Fallout: New Vegas and Outer Worlds developer Obsidian Entertainment was originally making upcoming RPG Avowed a cooperative multiplayer game before returning to its single player roots.
Speaking in a documentary celebrating Obsidian’s 20th anniversary, studio head and founder Feargus Urquhart admitted to being wrong after pushing for Avowed to be multiplayer.
“One of the things where I really pushed was that Avowed was going to be multiplayer, and I kept on that for a long time,” he said. “I know in the end it was the wrong decision to keep on pushing on it.”
Head of development Justin Britch said earlier in the documentary that Obsidian showed Avowed to Microsoft early on in the acquisition process, and while Urquhart didn’t mention Microsoft specifically, he explained that multiplayer added a lot of value.
“When we were still independent and I was selling it, it was a more interesting game to publishers,” he said. “And when you’re asking for $50, $60, $70 million you’ve gotta have something interesting to talk about. Multiplayer made it interesting. It was this idea of, it’s almost like peanut butter and chocolate, putting it together, like ‘wow it must be interesting’.”
Forcing a multiplayer project, as a studio famous for single player games, caused too many issues for Obsidian, as it was essentially having to relearn every aspect of game development.
“We were too focused on co-op and we were too focused on changing the way our pipelines work, and the way we write conversations and the way we do quests,” Britch said. “We weren’t focused on the things we’re best at. And so we did make a pivot on the game, basically to refocus and make sure that it was, at the end of the day, an Obsidian game and not something different.”
Obsidian’s initial focus on multiplayer bears resemblance to the recent controversy surrounding fellow Xbox Games Studios developer Arkane. Known most for its single player games like Dishonored, Arkane developed the co-op multiplayer game Redfall that launched to scathing reviews earlier this year.
Parent company ZeniMax reportedly pushed for a multiplayer focus that caused myriad issues, and 70% of staff who worked on single player Prey left by the end of Redfall’s development. Things allegedly became so bad at Arkane that, despite having put two years into Redfall at the time of the Xbox acquisition, staff wished it would be rebooted as a single player game or cancelled altogether.
Avowed is sticking to Obsidian’s roots though, and while it’s set in the same universe as Pillars of Eternity, the developer wants to make the world and universe much more approachable this time around.
“The thing that was both exciting and intimidating about stepping into this role on Avowed is, it’s an IP that I know but it’s a different style of game for us,” said game director Carrie Patel.
“Figuring out how much exactly we want to take from Pillars 1 and [sequel] Deadfire, and then how we make this game more approachable to a larger audience that maybe didn’t play the Infinity Engine games and maybe didn’t play either of the original Pillars games at all? How do we stay true to that IP but how do we create an experience that’s more approachable for a larger audience?”
Only time will tell whether Obsidian can achieve that goal, with players finding out when the game launches in 2024. No specific release date has been shared, though Obsidian did release a new trailer for Avowed in June.
Relatively little is known about the game so far, though it will reportedly feature destructible environments and is closer in size to The Outer Worlds than Skyrim.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.