Obsidian's designers discuss how they decide the size of Avowed's environments: 'We don't want to have those empty, meaningless spaces just to have them'

The recent documentary celebrating the 20th anniversary of Half-Life 2 included a segment where the designers talked about how important it was to make levels satisfying for players who barreled through them at high speed (possibly in an airboat), as well as those players who preferred to get out and walk so they could find all the spare ammo and little bits of narrative tucked away at the edges.

Listening to Obsidian talk about their upcoming first-person RPG Avowed, they echo a lot of the same thoughts. "A lot of players when they're playing, they want to screw off and go off the beaten path," says art director Matt Hansen, "and say, 'Yeah, I'll go to the grove eventually, right? I'll get to the thicket when I get to the thicket, I'm going to go see what this lighthouse is.' The lighthouse isn't critical-path, but we put a lot of love into it because we want fun stuff to exist for players that want to screw around a little bit."

Hansen respects that mindset because he embodies it. "I know there's a lot of us out there," he says, and it seems like Avowed will certainly cater to that exploratory playstyle, with plenty of hidden treasure to find, puzzles to solve, and monsters to fight around its edges.

"We don't want to have those empty, meaningless spaces just to have them, just to bloat the world itself," says lead environment artist David Presnell. "When you explore Avowed, your exploration, your curiosity, is going to be rewarded."

Hansen emphasizes that the most important consideration in world design is how it feels to players. "You have a glade, right? In this glade, you want to have multi levels of trees that you can climb up on with scaffolding. A little bit later, design goes, 'Actually, we need to put a combat here,' then you're suddenly going, well, this is way too densely packed for a fight to feel good. Enemies are going to get hung up on things, the player's situational awareness will be very poor because there's just too much clutter. It just becomes an iterative back and forth. Let's move this stuff back so we've got some more free space. We've got some mid-sized rocks here, move those to the periphery, replace them with small rocks that don't have collisions so they're not going to stub the player's toes as they're trying to move around or confuse the AI. Those kinds of things are happening all the time. While there are competing goals, the overarching goal of, 'Let's make sure this is a fun experience for the player' always wins."

Though he served as a concept artist on both Pillars of Eternity games, Hansen is adamant that the look of the thing isn't nearly as important as how it plays. "I have a very weird hierarchy as an art director," he says. "I think this may be controversial. Anything I look at, I go, will it run? Then, is it fun? Then, does it look good? Look good is the last one, because if it doesn't run, it doesn't matter—people can't play the game. If it isn't fun, it's not a game anymore. It's, I don't know, a visual demo. Then if it doesn't look good, I'm not doing my job. It's just making sure that we're prioritizing in that correct order, and I think we do a pretty good job."

Avowed is currently scheduled for a February 18 release, having been pushed back into the crowded calendar of 2025 games.