Avowedis Obsidian Entertainment’s next big RPG and has been a long time in the making. After a lengthy wait post the initial reveal trailer and numerous delays, it is finally around the corner, and naturally, fans couldn’t be happier. The developers have been hard at work fine-tuning it to deliver the experience everyone is expecting, and the finished product, or at least what has been seen in previews and gameplay clips, is shaping up nicely. It’s easy to see why so many RPG fans are excited aboutAvowed.
In fact,Avowedis easily one of themost-anticipated RPGs of 2025, with its day-one launch on Game Pass coupled with a lack of competition giving it a huge advantage. Many are hoping it will fill that void left by Bethesda, especially asThe Elder Scrolls 6is nowhere to be seen. However, while many want it to be the nextElder Scrollsgame, and, in many ways, it will be,there’s one change from that series and all RPGs that is not only going to makeAvowedstand out but potentially make it a better RPG as a result.
Avowed’s World Is A Lot Smaller Than Most RPGs
It’s More Like The Outer Worlds Than Skyrim
Avowedisn’t a strictly open-world game, but rather one split up into open zones, much like Obsidian Entertainment’s other renowned RPG,The Outer Worlds. Players will get to scour each zone from top to bottom, asAvowedpromotes freedomabove all else, but the primary purpose of the zone-based world design is to ensure that the developer can craft compelling content and deliver it at the exact right moment. Essentially, it is a pacing mechanism, which is something thatAvowed’sregion director Berto Ritger, and narrative designer Kate Dollarhyde discussed in an interview withGamespot.
In that interview, both Ritger and Dollarhyde discussed the need to know what players had last completed in order to best dictate what they should next see.This design philosophy ensures that players aren’t just experiencing things at random, but rather get a tailored experience that nonetheless offers a similar amount of freedom seen in other RPGs. In many ways, this removes it from theSkyrimmodel, which ostensibly allows players to explore the region at their own pace, encountering exciting emergent moments at random, but rarely sticking to the beaten path. In the interview, Dollarhyde explains it by saying:
“You never know where the player is and what they’re doing at any given time. So having these zones that happen in sequence means we always know what content you’ve just come from on the critical path. Maybe not what side quests you’ve done, but we always know you’ve just had this [core] experience.”
This means thatAvowed’smaps have to be significantly smaller, asa larger singular map likeSkryim’swouldn’t accommodate the stricter narrative pacing Obsidian Entertainment wants to implement. This means that, for a lot of players,Avowedwon’t be likeTES6, but will instead offer a unique approach to RPG design that developers haven’t properly explored. It feels old-school to drop the interconnected nature of a world, and typically something that lower-budget AA games likeGreedfallutilizes to give the illusion of a larger map.
However,Avowed’ssmaller maps aren’t necessarily a budgetary limitation or even an inherently bad thing. Not only does it allow for a better sense of pacing, but it also ensures that players more consistently get that sense of awe and wonder from exploration. A larger interconnected map will naturally be filled with more empty and open space, as seen in games likeAssassin’s Creed OdysseyandSkyrim. However,multiple smaller, more densely packed maps remove that emptiness, allowing for frequent bursts of excitement as players stumble across something new.
Avowed’s Maps Are Densely Packed
They’re Full Of Hidden Secrets And Quests
Fortunately, previews andAvowedgameplay footagehave confirmed that its smaller maps are far more densely detailed compared to other modern RPGs.It is more akin to a game likeYakuzaor even Xbox’s recentIndiana Jones and the Great Circlewhen it comes to the sheer amount of detail and things to do in one region, than, say,Skyrim. This level of detail applies to the environments - which appear to be rich in both physical structures, fauna, and flora, but also moments of environmental storytelling - and things to do within each region.
For example, in one of the starting regions, players have a large town to explore, multiple quests - both readily available and hidden - to tackle, pieces of loot to uncover, and bosses to fight. There are also a plethora of NPCs to meet, vertical locations to climb, and intricate details to notice for those inclined to scour every corner of the map. That’s not to say thatSkyrimor any other modern RPG lacks these features, but rather,Avowedcondenses them in such a way that players are constantly stumbling across something new, rather than at irregular intervals.
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This, coupled with the linear pacing that allows for a more impactful narrative, could makeAvowedone of the best RPGs of 2025. Indeed,if pulled off successfully, this structure could inspire a new generation of open-area RPGs, much like howBreath of the Wildproved that there was plenty of room for the open world to evolve. That is what makesAvowedone of the mostexciting 2025 Xbox exclusives, as it has the potential to build upon the foundations Obsidian Entertainment has been laying and offer up something refreshing after having slogged through enormous RPG after enormous RPG.
RPGs Have Gotten Far Too Big
They’re Overwhelming To Play
None of this is to say that RPGs shouldn’t be open-world, or even that every recent open-world RPG has been bad. The open world model, if done correctly, can add a lot to the immersive nature of an RPG, and there are instances of separated open zones that haven’t worked, such as the loading screen heavy universe of Bethesda’s ownoften malignedStarfieldorAssassin’s Creed Valhalla’sbeautiful yet empty rendition of England. However,there is a growing trend, especially from developers like Ubisoft, to rapidly increase the sizes of RPG worlds with little regard for what’s inside them.
Todd Howard famously claimed thatFallout 76would be four times the size and feature 16 times the detail ofFallout 4. However,while bigger,Fallout 76’sworld never felt any more detailed and the increased size only led to a gargantuan number of bugsthat made it one of the messiest launches in video game history. Similarly,Cyberpunk 2077, one of manygames unfairly hated, featured an enormous world that was bug-ridden at launch and still struggles with running on last-gen hardware.
While in scale, these worlds are technically more impressive than the densely packed streets ofYakuza’sKamurocho, they’re no match for just how immersive and detailed it is. That is whyAvowed’sapproach to world design is so exciting. It can be tempting to try and replicateElden RingandBreath of the Wild’sapproach to open worlds, one that sees players covertly directed to the next objective while making them feel like they’ve chosen to go there all on their own.
However, sometimes, shrinking the world size down to increase how much players can interact with it is a better and more achievable goal that still offers the same curated and impactful experience.Avowed’sworld may be smaller thanSkyrim’s,Cyberpunk 2077’s, andAssassin’s Creeds', but it looks like it’s doing a lot more with its space than any of those games did.
