Avowed has drawn the most comparison with Skyrim, with its fantasy flavor and first-person perspective reminding many fans of the last Elder Scrolls game. However, Skyrim should not be the only RPG of the last decade which Obsidian Entertainment looks to when developing Avowed.
The Witcher 3 was able to achieve one thing that Skyrim could not when it came to its side-quests. Avowed should look at how CD Projekt Red was able to integrate all of its Witcher 3 missions into a single overarching narrative – or at least, how it created the immersive illusion that the game's side-quests were just as much a part of the story as its main mission.
Skyrim's Side-Quest Problem
Once the player has progressed past a certain point in Skyrim’s main quest, completing side-quests can feel somewhat immersion breaking. Once the true extent of the dragon threat has revealed itself and the player emerges as the Dragonborn, the only person able to stop the End Times, it’s harder for many players not to feel like the time they’re spending dungeoneering or enjoying the swath of fun side-quests in Skyrim breaks character.
For example, its hard to justify in-character how the protagonist could find out about an existential threat that only they can stop, and then go off to Riften to become a master thief instead. The other option is completing the main quest first, but then the other big questlines not only risk feeling anticlimactic, but seem strange as NPCs never mention the fact that the player character saved the world, and the player has very few chances to bring it up.
In The Witcher 3, the side-quests, particularly the Witcher contracts, are integrated almost seamlessly into the main plot. There is a lot of focus on the need for Geralt to complete Witcher work in order to survive on the road while he is tracking down Ciri. As a result, the Witcher 3 side-quests feel like they serve the main story, and though they are diversions, most of them feel immersively necessary.
Making Side-Quests Immersive in Avowed
There are a few ways that Avowed could achieve this same level of immersion. First, Avowed's main story should not introduce an existential threat so early on that it overshadows the rest of the potential stories that could be told while exploring the world.
Second, the world of Avowed should be made to feel dangerous and harsh enough that the player can justify completing side-quests for their own survival before they have a hope of completing their main objective in the story. Pacing is vital in this kind of storytelling, as the main story’s threat needs to feel looming and intimidating but not so immediate as to make exploration feel unjustifiable in character.
The greatest strength of games like Skyrim is their worlds, and it is important that Avowed players are offered the opportunity to explore the world as an immersive part of the story instead of simply a diversion. Otherwise, the game risks having some of the problems of Dragon Age: Inquisition, which had a huge open world with little incentive to explore it, as it felt tangential to the story while areas like the Hinterlands were large but lacked content.
Avowed’s main setting is the hostile northern frontier island of the Living Lands, which makes prioritizing the survival angle seem like the best bet for making Avowed’s side-quests feel necessary. If done correctly, all of the quests in Avowed will all feel like a single unfolding narrative.
Avowed is in development for PC and Xbox Series X.