Avowed is set to release in just a few short weeks and ahead of our grand adventures into the Living Lands, Obsidian has given us some more details on what kind of RPG experience we’re stepping into. Largely, it’s about choice, but we won’t be able to go wherever, whenever.
Speaking in a recent interview to Xbox Wire, Avowed’s region director Berto Ritger explained why we’re not going to see an open-world map, and will instead get a series of open zones. “I think it’s a good pacing mechanism (for those choices). We know roughly what you’ve done before you’ve gone to the next thing. It’s still a very open structure within those zones, where you can do whatever you want for the most part, but it’s not one contiguous area where you could be anywhere at any moment,” he said.
Narrative designer Kate Dollarhyde added: “Pacing is really tough in open-world games. You never know where the player is and what they’re doing at any given time. So having these zones that happen in sequence means we always know what content you’ve just come from on the critical path. Maybe not what side quests you’ve done, but we always know you’ve just had this [core] experience.”
While these zones mean the entire map can’t be explored at once, as soon as you get a zone, you’re pretty free to do what you like within it, as we found out in our most recent preview.
Avowed launches on the 18th of February for Xbox Series X/S and PC.