"Avowed: A Unique Mix of Destiny and Skyrim"

In a revealing interview with Bloomberg, Carrie Patel, the second game director of Avowed, provided insight into the tumultuous development journey that saw two years of work being discarded. Initially, Obsidian Entertainment set out to create Avowed as a blend of Destiny and Skyrim, with ambitions to merge cooperative exploration in a vast open world with dynamic multiplayer elements.

The excitement sparked by the first teaser trailer in 2020 belied the reality: the game was far from finished. Mere months after the trailer's release, the decision was made to abandon the project entirely and begin afresh. Today, that teaser serves as a nostalgic reminder of an early prototype that shares little with the game that eventually launched.

After the reboot, Carrie Patel took the helm as game director and steered Avowed in a new direction. She moved away from the initial inspirations of Skyrim and Destiny, opting to eliminate the open-world and multiplayer aspects. Instead, Obsidian returned to their strengths, adopting a zone-based structure and concentrating on delivering a rich single-player narrative deeply connected to the Pillars of Eternity universe.

Restarting the project mid-development posed significant challenges, comparable to making a movie without a script. Teams worked relentlessly under uncertain circumstances as the leadership team endeavored to forge a unified vision. Despite these obstacles, it took another four years of development before Avowed was ready for release.