Wield magic and steel as GeForce NOW's fifth-anniversary celebration summons Obsidian Entertainment's highly anticipated Avowed to the cloud. This first-person fantasy role-playing game is ready to enchant cloud gamers, leading the charge of six titles joining the over 2,000 games in the cloud gaming library. GeForce NOW day passes are available to purchase again, in limited quantities each day. Members can currently purchase one day at a time, based on available capacity. Day pass users get 24-hour access to powerful cloud gaming with all the benefits of a GeForce NOW Ultimate or Performance membership. Stay tuned for updates as more membership options become available.

Choose Your Own Adventure
Embark on a thrilling adventure in Avowed, set in the captivating world of Eora. As an envoy of Aedyr, explore the mysterious Living Lands, an island teeming with ancient magic and shifting secrets, as a dire threat looms over the realm: a mysterious plague that defies nature and reason, spreading chaos across the sprawling wilderness. The Living Lands offer a diverse array of environments to explore, each with a unique ecosystem. Engage in visceral combat by mixing and matching swords, spells, guns and shields. Companions of various species, each with their own abilities and quests, will join the adventure, their fates intertwined with the players' choices. As the story unfolds, every decision will ripple across the Living Lands, shaping the future of its inhabitants and testing the players' resolve in the face of intrigue, power and danger.

The wait is finally over—Avowed, Obsidian Entertainment's highly anticipated fantasy RPG has officially launched! Step into the breathtaking Living Lands, a wild and mysterious island located in the Pillars of Eternity world of Eora, and embark on a journey filled with danger, discovery, and adventure. Play today on Xbox Series X|S, the Xbox app for Windows PC, Battle.net, Steam, and cloud, to experience Obsidian's latest RPG adventure. Also available on Game Pass!

A Land in Turmoil
The Living Lands is a frontier unlike any other. This rugged and untamed island has become a haven for exiles, dreamers, and adventurers seeking a fresh start. Its vibrant regions and scattered settlements pulse with life, each hiding untold stories and ancient secrets waiting to be uncovered. But this land of promise is fraught with peril. The Dreamscourge, a devastating soul-plague, is driving settlers to madness and turning them against one another. The very land itself resists colonization, haunted by echoes of lives long past. As an envoy chosen by a foreign emperor and blessed by a mysterious god, you are thrust into the heart of this chaos. With divine powers at your fingertips and the will to shape your own destiny, you'll confront ancient threats, unravel mysteries, and decide the fate of the Living Lands. Will you unite its people or watch as their struggles tear them apart? The choices you make will define the future of the Living Lands—and the person you become.

For those of you that have been exploring the Living Lands in Avowed, thank you for taking a break to check out the latest Game Pass news! We have some exciting new reveals and exclusive Perks to tease your install buttons. Also, mark your calendars and check out the ID@Xbox Showcase during IGN Fan Fest 2025 on Monday, February 24 at 10am PT for even more Game Pass announcements. Let's get to the games!

Available Today
Avowed (Cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X|S) - February 18. Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass
Available on day one! Welcome to the Living Lands, a mysterious island filled with adventure and danger. Set in the fictional world of Eora that was first introduced to players in the Pillars of Eternity franchise, Avowed is a first-person fantasy action RPG from the award-winning team at Obsidian Entertainment. Check out Xbox Wire for Starting Tips to Help You on Your Adventure in the Living Lands.

Welcome to another week of new game releases and this week's AAA title takes place in the same world as Pillars of Eternity, for those that were a fan of that game from a decade ago. If RPG games aren't your cup of tea, how about a face full of Norwegian snow, or maybe the summer of 1995? How about some equestrian challenges, some pirate ninjas or maybe something a bit more dystopian? If so, we got the games for you this week.

Avowed / This week's AAA title / Tuesday 18 February
Avowed is a first-person fantasy RPG set in the world of Eora, where your choices carve a path through war, intrigue, and ancient mysteries. Navigate a land in turmoil, forge powerful alliances or deadly rivalries, and wield magic and steel to shape the fate of the Living Lands—and your own destiny. Steam link

Intel today released the latest version of its Arc GPU Graphics Drivers. Version 101.6559 WHQL adds Game On driver-optimization for "Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii," with the optimization covering the Arc B-series, A-series, and Core Ultra processors with Arc iGPUs. The drivers also add optimization for "Avowed," covering the B-series and A-series discrete GPUs. Performance for Arc B-series GPUs has been improved for "Senua's Saga: Hellblade II," with up to 5.9% increase in framerates to be had at 1080p with High settings.

Among the issues fixed with this release are flickering seen with Arc A-series discrete GPUs, Core Ultra Series 1 and Series 2 processor iGPUs in Adobe After Effects, specifically in its Preview window. "Horizon Zero Dawn remastered" experiencing a crash with frame generation enabled on Core Ultra Series 2 processors with Arc graphics, has been fixed. Grab the drivers from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: Intel Arc GPU Graphics Drivers 101.6559 WHQL

The more I learn about the Living Lands of Avowed, an island ripe with riches, mystery, and magic, the more it feels like it's the Wild West of Eora. A frontier full of adventurers, mercenaries, and thieves, all looking to stake a claim—as a player, that's exactly where I want to be. It projects this unique, early-modern period look and feel where it's not quite medieval, but sophisticated enough that society is utilizing things like gunpowder and blast furnaces, with cultures developing their own distinct means of survival - much like moments in the history of our world. In talking with the team at Obsidian, I learned that all of this is intentional in its design, giving us a look at what a new frontier would look like if it were a first-person fantasy role-playing game. Borrowing elements from our world also helps to inform the "rules" Obsidian follows for crafting a player experience within the Living Lands, turning the dials just enough to give us something wholly unique, where souls are real and gods exist - but not necessarily in a way that we think of them.

"When you're informed by those two basic facts, it guides a lot about both the kind of content you develop and the tone and flavor you give it," explains Game Director Carrie Patel. "The flow of souls, the presence and existence of that energy, is key and core to life continuing in Eora in a way that will resonate with players who have been through Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire. We have a traditional pantheon in the world of Pillars, and you will get glimpses of some of these gods in Avowed." This all feeds into the various cultures you will encounter along the way—what's important to them (like their gods) is what gives life to the game. The Aedyrans, for example, are a nation that heavily values the ideas of rightful rule, leadership, and order—and now they're plopped into the greatest frontier of Eora. What would it look like as they start to try and blend in with the locals? It may be a small change in their outfit or adapting to how they choose to live. This "Wild West" attracts all sorts, and rigidity may not blend very well with what's required to survive the Living Lands.

Obsidian's latest RPG, Avowed, is undoubtedly quite a challenging game to run even on capable hardware, if recent reports are anything to go by. It was previously mentioned that the game will focus on visuals and fidelity instead of fast-paced gameplay, and might be limited to 30 FPS on the Xbox Series X. For those who need a refresher, the 4-year-old Xbox Series X packs a GPU with just over 12 TFLOPS of raw performance, courtesy of its 52-CU RDNA 2 GPU. Now, however, it appears to have been confirmed that the game will indeed be able to hit 60 FPS on the Series X.

In a recent interview with YouTuber MinnMax, Avowed game director Carrie Patel confirmed that the game will be able to hit 60 FPS on the aforementioned console. Previous leaks sourced from a person who was able to play the game on Microsoft's consoles stated that the game will be limited 40 FPS on the Series S, and 60 on the Series X, the latter part of which has now been confirmed to be the case. Of course, there will be a downgrade in the quality of visuals to be able to hit the vaunted 60 FPS mark, but that is nothing out of the ordinary for consoles. UE 5-based Avowed is set to launch on the 18th of February, and will be available with the Xbox Game Pass, which has witnessed quite a delightful series of major launches lately.

"Your worlds, your way" is not just a motto for Obsidian—it's truly how they think about their players. Freedom lives within everything they do, informing how they design quests, regions, combat, and more—it's these elements that help make an "Obsidian RPG" great (and why "Obsidian RPG" is a term you can immediately recognize in the first place). Ahead of the Avowed launch on February 18, 2025, I spoke with the team behind the upcoming fantasy role-playing game to learn more about the process that offers players such a huge level of agency—and how this philosophy is being pushed in this game more than ever.

"There are choices you can make and consequences of actions you can take or not take, whether they are forecasted to you or not, that will impact the future of entire settlements, individual people, groups of people—the whole spectrum basically," says Region Director Berto Ritger. This felt evident as soon as I got off the boat in the game's first region, Dawnshore, as the entire zone is essentially laid out in front of you, waiting to be explored. Everywhere I looked was an opportunity to engage with this world, either through circumnavigating old houses to find loot, or talking to locals that would yield side quests—and this was all before I even stepped foot outside of the port city of Paradis.

This GFN Thursday recaps the latest cloud announcements from the CES trade show, including GeForce RTX gaming expansion across popular devices such as Steam Deck, Apple Vision Pro spatial computers, Meta Quest 3 and 3S, and Pico mixed-reality devices. Gamers in India will also be able to access their PC gaming library at GeForce RTX 4080 quality with an Ultimate membership for the first time in the region. This follows expansion in Chile and Columbia with GeForce NOW Alliance partner Digevo. More AAA gaming is on the way, with highly anticipated titles DOOM: The Dark Ages and Avowed joining GeForce NOW's extensive library of over 2,100 supported titles when they launch on PC later this year. Plus, no GFN Thursday is complete without new games. Get ready for six new titles joining the cloud this week.

Head in the Clouds
CES 2025 is coming to a close, but GeForce NOW members still have lots to look forward to. Members will be able to play over 2,100 titles from the GeForce NOW cloud library at GeForce RTX quality on Valve's popular Steam Deck device with the launch of a native GeForce NOW app, coming later this year. Steam Deck gamers can gain access to all the same benefits as GeForce RTX 4080 GPU owners with a GeForce NOW Ultimate membership, including NVIDIA DLSS 3 technology for the highest frame rates and NVIDIA Reflex for ultra-low latency.

Obsidian Entertainment has revealed more details about its upcoming first-person fantasy RPG, Avowed. Launching on February 18, pre-orders are now opened for all editions of the game, and Obsidian shared minimum PC system requirements for the game.

Avowed is set in a previously unseen region in the world of Eora, introduced in Pillars of Eternity game. "In your role as envoy, alongside your companions, you'll uncover hidden truths and navigate delicate situations, where every choice shapes the fate of the land and the people living here." The game will be available in Digital Standard Edition, Digital Premium Edition, and the Premium Edition SteelBook Edition, where Premium Editions will get early access on February 13. The Premium Edition is currently available for pre-order on Xbox app on Windows, Battle.net, or Steam. It will also be available to those owning Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass membership.