed You To Respec Classes, But Gear Made This Difficult

One of the best aspects of Avowed’s skill trees was the ability to completely respec at any time. This allows you to make dramatic changes, like completely swapping between builds or just reallocating points within your class. Unfortunately, the same flexibility isn’t extended to upgrading weapons and armor. There is a limited amount of upgrade materials in the world, and disassembling the armor or weapons you upgraded doesn’t give you all the materials you spent on it back.

It would be nice to see Avowed 2 carry the flexibility of its class builds over to its weapons too. Like Avowed, there should be a limiting factor to this, similar to how you need gold to respec your points. Maybe you would need to find a specific merchant later in the game that would be willing to trade upgraded weapons for the amount of crafting material you used on them. Either way, it would be nice if it was at least possible, so you could swap between weapons as easily as you can classes in Avowed.

Avowed 2 Should Keep The Same Creative Team

Avowed’s Game Director Has Hinted At Wanting To Make More Content

Avowed’s Game Director, Carrie Patel, made a compelling argument for an Avowed sequel in an interview with Bloomberg:

"Now that we've built this wonderful world, and also built this team strength and muscle memory around the content and gameplay in this world, I'd love to see us do more with it."

As Patel’s statement implies, it would be a bit of a waste for Obsidian not to capitalize on the momentum of the first game and use some of that creative energy to keep building new content in the world of Avowed. Not only does the team now have a better idea of how to work within that world, but they also likely have more ideas that couldn’t make it into the final game.

Keeping the creative team from the first game would give Avowed 2 a head start on development since they already know what they’re doing. This would also allow the developers to build on the strong base established in the first game, instead of having a new team coming in and trying to recreate what was already done. Hopefully, Patel gets her wish, and she and the rest of the Avowed team will be allowed to continue their work on a future project.

Avowed 2 Should Make Traveling Between Regions Part Of The Game

Jumping Between Regions Seamlessly In Avowed Takes Away From The Sense Of Adventure

Although I enjoyed each region of Avowed, I couldn’t help feeling less immersed in the world when I quickly traveled from one to the next. Adding in a transitional level between the regions would have helped make me feel more like I was actually on a journey through a dangerous land. These could be single instances that just happen the first time you visit a new region, a quick encounter on a small map that gives you a snippet of what your journey was like.

Although I don’t think this is fully necessary, I think it would help add to the sense of adventure in Avowed. Hopping seamlessly between regions in a game like The Outer Worlds makes sense since you’re traveling there in your spaceship. However, in a fantasy game, I would like there to be transitional steps between destinations, similar to what was in the Pillars of Eternity games.

Source: Bloomberg