Obsidian has confirmed that its upcoming RPG, Avowed, will not be an open-world title. While some may feel this is a poor choice of action, it might just be the formula needed for the game to succeed as a memorable exponent of the genre.
Though we knew for a while, or at least could guess, that Avowed won’t be an open world title, we recently received confirmation via Xbox Wire, where some of the games devs explained this route and how going for “zones” was much better for pacing and other aspects of game design.
Open worlds have become a staple of the RPG genre and conquered many others as well. It seems that in the past few years, every single game that wanted to captivate the broadest audience possible simply went for an open-world design, caring little for what that philosophy actually does to a title. While it’s fantastic to be able to explore massive sections of land and country and take in the atmosphere and world, open worlds often tend to dilute a game too much, needlessly spreading it out and removing that “oomph” from story and gameplay.
With its “open-zone” design, Avowed can take the advantages of open worlds and combine them with the upside of limited, focused, and dense zones that consistently impact the player positively. They won’t feel like they’ve been traveling in real life after going from point A to point B in an open world, but also won’t feel constrained or boxed in as they would with a traditional linear game, allowing for both immersion and consistency across the board.
One of the major issues I had with Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree and its incredibly open design is the developers obviously had no means to predict what level or skill you would have when facing a certain boss. Roaming around the map and meeting all sorts of enemies usually ended in your death in a mausoleum somewhere, since the boss you fought was obviously way too strong for you. This is just one issue of completely open-ended designs, and the approach Avowed has taken can completely mitigate that.
With these open zones, Avowed‘s developers at Obsidian can predict precisely what you’re planning to do at any given moment within a zone, allowing them to carefully craft the experience and tailor it to your present self. They can better understand player behavior and patterns and thus create levels where you’ll never feel out of place, or like you’ve wandered into some location you shouldn’t have reached yet, forcing you to backtrack and search for the spot you were supposed to find, but completely missed.
Even the developers share this sentiment. “Having these zones that happen in sequence means we always know what content you’ve just come from on the critical path,” the game’s narrative designer Kate Dollarhyde said in the same Xbox Wire interview.
Open worlds also commonly fail to provide proper pacing. All of a sudden you’re doing something else entirely and have forgotten about the story, which is generally shorter than it would seem since the game depends on your constant meandering and exploration to make it feel longer. This leads to you either rushing through the story, often winding up much weaker and inexperienced than the developers intended, or staying too long and finding it too easy after the fact.
That’s a summarized view of the issue, but you get the gist. With zones, it’s easier to properly pace your game. Every part of the story is intertwined in that one zone before you move to the next one, where yet another part and its branches are present.
Remember The Witcher 3 and its open zones? White Orchard gave you your first major quests and some side content to boot, providing extra context for the location and the story. the massive Velen area had numerous branching “side” quests that tied into the main story and could later have consequences on it, while incorporating Novigrad and Oxenfurt as smaller zones within it. Skellige, Kaer Morhen, and Toussaint in the Blood and Wine DLC were the same. All zones had their own self-contained storylines that tied into the main story related to these locations, allowing for some quite fantastic pacing where you neither stay for too long or leave too quickly and everything feels right in its place.
We’ve certainly seen changes and shifts in the RPG genre in the past, though the genre has never been as stale as it is now. Baldur’s Gate 3 also showed us that focused zones are way better than completely open worlds, so perhaps with Avowed following the same path, the role-playing sphere can finally shift towards a new and more exciting design approach, finally replacing the stale “open world” that’s usually synonymous with empty.
Avowed is set to launch on Feb. 18, so we’ll find out then.
Published: Jan 30, 2025 01:38 pm