Making an RPG is difficult. Bringing a well-established world to a whole new dimension has to be even more challenging. But in my eyes, Avowed hit the nail right on the head. A genuinely beautiful experience, from the graphical stylings to the choices I could make. It’s been quite a while since a first-person action RPG captivated me like this one did. And I wanted to learn more about what made Avowed tick.I had the opportunity to speak with Carrie Patel, director of Avowed, to discover what made the RPG so special. Bringing the world of Pillars of Eternity to a whole new audience couldn’t have been easy. But, the team at Obsidian made it happen with ease.Screenshot: Obsidian EntertainmentI first need to gush about the Key Art for ‘Avowed’. Even before release, it’s one of the most beautiful pieces of art I’ve seen for a video game. What went into the creation of it?Skylight Collective is responsible for our key art, and their work blew us away. We were familiar with them because they’d also done the key art for Pentiment. In our initial meeting with Skylight, we sent over an initial design brief that provided an overview of the in-production game, Avowed’s tone and vibes, and a set of stylistic reference points. They came up with something like a couple dozen different treatments. Ranging from the traditional (companions lined up in a game environment) to more abstracted, feelsy options like the one we picked.When we reviewed the options, we all fell in love with the overgrown skeleton right off the bat. It captured the spirit of the game so perfectly. The illustration and watercolor style hearkened back to classic fantasy imagery, and it made for such a compelling picture. Like many things in Avowed, it felt like a risk. But one that was right for the game, and we couldn’t be happier with it.Screenshot: Shaun CichackiThe world of ‘Avowed’ is a joy to explore, and being split up into multiple zones allows for expanded creativity. How was the world designed?We set out to create visually and thematically distinct regions that would show off the range of the Living Lands and give the player a strong sense of progression through the world. We also paid special attention to the story threads running through each region. How is the Dreamscourge developing, what’s the threat level between local settlements and Aedyr, and what is the player learning about their own mysterious connection? Breaking the world up in this way allowed us to give all of these threads space to breathe and it let us create something unique and memorable in each map.Screenshot: Shaun CichackiWhat went into the creation process of taking the world of ‘Pillars of Eternity’ and turning it into an Action RPG?Any time you’re translating an existing IP into a new format, you have to answer the following: What is core to the feeling and identity of your IP? What are the expectations of your format? It sounds basic when you look at it like that. But, when it comes to gameplay, you’re theming your mechanics around your IP so that you aren’t sacrificing what makes your chosen format fun.For instance, we carry over the same player character attributes from Pillars. Those attributes do many of the same things they’ve always done. Might governs damage, Constitution determines maximum health, and Dexterity increases attack speed. But because Avowed’s moment-to-moment gameplay is action-focused rather than turn-based, we don’t have under-the-hood calculations for defensive stats like Reflex or Will.If you want to avoid an attack, you are dodging or blocking. So, the Resolve attribute now determines your maximum Stamina. Which is the resource you use to dodge and block, rather than a set of passive defensive stats. In other words, we take our existing attributes and translate them so that they provide similar utility for the player under a different set of rules.On top of that, we ensure that the lore, story, and characters we build the game around are true to the original IP. If you’ve played Pillars or Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, you’ll find that many of the same big events and conflicts are reference points for characters in Avowed. More importantly, the philosophy and “feel” maintain the same DNA. This is a world of nuance and mystery rather than simple, good-and-evil conflicts.Screenshot: Shaun CichackiWhen I was playing through ‘Avowed,’ I was impressed at the quality of the animations in both first- and third-person. What went into the creation of these animations?A lot of work! There isn’t really a shortcut. Supporting both first- and third-person gameplay means you are supporting a lot of additional animation and VFX work, because something that looks good in one perspective may not work at all in the other. Seth McCaughey is one of our most experienced animators, and he deserves a ton of credit for being the point person on many of our third-person player animations.The animation, VFX, and gameplay teams worked in close coordination to make movement and combat animations feel good. You can see that evolution with enemy hit reactions. Those improved dramatically from our early gameplay reveals as the team iterated together to make those hits feel appropriately weighty and fun.Screenshot: Xbox Game StudiosThe combat, weirdly enough, reminded me a lot of ‘Dark Messiah of Might and Magic,’ as attacks had weight and heft behind them. What influenced the combat to feel as fluid and lively as it does?I love that so many people have made that comparison. Dark Messiah was a soft reference point. Particularly for how the combat encourages players to make use of their environment. Dying Light was also an early reference for parkour. Avowed doesn’t go quite as far with the mechanics of either of those games. But, they’re great reference points for how to make combat and movement feel fluid yet weighty in first person.Screenshot: Shaun CichackiForgoing typical classes is a bold move for an RPG. It’s something I grew to appreciate more and more as I played through ‘Avowed’. Why didn’t the team choose to stick players with one class?We wanted to give players maximum flexibility and encourage them to experiment. One of the aspects of RPGs that make them such special and singular experiences is that each playthrough — with your unique character, your particular path through the world, and your choices across content — feels intensely personal.Funnily enough, you can spec into a lot of traditional RPG classes — one of my favorite examples is building a monk with Iron Fists, Constant Recovery, and Flurry of Blows — but you can also build a gun mage. One detail about Avowed that players have responded very enthusiastically to is the fact that there is so much in the game that is not explicitly marked — it’s there for players to discover. Our build options are no different! I love seeing players find truly unique, creative, and character-rich combinations of abilities, attributes, and gear.Screenshot: Shaun CichackiWhile I know plenty of people would love the chance to woo Kai a bit, ‘Avowed’ forgoes the romance route. Is there any particular reason why romance didn’t make the final cut?There are a few reasons, but it comes down to two big things. First, doing romance paths right means a lot of work. Both to support a believable, true-to-the-character romance, and also to support an equally rich platonic path. You need the entire writing team fully bought in on the vision, or it just isn’t worth it.Secondly, romance paths can encourage players to metagame at the expense of the overall experience. The best companion relationships (in any form — romances, friendships, rivalries, etc.) are the ones that feel like a natural development of the player’s time and experience with the character. And the more we provide mechanically-driven relationship trajectories with visible progress bars and predictable end states, the more tempting it becomes for players to interact with companions as reward generators rather than as characters.Systematized romance can also create rigid player expectations around what the end state of a relationship “should” look like. Avowed’s companions probably have more conversation content than any of our previous games’ companions, and most of it is purely optional. And that’s the point — if you’re the kind of player who enjoys talking to companions, then getting to know them is the content and the reward.Screenshot: Shaun CichackiThe addition of the active lore during conversations was something I loved and highlighted in my review. As someone unfamiliar with ‘PoE’ and its massively built world, this was a huge timesaver. What made the team at Obsidian consider adding this feature to the game?We first implemented a version of this feature in Tyranny for all of the reasons fans have called out. It allowed us to seamlessly provide lore and context for players that they could opt into at their own pace. Without turning every conversation into a massive infodump. We carried this feature forward into Deadfire, and I wanted it in Avowed for all the same reasons.There are also returning fans who already know a ton about the world and new players who have no idea what “Animancy” is. Some players like gleaning context clues. Those players who want to know everything, and players who return to a game after a months-long hiatus and need a refresher. The lore glossary allows all of those players to get exactly what they need.Screenshot: Shaun CichackiUnreal Engine 5 has been criticized for being hard to optimize, but ‘Avowed’ ran fantastically on Xbox Series X in my experience. What was the main choice when choosing to go with UE5, rather than an in-house engine?In-house engines require a ton of support to develop and maintain, and you need both an appetite for that cost and a very clear understanding of what that in-house engine will do for you that others can’t. And it needs to be something that you’re going to use for many projects and years to come.Unreal is widely used across the industry, so many new hires will already be familiar with it. We’d developed The Outer Worlds and Grounded with Unreal 4. So, we had a lot of in-house experience that made Unreal 5 a natural choice for Avowed.Video via Obsidian Entertainment on YouTubeWhile Avowed is going to stick in my mind for a while, I’m hoping you may have some details that are a little more… out of this world for us. Anything you can say about The Outer Worlds 2 that can get fans more hyped than ever?All I can say is that fans are gonna be stoked this year. The team on The Outer Worlds 2 is doing amazing work.I would like to thank Carrie Patel for taking the time out of her busy schedule to chat with us about Avowed.The post Carrie Patel, Director of ‘Avowed’, Dishes on What Makes the New Obsidian RPG So Special (Interview) appeared first on VICE.