Obsidian Entertainment are revving up for the launch of their new fantasy RPG, Avowed, but many fans have started criticizing the game before it can even release by comparing it to last year’s Game of the Year winner, Baldur’s Gate 3. Fans have begun to vent their frustrations about the reveal that the will be no romance system in the game. However, director Carrie Patel commented recently on her opinions on romance systems:
It’s a ton of work. You want to make sure you do it right. And part of that is also you want to make sure that a player who opts not to romance but still wants to have a very deep relationship with those companions gets to have just as thorough and meaningful an experience on a friendship or ally path as [if] they went on a romance path. And so we felt that we could best tell our companions’ stories and our players’ relationships with them without the romance option.
She would go on to discuss how a romance system wouldn’t work in Avowed with the story her and her team are trying to tell:
It isn’t a story that I think you often get to see in a lot of games with a party member who’s travelling with you and so one thing players will really get to explore with here is kind of how she navigates having her heart in one place, while knowing that she really needs to be here.
With the four companions we wanted them to all have key roles in the story, different party roles, different personalities, and ways that they compliment each other and let them tell the story of the Living Lands to the player.
Avowed is set to release on Windows and Xbox Series X/S on February 18th, 2025.