After years of waiting, gamers finally have a substantial gameplay trailer and release window for Obsidian Entertainment's upcoming RPG Avowed. Taking place in the same universe as the studio's crowdfunded Pillars of Eternity projects, this title will jump genres to a first-person action-RPG similar to The Elder Scrolls. Obsidian recently got back into first-person RPGs via The Outer Worlds and Grounded, so hopes are high for Avowed. The game already looks impressive and should scratch the itch for a new single-player title that many Elder Scrolls fans have been feeling.
With how similar Avowed looks to The Elder Scrolls, especially Oblivion and Skyrim, it's difficult not to also bring The Elder Scrolls 6 into the conversation. Teased years in advance, Bethesda's next fantasy RPG isn't expected to release until 2026 at the earliest, fifteen years after Skyrim originally came out. As Todd Howard's team has been focused on Starfield in recent years with a pandemic occurring in the middle of its development, The Elder Scrolls 6 could be quite far off. When standing next to Avowed, however, that may not be a bad thing.
Avowed Feels Like A True Iteration On The Elder Scrolls
The tools that Bethesda's main RPG teams used for their most recent offerings are infamously antiquated and have hampered the last several projects. Skyrim, Fallout 4, and Fallout 76 all run on the Creation Engine, something that has a long history of technical issues. Despite Starfield upgrading to the Creation Engine 2, the game will be capped at 30 frames per second on consoles, even on the Xbox Series X. Starfield will benefit from the most technical polish Bethesda Game Studios has implemented in over a decade, and it still can't help but show cracks on the strongest console a Creation Engine has ever run on.
It almost feels unfair to turn towards another Microsoft studio making a similar game seemingly without those issues. Avowed looks like Skyrim with better combat, better animations, more colorful art design, and a fresh, new world. Obsidian has made a concerted effort to fix the mistakes synonymous with Bethesda RPGs, producing The Outer Worlds as a sci-fi Fallout: New Vegas and now Avowed as a heavily modified Skyrim. If Avowed and The Elder Scrolls 6 come out within a couple of years of each other, comparisons between the two will be inescapable. Even backed by better hardware, software, talent, and funding than ever before, that's not something The Elder Scrolls 6 can afford.
The Elder Scrolls 6 Must Stand Out, And Apart, From Avowed
Skyrim is a living legend in the game industry. It continues releasing skews on new consoles with many of the issues it launched with, and sells in spite of that. The fifth Elder Scrolls game struck a chord with mainstream gamers that has only been replicated by a few open-world fantasy titles since then. Expectations for The Elder Scrolls 6 will be appropriately high, and if the game manages to release within two or three years of a successful Avowed launch, some of its thunder will be stolen.
There's a chance that, if Avowed comes out in late 2024 or is delayed to 2025, The Elder Scrolls 6 will also be pushed back. Microsoft wouldn't want its own projects to cannibalize each other, and TES6 will still take years to make even if some of the Starfield team has already begun pre-production on it. Chances are, The Elder Scrolls 6 will release far enough away from Avowed that it won't matter when Obsidian's game comes out. Still, it will be a good idea for Bethesda to keep an eye on what Obsidian is doing with the formula it once championed, and learn from it while making The Elder Scrolls 6.
Avowed will release in 2024 for PC and Xbox Series X/S.