Avowed began as a multiplayer blend of Skyrim and Destiny.

Forget about Kai, Marius, Giatta, and Yatzli; in an alternate reality, you could have been exploring Avowed’s Living Lands with your real-life buddies. This action RPG, released in February 2025, opted for a single-player experience, despite its original vision as a blend of Skyrim and Destiny.

In a chat with an outlet, Feargus Urquhart, the head of Obsidian Entertainment, revealed that Avowed was initially conceived as “an ambitious cross between megahits The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Destiny that would let players team up to battle monsters in a vast fantasy realm.”

It was a bold vision. “When I first saw it, my thought was, ‘I don’t think there’s a team on the planet that could pull this off,’” remarked Josh Sawyer, Obsidian’s studio design director.

The multiplayer concept emerged when Obsidian joined Microsoft’s Xbox Game Studios in 2018. However, while the fantasy elements of Avowed remained intact, the multiplayer aspect was scrapped after just two years of development. Since then, Obsidian has focused on single-player RPGs and co-op survival titles.

Despite the success of their recent survival game Grounded 2, Obsidian’s latest single-player RPGs, Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2, didn’t quite hit sales targets. Urquhart pointed out several areas for potential improvement, like adding crime mechanics, but the lengthy development cycles are seen as the main hurdle. Both Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2 spent over six years in development, leading to increased production costs.

Urquhart suggested that faster decision-making, outsourcing, and reusing certain technologies could help streamline development. For instance, there’s no need to reinvent inventory systems for every new title.

Obsidian is currently busy with new projects, including additional content for Grounded 2 and The Outer Worlds 2. While The Outer Worlds 3 isn’t on the horizon, the studio plans to expand the Avowed universe. Given the focus on reducing development time, it might not be the right moment for another ambitious pitch like “Skyrim meets Destiny.”