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.

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

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.

At the recent Xbox Developer_Direct 2024 broadcast, Obsidian Entertainment shared its most comprehensive look yet at its upcoming fantasy-action RPG, Avowed. But even that only scratched at the surface of what's coming your way this fall. On today's special episode of The Official Xbox Podcast, Avowed Game Director Carrie Patel and Gameplay Director Gabe Paramo shared an extended look at the quest showcased during Developer_Direct, providing more detail on the moment-to-moment experience of the flexible combat system, and where this side quest fits in the larger narrative of Avowed.

This latest look at Avowed gives us a good idea of what to expect from Shatterscarp, one part of the ecologically diverse island of The Living Lands, all in the same universe as Obsidian's CRPG series Pillars of Eternity. But what makes Avowed a very 'Obsidian game' goes far beyond the commonality of setting in the world of Eora. "It's really about our player-centric approach to role play," Patel shared during this week's Podcast. "The way we really approach consequence and choice is giving players the opportunities to define who they are in this world, how they want to behave - what fantasy, what challenges they want to undertake." It's all part of Obsidian's "your worlds, your way" approach, and players will feel the weight of their choices moment-to-moment with every slash, parry, and spell cast.

The EPIC Games Store is planning on being your faithful companion throughout this Christmas season with a number of free games to tide you over. This isn't just a generous move from EPIC Games' heart; customers who enter the storefront to redeem a free game are more likely to purchase other entries than customers who don't even make it through the (metaphorical) entrance. The company will thusly offer 15 free games, one game per day, starting on December 17th. Customers will only have 24 hours to take advantage of the free game offer before it expires. There is no information on which games will actually be free, but the EPIC Games Store has already offered an insanely good amount of, well, insanely good games, so chances are high we're getting something worthwhile. And that is a bonus to the usual game discounts.

In the meantime, two of the aforementioned worthwhile games are now available through to December 17th, where the EPIC Christmas season begins proper. The company is now offering Obsidian Entertainment's Tyranny - Gold Edition - a story-driven RPG where you're destined to become the tirant, not bring him down. This doesn't even qualify as a try to hook gamers into buying available DLC and expansions for the game, as the Gold Edition already offers all additional content that was released to this - in this editor's opinion - excellent game. Not to be content, EPIC is also offering Pillars of Eternity Definitive Edition. You know, another game developed by Obsidian Entertainment, which also merrily includes all additional released content for the game. Say what you will about EPIC - their games store throws us gamers some definite delights.

Reports are circling around the web regarding an imminently/closed deal between Microsoft and Obsidian Entertainment, developers of Fallout: New Vegas and, more recently, the Pillars of Eternity series. Microsoft has been on a roll with its investment in games studios, bringing numerous big development houses (such as Playground Games, Ninja Theory, Undead Labs) to their fold and putting together new internal studios (The Initiative, for one).

Should the deal go through, Obsidian Entertainment would bring a wealth of new RPG games development experience to the Microsoft Game Studios umbrella - with a specific focus on PC gaming. At the same time, Obsidian Entertainment themselves would have access to resources and tools that would otherwise never be available for them - and have we said this is Microsoft's coffers and resources we're talking about? Even though Phil Spencer is often seen as a magnanimous leader of Microsoft's entertainment division, Obsidian could find themselves working on some specific projects for Microsoft, instead of pursuing their own IPs/new IP ideas. Or that could not materialize at all, and the studio be given free reign (as much as there can be in these things) for their own creativity.

After the media coverage and customer response to some of the latest games to ship with the current gamers industry parasite of microtransactions or loot crates, it's only fair for media outlets to provide coverage for known companies that might take up that path, but choose not to. There's nothing inherently wrong with microtransactions, per se - it's up to each user to choose whether or not they want to take part in that particular economic bit of gaming. That said, it's just the way of the beast that microtransactions' implementation usually end up affecting progression systems and the ability for players to unlock what would otherwise be behind a paywall - just ask Destiny 2 or Star Wars: Battlefront 2 players. But while microtransactions of some kind may not have anything inherently wrong with them, loot boxes, by their very nature, actually might.

As such, here's some free coverage for Obsidian Entertainment, makers of Alpha Protocol, Fallout: New Vegas, Tyranny, and Pillars of Eternity 2: the company has said in a blog post that users should not, will not, can not expect any kind of microtransactions whatsoever to appear in their upcoming, super secret game, being developed in partnership with publisher Private Division. Obsidian's "emoney" said that "We're extremely excited about our upcoming RPG, and we know you are too. We wish we could tell you all about it right now… but we're going to hold off until the time is right. What we did want to talk about was a question a lot of you have been raising: "Will this upcoming game feature any lootboxes or other microtransactions?" To which he added: The answer is simply: "no." No microtransactions, of any kind, in our game." For me, that's one point more for Obsidian (whose Tyranny was actually amazing, in this editor's humble opinion). Vote with your wallet and all that.