Avowed, the upcoming RPG from Obsidian Entertainment, was first announced through a teaser trailer in July 2020. Since then, very little information about the first-person title has been released. What we do know is that Avowed will take place in Eora, the same universe as the studio's Pillars of Eternity CRPG series.

As a first-person fantasy RPG, it was inevitable that Avowed would draw comparisons to Bethesda Softwork's Elder Scrolls series. After all, Obsidian's first-person sci-fi RPG Outer Worlds is often compared to Bethesda's Fallout. Funnily enough, it seems fans know as little about the upcoming Avowed as they do about Elder Scrolls 6. One thing that has been revealed is Obsidian Entertainment's internal codename for Avowed, Project Alabama. This name follows a long-running tradition at the studio and reveals something interesting about the projects' developments.

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Obsidian Entertainment is an American studio based in California and was first founded in June 2003 by former members of Black Isle Studios. The studio has produced fourteen games in total, many of which received critical acclaim. Over the years it's become clear that Obsidian has a tradition of internally naming its games after the US States.

While it's unclear when this tradition got started, the earliest known codename is Project New Jersey. New Jersey was the Obsidian internal name for Dwarfs, a canceled project from 2005 that was intended to be a third-person action-RPG prequel to Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

Since then, several more United States codenames have been revealed by data-miners and leaks, some of which are for major titles. For example, the codename for the Outer Worlds, Obsidian's sci-fi RPG, was Project Indiana, and the survival title Grounded was known as Project Maine. These codenames reveal an interesting pattern in Obsidian's naming tradition, something that relates to Obsidian's development.

Several years ago, a leak from Obsidian Entertainment revealed that they were working on Project Louisiana. This immediately provoked a wave of interest in the community, with many speculating that Louisiana would be the codename for Fallout: New Orleans. However, it eventually turned out to be Pillars of Eternity 2, proving that the codenames that Obsidian chooses don't necessarily have any correlation to the games themselves.

This doesn't mean there isn't a pattern, however, as it seems that Obsidian Entertainment is using states in the order that they became part of the US. This makes sense chronologically, as Alabama was the 22nd state to be admitted, and Indiana the 19th. This would mean that Avowed, codename Alabama, was the 22nd project to be named in this system, and Outer Worlds was the 19th with its codename Indiana.

However, these games aren't always released in the order that they're named. After all, larger projects can take many more years to complete. This is presumably why the codename for Grounded is Project Maine, despite the fact that Maine was the 23rd state to be admitted, following Alabama. These names indicate that the development of Avowed was started shortly before the development of Grounded, even though the survival game has already launched into Early Access. By looking closely at these codenames, including the few that have been leaked for TBA projects, it's possible to uncover some secrets about Obsidian Entertainment's development cycle.

Avowed is in development for PC and Xbox Series X/S.

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