Avowed Merges Destiny's Style with Skyrim Roots

In a recent Bloomberg interview, Avowed's second game director Carrie Patel discussed the turbulent development that resulted in two years of work being abandoned. Initially, Obsidian Entertainment imagined Avowed as a hybrid of Destiny and Skyrim, blending shared exploration in a vast open world with exciting multiplayer gameplay.

The 2020 reveal trailer generated considerable fan enthusiasm, yet concealed the truth: the real game was far from finished. Merely months later, the decision was made to discard everything and begin again from scratch. As a result, that original teaser now serves as a remnant of an entirely different prototype with no connection to the final release.

After the reset, Carrie Patel took over as game director and fundamentally reimagined the project. She moved away from the initial Skyrim and Destiny inspirations, abandoning the open-world blueprint and multiplayer components. Obsidian instead returned to their hallmark zone-based design, concentrating on developing a powerful single-player narrative deeply embedded in Pillars of Eternity lore.

Restarting mid-development presented enormous difficulties, comparable to filming a movie without a finished script. Teams worked intensively under ambiguous circumstances as leadership struggled to define a unified direction. Against these obstacles, development continued for another four years before Avowed was ultimately completed.