Avowed Director hints at the team’s plans for the franchise after gaining success from its release. Read to learn more about the game’s possibility for an expansion or sequel, and other plans from the company.
Avowed Director Wants To Do More With The World They Built
Possibility of Expansions or Sequels
Avowed’s release was successful as Microsoft and Obsidian are reportedly happy with its current sales. Avowed Game Director Carrie Patel sat down for an interview with Bloomberg on February 22, 2025 and discussed the possibility of an expansion or sequel to the game.
Although Obsidian has not revealed any plans for the franchise, Patel wanted to keep directing games, and creating something new is appealing to her. She expressed her interest in future expansions and a sequel to the game, and stated "Now that we’ve built this wonderful world, and also built this team strength and muscle memory around the content and gameplay in this world, I’d love to see us do more with it."
Changes in Avowed During Development
The development of Avowed was met with different challenges and changes before becoming what it is today. Patel revealed that the whole process was messy, but eventually found their way at the end.
The project began in 2018 as Obsidian was gearing up to sell the company despite having success with their titles such as Fallout: New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity, but being independent had its own set of challenges. Eventually, Microsoft bought the company and announced the game in 2020. However, the team had to forego several features such as several functionalities of the game and its multiplayer aspect. In January 2021, the company decided to change the leadership team of the project and reboot the game.
With Patel at the helm, she shared the difficulties of handling over 80 people in production. "Normally if you’re stepping back and reevaluating your creative direction, putting together a new vertical slice and revised production plans, you would do that with a very small team," she said. Under Patel’s vision, the team focused on highlighting the story and lore from the Pillars of Eternity franchise, as well as replacing the open world with open zones, which allowed the team to improve these spaces.
Patel spoke on the experience she had in these situations and said "There’s this interesting thing I’ve seen on every project I’ve worked on or seen during my time at the studio — things are messy, messy, messy, then they start coming together."
Obsidian Wants Pillars of Eternity Tactics
Now that the Pillars of Eternity franchise is back with Avowed, Obsidian wants to create a Pillars of Eternity Tactics. During a recent Twitch Livestream on February 23, 2025, Pillars of Eternity and Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Director Josh Sawyer revealed the company’s interest in creating a tactics game for the franchise.
"Pillars: Tactics is a thing that a lot of people would like, a lot of people at the studio would like to work on; there are a lot of people who like tactics games," Sawyer said. However, he also pointed out "The difficulty is figuring out the scope of it, in terms of 'how many people' and 'what sort of visual quality are we going for' and 'how big is it?'". There have been previous reports that several developers have had an interest in making a tactics game for Pillars of Eternity, and now that the franchise is in the limelight due to Avowed’s success, this may come to fruition in the future.
Despite this, Sawyer remains adamant about his intention of making Pillars of Eternity 3 but with a budget similar to Baldur’s Gate 3 of $100 million, which is far from what they worked on with Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire.
Avowed is now available for Xbox Series X|S and PC. To stay up to date with the latest information on Avowed, check out our article below!
Source:
Avowed Game Director Bloomberg Interview
Obsidian Studio Design Director Twitch Livestream
