Obsidian's Avowed: From Co-op Ambitions to Single Player Mastery

Obsidian's upcoming first-person fantasy RPG, Avowed, originally started as a multiplayer game but was later pivoted to a single-player experience. Studio head Feargus Urquhart revealed that the decision to focus on multiplayer was made to make the game more appealing to publishers during the independent selling phase. However, the studio realized that prioritizing multiplayer wasn't playing to their strengths and made a pivot to ensure that Avowed remained an authentic Obsidian game. The pivot took place relatively late in the project's development, with the team defining a new direction and building a vertical slice in just eight months.