Obsidian has already made clear that Avowed is going to be smaller in scope than the massive Skyrim-style RPGs you might want to compare it to, more akin the studio's previous first-person RPG, The Outer Worlds. Part of the reason for that is that the devs themselves don't have the gaming time they used to, and they want to build a game that respects your time by letting you decide how much to invest in it.
"It's not this 10,000-hour epic," lead art director Matt Hansen tells GamesRadar+. "We're also a really small team relative to a lot of larger-scale games. Being able to focus in on what we've got and make it really a solid experience was really critical. And also, selfishly, man, I'm getting older. I got a lot of responsibilities. I don't got time for a 500-hour game, and I know a lot of our players don't."
That's not to say Avowed won't have any meat. While it doesn't feature a single, contiguous open world like Skyrim, it does feature an array of big, open-ended zones with their own stories to explore and quests to undertake. If you want to really dive deep into a given region, you'll find a lot to explore.
"I will say that I did a full completionist playthrough, and the game is big," lead environment artist Dennis Presnell tells us. "Like, I was surprised just how big it was. I mean, the regions are sizable, but they're also content-rich, and it's a great experience, I think, from start to finish because it never feels like a job to play the game. You never feel like you're grinding through it just to get done."
Ultimately, it sounds like you'll be able to decide just how much time you want to invest in Avowed. According to Hansen, the idea is to give players "something they can experience in a rapid state if they want, or draw it out a little bit. I've had playthroughs that were really quick, and I've had playthroughs that took five times as long to play."
