"Early on in development, we realized that often the Xbox Series X performs better than the PC" — Playing Avowed for the first time while discussing the delay, Xbox performance, and ray tracing

When Obsidian Entertainment unveiled its latest project, a semi-open-world fantasy RPG set in the Pillars of Eternity universe, it immediately became one of my more anticipated first-party Xbox titles. I've adored every Obsidian game I've ever played, and a first-and-third-person fantasy RPG made by that team seemed to be a dream come true. My feelings on Avowed have fluctuated somewhat with each successive reveal and trailer, but now my excitement has never been higher.

During Gamescom 2024, Xbox flew me out to Los Angeles, California, for a chance to go hands-on with upcoming titles from Xbox Game Studios and its partners, including the very first hands-on demo for Avowed outside of Obsidian's studios. After I played the game, I had another opportunity to chat with some of Avowed's devs, this time Production Director Ryan Warden and Art Director Matt Hansen. My fun didn't stop there, though, as I got to play Avowed again — this time with a character build that was otherwise only shown on the Gamescom showroom floor.

I have a lot of thoughts on Avowed and a ton of new insight to reveal, and all of it points to why Avowed is one of the best upcoming Xbox games and absolutely deserves to be on your radar.

Finally getting to play Avowed for the first time

Avowed has shown off gameplay before, but outside of Obsidian's devs, QA team, and a handful of carefully selected play-testers, no one has gotten a chance to personally play Avowed. Gamescom 2024 changed that, giving invited media the opportunity to play one mission with up to three pre-built characters designed around common RPG archetypes (Barbarian, Ranger, and Mage). I was one of the few, and it's what I was most looking forward to when landing in LA.

In the mission, you're tasked with tracking down a missing expedition team within underground ruins dedicated to one of Eora's many gods. It was a great mission for Avowed's first-ever demo, featuring plenty of exploration, branching paths, combat and puzzle segments, choice-based dialogue and investigation, and one (or two) intense boss fights. I spent time as all three of the "classes," eventually finishing the mission and my time with Avowed (or so I thought) with the mage.

It's worth mentioning that Avowed is an entirely classless RPG, and that's 100% by design. Obsidian doesn't want to confine players to any preconceived genre tropes, giving players the freedom to get truly creative. "There are so many different ways to enjoy it and kind of break our combat," said Matt Hansen, Art Director at Obsidian Entertainment. I'll go into more detail in the next section, just know that none of the abilities or combinations I experienced are in any way mutually exclusive.

The first thing that struck me when I first began my new adventure in Eora is just how stunning Avowed looks. I'll be blunt, when Avowed's first gameplay trailer was unleashed, I wasn't blown away by the overall visuals. I never expected Avowed to be a showcase in graphical fidelity, but there was a distinct lack of polish. The game has come a long way since then, though, and I can confidently state that Avowed is gorgeous, even without relying on photorealism.

Obsidian planned for this progression of appreciation, though. "We took a risk with how we wanted to market," Hansen told me. "We decided really early on that we're just going to show the game exactly as it is whenever we have a marketing beat, no smoke and mirrors. It'll be what it'll be, and people will enjoy it more and more as we work on it more and more."

Avowed is uniquely colorful, with absolutely spectacular environmental design that truly brings Eora to life. Some have claimed the level design of the demo area is average, but I loved the bevy of secrets (with me discovering more with each successive playthrough of the mission), the multitude of potential paths, and the diversity in both setting and verticality. "It's an interesting place to play within, is vibrant fantasy. There's not a ton of it out there and I really wanted to challenge our team to make that work in a way that is satisfying," Hansen responded to my praise.

I truly believe Obsidian is succeeding. The wash of clashing colors is beautiful, and it's thorough, too. Combat and elemental effects like lightning and explosions interact with enemies and the environment in unique ways, making Avowed feel a little more dynamic than I expected it to be. It's not to the level of having destructible environments, but Avowed is generally overflowing with detail that helps build the world and its history. I remember clearly being struck with awe when going underwater briefly, as Avowed paints its 3D underwater environments with detail, whereas many other games neglect these niche spaces.

"Honestly, the game is far prettier than I thought we could do [in the beginning]," Hansen admitted during our conversation. In terms of art design, lighting, and animations for both NPCs and enemies, Avowed has markedly improved versus its initial debut. "Pointing back to that early gameplay trailer, there's a lot of understandable skepticism around it, but as more polished content has been getting in front of people's eyes they're like, 'Okay, I think I get it,' and that's exciting," Hansen said.

"There have been some gasps and some people going, 'Oh, dang!' as they're playing, and just getting to see those reactions and see the joy on people's faces as they experience the world of Eora... It's a really good feeling," Ryan Warden, Production Director at Obsidian Entertainment, said of people playing Avowed for the first time.

Hansen picked up where Warden left off, saying, "Candidly, I'm just over the moon right now. We may have felt a little differently if people weren't enjoying themselves, but everyone seems to be, and that's such a vindicating experience." Obsidian's efforts to polish Avowed over the months are also influenced by the transparently unfinished nature of earlier trailers, with Hansen telling me, "It's given us a really novel opportunity. When people are seeing things and go, "Oh, the combat is a little static,' we can go, 'Okay, what do we think they're reacting to here, and how can we address it?'"

Speaking of the combat, how does Avowed feel to play? Well, this is another area where it's clear a lot of improvement has been made since Obsidian first showed off Avowed gameplay. Yes, Obsidian working to improve the responsiveness and tactility of combat in Avowed is well-known at this point, but it's different to actually feel those improvements. Obsidian also confirmed to me that the team continues to work on improving combat and gameplay even now, so what I played is a step beyond the last gameplay reveal.

Combat in Avowed is hardly going to compete with the best of the Soulslikes or action-RPGs, but for a traditional fantasy RPG, it's a ton of fun. Being able to independently use each hand to wield whatever weapon you want is awesome. You can dual-wield wands, main a shield and bash enemies, or be a blood-thirsty mage waving around a gruesome axe alongside their grimoire. I only got to see a handful of combinations, but the possibilities are intriguing. I also love the ability to instantly switch between two weapon loadouts at any point.

For a mage, that might mean two different grimoires with unique specialties. For a ranger, that might mean switching to dual short swords in close combat. It could mean anything to anyone, like switching between a defensive shield-and-wand combo and a massive two-handed battleaxe. Both using the unique weapon in each hand and switching between your two loadouts feels smooth and gives you a lot more freedom to react to new combat situations than most other RPGs.

Of course, Obsidian was in for one heck of a challenge translating Pillars of Eternity's CRPG tactical combat to Avowed's immersive, real-time gameplay, and that's where the ability wheel comes into play. This wheel is carrying a lot of weight to keep the two-handed and dual-loadout gameplay as smooth and effortless as possible, storing all of your extra abilities and spells, companion abilities, consumables, and throwables behind a menu that massively slows down in-game time.

In my limited preview, the ability wheel felt a little awkward solely because of how much is stored here, but there's plenty of customizability to tailor to the playstyle of each player. Between that and the four quick slots assigned to the D-Pad, I could clearly see how Avowed players will master their own ability wheels during the course of their playthrough, providing more utility in combat and gameplay without needing to go into your inventory to change equipment or find specific items.

I played as all three of the "classes" Obsidian created for the Avowed demo, and all three felt good to play as. Ranged combat and spells felt particularly smooth and tactile, although melee combat in practice feels much better than it looks with more reactive and responsive enemies than earlier Avowed gameplay footage. There's still room for improvement in terms of weapon impact and player mobility, but there's an excellent foundation here.

Of course, the demo was much more than just combat, even if it does end with a nail-biting boss fight against a horde of skeleton warriors, rangers, and healers (a fight that actually seemed to be relatively challenging for many of the demoing players). The mission we played also featured a ton of exploration, with multiple possible endings depending on how thoroughly you explore and which secrets you discover, how your character is built and what they know, and what decisions you make in conversations.

In true Obsidian RPG fashion, you can also opt to skip straight to violence as the ultimate solution or inadvertently set new events in motion simply by exploring (like accidentally destroying a sacred statue and causing a powerful boss to attack you). Interestingly, the environment of the mission area also changed over the course of the mission, with more areas becoming flooded, caved in, or blocked by massive roots. In one mission I felt a good deal of replayability, enough that there was still more that I hadn't seen after four successive playthroughs.

Avowed even has various puzzles hidden throughout areas, giving you access to powerful loot or useful knowledge. There was one puzzle I didn't figure out, but I did discover a secret on my fourth run that Obsidian told me very few actually found, giving me a new way to complete the mission. That fourth run was my absolute favorite for many reasons, as I discovered additional secrets, had more opportunity to explore changing my gear and equipment, and played with a build almost no one else actually went hands-on with: the blood mage.

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Even getting time with the special 'blood mage' build

"We were trying to figure out what the individual loadouts were going to be for the three builds we were creating for this demo, and Yan, one of our QA testers, put up his hand and was like, 'Uh, I've got a build for a blood mage,'" Warden recounted to me. Press and other invited people may have been able to play three distinct builds in Avowed, but there was one other build that was only shown to people.

On the Gamescom 2024 showroom floor, any and all participants could head to the Avowed booth to watch a hands-off preview of a "blood mage" take on the same mission as the hands-on demo. After my interview and toward the end of the Xbox Gamescom event in LA, I went back to the Avowed demo area to see if I could go another round, and Warden, Hansen, and the other two present Obsidian members set me up with the unique blood mage build. It was my fourth time going through the mission, this time with members of Obsidian actively watching, and it was absolutely my favorite.

Again, there are no classes in Avowed, but this "blood mage" build revolved around an ability to burn through health to cast spells when you run out of essence/mana. To supplement your health and turn you into a ceaseless spellcasting demon, this build utilizes spells and weapons that siphon health from enemies. It's a highly aggressive build, but the best part is that it was incomplete at the beginning of the mission.

"In the character creator, you don't press 'A' on 'blood mage' and then bam! you're a blood mage," Warden had said during our conversation. "You have to pick up all the constituent pieces and then piece that together. Yan did that and was like, 'I have something that's really fun. Y'all want to try this?'"

There's always gear and other loot to discover in Avowed's hidden places if you care to look for them, and Obsidian had stashed valuable loot behind puzzles and within secret holes for me to find. On my fourth playthrough, I managed to find all but one secret, and over the course of the mission, I picked up new gear that increased my damage output (but decreased my defense), made it so that all weapon damage siphons enemy health, and more.

By the boss fights at the end, I was a glass cannon who was continuously healing, dishing out absurd amounts of damage with my bloodthirsty grimoire in one hand and a sword in the other. It was by far the most fun I had with Avowed's combat because it wasn't your standard RPG archetype, instead relying on the creativity of a QA play-tester to build something really spellbinding. "There's an awful lot of discovery there where you can put together really interesting trinkets, pieces of armor, and weapons to create exactly the playstyle you want to play," Warden said.

This "blood mage" build is possible early in the game, too, showing that Avowed doesn't make you wait for the fascinating abilities. That did make me wonder, though, if Avowed falls into the trap so many RPGs do in that late-game progression is reduced to essentially stat boosts. Obsidian assured me this isn't the case. "At higher levels, when you might run into that trap [in other games] of, 'Oh, I'm just putting another perk point into Strength,' or whatever, some of the abilities you can unlock [in Avowed] are some of the most bombastic, meta game-changing abilities that you can have," Hansen told me.

Avowed's only restriction is that you'll never have enough XP to unlock every ability, forcing you to commit to a unique playstyle, but that doesn't mean you're locked to one build. It'll be easy to fully respec your skills and abilities with a small in-game cost, enabling you to experiment with all-new loadouts whenever you pick up new gear with a unique attribute you can't find anywhere else or unlock a new ability.

Obsidian confirmed to me that Avowed won't have any New Game+ option at launch to carry your progress into future replays, but the sheer amount of choice you have with your character and how you can progress the story in different ways makes Avowed highly replayable.

Even Warden and Hansen couldn't tell me the limits of Avowed's character-building systems. When I asked if there were possible combinations with powerful and truly unique reactions that could make players practically unstoppable, both Obsidian devs agreed, with Hansen adding, "Obviously we want the game to be balanced so it's fun, but it's a single-player game — it's not competitive. If our QA team and our play-testers are breaking this and they're having a great time doing it, that's not a bug, baby. Let's keep it."

Playing the Avowed demo for the fourth time with the blood mage build was hands-down the highlight of my time in LA, but it was also a suggestion for just how flexible and creative you can be when building your character in Avowed.

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Discussing performance and ray tracing in Avowed

Recently, Avowed went viral for another interview from the same Xbox event I attended, during which Hansen indicated that Avowed would run at a "bare minimum" of 30 frames-per-second (FPS) on Xbox Series X|S. Many criticized this for not being up to the 60 FPS standard of modern AAA games, but that piece of information may not only be incomplete but unconfirmed this far ahead of release.

During my own interview, Hansen and Warden wouldn't give me hard numbers, with Hansen saying, "We're so focused right now on polishing the content we have while simultaneously doing all the performance stuff, because that always comes at the end... So, a lot of that stuff is hard to pin down at the moment."

A "bare minimum" of 30 FPS for Avowed on Xbox Series X|S does not mean "only 30 FPS" despite how many seem to have run with the original quote, although Hansen did justify the potential 30 FPS cap during that other interview by saying, "You know, it's a first-person [and third-person] single-player game, you don't necessarily need that 60 frames."

The fact of the matter is, though, that it's too soon for Obsidian Entertainment to state exactly what the performance targets are for Avowed on Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, as finetuning performance goes hand-in-hand with the final development stage of polish.

Matters may be more positive on this front than many currently believe, and at the very least, Obsidian seems extremely confident in the Xbox version of Avowed. "We've been developing [for Xbox and PC] in tandem the whole time," Hansen reassured me. "But, honestly, one of the things that surprised me most was that, early on in development, we realized that often the Xbox Series X performs better than the PC."

"The console is running [Avowed] really, really well," Hansen continued. "We haven't had to have that many specific affordances for Xbox. We're still figuring out the specs for Xbox Series S, just because it doesn't have some of the bells and whistles on the backend, but we have got an amazingly skilled engineering team."

The hands-on Avowed demo was running on a PC, so I obviously can't comment on Xbox performance, but the right mentality is there. "I'm a weird Art Director in that art is actually my third priority behind 'Does it run well?' and 'Is it fun?'" Hansen told me.

This mentality also applies to the possibility of using ray tracing in Avowed on Xbox Series X|S. NVIDIA recently showed off Avowed with DLSS RTX enabled, and it prompted me to ask Obsidian if the console version would receive similar treatment.

"We're figuring out what all components of ray tracing we want to utilize [on Xbox], but, absolutely, there will be elements of it," Hansen told me. It needs to be stated, though, that ray tracing is considerably more complex than what you may envision in your head. "Using ray tracing is one of those things where there are 12 different components of it that you can choose to utilize or not," Hansen explains.

Ray tracing is much more than enhanced reflections and shadows, and it may appear in a different form in Avowed on Xbox Series X|S than what most people see when they think of ray tracing. Right now, nothing is set in stone, which is another reason I'm hesitant to take that "bare minimum" framerate as being the hard, inalienable truth for how Avowed will run on Xbox. "When we're looking at the bells and whistles," Hansen said, "it's just figuring out which work best for us and which things are genuinely improving the look of the game."

One area where Obsidian had no issue elaborating was with accessibility. I consider accessibility an incredibly important part of video games, as I believe everyone should have access to this wonderful pastime and all the art it includes. It's part of why I love Xbox, as the company puts accessibility front and center. In fact, Xbox just recently announced a new accessibility-focused Xbox nunchuck-style joystick and 3D-printed joystick caps.

During my demo, I already saw how approachable Avowed is with its easy-to-read user interface that includes extremely helpful (and beautifully designed) elements that help with things like locking onto a target with the bow. Approachability-first game design and a great interface are related to accessibility, but true excellence in this area requires going a step further. "There's a whole accessibility team within Xbox and they've reviewed [Avowed] and said, 'Okay, we've got a wishlist of items here,'" Warden told me. "One of the nice things is we don't have any must-dos at this point, we're just chipping away at... what we can achieve by the time we ship."

Avowed's extra development time will undoubtedly help with that list of extra accessibility options, but Obsidian was happy to remind me (and all of you) about one of the best. "One of the biggest accessibility features that we have is third-person [perspective]. That has been developed almost entirely as an accessibility feature because not everybody can play in first-person," Warden said.

Many gamers can't play first-person titles because of motion sickness, and the demand for a third-person mode in Avowed was massive; when Avowed finally revealed third-person support, the response was triumphant. Of course, there was never any doubt. "We were keeping [third-person perspective] in our back pocket," Hansen admitted. "[Third-person] was one of the first decisions we made on the project."

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The reasons behind Avowed's release date delay

Toward the beginning of August, we were given the devastating news that Avowed had been delayed from its original Nov. 2024 release window to Feb. 2025, increasing the wait for Xbox's next big RPG by four months. My feelings were bittersweet, however, as I already knew that Avowed was content-complete and nearly across the finish line — but extra time in the oven just means an even better game.

At the time of the announcement, Xbox quoted a very busy Holiday 2024 release schedule as the primary reason, with games like Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Life is Strange: Double Exposure, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Assassin's Creed Shadows, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle all occupying the same time frame. Out of curiosity, I asked Obsidian if this was really the main reason Avowed was delayed.

"Honestly, [the delay] is 100% because there were so many games coming out in the next couple of months," Warden confirmed. "We're grateful to our friends at Xbox for giving us the time where Avowed can just shine on its own. We're going to spend the intervening time just making it as good an experience as we possibly can."

"We were prepared to ship in November, but now we just get to sprinkle a little more on there," Hansen told me a little later in the conversation.

Video game development is complicated, and every project comes with inherent compromise. Most of the bugs you, as the player, may discover in a new game were already known to the developers but were left alone due to time or budget constraints. "It's murder, when you see something that you're like, 'I really, really want to fix that' and we can't because it's too risky or there's not enough time," Warden said.

"Very candidly, before we knew [the delay] was going to happen, we were going, 'Oh man, we're going to feel bad about leaving that one on the cutting room floor' because we weren't going to get to it, and now we can," Hansen added.

Avowed may have been ready to go in November, but the list of "acceptable compromises" is about to get a whole lot shorter, thanks to the added time Xbox gave the Obsidian team. "We've been really diligent about preserving this last stretch of development for polish... which is a rare affordance and I'm glad we've gotten to act on that," Hansen said.

There's more to polish than just squashing flaws or improving performance, though, although any progress in those departments will absolutely help Avowed be a better game come February. It means better accessibility, more refinement, and fewer trade-offs. "It's not just about bugs," Hansen told me. "We're not necessarily adding new features, but we're repolishing things that we had to compromise on for time and now we can go, 'Let's un-compromise. Let's do the original vision we had.'"

Avowed isn't just getting a little extra time, either. Four whole months of added development can mean a whole lot of improvement for Avowed, even without adding any new content or expanding the game at all. It reminds me of an IGN interview during which Watch Dogs: Legion Creative Director Clint Hocking discussed how that game's last-minute delay helped them reevaluate gameplay systems like being able to play as any NPC and take them to the next level. It's the kind of refinement that's much more difficult to do once a game is already out the door.

After seeing how good Avowed already looks and feels, I'm content waiting a little longer to give Obsidian Entertainment time to cook.

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Now one of my most anticipated games in years

This is actually the second time I've interviewed members of the Avowed team at Obsidian Entertainment, with my first conversation centering around companions, quests, and choices in Avowed. I'm still very proud of that interview (go give it a read if you haven't already; there's some good stuff in there!), but it made me want to play the game even more. Now that I have, I can't say that yearning has abated in the slightest.

Avowed isn't setting out to be the most photorealistic, grittiest, largest, or most ambitious RPG ever made; instead, it's Obsidian's take on "vibrant fantasy" set in a beloved universe. Avowed is about player freedom, exploring the sandbox, and immersing yourself in an unapologetically fantastical world. Seeing how much Avowed has improved since its initial gameplay reveal and knowing how much fun I had in around an hour and a half of playtime make me unbelievably excited to play the full game.

The biggest mysteries remaining here are how well Avowed's story will add to the foundation built by Pillars of Eternity and whether the side quests and companions can properly enrapture players with depth, nuance, and character. I only got a hint in my demo, and it wasn't enough to truly sell me. Still, Avowed has every chance to become one of the best Xbox games of... well, next year. We still have a while longer to wait, as Avowed now releases on Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, Xbox and PC Game Pass, and Xbox Cloud Gaming on Feb. 18, 2025.

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