In the same 20th anniversary documentary celebrating Obsidian Entertainment, the company shared some insight about the original multiplayer and co-op plans for the upcoming first-person fantasy game Avowed and why it decided to scratch these ideas.
Head of development Justin Britch explained the development side of it - noting how it got to a point where Obsidian was simply "too focused" on the co-op experience. This began impacting other areas such as the company's pipelines and also how things like conversations and quests were crafted for the game.
After working on this project "for a little bit", the team realised it wasn't focused on the "things" it was "best at" and so it made a pivot in development to ensure the title was an "Obsidian game and not something different".
Studio head and founder Feargus Urquhart also mentioned how he originally "pushed" for the title to be a multiplayer experience, but admits it was the "wrong decision". The initial idea behind this was to make it a more "interesting" game when presenting it to publishers at the time:
"When you're asking for $50, $60, $70, $80 million you've gotta have something interesting to talk about, and multiplayer made it interesting, it was sort of this idea of it's almost like the peanut butter and chocolate, and putting it together and 'wow' it must be something that's good."
The experience players can now expect from Avowed is a single-player action RPG set within the same world as the Pillars of Eternity series, and a game that will apparently be "something very unique" compared to the regular type of games within the fantasy genre.