Avowed's anniversary update loosens the "strict and punishing" upgrade system that Obsidian was "surprised" fans bounced off, but director warns the haters that the RPG hasn't "fundamentally changed"

Avowed screenshot showing a corpse-like figure's face with glowing purple mushroom/spore growths — (Image credit: Obsidian Entertainment)

Obsidian's 2025 RPG Avowed is now available on PS5 alongside a big anniversary update for all platforms, and as usual it seems the players who've chosen to wait are going to get the game at its best. Although the devs will tell you that the fundamental gameplay remains largely unchanged – if you didn't like Avowed the first time around, you probably still won't like it here – after being "surprised" by players' negative response to the upgrade system, they've taken big steps to fix it.

"I want to be upfront," gameplay director Gabe Paramo tells tells RPG Site. "If you didn't enjoy the core pacing of Avowed, the flow between conversations, exploration, and combat, nothing about that has fundamentally changed. But if you're a player who felt limited in the type of character you could create compared to Pillars in terms of race, or felt like you couldn't fully realize your Fighter, Ranger, or Wizard fantasy, or felt like your playstyle wasn't being supported due to a lack of unique gear variety from region to region, or felt like the economy was too strict and punishing, we've addressed all of that."

Those features – plus the new races and New Game Plus – are the big additions for the anniversary update, but Paramo particularly zeroes in on the economy and upgrade system as a core concern that Obsidian wanted to address here.

"We were definitely surprised by how many people consistently bounced off the upgrading experience," Paramo explains. "We were trying to create a tight gameplay loop. The player completes content, upgrades their gear, and faces harder content. But because the game is open-area, players who really wanted to explore were getting stopped in their tracks in ways we didn't anticipate. They'd push into new areas and hit a wall, not because of enemy difficulty, but because the upgrade system wasn't keeping pace with their curiosity. That frustration came through loud and clear. We've since addressed it and made the experience much more gradual and less binary."

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Avowed is divided into four major areas, and the upgrade path more or less matches that progression. You spend your time in each map collecting upgrade resources, strengthening your chosen gear, and taking it to the next tier of rarity, hopefully turning your equipment into gold-tier by the time you reach the end game.

I ultimately found reaching the top-end gear ranking pretty satisfying, when my wizard spent the final hours of the game just raining fire down upon helpless enemies, but I definitely felt more than a little railroaded getting to that point. With resources being tight, I felt like I needed to lock into a playstyle early, and each new piece of gear felt less like a fun chance to experiment and more like something I'd need to immediately break down and feed into my current equipment.

So, it's nice to see Obsidian taking that feedback on board, and, as Paramo puts it, "the friction has been smoothed out significantly." After 20 hours with the PS5 version of Avowed, my colleague Heather reckons there's never been a better time to play the RPG, and looking at this update from the outside I'm inclined to agree.

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