Avowed is Obsidian Entertainment's next first-person RPG. It picks up the setting from the Pillars of Eternity games but with a new, first-person perspective akin to The Outer Worlds or Fallout: New Vegas.

There are lessons that Avowed can learn from all three of these games as a first-person fantasy RPG. There's also enough variation between the games to show that Obsidian doesn't always reliably pull off the best parts of its previous titles in later games. Here's what Avowed can learn from New Vegas, The Outer Worlds, and Pillars of Eternity.

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Fallout: New Vegas is one of the most beloved games in the franchise, developed by Obsidian and published by Bethesda. Although the settings are completely different, New Vegas has a lot to teach Avowed. For a start, the game's opening is extremely conducive to open roleplay while still having a clear plot with high stakes and interesting characters.

At the start of New Vegas, the player character is shot in the head by a gangster named Benny, who steals the Platinum Chip the Courier was delivering on behalf of Mr. House. They somehow survive, however, and wake up in Doc Mitchell's office having been patched up. This opening is great for several reasons. First, it does not prescribe anything about the player character besides a single job they took to deliver a package. Although later DLCs bring back some deliveries from the Courier's past, the game still never establishes anything about the Courier's age or origins, giving the player free reign to roleplay as whoever they'd like.

The second smart thing about this intro is that it leaves the player character's motivations entirely up to the player. The plot with the Platinum Chip is certainly intriguing, and some players may be driven to find Benny and exact revenge. It's also completely reasonable, however, for players to avoid the man who once shot them and left them for dead, count themselves lucky, and head out the opposite way through the Mojave Wasteland. In contrast the Bethesda RPGs Fallout 3 and 4 make it extremely hard to justify ignoring the main quest, particularly in Fallout 4 where the Lone Survivor believes their infant son has been kidnapped.

Finally, Obsidian should keep some of the unique skill checks seen in New Vegas like low intellect dialogue options, Black Widow, Confirmed Bachelor, Sneering Imperialist, Terrifying Presence, Cannibal, and all the other perks that give the player unique options while talking to NPCs. Along with the Courier's lack of background these traits make every playthrough feel like a fresh experience with unique roleplaying opportunities.

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Considered a new take on the New Vegas formula was The Outer Worlds. Set in a distant solar system, The Outer Worlds shared many themes and mechanical similarities with Fallout. It even carved out its own little fandom. However, without Bethesda's engine or the Fallout 3 assets to work with, there were some areas where it fell flat that Avowed will need to avoid.

For example, unlike first-person Bethesda RPGs like Fallout 4 and Skyrim, the player in The Outer Worlds has far fewer opportunities to interact with the environment. They can't move corpses or items, sit down in the captain's chair of their ship, or drink water from natural sources. While this might not seem like much, features like these make a world feel far more like an RPG than a FPS by giving the players more opportunities to immerse themselves.

While The Outer Worlds was split into several space stations and planets, Avowed will be an open-world game set in the Living Lands, a northern frontier. The Living Lands will need far bigger settlements. Although well positioned buildings and posters make locations like Edgewater and The Groundbreaker seem large, as soon as the player begins exploring or brings up their map they'll see just how small the explorable areas are. This is particularly noticeable in the city of Byzantium, where the player can only explore a sliver of the city.

Unlike The Outer Worlds, Avowed also needs more enemy variety, and more ways to deal with non-essential NPCs beyond mowing them down in great numbers. The game could also do with a fully fleshed out crafting system. The more roleplaying variety the player is offered in Avowed, the better.

Pillars of Eternity may not be a first-person RPG, but with their shared setting the game most closely predicts the tone of Avowed, and there are still some lessons the new RPG can learn. Pillars of Eternity has a rich lore, a fascinating cosmology, and an in-depth plot. However, its seriousness often left its world and companions coming across as cold and detached. The story can be serious and its stakes high, but Avowed needs companions who show warmth like Minsc, the hamster-loving warrior from Baldur's Gate. Without that, Obsidian can't expect players to be as invested in their followers.

Pillars of Eternity also gets wrong what New Vegas gets right. In Pillars of Eternity the player is exposed to a cultists ritual that makes them a Watcher, a person able to read souls and see their past lives. If the player doesn't track down the cultists, they are told, their character will go insane.

With Benny, the player might pursue revenge or simply avoid him, but in both cases it feels far more like a personal, in-universe decision rather than the player just following the plot's demands. The main character in Avowed needs the option to ignore the main quest, and should be positively motivated to do it, not negatively. This may not need to be the case for all RPGs, but Obsidian has shown before that it works particularly well with the open-world RPG formula.

Avowed is in development for PC and Xbox Series X.

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