Xbox is giving Avowed room to breathe by delaying it until February 2025, but what this RPG really needs is a stage to shine on
In an effort to give Avowed room to breathe, Xbox Game Studios has pushed its upcoming RPG into what may be the most suffocating year of the current generation. It’s almost poetic. The new title from Obsidian Entertainment has been delayed until February 18, 2025 – a release window which has the capacity to be actively hostile to unknown quantities.
Avowed will land in the aftermath of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and under the shadow of upcoming Xbox Series X games like Doom: The Dark Ages, Fable, and South of Midnight. There’s Death Stranding 2: On the Beach and Monster Hunter Wilds to contend with, which will no doubt dominate early Game of the Year conversations. And it’s impossible to anticipate the vacuum that GTA 6 and the launch of Nintendo’s Switch 2 will generate. 2025 is going to be wild.
Which is all to say that Xbox will need to be deliberate and decisive in the ways it showcases Avowed in the six months ahead. I’m not necessarily saying that Avowed is an entirely unknown quantity, and a new RPG from Obsidian should be generally cause for celebration – the studio is a certified hitmaker, with a proven power for reshaping the genre – but I can’t shake this feeling that Avowed is still fighting for definition four years after its reveal.
Frankly, this isn’t a problem that’s unique to Avowed – but rather an issue that first-party Xbox games grapple with from time-to-time. It wasn’t until a few short weeks before its launch in May that the publisher really shifted attention onto Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2; years were spent detailing the toolsets powering the adventure, and comparatively little time showcasing what that technology could render into reality. Hellblade 2 is undoubtedly the best-looking, most-unique exclusive that the Series X has, but I’m not sure that message reached beyond the most faithful platform owners.
Looking ahead
So the challenge Xbox faces as we head into a competitive autumn release window is to find the space to create a compelling, consistent narrative around what makes Avowed unique – even as attention shifts towards the promotion of Black Ops 6 and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, both slated to land before the end of the year. Avowed is not currently expected to be playable to the public at Gamescom 2024, which means Opening Night Live is perhaps the best opportunity for Xbox to get eyes on its RPG and reset expectations. That’s key, given what we’ve received so far.
Revealed in 2020 with a cinematic trailer vague enough that we began to believe that Obsidian was creating its answer to the Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim. When Avowed reappeared after three years of relative silence, we were suddenly faced with a far more intimately-scaled RPG, closely mirroring that of The Outer Worlds with its self-contained open-zones; the combat was criticized for its stilted appearance, the artificial intelligence for its unresponsiveness, and Avowed soon disappeared from view once again. Many believed the Xbox Games Showcase would highlight just how far the title had come as Obsidian drove towards a planned autumn release window, but instead we received a 97-second story trailer.
I think that was a missed opportunity, particularly when held up against the lavish presentations Black Ops 6, Perfect Dark, and South of Midnight were given. The summer showcases represent one of those rare moments where players are willing to forgo platform allegiances to see what the competition has to offer. Xbox hardware revenue is reportedly down 42% for the quarter, and it was the combination of enticing platform exclusives like Avowed and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, combined with outrageous Game Pass offerings like Black Ops 6, that could have helped turn the tide this year.
What’s interesting is that Avowed did get the deep-dive it truly deserves, though it arrived the day after the Xbox Game Showcase when the attention of the game-playing public was lost in the noise generated by Summer Game Fest . The 30-minute presentation arrived as part of the Xbox Podcast, and gave the world the first real look at Avowed in action – showcasing a wondrous visual design, a world worth exploring, weighted combat, and in-depth character and companion systems. Avowed looked fantastic in that showing, which has only been viewed some 275-thousand times on Xbox’s YouTube channel, versus the five-plus million views the core Xbox Games Showcase has obtained in the same location.
Which is all to say that the decision to shift Avowed to 2025 could work in Obsidian and Xbox’s favor, so long as it’s given the opportunity to reintroduce itself to the world in the next six months. When I spoke to Obsidian art director Matt Hansen in June, he told me that Obsidian was now focusing its energies on “experiential polish” with game director Carrie Patel adding that “we’re in a really exciting time in our development, because it’s at the end where you really see everything come together.”
Xbox needs to do a better job of showcasing how it’s all coming together. Everything I have seen of this game and heard from this studio is exceptionally promising, but that narrative is yet to really break out beyond the core Xbox playerbase. Avowed and Obsidian have the capacity to break out in 2025, but it needs a global stage to help reset the narrative around the title now and refine its definition. I’ve got everything crossed that Gamescom: Opening Night Live will deliver in that respect when the showcase kicks off on August 20.
While you wait for more on Avowed, check out the best Xbox Series X games you can play today.