"Avowed: Originally a Mix of Destiny and Skyrim"

In a revealing interview with Bloomberg, Carrie Patel, the second game director of Avowed, provided insights into the tumultuous development journey that saw the team discard two years of work. Initially, Obsidian Entertainment set out to create Avowed as a blend of Destiny and Skyrim, aiming to merge cooperative exploration in a vast open world with robust multiplayer features.

The excitement around the first teaser trailer, released in 2020, was palpable among fans. However, the trailer concealed a stark truth: the game was far from finished. Mere months after the trailer's debut, the decision was made to completely overhaul the project, rendering the teaser an artifact of a discarded prototype that bore no similarity to the eventual final product.

After the reboot, Carrie Patel took the helm as game director and reshaped the project's direction. She moved away from the initial inspirations drawn from Skyrim and Destiny, abandoning the open-world and multiplayer ambitions. Instead, Obsidian returned to their roots with a zone-based structure and concentrated on developing a rich, single-player narrative deeply embedded in the lore of Pillars of Eternity.

Restarting development midstream posed significant challenges, comparable to trying to make a movie without a script. Teams worked relentlessly amid uncertainty as the leadership struggled to forge a unified vision. Despite these obstacles, it took an additional four years of development before Avowed could be released to the public.