Obsidian head wanted Avowed to be a multiplayer game at one point

While Grounded is a great survival game, many fans of Obsidian Entertainment became fans through single-player RPGs. At one point, Avowed was going to be more multiplayer-focused as part of an internal effort to entice publishers into helping with the project. 

Prior to being acquired by Microsoft, Obsidian had spent decades as an independent studio and constantly had to hustle to keep things going. In a particularly bad period between projects, Obsidian turned to Kickstarter to fund Pillars of Eternity, a decision that ended up saving the studio from going under. Avowed is a new first-person RPG, set in the same universe as the Pillars of Eternity games.

In a portion of the Obsidian 20th Anniversary Documentary, co-founder Feargus Urquhart confirmed that at one point, he “really pushed” for Avowed to contain multiplayer, as it would enable him to sell it as a ‘more interesting game' to publishers in hopes of securing funding and partnerships to see the game through to release.

Looking back on this, Urquhart says that he now believes this was “the wrong decision” and ultimately, Obsidian did drop its multiplayer hopes, in part due to difficulties restructuring the team's usual workflow to accommodate for multiplayer and co-op gameplay. Now, Avowed is set to be the type of RPG most fans follow the studio for.

Avowed does not have a release date yet but it is expected to launch sometime in 2024 for PC and Xbox Series X/S consoles.

KitGuru Says: Most RPGs struggle to incorporate co-op in a way that makes sense to me or is completely user-friendly. There are usually some caveats and the gameplay experience is typically very different from a polished single-player game. Obsidian has Microsoft's backing now, so it will have the ability to try out new ideas in the future but in the meantime, sticking to single-player for Avowed will be considered the right choice by many fans. 

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