---
title: 'What I Would Want From Avowed 2'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=iU9oj6pg4VM'
video_id: 'iU9oj6pg4VM'
date: 2026-06-28
duration_sec: 0
---

# What I Would Want From Avowed 2

> Source: [What I Would Want From Avowed 2](https://youtube.com/watch?v=iU9oj6pg4VM)

## Summary

The video discusses the speaker's desires for a potential sequel to Avowed, building on their recent experience with the Pillars of Eternity series. The speaker argues that Avowed 2 is more likely than Pillars 3 due to commercial and corporate constraints, and focuses on key improvements: setting, character classes, and world design.

### Key Points

- **Setting: Living Lands or Aedyr Empire** [2:11] — The speaker suggests either revisiting the diverse Living Lands or moving to the unexplored Aedyr Empire, both with narrative challenges involving the broken reincarnation cycle and a natural-born god.
- **Character Classes: Bringing Back Pillars' Uniqueness** [4:29] — The speaker wants the return of all Pillars classes (especially cipher and chanter) in a multi-class system with two skill trees chosen at character creation, acknowledging implementation difficulties for action-oriented gameplay.
- **World Design: Addressing Static World Criticism** [9:39] — The top criticism of Avowed was its static hub-based world. The speaker advocates for an open-world sandbox with NPC schedules, while preserving the rewarding vertical exploration and loot system of the original.
- **Sequels as Stepping Stones** [11:48] — The speaker notes Obsidian's history of improving sequels (e.g., Pillars 2 over Pillars 1) and hopes Avowed 2 will be a dramatic improvement incorporating feedback.

### Conclusion

The speaker hopes Avowed 2 will be a stepping stone to a better game, incorporating fan feedback and advancing the rich lore of Eora, but acknowledges uncertainty about whether it will happen.

## Transcript

[music]
>> What's going on everybody? Mortem here,
this time bringing you what I would want
from Avowed 2. Because you see, I have
been playing a lot of Pillars lately, a
turn-based review for the original game,
and I've been running through the second
game recently to take another look at
that one for a video as well. And those
games are of course set in the same
world as Avowed, if you didn't know. And
that combined with some rumors of Avowed
2 swirling around last week or so. That
said, just being rumors that this is
something that Obsidian was working on,
and I'm not one to put a ton of stock in
that, but I'd be lying if I said all of
that didn't have me thinking what I
would even want from an Avowed 2. And so
I figured I would of course make a video
about it. Now, if you have not played
Avowed since release, you may well be
interested in an anniversary video I
made for it earlier this year talking
about all of the updates it got, because
some of the things that I would
definitely want in Avowed 2 were already
added to Avowed post-release. These of
course being things like all of the
races being added, bonuses to each of
those races, just little stuff going on
like that. But, before we get into that,
I do want to point out that I do think
Avowed 2 is more likely than Pillars 3.
Personally, I would take Pillars 3 all
day every day, but I love CRPGs, and so
it shouldn't really be a surprise that I
would prefer a more traditional CRPG
experience in the vein of Pillars of
Eternity. However, it's also not really
news that Pillars 2 took a long time to
become profitable, and that combined
with Microsoft and Xbox having all sorts
of money troubles these days, rumors of
them shutting down studios, etc. I
sincerely doubt they would be willing to
take a bet on something like Pillars 3,
as much as I would really enjoy it. I
certainly don't have enough money to
keep them afloat. So, something a little
more mass appealing like Avowed would be
makes more sense. Because, while there
were plenty of people with some
legitimate criticisms we're going to get
into in this video actually, it also did
the important work of making the genre
transition happen. And so,
theoretically, it should be a little
easier to build from there and take into
consideration some of those criticisms
people had for the original game in
order to make a more complete experience
people would enjoy. With that said,
let's go ahead and dive into this thing.
Let's first talk about setting. So, some
small spoilers for Avowed actually going
forward here in a little bit of Pillars
2 as well, to be honest. Let's talk
about where this game would even be set
because you could theoretically set it
in the Living Lands again. If you're
unaware, Avowed takes place in the
Living Lands, and the Living Lands is a
very vibrant, over-the-top place, just
absolutely teeming with life and diverse
biomes, etc. And so, you could
theoretically set another game there and
actually have it be substantially
different in uh you know, in terms of
like biomes and things. However, I could
see them not wanting to reuse that, and
so they might want to set it someplace
else. If they are going to set it
anywhere else, I think it needs to be in
the Aedyr Empire, personally. That being
the empire that sent you as an envoy in
your role in Avowed, anyway. But, it's
also a place the games have thus far
never taken us, and so they would have a
lot of room to work with there. And
while I would be totally fine with that,
personally, it does uh sort of run into
another problem, which is that ideally,
Avowed 2 would start tackling some of
the bigger lore that has been
introduced. So, if you're up to date on
the timeline, the world of Eora, the
actual setting we are in, is dealing
with a very tumultuous moment, let's
say. At the end of Pillars 2, the cycle
of reincarnation that defines the world
has largely been put to a stop. And as a
result, they've basically got a couple
of generations to figure out a long-term
solution, or there's going to be a
problem. Because without the cycle of
reincarnation happening, people will be
born without souls, which is more or
less like a zombie in some ways. And
then, without souls churning through
this cycle, the gods themselves cannot
feed off of that energy, which means
they would also die. And so, there has
to be a solution found to that problem.
Avowed takes place a couple years after
Pillars II, where we're starting to see
the effects of that, but it's not
immediately dire. And then that game
introduces a whole bunch of new lore
about a natural-born god, which up to
this point hadn't really been a thing.
However, that natural-born god was sort
of cut off and confined to the area of
the Living Lands. And regardless of
where I think they would set a new game,
I do think they would want to uh
hopefully address some of that stuff,
and so it would come up and you'd have
to the sort of write your way around
that. Nothing that would be impossible,
but you know, one of those would
probably be ideal. But I think both
would come with some hoops to jump
through. But then there's the character
side of things. This is pretty important
to me personally, because with the big
genre shift, there were some things lost
in translation there. Namely, uh some of
the class stuff that made Pillars really
unique as an experience, but also I
think a larger investment into your
character as well. As I already
mentioned at the top of the video, some
of the post-release updates for Avowed
did bring back things like all of the
normal races you could play, minus uh
the Godlike, but you are a Godlike
already in Avowed no matter what, which
is how that always works. As technically
a Godlike can be of any other race, and
the Godlike portion is just on top of
that. But either way, those races are
there and playable. So, the other side
of this would just be that I want them
to bring the classes back. And I think
there's a couple ways they could do
this. So, the way Avowed works already
is that you could effectively be a
multi-class of fighter, mage, or ranger,
which are, to be fair, three of the
classes available in the Pillars games.
However, there's a lot of other classes
that weren't really available outside of
some ability overlap, let's say. And I
would really want them to bring those
classes back, along with multi-classing,
in fact. And I think a way they could do
that is by effectively making one of
these skill trees for every single
class, and then simply allowing you to
pick two of them at character creation,
which would effectively be your
multi-class, and then you could proceed
relatively as normal from there. Now,
that is of course much easier to say
than it is to do, as you would have to
make all those abilities for all those
classes, make them thematic, etc. And I
don't think a little bit of overlap,
especially in terms of like passive
abilities, would be a big deal at all.
Just add those passives to individual
trees where they make sense. I don't
think they have to be 100% unique tree
to tree, but having some overlap there
in terms of the active abilities and
just incorporating a lot of what makes
Pillars unique in particular would do a
lot for I think both build diversity,
but also getting you more attached to a
character in terms of replayability.
Also, this would allow them to make use
of the incredible multi-class names that
were added in Pillars 2. So, in Pillars
2 you could multi-class and every single
possible combination of multi-class got
a unique class name, which I thought was
fun. And I would like to see those in
Avowed 2, to be honest. But, I think the
real challenge of even that system, as
nice as it is to say, would be
incorporating some of the more difficult
classes to bring into this
action-oriented fold. Some of them, like
I think barbarian and fighter, would be
relatively easy. You see that in other
games, as barbarian and fighter have a
lot of overlap, obvious things like
that. However, the two most unique
classes that are very like Pillars and
what you think of when you think of
Pillars fantasy is of course cipher and
chanter. But, I also think these would
be difficult to incorporate into an
action-oriented game, but certainly not
impossible. The problem is I just don't
think you could port them in wholesale,
no matter how much you wanted to.
There's a couple reasons for that. I
think cipher in particular is a class
that has interesting targeting
mechanisms for a CRPG. A lot of its
abilities often trigger very uniquely by
either bouncing off friendly targets to
hit an enemy, or going from you to a
friendly target and affecting enemies in
between you two, jumping from enemies,
being like purely debuffs and things
like that. And I could just see that
being more difficult to incorporate into
an action game. Especially given that
with those abilities, positioning is
really important. And how that would
feel in a more action-oriented RPG would
almost certainly require some tweaking
and a lot of time to get right. And I
can see why they didn't want to do it
for Avowed, to be honest. Chanter runs
into a slightly different problem, where
yes, it is a variation of a bard, let's
be honest. It also functions a bit
differently in the CRPGs in that
chanters basically chant phrases, and
those phrases individually will, of
course, produce different effects. And
then as they have so many phrases
chanted, they basically build that up as
a resource. They can then use their
actual normal abilities outside of the
effects produced by the chants. Meaning
that a lot of what their class does is
like build up those chants, and those
happen sort of passively, and then your
big abilities, once you've said so many
phrases over a period of time, have a
little more active participation. As
typically what you'd do is set the
chants up before you get into combat.
And this would be difficult to
implement, I think, for a variety of
different reasons. There are a ton of
these chants in the CRPGs, and tons of
different ways to mix and match those,
but they take time, you know, in combat
to actually go off. And again, I'm not
really sure how well that would
translate to an action game, like how
well you would even be able to use those
chants. It would obviously be more of
like a support situation, which I think
would obviously make for a good
multi-class in that case, cuz then you
could have more active abilities on top
of the chanting. But long story short, I
would really want these to be in Avowed
2. I think they're some of what makes
Pillars so unique. And I think finding a
way to implement them into the game in a
fun way that is, of course, enjoyable is
not a small thing. But if we're going to
do Avowed 2, I really think that's where
a lot of the effort needs to be focused,
personally. And yet, it is actually not
the only place a lot of the effort would
need to be focused because next I want
to talk about the biggest criticism
Avowed received which was its static
world. So, Avowed was never like going
to be a big open world sandbox. That is
to say the version we got. I know there
were like rumors from the initial
announcement of Avowed being a thing
that people really wanted it to be the
sandbox to rival Skyrim and people were
very disappointed when it was not that.
And I think that's for a few reasons but
I mainly think it's because a lot of
people just want a city and to do that
again. A lot of people love New Vegas of
course and that is obviously an open
world sandbox and I think people just
really want that as an experience from
them again and they just aren't
receiving it and so this game they got
close to that in the sense of it's like
open world hubs and everything was
frustrating for a lot of people. And if
you wanted to address feedback and
criticism that Avowed received, this is
pretty much the top of the list which
would be to make the game an open world
sandbox with NPCs that have schedules
and move around. That is again something
that is much easier said than done,
especially in an RPG where there's a lot
of potential for non-linearity but
Obsidian does have that experience and
it certainly could be done. What's more
though, I think something that goes a
little unsung so to speak was how
rewarding exploration could be in
Avowed. There was just stuff tucked
everywhere and every little nook or
cranny and they really made it a delight
to go and explore like individual pieces
of levels and climb on top of stuff.
There's a lot of verticality and you
would usually get up somewhere and they
would pretty much always be some form of
loot. Even places you might think were
initially unreachable, you get up there
and sure enough there's loot to find and
be collected. And I think combining that
rewarding exploration with a proper open
world sandbox that people want and
ideally giving us a lot of different
ways to approach different quests and
things on top of the more
action-oriented elements and really kind
kind rope all of the RPG aspects into
it, which Avowed certainly plays around
with here and there, but could certainly
lean into more as well. And suddenly, I
think you have a game that would at the
very least address the criticism this
game mostly received. But to sort of
start wrapping this up, if we were to
get an Avowed 2, I would say that I
would sincerely hope that Avowed would
in fact just be a stepping stone to
something bigger and better, which is
something that Obsidian has done well
with in the past. A lot of their sequels
are in fact better than some of the
original games. Even speaking uh purely
to the Pillars series, which was all
in-house at Obsidian, as opposed to the
sequels they worked on from other
franchises. Pillars 2 for me was a
dramatic improvement over the original
game. And in that sense, I would hope
that Avowed 2 would be a dramatic
improvement over that original that
would hopefully incorporate some of this
feedback and criticism that the original
received. And in that sense, I do think
there's a way forward, and I certainly
hope there is, because otherwise, I just
don't know that we would get more of the
world of Eora. And personally, to me, as
somebody who's made a ton of lore videos
and covered these games uh pretty
extensively at this point compared to
the vast majority of people out there
anyway, the idea of not seeing more of
this world in a medium that I love,
video games of course, would be
incredibly disappointing. But
ultimately, time will tell what actually
happens with this, and we will see if
those rumors prove true. But for today,
that is going to do it. Certainly hope
you enjoyed the video. If you did, by
all means, like, comment, subscribe, all
that YouTube jazz. But regardless of any
of that, truly, just thank you so much
for watching. I really do appreciate it.
May you wander in wisdom and have an
amazing day.
>> Mhm.