Avowed Developers Wanted Every Single Quest To Matter
Director Carrie Patel explains what makes Obsidian's approach to open-world RPGs so different.
A big part of what makes Avowed one of the year’s best games isn’t its punchy combat or remarkable art direction, but its efficient use of player time. Across its 30 to 50 hour runtime, Avowed cuts much of the fat that players come to expect from similar games in the open-world RPG genre while still feeling like a grandiose fantasy adventure.
Every part aspect of exploring The Living Lands, from the way leveling and gear works, the scale of its four open-world hubs, the frequency of its side quests, and even its dialogue trees, makes each passing hour feel meaningful and optimized to push the player forward at a steady pace. Avowed’s director Carrie Patel says that the no-frills approach to Avowed’s very familiar formula is by design and a staple of Obsidian Entertainment’s philosophy.
Players never feel like they’re wasting time exploring Avowed’s The Living Lands.
“One of our strengths as a design studio is in our quest and our narrative development. That's not just writing dialogues for characters, it's also how we tell the story through the players’ experience in the world through the things they see and encounters they have,” Patel told Inverse. “And for that to really come together, you have to have intentionally placed content.”
New role-playing epics casually demanding more than 100 hours from their players have become the new norm. It’s far from a problem, as games like Persona 5, Baldur’s Gate 3, and Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth are some of the finest games crafted in recent years. But when there are so many great games vying for your time and attention, it's a breath of fresh air to play something that feels like it has a sense of urgency to it in comparison.
Obsidian has found a lane all to itself in recent years defying this trend. It’s no stranger to creating gargantuan worlds. Players can easily spend over 110 hours in Obsidian’s older works like Fallout: New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity. But since 2019’s critical hit The Outer Worlds, the studio has made a habit of stripping the role-playing genre it's been a master of for over two decades to its most essential qualities and accentuating them.
Obsidian is no stranger to lengthy, sprawling role-playing games.
“Everybody's busy nowadays. I don't think any of us are looking for things to fill hundreds of hours just to keep ourselves busy,” Patel said. “We want experiences players have to be meaningful and enjoyable and really add up to something that they're gonna value and remember.”
When filling out Avowed’s four regions, the team drilled down to the most important motifs of each first. The story of the land, the aesthetic and vibe of its winding roads, desecrated ruins, and bustling cities were all set in stone.
From there, building the themes, threats, and ideas of its optional quests was about making sure it either complimented the game’s main story or supplemented the broader adventure players are on at that point in the game.
“We’d ask ‘Where are they along the crit path and how can we build out side content that informs that story without rehashing the exact same beats?’” she said. “A lot of our sidequests also have a bit more humor. Even if they're not necessarily lighthearted quests, they have some interesting character moments.”
It’s this meticulous planning that allows Obsidian’s games to feel like they respect the player’s time.
“It's all about having the high-level idea, an initial plan of what kind of experience you want to build with the content. It has to be intentional,” Patel said. “And you continue to iterate and monitor the progress of that work so that you can fulfill a good player experience, not be too wedded to ideas just because they sounded great on paper six months ago.”
Avowed kicks off a strong few months for publisher Xbox Game Studios this year. After Obsidian’s fantasy adventure releases next week, the publisher is dropping the graphically stunning South of Midnight, followed by the JRPG-inspired Clair Obsur: Expedition 33.
