Obsidian’s Upcoming RPG Game, ‘Avowed,’ Won’t Let Players ‘Romance’ Their Character’s Companions

Set to release later in 2024, Obsidian Entertainment’s upcoming Avowed will have a lot of focus on the player’s interactions with their character’s companions, but won’t feature an option to “romance” them like other RPG games.

In an interview with EuroGamer, the game’s director, Carrie Patel, spoke about this gameplay mechanic’s exclusion by stating that they were unsure if they would be able to give it a “payoff” in Avowed before joking that “it would be awkward” to break up with one of your party members if they’re supposed to stay with you to save the world.

Despite the exclusion of being able to date your companions, the game’s storyline has been said to be designed to allow each member of the players’ party to have fulfilling story arcs throughout the game. There will also be more compacted curation for the game’s open world to ensure the player will still be able to follow along with the game’s narrative without straying too far away while exploring, which is a large deviation from the game’s original mission to replicate Skyrim’s style of gameplay to something more familiar with the studio.

Avowed was first announced in 2020 during an Xbox Games Showcase in July, with the game being in the works since 2018 when Microsoft bought Obsidian. The game will take place in the same universe as the Pillars of Eternity franchise and is beloved by both critics and fans of the RPG genre. The studio since being bought has released two highly successful titles in 2022 with their multiplayer survival game Grounded and the 2D RPG game, Pentiment. 

Although an official release date has yet to be announced, Obsidian does have the intention to release Avowed for Windows on PC and the Xbox Series X/S for console by the fourth quarter of the year.