Microsoft acquired Obsidian Entertainment way back in 2018, which feels like a lifetime ago now with how much Xbox has changed in the years since. For most of that time, Avowed has been in the works over at the California-based developer, but did you know that the game was going to be a co-op RPG before Xbox stepped in?
Pulled from the finale episode of its 20th anniversary documentary, Obsidian talks about the origins of Avowed and how it was in development for roughly eight months as a multiplayer game. Studio head Feargus Urquhart "really pushed" this move to make it an "interesting game to publishers", but all that changed when the team was acquired by Microsoft.
"One of the things where I really pushed was that Avowed was going to be multiplayer, and I kept on that for a long time. In the end it was the wrong decision to keep on pushing on it. Why I had done it, was that when we were still independent and we were selling it, it was a more interesting game to publishers. And, when you're asking for 60, 70, 80 million you've got to have something interesting to talk about. Multiplayer made it interesting."
In the end, Obsidian has gone on to develop Avowed so that it's in-line with "what they're best at" - that being single-player RPGs with lots of dialogue options and player-driven decisions. The team is now on the final stretch of development, and it seems happy with the direction it eventually took.
Speaking of that final direction, we actually saw very recently that the game will be playable in either first or third-person, with the choice of camera view left totally up to the player. If you want to see a short clip of Avowed third-person in action, check the link down below.