Obsidian just about turned Avowed into a multiplayer game so they could get the funding they needed before Xbox bought the studio in 2018. Obsidian founder Feargus Urquhart said in the last installment of the studio’s anniversary document that he was responsible for the decision and kept pushing it for what was probably too long.
“One of the things I really pushed was that Avowed was going to be multiplayer. and I kept on that for a long time,” Urquhart said. “I know, in the end, it was the wrong decision to keep on pushing on it.”
“We were still independent and [when] we were selling it, it was a more interesting game to publishers. And when you’re asking for $50, $60, $70, $80 million, you have to have something interesting to talk about. And multiplayer made it interesting. It was this idea of sort of the peanut butter and chocolate, putting it together – it must be something that’s good.”
The rest of the studio and Urquhart eventually realized that multiplayer wasn’t their strength – similar to when they realized they shouldn’t just try to make Obsidian Skyrim – and they changed direction. By that point, however, the team was already preparing a vertical slice, which is games industry speak for a showcase demo, so Urquhart was apparently pushing the multiplayer idea for quite a while.
That might explain why the Xbox Games Showcase trailer we saw didn’t show off terribly much from the game and why there’s no concrete release date for it except sometime in 2024.
Written by Josh Broadwell on behalf of GLHF
