It has been a hot minute since fans have last heard anything about Obsidian Entertainment's new fantasy RPG Avowed, based on the world of another Obsidian game, Pillars of Eternity. While Avowed's setting has not yet been officially disclosed, it is rumored that the game will take place in the northern region of the Living Lands in the world of Eora, which was never explored previously in Pillars of Eternity. In terms of lore, the Living Lands is a wild environment with lots of different species and diverse biomes, with no laws to keep the Kith (the civilized races of Eora) in check, which would be a perfect fit for Avowed's display of next-gen graphics and RPG elements.
Avowed is rumored to be a very large open-world game, not too dissimilar from Bethesda's Skyrim, but with no specific climate or enclosed setting, possibly with a real-time system for the weather. It's very likely that creatures, bosses, and NPCs will be based on Pillars of Eternity games in terms of lore, but Avowed is very likely to introduce brand-new enemies and spice up encounters. Among the various things that have players all over the world excited to learn more about Avowed, the trailer for the game's reveal showed what looks like a very promising magic casting system, which looks much more hard fantasy than that of Skyrim, for example.
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Spells in Skyrim are interesting, and the game's system that allows players to "dual wield" spells by binding one to each hand is fun. However, Skyrim's magic feels a lot like a sort of point and click experience, which subtracts a little something from the immersion that otherwise players can enjoy while delving into the lands and mountains of The Elder Scrolls 5's region. Not only that, as Skyrim's spells all look very visually alike before actually casting them, many miss some of the more mechanical complexity of spells in previous The Elder Scrolls games.
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Oblivion, which offered an incredibly deep magic system that was way ahead of the game's time, allowed players to craft their own spells by mixing and matching currently available ones. Daggerfall and Morrowind did have this same system, and they were even older chronologically than Skyrim, resulting in some modders from the online community starting work on a few spell crafting mods to implement in Skyrim. Still, the act of casting spells itself didn't prove to be very innovative, but rather a more graphically advanced process that seems to be slightly lacking in soul.
Avowed seems to be very different in this department, at least by the looks of the trailer, during which a character is seen drawing symbols with their hand in the air. Purple runes entangle their arm, and violet flames engulf the character's hand. This potentially alludes to the possibility of a more varied spell system that makes the world feel more attuned to magic, which bodes very well for Avowed players who love details and RPG elements.
Whether Avowed's magic system will diverge from that of Skyrim in terms of actual gameplay, it remains to be seen once more gameplay of the new IP is released. However, at least from an aesthetic standpoint, Avowed seems to be doing an excellent job at being its own game, and innovating on the magic abilities of another title.
Avowed is currently in development.