Avowed's companions won't ditch you for making the 'wrong' choices: 'It's not about maintaining their approval, it's about getting to know them'

Avowed, the upcoming first-person RPG from Obsidian, mixes and matches a few RPG standards in its approach to companion characters and their stories. Before we get into details, some basics—in an interview with game director Carrie Patel and gameplay director Gabe Paramo this week, we learned the following about Avowed's companions and party management:

Avowed takes place in the same world as the Pillars of Eternity CRPGs, but its approach to companions and party management is much more like that of a Mass Effect game, or Obsidian's own Fallout: New Vegas. We might rely on their help in combat, but we won't be giving them granular instructions or controlling them directly.

«They have moment-to-moment gameplay combat abilities,» Paramo told us. «They also have, outside of combat, more environmental interaction abilities. And so you can kind of order them to do those abilities both in combat and out of combat.»

«We don't want players feeling like they have to micromanage a party,» said Patel. «So, you know, certainly their abilities are there and they're very useful. But you're not going to be pulling up pause and feeling like you have to move them around every 30 seconds.»

Storywise, companions will each have a «personal arc,» said Patel, and they'll all be involved in each playthrough—it's not like Baldur's Gate 3 where you can walk by a hand sticking out of a portal, shrug it off, and leave Gale to his fate.

«You could recruit some of them a little bit earlier or a little bit later, but they all will join your party by certain known points in the game,» said Patel, «which allows us to weave them a bit more intricately into events, conversations and all of the action that's happening.»

We didn't want players feeling like they had to choose the 'right' options in order to maintain their companions.

As has been so popular in Baldur's Gate 3 recently, the party camp will be a place for «heart to heart» conversations. Don't expect romance, though—it didn't come up in