Avowed 's setting has far more to offer than it first appears to. Its hidden depths are literal. There are huge pillars of adra - a soul-channeling mineral - that extend into mega-dungeons beneath Eora that hide hidden secrets and technology. This might sound like The Elder Scrolls ' Dwemer ruins, but unlike The Elder Scrolls , Obsidian's Eora-set games have not hesitated to make solving the mysteries of its lost civilization a main part of the p
Avowed will be set in the Living Lands, described as a "lawless land where communities band together, fall apart, and fight petty wars with eachother constantly." The two Pillars of Eternity games were set in Dyrwood, a warring kingdom, and the Deadfire Archipelago , a distant chain of islands populated by pirates and outca
Not only have far fewer players had a chance to interact with the world of Pillars of Eternity , but its inhabitants are just as weird and wonderful as those in The Elder Scrolls . It isn’t known whether or not Avowed will have multiple playable races yet, but alongside Eora’s more standards fantasy Elves and Dwarves are the Orlans, a diminutive race of fur-covered people, the Godlike, whose bodies are radically changed when they’re "blessed" by a deity, and the large semi-aquatic Aum
Open-world games need their worlds to feel immense and unexplored at the start of the game. There’s an argument to be made that The Elder Scrolls 6 could still achieve this - after all, Skyrim was able to create a world that felt worth exploring despite previous games like The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion . However, while Oblivion sold under 10 million copies, Skyrim surpassed 30 million sales all the way back in 2016, and could risk being a victim of its own success, unable to capture the sense of originality players felt in the last g
In Pillars of Eternity , Woedica is the deposed queen of the gods. She is the goddess of justice, oaths, and rightful rule, with a strictly authoritarian streak. Like all the gods in Eora, she was actually created by the long-extinct Engwithan civilization from a single ideal using the souls of the Engwithan populat
The Living Lands could be a setting that initially appears to be generic and predictable, but which reveals itself to be far more than first meets the eye. The origins of the gods of Eora as seen in Pillars of Eternity borders on sci-fi, with the Engwithans building ginormous machines to manage the souls of the dead, create their own gods using animancy, and discover the answer to life's existential questi
Obsidian originally found success with its first game, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 - The Sith Lords in 2004. The developer was founded by former members of Black Isle Studios who already had a wealth of experience in developing RPGs, having worked on series such as Icewind Dale and Fallout. To this day, the developer has mostly kept its projects within its RPG roots, but it has experimented with other genres and styles of role-playing experiences over the years. Its current slate of games represents a mixture of its role-playing expertise and some new directions for the comp
Woedica appears in both Pillars of Eternity games, but there are reasons to think that the focus on her in the trailer may also indicate the time period in which Avowed is set. Woedica was once the queen of the gods of Eora , but she was eventually overthrown by the other deities in the pantheon. As such she is also known as the Exiled Queen or the Burned Queen, having been burned by Magran, the goddess of fire and
Avowed may not use a system entirely similar to Oblivion , but The Elder Scrolls 4 may give a good idea of what Avowed Skills 's class system might be working from if it has one. In this case classes are essentially major stat modifiers — they don't necessarily affect what the player is able to do, but they do greatly tilt the likelihood of success in favor of certain tact
It could be possible for Avowed to find a compromise between the class system found in more traditional RPGs and more accessible ones. Class choice could give the player certain abilities at the start of the game which other classes would have to unlock later, for example, as well as affecting their attack power with certain weapons and spells. Some lighter class systems like this can be found in games like Dark Souls , where classes affect how the player starts the game but doesn't stop them from redirecting their specialties as they play m
Skyrim 's skill system also has flaws which aren't necessarily connected to doing away with traditional classes. There are plenty of Skyrim mods which completely revamp the skill system without reintroducing classes, demonstrating the variety of routes Obsidian could go down even if classes go out the win
The Living Lands are a great blank slate for Obsidian to create a setting that is more prone to player influence than other open-world RPGs, with factions fighting over unclaimed land and settlements rising and falling. Avowed 's setting also has the potential to have a main quest that tells a less predictable story than other fantasy RPGs, blending elements of medieval fantasy with science-fiction and a hint of existentialism. It will be up to Obsidian to take full advantage of the elements of Eora that could make the Living Lands stand out, but if it does the game may be able to step out of Skyrim 's shadow, creating a world that is more ambitious both in terms of the player's impact and the complexity of its p