With Avowed and the Outer Worlds 2, Obsidian’s 2025 Is Stacked but either One Failing Will Hurt Xbox Badly

In addition to showcasing the first gameplay footage of The Outer Worlds 2, Obsidian also disclosed in a trailer at this year’s Game Awards that the game will be released sometime in 2025. This means that, with Avowed dropping in February, the studio will now have two full-fledged RPGs in the upcoming year.

It’s becoming evident that Obsidian Entertainment’s upcoming action role-playing game, Avowed, may set the standard for years to come after its release due to its daring subversion of several current trends. However, if one of them fails, then it is going to be a huge blow for Xbox and Obsidian.

Obsidian Entertainment drops the first gameplay trailer of The Outer Worlds 2

The first line of the trailer is a hilarious joke about Obsidian’s beginnings as a sequel studio to the fantastic role-playing games of Knights of the Old Republic 2, Neverwinter Nights 2, and “Fallout 3 (part 2),” also known as Fallout: New Vegas. Although few details were revealed, the trailer claimed that despite development taking “three times as long,” The Outer Worlds 2 would be “twice as big.”

With a generational graphical leap, it undoubtedly looks like the original game, but some of the artistic flourishes and gameplay tidbits were also intriguing. In addition to some absolutely stunningly opulent and baroque interiors that rival the rich guy planet of Byzantium from the first game, there’s this desert planet with a stunning blue and red skybox.

Compared to the original game, what was shown of the fighting certainly appeared crisper and more action-packed. What truly caught my eye, though, was some stealth gameplay that showed off some sort of gnarly predator vision in addition to some new, vicious takedown kills. It will be exciting to see Obsidian expand on the surprisingly effective social stealth systems found in The Outer Worlds, which were based on disguises and classic Bethesda-style crouch-walking and sneak-attacking.

Avowed needs to have a successful launch

The creators of Avowed have stated time and time again during its promotional launch that the game is not intent on pursuing the popularity of a completely open-ended gameplay structure. Director Carrie Patel described the game’s resemblance to The Outer Worlds in an interview with RPG Site for Avowed:

…an open zone structure where you have these different regions that you’ll visit that each have kind of their own leg of the critical path, their own series of side quests, and their own set of local concerns that, reflect more broadly on the larger stories of the living lands.

Instead of diminishing player choice, this kind of “open-zone” approach has the potential to make consequences more impactful by placing them in more personal settings with custom character interactions. This essentially guarantees that several playthroughs are necessary to experience everything available.

When Avowed is released first, it must perform well because if it doesn’t launch well, the hype surrounding it will fade, which will somewhat hurt The Outer Worlds 2. Because The Outer Worlds 2 has been anticipated for a long time, especially after the trailer we saw, its failure will be more than disappointing, and it will ultimately hurt Xbox as a whole.

Furthermore, Xbox games have a history of failing at launch, for example: Anthem, Mass Effect Andromeda, No Man’s Sky, Redfall, and recently, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. Now if Avowed cracks it at the beginning, The Outer Worlds 2 will have bigger anticipation. Now, only time will tell how fans are going to perceive the changed approach of an RPG in Avowed.