Avowed's release delayed into 2025 to dodge "a busy season" on Game Pass, claims report

Obsidian's first-person action-RPG Avowed is one of our 75 most anticipated games of 2024, but according to a report, it's been booted back into early 2025 to avoid a "very busy period" on Microsoft's Game Pass subscription service. Thanks, Microsoft. Do you know how long it took to cobble together that 2024 list? I still get hand cramps.

The report in question is from The Verge's Tom Warren - as sturdy a source as they come. Writing on his Notepad blog (paywall), Warren claimed that Avowed is in "good shape", and that the delay is "more a matter of wanting to give the game breathing room during a very busy period for Xbox Game Pass".

Obsidian accidentally let slip a 12th November release date for Avowed in June in a developer blog. On Game Pass, that would have put it up against Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 (19th November) and the much-delayed post-apocalyptic shooter Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl (20th November). I'm not convinced that qualifies as a "very busy period".

Outside Game Pass, it would have to reckon with Assassin's Creed Shadows (15th November) and, perhaps most worryingly for Obsidian, BioWare's Dragon Age: The Veilguard (not dated yet, but due to land in EA's third quarter 2024, after 1st October).

Avowed could probably do with a bit of distance from anything comparably bulky and shiny with "action" or "RPG" in the job description. A classless RPG with easy respeccing and "open zones", once pitched as Obsidian's Skyrim, it still feels to me like it's stuck in No Man's Land between Obsidian's prior Pillars Of Eternity CRPGs, which are set in the same universe, and the more recent first-person Outer Worlds.

As with all current fantasy RPGs, it must also reckon with (perhaps unfair) expectations created by last year's Baldur's Gate 3, whose spell and ability combos knock what I've seen of Avowed's combat alchemy into a cocked hat. I do like the looks of the game, but I'm not exhilarated.