Summary
Obsidian Entertainment’sAvowedcontinues to be hotly anticipated even as it has gone through a number of updates and clarifications made by the developer since its initial reveal in 2020. As the studio’s upcoming foray into the dark fantasy FPS RPG genre, expectations forAvowedremain understandably quite high. Though it was previously set for a 2024 Fall release, this was pushed back to Jun 15, 2025, earlier this year, and thus fans will have to wait a little more before being able to see all that Obsidian has in store for its next title.
What is established is thatAvowedis based onPillars of Eternity,Obsidian’s preceding CRPG series, and will expand on the setting of Eora in some major ways. Notably,Avowedwill set players loose in a new area known as The Living Lands, with a central story component being that they will be tasked with looking into a bizarre affliction spreading across the Lands, known as the Dreamscourge. The originalPillars of Eternityalso contains an unsettling illness as part of its framework, called the Hollowborn Crisis. How these two threads have been presented so far makes for an intriguing study between them, as well as some of their implications for the future of the franchise.
Comparing Avowed’s Dreamscourge Disease and Pillars of Eternity’s Hollowborn Crisis
The Hollowborn Crisis in Pillars of Eternity
InPillars of Eternity, players explore the Dyrwood region, which is suffering from the Hollowborn Crisis, also known as Waidwen’s Legacy. The Crisis is quite a disturbing event, resulting from the intersection of magic, technology, and the nature of how souls function inPillars of Eternitylore. The Hollowborn are children inexplicably born without souls of their own, displaying no sense of awareness of themselves or others, and lacking any self-preservation. Essentially empty shells, they quickly wither and die without the spark of life. As the plot opens, the tensions and anguish caused by the Crisis have the population on edge, growing increasingly violent or on the verge of despair.
A solution was sought in the form ofAnimancers (specialists in soul magic)imbuing animal spirits into the affected. While this seemed to initially give them at least a semblance of personality and well-being, it then tragically backfired. As the children grew older, they became more feral, eventually reverting into an uncontrollable bestial-like state that forced many to be put down. Thrust into this harrowing state of affairs, the player character intervenes by discovering the shocking secret truth about the connection between the world’s gods and its peoples' souls, disrupting the ancient conspiracy that was the root of the Hollowborn. While the Crisis was thus halted, it still left the survivors reeling as they attempted to recover from its devastating effects and the revelation about how and why it occurred.
Following the above resolution,Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfirethen focused on tracking down and stoppingEothas, one of Eora’s prominent gods.
How Avowed’s Dreamscourge Has Been Described So Far
The Dreamscourge plaguingAvowed’s Living Lands is the impetus for the main character being sent by thepowerful Aedyr Empireto investigate the region. They are tasked with finding its source and preventing its spread if possible. The Dreamscourge is said to be a “symptom of a deeper and more dangerous rot,” which implies it may have adjacent aspects to the Crisis, perhaps being set in motion by nefarious forces behind the scenes.
In contrast to the Hollowborn Crisis only affecting infants, the depiction seen in material so far shows the Dreamscourge disease afflicting all the flora and fauna of the Lands, with everything touched by it forming strange fungal growths. An aspect that it does seem to share with the Crisis, though, is apparently causing sentient beings to become erratic and aggressive. Combined, these elements also paintAvowed’s Dreamscourge as reminiscent toThe Last of Us' cordyceps infection.
Though in both cases the setups are broadly similar, the Dreamscourge inAvowedcompared toPillars of Eternity’s Hollowborn Crisis is likely to differ in other significant and possibly surprising ways. GivenAvowed’s place on the overall timeline, and its shifting to a completely new, more isolated region, there is plenty of room for Obsidian to work within this angle. Whether the Dreamscourge will be revealed to again be connected to the machinations of a secret sect, the gods, or something else entirely remains to be seen. Still, fans can probably expect some major advancements in fleshing out the greater story viaAvowed’s Dreamscourge mystery, some of which may potentially tie back into and recontextualize previous events like the Hollowborn Crisis.
Avowed
WHERE TO PLAY
Welcome to the Living Lands, a mysterious island filled with adventure and danger. Set in the fictional world of Eora that was first introduced to players in the Pillars of Eternity franchise, Avowed is a first-person fantasy action RPG from the award-winning team at Obsidian Entertainment.You are the envoy of Aedyr, a distant land, sent to investigate rumors of a spreading plague throughout the Living Lands - an island full of mysteries and secrets, danger and adventure, and choices and consequences, and untamed wilderness. You discover a personal connection to the Living Lands and an ancient secret that threatens to destroy everything. Can you save this unknown frontier and your soul from the forces threatening to tear them asunder?
