Avowed Developers On Making A Game Where "The Politics Are As Dangerous As The Creatures"

Summary

Avowed offers a new adventure in the Pillars of Eternity universe, taking players to unseen places with new characters.
The game is more story-focused than open-world, allowing players to choose weapons from magic to firearms.
Companions play a key role in the storyline, representing different cultures and viewpoints in the Living Lands.

Avowed will take players back to the Pillars of Eternity universe, bringing them into a brand-new adventure in the world of Eora. The release from Obsidian Entertainment will take players to never before seen places in the established universe, introducing a myriad of new characters alongside a few long-time fans will recognize. Though there's still a lot under wraps, this week's Xbox Showcase during Summer Game Fest offered a bit more insight into what players can expect.

Though Avowed began as an Elder Scrolls-inspired game, it’s since taken on an identity all its own, becoming much more focused on story than crafting a completely open world. The game’s protagonist has just arrived in the Living Lands when the title begins, having been sent to investigate a mysterious plague. Players will have a slew of choices when it comes to both weapons on their journey, with Avowed offering everything from magic to firearms, and they’ll fight alongside a roster of interchangeable companions that are integral to the overall narrative.

"We Want Players To Experiment": Avowed Developers Explain How Combat Is All Up To You

Avowed's game director Carrie Patel and art director Matthew Hansen explain how the combat and skill system was built for every type of playstyle.

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Screen Rant spoke to Avowed’s game director Carrie Patel and art director Matt Hansen during this week’s Xbox Showcase event to learn more about the game’s characters, combat, and how it fits in with the Pillars of Eternity universe.

The World & Weapons Of Avowed

Expanding On Pillars Of Eternity & Making Customizable Combat

Screen Rant: Can you talk a little bit more about where this fits into the established Pillars of Eternity universe and lore, that sort of thing?

Carrie Patel: Yeah, it takes place a few years after the end of Deadfire, but the events and the story, and most of the characters, are pretty separate from the previous games. If you come to Avowed as a fan of the previous Pillars games, you'll certainly see a few characters you recognize, including Inquisitor Lodwyn. You'll definitely hear references to events and places that you may be familiar with, but if you're a fresh player, there's nothing there you have to know. It really just builds and fills out the world because this is a new adventure, a new story, and largely a new set of characters.

Matt Hansen: And very critically, a new protagonist. In Pillars 1 and 2, you play as the Watcher of Caed Nua. You're not that guy now. You're an entirely different person, as Carrie mentioned earlier from the Aedyran Empire, so lots of room to explore.

In of watching the combat and everything in Avowed, it has a really, really distinct art style. Can you talk a little bit about what made you guys want to make it look so different than a lot of other games and how you landed on the aesthetic that you have?

Matt Hansen: For me, I am a big fan of fantasy games and fantasy genre. I'm also a big fan of vibrant worlds. What you often see, and it's a really useful effect, is a lot of fantasy games will go with a more muted palette, a grimmer look, because it's an instant draw to nostalgia. You immediately feel like you're being transported to an older world because we associate that color palette with history, even though in reality, history was just as vibrant as today minus all the LEDs and things like that.

Carrie Patel: The fifties weren't black and white? [Laughs]

Matt Hansen: The fifties weren't black and white. Wild, right? And so, I wanted to tap into that, just because I think conflict is so much more interesting when it's in color, in full color.

Also, just the world is a wonderful palette to draw inspiration from. The other half of that is the Living Lands itself, as it's referenced in our prior games, is this exotic and very dangerous place. When people think of exotic and dangerous, they think of things like poison dart frogs and all of these very vibrant forms of danger. We wanted to tap into that here as well, but also, within our game, there are areas where it is a little more muted. We can play into that duality and play into those contrasts.

Humans perceive contrast - that's how we perceive everything, the contrast between things. Having an area that's a gloomy swamp, and going from that to a vibrant red desert, to an ashy waste and flipping between all of those different areas, it makes the world feel very, very grand. The Living Lands is a single continent, but it feels like you're traveling across the entire planet between all of these different biomes, so we really wanted to tap into that.

In of combat, I know that this is a really interesting blend of melee and magic, but also something that you don't often see in this style of game, which is that firearms are in the mix too. Can you talk a little bit about how players will be able to customize the way that they want to fight in this game?

Carrie Patel: Yeah, Avowed is a classless game. We have a range of weapons and also a range of abilities that players can choose from. By design, those things are flexible. We wanted to encourage players to experiment, and we wanted to encourage them to really find and define their identity in the world through the way that they choose to play. We've got ability trees based around your traditional warrior archetypes, your traditional ranger archetypes, your traditional wizard archetypes, and you can mix and match freely between those. One that Matt [Hansen] and I were talking about earlier is, if you like your dual pistols, like I do, you can shoot at guys from a medium distance, charge on in to close the gap and do a little bit of knockback, and then switch to your one or two-handed melee weapon, and go to town on everybody.

You can also - if you've got a few skills that you're really interested in maybe late in the wizard tree, but you don't want all the stuff that's in the middle - you can spend those early points wherever you want, and then whenever you reach the appropriate level, invest in those big, powerful spells that you've been really excited about. We really wanted all the players' choices to lead them to things they were interested in playing and experiencing. We don't want players to feel like they have to invest points in areas they're not interested in. The goal really is flexibility, adaptability, letting players experiment with a wide range of abilities, your traditional melee weapons, some really fantastical, magical weapons, firearms, and also your bow and arrow for players who like that as well.

Avowed's Companions & Perspective Switch

Making Meaningful Party & Transitioning From An Isometric View

Avowed female character holding a glowing staff, a blue skinned man is behind her.

I know companions are also a really key part of this game, not just in combat, but the story as well. I'm sure you probably can't talk about it too much in detail, but what can you tell me about the role that they'll be playing and the options players will have when it comes to making their party to their liking?

Carrie Patel: Yeah. We wanted our companions to feel really closely integrated into the story. In most of our past games, companions are optional. You can kill them if you want. But with Avowed, since we really wanted them to be part of the journey, we wanted to create this sense that it's almost that scene in Annihilation when you see the four characters walking into the bubble, going into the - I forget what they call it, Beyond the Veil or whatever it's called - but this sense that you're in this big dangerous world that is beautiful but hostile, the politics are as dangerous as the creatures, and you've got a very small squad and you're in this fight and this journey of discovery together. With that sense, the four companions that you meet will be required party , but we've invested a lot in making them feel interesting, giving them distinct combat roles and just making them helpful parts of the journey to really complement the player.

Matt Hansen: One of the aspects of them that I think is, for me, super critical too, is you're coming to the Living Lands as the envoy of an empire with the goal ostensibly of taming it. Each of the companions provides a counter viewpoint. They all represent different cultures within the Living Lands itself, and so as you're meeting them, you're learning more about the place through them in a way that feels a lot more intimate, because you've built these connections with these characters. It's a nice opportunity as you meet more and more of them as you unlock them throughout the story to kind of go, "Why really am I here? What am I doing? These people mean so much to me. Who of them should I be listening to really define the future of this place?"

When you were bringing it over from isometric to first-person, what did you find - besides, obviously, in the grand scheme of things, you have to think from a whole new perspective - but what other things did you find were the hardest to translate into that new environment?

Carrie Patel: I think one was definitely that sense of understanding the players. What is their height and what is their view of the world at all times and how are we guiding them through it? That's something that we've definitely iterated a lot on in the later phases of production as we've really been honing and refining our levels, and our design is just understanding how you guide the player organically from one spot to another, how you call out these enticing little corners where there's something optional to find, but you still make it feel like a very player-led discovery. Just understanding what the player sees, where their attention is drawn and how to make moving through a level feel interesting and dynamic rather than confusing and disorienting, which is very easy to do in first-person.

Matt Hansen: Yeah. I mean, Carrie hit it really, really straight on. The challenge of not knowing what the player will be looking at at any point is so much different than a isometric game. You know what exactly what the framing will be, always, and so, realizing, "Oh yeah, the player might look up. We should probably do something up there", it has been fun.

Carrie Patel: Or problematically, they rarely look up.

Matt Hansen: That's true.

Carrie Patel: How do you get them to look up when you need them to? When we're writing companion barks where you're exploring the world or you're exploring some dungeon, a very early piece of friction we had to work through is we'd place these triggers where it'd say, "We crossed this threshold and your companions will bark about this thing", and three quarters of the time it's like, "I don't understand why my companions are just talking about that tower. I'm looking over here." Understanding what the player's going to be looking at, understanding where we can just make something a look-at trigger, but like Matt said, knowing that where the player's attention is drawn is a lot less predictable in that first-person game.

Matt Hansen: Even past exploration, when you're in combat, you might be looking over here, you might not see the enemy over there. We have companion barks, "On your right, on your left", as you'll see in a lot of first-person games. That has brought just so much more awareness to the player's ability to get through combat without getting owned from behind constantly.

Of course, I would be remiss if I didn't ask just if there's any sort of timeline in mind for when players might get to finally get their hands on this game?