Avowed delayed to 2025 to avoid “peak season” on Game Pass, report claims

Obsidian's first-person action-RPG Avowed is one of our 75 most anticipated games of 2024, but it's been pushed back to early 2025 to avoid a “very busy period” for Microsoft's Game Pass subscription service, according to a report. Thanks, Microsoft. Do you know how long it took to put together a 2024 list? I'm still getting hand cramps.

The report in question comes from The Verge's Tom Warren – the most reliable source out there. Writing on the Notepad blog (paywall), Warren claimed that Avowed is “in good shape” and that the delay was “a matter of giving the game breathing space during a very busy time for Xbox Game Pass.”

Obsidian accidentally let slip a November 12 release date on a developer blog for Avowed back in June. On Game Pass, that would put it in line with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 (November 19) and the much-delayed post-apocalyptic shooter Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl (November 20). I’m not convinced that qualifies as a “very busy period.”

Outside of Game Pass, it will have to face Assassin's Creed Shadows (November 15) and, perhaps most worryingly for Obsidian, BioWare's Dragon Age: The Veilguard (not yet dated, but expected to be released by EA in Q3 2024, after October 1).

Avowed may need to step back a bit from something similarly clunky and polished that has “action” or “RPG” in its job description. A classless RPG with “open zones” that could easily be repurposed, once billed as Obsidian's Skyrim, it still feels to me like it's stuck in No Man's Land between Obsidian's previous Pillars Of Eternity CRPGs set in the same universe and the more recent first-person Outer Worlds.

Like all recent fantasy RPGs, it also has to reckon with the (perhaps unfair) expectations created by last year's Baldur's Gate 3; that game's combination of spells and abilities overwhelms everything I've ever seen Avowed's combat alchemy do. I like the look of the game, but I'm not thrilled.

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