Players are used to the fact that in many modern RPGs you can start a relationship with one of your companions or NPCs. Therefore, the lack of such an option in the upcoming Avowed from Obsidian has greatly surprised gamers.
In a recent interview with Games Radar, game director Carrie Patel explained that relationships in the game are simply not needed. According to her, they already have enough written companions, and romance would be completely unnecessary.
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.
In addition, the game director explained, one of the companions in Avowed is already in a relationship at the time of the game. This point in the biography will be connected with the plot and will affect the character's development.
Recall that Avowed will be released on February 11 on PC and Xbox Series X/S. The events of the game will unfold in the Pillars of Eternity universe, and the plot will send gamers to the island of Living Lands, where a mysterious plague is raging.
Earlier it became known that the Xbox version of the game will only be able to support 30 FPS.