Obsidian originally found success with its first game, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 - The Sith Lords in 2004. The developer was founded by former members of Black Isle Studios who already had a wealth of experience in developing RPGs, having worked on series such as Icewind Dale and Fallout. To this day, the developer has mostly kept its projects within its RPG roots, but it has experimented with other genres and styles of role-playing experiences over the years. Its current slate of games represents a mixture of its role-playing expertise and some new directions for the comp

Announced in July 2020, Avowed is a first-person action-RPG that's coming at an unspecified date, and it looks set to be one of Obsidian's largest projects ever. Avowed was immediately compared to Skyrim , thanks to its fantasy setting and first-person perspective, but Obsidian have a large well to draw from to make it stand out as a more unique title. The game is a spin-off of Obsidian's RPG series Pillars of Eternity, and it's set in the same world. Where Pillars is a classic throwback RPG, Avowed is very much set to take a more action-orientated spin on the world of E

There is one key way that the world of Avowed may not be like Tamriel. The game's universe has been shown to have significantly more modern technology than most of The Elder Scrolls ' world. Many fans will be wondering, however, if that means Avowed will include g

Lovecraft's Azathoth and The Elder Scrolls ' Godhead are both consciousnesses that exist beyond reality. Lovecraft's other powerful beings like Cthulhu are still ultimately subject to the subconsciousness of the Blind Idiot God, while Tamriel's Nine Divines are still just figments of the Godhead's dream

While Avowed is undoubtedly a huge undertaking, Obsidian Entertainment somehow has another project in the works that could be equal to the scale of Avowed, if not greater. Josh Sawyer, design director at Obsidian Entertainment, took to Twitter in August 2020 and noted in no uncertain terms that he's directing his own project and that the project isn't Avowed. Josh Sawyer worked on the Icewind Dale and Neverwinter Nights series early in his career. More recently, he was responsible for pitching Pillars of Eternity which saw the company get out of a tight financial spot, and went on to direct the two games in that series. He's perhaps most well-known for directing Fallout: New Vegas, a fan-favorite entry in the post-apocalyptic RPG ser

Skyrim has a few explicit Lovecraft references. The Daedric prince Hermaeus Mora appears in the Dragonborn DLC as a shifting mass of eye-like orbs, inky darkness, and tentacles. Lovecraft fans will see the similarities between Hermaeus Mora's design and descriptions of Yog-Sothoth, who is described as a group of "malignant globes." Mora's domain, esoteric knowledge, is also strongly tied to Lovecraft's the

It is possible that guns may still exist in Avowed , even if the game is set some time before the Pillars of Eternity games. Avowed will be set in the Living Lands , a wild northern frontier filled with competing factions and strange beasts. It may be that the Living Lands are less technologically developed than the heart of Eora's empires, but that more modern technology like guns can still be fo

If nothing else, the fact that Obsidian has shown that Eora has the capacity to change technologically could make it more immersive than many fantasy worlds. The Elder Scrolls Online , for example, revealed that the surface civilizations of Tamriel have been technologically stagnant for at least a millennium. It may be unlikely that players will have access to guns in Avowed , but the full extent of the game's combat system has yet to be revealed. Even without guns the spell system in Avowed has the potential to satisfy the itchy trigger fingers of players with a love of ranged combat and explosi

This bodes well for The Outer Worlds 2 , which was announced at E3 2021. The game's trailer parodied the early announcements of other games - particularly RPGs like Cyberpunk 2077 and The Elder Scrolls 6 - suggesting it's in very early development. In that case, The Outer Worlds 2 could be in Obsidian's back pocket, with the announcement trailer designed to keep interest in the studio's upcoming releases as it works on Avowed . In other words, the fact that both Avowed Secrets and The Outer Worlds 2 are "in development" doesn't actually mean that Obsidian is dividing its resources evenly between the games, or anywhere cl

Unlike The Outer Worlds , Avowed also needs more enemy variety, and more ways to deal with non-essential NPCs beyond mowing them down in great numbers. The game could also do with a fully fleshed out crafting system. The more roleplaying variety the player is offered in Avowed , the bet

The gods of Eora , the setting of Avowed, have some surface-level Lovecraftian influence. Wael is the god of mysteries, dreams, and revelations, resembling both the dreaming Godhead and Hermaeus Mora in The Elder Scrolls . Wael is covered in eyes and mouths resembling the malignant globes of Azathoth. However, there's one main difference between the role Lovecraft's influence plays in Tamriel and Eora that changes everyth