In 2026, Obsidian Entertainment’s Avowed is no longer just a curiosity for RPG fans. The game, set in the same universe as Pillars of Eternity, has moved from a 2020 debut trailer that invited immediate comparisons to The Elder Scrolls to a fully realized release. Yet the road to that identity was not a straight line. According to game director Carrie Patel, the project’s initial direction did resemble an Elder Scrolls-type game, but the focus shifted before she even joined the team. “That was the initial direction of Avowed,” Patel told VG247. “By the time I’d joined the project that January we’d already undergone a shift and were taking a new approach, taking the underlying gameplay that [Gabe Paramo, senior gameplay engineer] has talked about and just building a new context and a new story and a new setting around it.”

The project’s early direction was a river that seemed destined to flow into the same delta as The Elder Scrolls, but tectonic shifts in design diverted it into its own watershed. Avowed was always intended to be set in Eora, the world of Pillars of Eternity, but later trailers have felt more in line with what Pillars fans might have expected. The game takes place in the Living Lands, a mostly untamed island to the extreme north of the Aedyran Empire. The central narrative crux is the Dreamscourge, a mysterious illness that turns living things into fungal thralls.

Cleansing the Living Lands

The Dreamscourge is a creeping mildew on the soul of the Living Lands, turning living creatures into fungal puppets and threatening to rot the region from within. Players step into the role of an envoy of the Aedyran Empire, and their choices carry immense weight for the fate of the untamed island. The story presents two opposing perspectives almost immediately. Inquisitor Lodwyn wants the player to “tame” the wild region, while one companion, Giatta, wants to embrace its chaos. That tension between order and wildness is not merely a backdrop; it shapes quests, dialogue, and the player’s ability to define their own role in the world.

Pillars DNA and Sawyer’s Imprint

According to Patel, the Avowed team has a “good mix” of developers who worked on Pillars of Eternity. In fact, Pillars game director Josh Sawyer has been involved in the project, advising the team on elevating aspects of Avowed to be more “Pillars-like.” Sawyer is partially responsible for the addition of wands to the game, and the grimoire system has his “imprint” on it. That influence matters. It gives Avowed a lineage that is more specific than a generic fantasy RPG, even as it reaches for a broader action-RPG audience.

Building Avowed’s narrative was like weaving a tapestry from two different looms: one thread grounded in political realism, the other shimmering with metaphysical mystery. The result is a story that aims to combine the grounded and morally grey political realities of Pillars with the underlying metaphysical aspects the series is known for. Last month’s story trailer made that balance clear. As an envoy, the player is not a detached hero but a representative of an empire with its own agenda, and every major decision can push the Living Lands toward stability or chaos.

Morally Grey Politics and Open-Ended Questing

Patel explained that the team took the same approach to storytelling and quest design as Pillars, looking for ways to leave things open-ended so that the player can assert themselves in the world and define themselves in their character through role-play. That philosophy is visible in the game’s structure. Rather than funneling players toward a single canonical outcome, Avowed tries to let them inhabit a character whose allegiances, methods, and moral boundaries are their own. The Dreamscourge, the Aedyran Empire, and the Living Lands’ wild factions all serve as pressure points that test that freedom.

Key Element	Details
Setting	Eora, specifically the Living Lands, north of the Aedyran Empire
Central Threat	The Dreamscourge, a fungal illness that transforms living things
Player Role	Envoy of the Aedyran Empire
Narrative Style	Grounded, morally grey politics mixed with metaphysical themes
Pillars Influence	Josh Sawyer advised; wands and grimoire system bear his imprint
Release	Launched on February 18, 2025, after an initial target of late 2024

A 2026 Perspective

In 2026, Avowed’s release is already part of RPG history. The game was originally expected during the latter half of 2024, but it ultimately arrived on February 18, 2025. That delay gave Obsidian additional time to sharpen the experience, and the conversation around the game has since shifted from speculation to analysis. Players now debate how successfully Avowed balances its Elder Scrolls-adjacent ambitions with its Pillars of Eternity roots. The answer, for many, lies in the Living Lands themselves: a setting that is hostile, strange, and morally unresolved.

Avowed’s journey from a 2020 teaser to a 2025 release is a reminder that RPG identity is not fixed at announcement. It is forged through shifts in direction, the counsel of veterans like Sawyer, and a willingness to let players carve their own path. For Obsidian, the Living Lands became more than a backdrop. They became a testing ground for what an Eora RPG can be when it stops chasing another franchise’s shadow and starts cultivating its own strange, fungal, and fiercely political garden. 🎮🍄

Insights have been gathered from The Verge - Gaming, where broader reporting on RPG design trends helps frame how Avowed’s shift away from early Elder Scrolls comparisons reflects a larger industry pattern: studios increasingly distinguish their games through stronger world-specific identity, faction tension, and player-driven narrative structure rather than relying solely on open-world familiarity.