Avowed: Release date, gameplay, & everything we know

Avowed is one of the biggest Xbox exclusives for 2024, and with all the new info flying around, it's a good time to refresh our round-up of everything we know!

Heidi Nicholas

Published 04 Jul 2024

Following the 2024 Xbox Games Showcase, we've had a wave of new info, so now's a great time to dive into everything we know about Avowed, Obsidian's upcoming fantasy RPG.

Avowed is one of the biggest upcoming Game Pass games and one of the most intriguing Xbox exclusives. It's moved its release date to early next year, and we've got a lot of new details to dive into...

Avowed: Release window, gameplay, & everything we know

Everything we know about Avowed

When is Avowed coming out?
What platforms is Avowed coming to?
Is Avowed coming to Xbox Game Pass?
What is the story and setting for Avowed?
What type of game is Avowed?
Avowed achievement list
Avowed trailers

When is Avowed coming out?

Avowed was announced way back in 2020, and after several years of (not so) patiently waiting, we had a release window of fall 2024. This has since been moved back to February 18, 2025, with Xbox saying this is to give players "some breathing room" as "so many games" are coming out.

What platforms is Avowed coming to?

Avowed is an Xbox exclusive published by Xbox Game Studios, and will launch for Xbox Series X|S and Windows.

As a first-party exclusive, Avowed will not be coming to PlayStation 5 or Nintendo Switch.

Is Avowed coming to Xbox Game Pass?

Yep, as it comes from first-party Xbox studio Obsidian Entertainment, Avowed will land on Game Pass on day one when it launches this fall.

What is the story and setting for Avowed?

We've had a wealth of new details and trailers for Avowed which give us much more info about the game.

Avowed takes place in the Living Lands in the world of Eora (within the same universe as Pillars of Eternity), although our character comes from the far-off land of Aedyr. We (playing as a human or an elf, according to an IGN interview) are sent as an envoy to the island of the Living Lands, which is said to be suffering from a strange "spiritual" plague known as the Dream Scourge. The game’s Xbox page adds to this, telling us that we’ll “discover a personal connection to the Living Lands and an ancient secret that threatens to destroy everything.” As if a plague wasn’t enough, you’ll be trying to “save this unknown frontier and your soul from the forces threatening to tear them asunder.”

So, first the Dreamscourge itself: it affects the land, its people, and its animals, so it sounds as though no one is safe. According to that recent interview with the Avowed team, those affected by the Dreamscourge start out feeling confused and seeing hallucinations, before progressing to unpredictable behaviour, and then the final stage: becoming Dreamthralls, "their bodies twisted with fungal growths and their minds and souls overtaken by the plague."

We know that there will be complicated relationships between the factions on the island, but it seems our mission is also complicated by differing beliefs of those in Aedyr. The emperor fears the Dreamscourge could spread to Aedyr, while Inquisitor Lödwyn, the leader of the Aedyran paladin order the Steel Garrote, thinks there's more going on behind the scenes and wants our character to master the island's factions.

We'll apparently start dealing with all this chaos in the port city of Paradis, which, according to the Avowed team, is "the epicenter of tension between Aedyran forces and the locals, who are suspicious of Aedyr’s growing presence."

If you're wondering about map sizes, Xbox Wire interview with game director Carrie Patel and gameplay director Gabe Paramo tells us that “it’s open-zone, size comparable to The Outer Worlds areas on the larger side, and [with] multiple paths essentially to tackle combat situations, or avoid them.” There will also be a dynamic day to night cycle which will no doubt give even more variety to the game's different areas.

What's more, the game will have multiple endings. In an IGN interview, game director Carrie Patel said that Avowed is "an Obsidian game... What else would we be if we didn't have a few different endings?"

What type of game is Avowed?

Avowed is a first-person fantasy action-RPG in the same style as games like Skyrim.

Exploration and combat look to be key aspects — we arrive in the Living Lands to investigate the Dreamscourge plague, so we’ll be busy traversing the island. The enemy types appear quite varied, especially since the plague affects people and animals alike, and we've seen Xaurips (recognisable from Pillars of Eternity), giant spiders, ogres, and the usual human enemies, as well as more bizarre creatures like that fungi-covered bear and what looks to be a reanimated corpse.

When it comes to defence, however, we'll also have some interesting options. That first look we ever had at Avowed with its announce trailer gave the idea that we'd be armed with full old-school fantasy weapons, such as magic, swords, and bows and arrows. However, Avowed also offers up guns, wands, and more, and these can be combined — the Obsidian interview tells us that you can freeze an enemy with a spell, and then smash the ice block you've just created with another weapon. Or else, you can use a fireball to cover the ground with flames and then pull the enemy into the inferno using the Into the Fray ability. That's on top of the game's dual-wield system and the option for usual combat moves such as parrying and blocking.

We'll have skills, abilities, and attributes to upgrade, and everything from our weapon enchantments to our companions' abilities will help. An Xbox Wire post includes Patel's explanation of the freedom you have with skills: “You can really mix and match freely between them... If you want to be all-wizard, you can build entirely throughout that skill tree; if you want to mix and match — make a battlemage, or make someone who can be a little stealthy in certain moments and a little more aggressive in others — you have a lot of freedom to do that.” Patel expanded on this still further in a Windows Central interview, explaining that while "even over the course of a completionist playthrough you won't get enough points to take absolutely every skill," you can still "try everything over the course of your playthrough," you just won't have them all unlocked at the same time. Combat fans, meanwhile, will be happy to hear that a 100% pacifist run isn't possible and that combat will be a necessity, at least in some parts of the game.

Our character, meanwhile, is, a godlike, and this connection to the gods will impact our cosmetic options. "With Avowed you can choose exactly what that manifestation looks like," Patel says. "You will have some that are a lot bigger and more dramatic, and you’ll also have some that are a lot subtler. But either way you have a connection to one of the gods." We'll be able to admire our own appearance too, since you can play in first-person or third-person perspective in Avowed.

Our companions and their stories will also be important in Avowed. We’ll apparently have four companions from different species and backgrounds (including a mercenary and a wizard), who join up with us for their own reasons, each with their own quests for us to follow. The Xbox Wire interview also tells us that these companions are locals of the Living Lands, and can therefore give us a lot of helpful information about the island and assist us with handling conflicts. They'll also help us out in combat — for instance animancer Giatta is a healer, who can keep you alive in battle. She also knows a lot about soul energy and the Living Lands.

You won't have the option to romance your companions. Speaking to IGN, game director Carrie Patel says, "We are building thoughtful relationships with our companion characters. Ultimately, I personally am a fan of making that an option, but I feel like if you're going to do it, you really, really have to commit and make sure that you're giving all to fulfilling that in a way that feels both true to the character, but also creates an engaging player experience. So not something we're doing for Avowed, but I wouldn't say never."

You will, however, get the chance to learn a whole lot about them. Part of this will no doubt be through what looks to be an extensive dialogue system — that gameplay shown during the official Xbox Podcast after 2024's Xbox Games Showcase showed the variety of options available when talking with Yatzli, one of your companions. You can also learn more about them at the Party Camp, which Patel says is "both your narrative hub and also your upgrade hub. That’s where you’ll get to know your companions better, you can get to know their backstories and get to know them better as individuals — you can also hear them getting to know one another through their banters at camp, which is always super-fun to eavesdrop on."

Interestingly, the detailed gameplay shown at the start of the year (which you can check out below) all came from just one side quest in an area of the Living Lands known as Shatterscarp, "the third region in the game". What's more, it's even missable, suggesting that there's a fair amount of content to discover. One character in particular, Kai, has a tie to Shatterscarp, and we'll be seeing his reaction to how the area fared in his absence.

Choices will also have a part to play, with Obsidian adding that our choices will “shape” our companions and hinting ominously at the “consequences” of our decisions. The Xbox Wire interview gives us a tiny hint at the kind of choices we'll be facing, too: not just dialogue options but choices that affect quests and on a grander scale, affecting the "wellbeing of certain characters or communities."

Avowed achievement list

No word yet on the Avowed achievements, but we’ll keep you posted.

Avowed trailers

The official Avowed announce trailer graced our screens back in 2020. Whether it was the hopeful anticipation we've all been suffering from for the next Elder Scrolls game or not, there seemed to be something almost a little Skyrim-y about this announce trailer with its sword and magic combo and its talk of epic wars and empires. You can check that announce trailer out below.

This was followed by the official gameplay trailer in 2023, which again gave us some lovely old-school fantasy vibes as well as a better idea of the game's combat and world.

Then, most recent of all was the Xbox and Obsidian extended gameplay breakdown following Avowed's appearance during Xbox Developer Direct. This was a much longer look at the game, with over 25 minutes all about Avowed.

We had a lot more news from Xbox Games Showcase 2024. First we had a story trailer, reiterating our mission to head to the Living Lands and investigate the Dream Scourge, but also hinting that there might be a deeper conspiracy behind it. It was a gorgeous trailer, full of busy colorful shots of the areas we'll be exploring and the people we'll meet.

Following that, we had a much longer deep dive into the game with new gameplay and detailed commentary from game director Carrie Patel.

More Avowed stories:

Written by Heidi Nicholas

Heidi tends to lean towards indie games, RPGs, and open-world games on Xbox, and when not playing Disney Dreamlight Valley, happily installs every new wholesome game that appears on Xbox Game Pass, before diving back into favorites like The Witcher 3. She's looking forward to Age of Mythology Retold, Everwild, Fable, and Avowed on the Xbox horizon. Heidi graduated with an MA in English Literature before joining the TrueAchievements team.