Unlike other big fantasy roleplaying games such as Baldur's Gate 3 and the recent Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Avowed won't feature any romance options when it lands in around three months. Speaking to Gamesradar during the recent EGX convention, Avowed Game Director Carrie Patel explained:
It works very well in some games. 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. With the four companions, we wanted them to all have key roles in the story, different party roles, different personalities, and ways that they complement each other and let them tell the story of the Living Lands to the player.
Patel then added that the lack of romance is particularly meaningful because one of the four companions featured in Avowed is already engaged with someone else.
It isn't a story that I think you often get to see in a lot of games with a party member who's traveling with you, and so one thing players will really get to explore with here is kind of how she navigates having her heart in one place while knowing that she really needs to be here.
Having one companion unavailable for romance is nothing new, though. Many games have successfully implemented romance with similar limitations. As a whole, it seems like Obsidian isn't too keen on romance if we take a look at their past games. What's considered their best game, Fallout: New Vegas, had no such thing, despite allowing you to sleep with some NPCs for casual affairs, and the same goes for The Outer Worlds. One of the few exceptions was Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, but that was an isometric cRPG, which meant a lot less work had to go into actual romance scenes than for a third-person game.
Avowed launches on February 18, 2025 for PC and Xbox Series S|X. Stay tuned for a lot more in the lead-up to the release date.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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