Obsidian wants Avowed to be a "challenging" RPG that's more complex than "black-and-white, good-versus-evil morality"

Obsidian Entertainment is hammering away at its fantasy-with-firearms roleplaying game Avowed , due this year, which the developers hope can surpass the "black-and-white" moral binary.

"Our approach to choice and consequences is to eschew a black-and-white, good-versus-evil morality scale, where the moral balance of your decision is very obvious," director Carrie Patel explains in an interview with Gamesradar , "but rather something that feels closer to life, where sometimes it's not obvious or sometimes the right choice feels obvious, but the outcome can be surprising; justified but surprising."

Patel explains that she enjoys that moral challenge as both a player and a designer because it allows people to "chew on something complicated and kind of make and explore those decisions in the relatively safe environment of a game." Where else could you accidentally fly your own ship into the sun, if it weren't for Obsidian games, right?

Patel then points to Mass Effect 2 - despite its pulpy paragon and renegade binary - and the incredible Legion loyalty quest as an example of a dilemma that players were "talking about years later." She believes that those kinds of headscratchers "bind" players to their in-game counterparts. "And also the characters and companions that they're sharing this journey with."

Between KOTOR 2, Pentiment, The Outer World, and Pillars of Eternity (which shares a setting with Avowed), the studio certainly has a knack for tough decisions that leave you with existential questions no matter what. We haven't seen much of that in Avowed aside from a brief side quest shown off in the Xbox Developer Direct 2024 , but I'm still excited to see more in the coming months. 

Another Avowed lead recently explained that there's "no one perfect build" in the classless RPG.