Obsidian Entertainment revealed that its upcoming RPG, Avowed, originally had multiplayer co-op before the studio pivoted to make it a single-player game.
In the fifth and final part of Obsidian’s 20th-anniversary documentary, founder Feargus Urquhart explained that he pushed for multiplayer co-op in Avowed back when the studio was still independent. “It was a more interesting game to publishers,” he said. “When you’re asking for $50, $60, $70, or $80 million, you got to have something interesting to talk about, and multiplayer made it interesting.”
Obsidian talks about Avowed:
• Avowed had a co-op focus early in development, now changed to a traditional Obsidian singleplayer RPG
• Avowed is Obsidian’s version of what a fantasy first-person RPG is
• Finding the right balance between taking things from Pillars of Eternity… pic.twitter.com/SAbWQiUOVe— Klobrille (@klobrille) August 8, 2023
Head of development Justin Birch added, “We were too focused on co-op, too focused on changing how our pipelines worked, the way we write conversations, the way we write quests, and everything else.”