Obsidian Shows Off Avowed, Its Answer to Skyrim

At today's Xbox Games Showcase, the world just got its first look at Avowed, a new title in development at Obsidian Entertainment.

Obsidian, makers of The Outer Worlds, Fallout: New Vegas, and Pillars of Eternity, appear to be sticking close to the team's RPG expertise with Avowed. The trailer showed some high fantasy concepts, including swords and magic, and it looks to be first-person as well.

There are castle walls, fire arrows, and kingdoms at war. The ending of the trailer even seems to have a Balrog-style creature approaching ominously. The trailer says Avowed will be set in Eora, the same world as Obsidian's RPG franchise Pillars of Eternity. While not a wholly new world, this is certainly a new way of exploring it. Skyrim by way of Pillars of Eternity seems like fertile ground for Obsidian.

Obsidian joined Xbox Game Studios in 2018 and is just about to launch its first Xbox-published project, Grounded, into early access on July 28 for PC and Xbox One. A departure from the Obsidian norm, Grounded is a solo or co-op title that casts players as kids who've been shrunk down to about an inch tall and who now have to survive the dangers of a suburban backyard.

At the showcase, Obsidian and publisher Private Division also revealed the first details on The Outer Worlds: Peril on Gorgon, the sci-fi RPG's first DLC since it was released last year.

Since the Microsoft acquisition, Obsidian has been pretty forthcoming with how it hopes to operate as a part of Xbox Game Studios. In an interview last year, senior designer Brian Hines said that Microsoft has encouraged Obsidian to "keep making these games that [its] fans like, and hopefully on a grander scale, and better quality." CEO Feargus Urquhart has also indicated that although Obsidian's teams will "be a little larger" under Microsoft, he doesn't want the studio to expand all that much.

No release date was set for Avowed, though it's confirmed as coming to Xbox Series X and PC.