We already knew that Obsidian Entertainment’s RPG wouldn’t be as big as Bethesda Game Studios’ The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, but now we have more details about Avowed from the game’s director, Carrie Patel.

Patel told Game Informer what game Avowed’s concept has been scaled up to: “The best comparison for Avowed in terms of scope is The Outer Worlds. Players can expect a roughly similar experience to The Outer Worlds, depending on what difficulty they play on and how thoroughly they explore and invest in the internal content, as opposed to just sticking to the main Crit Path missions.” She made a similar comment last year, though she mentioned another game (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2) that requires more than 30 hours to complete the main story, or more than 40 hours if you play through the side missions.

The Outer Worlds, on the other hand, has become one of the shortest mainstream RPGs, as the main story can be completed in about 13 hours, but with the side quests it would take more than 25 hours. The Witcher 2 and Dragon Age II, two other non-open-world RPGs, also require 25-37 hours. However, Obsidian has an excuse for the shortness: budget, as Take-Two is the publisher (or more precisely its indie arm, Private Division), although the studio is now part of Microsoft, so they shouldn’t have that problem later on. But how big will Avowed be compared to Obsidian’s other games, and will there be any romantic potential?

“Tonally, the best comparison would be Deadfire, the second Pillars game, where you have a very grounded and serious political story. A very strange and esoteric, metaphysical and divine story underneath. A lot of moments of seriousness, but also moments of levity to kind of break that up, and a lot of those things are very character based. So yeah, I wouldn’t compare it tonally to The Outer Worlds.

We decided not to go the full romance route in Avowed. That’s something we thought about very hard and we talked about it as a story team. I think if you’re going to invest in romance, everyone who’s writing it has to be absolutely, fully invested in it. And the other thing you have to do is make sure that if you’re going to provide that path, that you balance that with an equally meaningful and well-developed non-romantic path, because you never want players to feel like, “Well, the only way I’m really going to get to know this character or really form a meaningful relationship with them is if I commit to romancing them, which may not be something I want to do. So for all of those reasons, we decided not to have romance, especially in Avowed,” Patel said.

Avowed doesn’t have an official release date yet, but Obsidian has already let slip that it could be out on November 12 for Xbox Series, PC, and Game Pass.

Source: WCCFTech, Game Informer