CHIM and the Godhead may rarely be touched upon in The Elder Scrolls games, but "the mantlings of an uncaring godhead" are explicitly mentioned in Hermaeus Mora's Black Book "Waking Dreams of a Starless Sky." The Godhead has many similarities to Lovecraft's "Blind Idiot God" Azath
Obsidian's past financial struggles were likely one of the motivations behind taking the setting from Pillars of Eternity and using it for a more mainstream, accessible first-person fantasy RPG like Avowed . While CRPGs remain a relatively niche market, Avowed was almost immediately compared to Skyrim after its announcement trai
This has led some fans to worry that Obsidian may be biting off more than it can chew. While those fears are not unfounded given the company's history, there is also some evidence to suggest that the studio may be in a stronger position to take on ambitious projects like Avowed and The Outer Worlds seq
In both The Elder Scrolls and Lovecraft , the idea of an immensely powerful being simply dreaming the universe plays on the existential dread that the universe, despite containing consciousness, doesn't have any real direction or agency, and is chaotically amoral. However, Avowed 's world imagines a very different kind of existential dread - discovering that there are no gods at
The risk is that by setting Avowed in an earlier period of Eora's history, the game will resemble the more standard fantasy worlds of games like Skyrim rather than Pillars of Eternity 's more distinct setting. Fortunately, there are a few ways the Living Lands could still feel very different from the settings of other fantasy ga
Dwemer ruins tend to be the most expansive and varied in their design, but Avowed will need to do much more than emulate Skyrim 's best dungeon experiences. With evidence that Avowed may be further along in development than fans think, here are just some of the ways Obsidian could redefine the dungeon-diving experience for the next generat
Skyrim is packed full of references to the works of H.P. Lovecraft. Its last DLC, Dragonborn, saw the inhabitants of the isolated town of Raven Rock fall under a mysterious trance-like state that was leading them to build strange obelisks, with only the faintest memory of doing so. While some The Elder Scrolls quests are full of surface-level Lovecraft allusions like this, the series' metaphysical lore makes the connection explicit. The same can be said for Obsidian's upcoming first-person fantasy RPG, Avow
Grounded is Obsidian's big potential release for 2021, but the studio's next step is public too. In the same showcase that Grounded was revealed, Obsidian and Microsoft announced Avowed, a new RPG set in the Pillars of Eternity universe. Although Obsidian has said next to nothing about Avowed patch notes since then, knowing the setting of the game has gone a long way in helping fans get an image of the game. There's tons of Pillars of Eternity lore already in place that'll surely inform the game, no matter what the story is or how the gameplay differs from the games that precede
Two thousand years before the events of Pillars of Eternity , an ancient civilization known as Engwith made huge advancements in Animancy . At the time, many Engiwthans were suffering from "soul maladies." Soul maladies include phenomena like "soul twins," where a reincarnated soul splits between multiple bodies. To prevent such problems, the Engwithans created a giant machine that controlled the flow of souls from The In-Between to The Bey
Obsidian fans should get excited about the state of the studio. It's determined to push out a lot of new projects, and experimental ones like that. The Outer Worlds ' incredible claim that no NPC has to live for players to beat the game proves that Obsidian wants to try bold new things. Obsidian's future isn't just packed with new games; it's packed with new ideas that'll help Obsidian grow as a stu
A smaller project like Grounded also seems unlikely to take up too many of Obsidian's resources, even if its continually worked on throughout the development of Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2 . Ultimately, there's no way to know how well the studio is handling multiple projects until details about either Avowed or The Outer Worlds 2 's release windows are revealed. However, while Obsidian has struggled in the past, the studio may be in a better position for its increasing ambition than ever bef
The game industry is built on the backs of a wide range of studio types, from small indie developers to independent AAA studios to in-house developers under the likes of Microsoft and Sony. One company that's managed to travel through multiple of these categories is Obsidian Entertainment, the masterful developer of RPGs responsible for such games as Fallout: New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity. Obsidian has long been hailed as a talented studio thanks to games like these, and it keeps delivering new games that capture the imagination of fans. That's why it's a big deal that Obsidian is still going pla