Waiting Without a Map
Avowed launched in February 2025 to a warm but measured reception. Obsidian’s first-person RPG set in the Living Lands delivered solid world-building, enjoyable combat, and enough lore to satisfy fans of the Eora universe. But it was also clearly a contained experience – a game with a defined endpoint and no obvious path forward for players who finished it and immediately wanted more. Obsidian has said almost nothing about DLC, post-launch content, or what comes next for the franchise. That silence is now doing something unexpected: it’s sending players directly back to Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire.
Steam activity tracking and forum traffic both point to a quiet but steady uptick in Deadfire engagement since Avowed’s launch window closed. The pattern makes a certain kind of sense. Players who fell in love with the Living Lands want to stay in Eora, and if Obsidian isn’t offering a new door, they’ll walk back through an old one. The question worth asking is what that says about how Obsidian is managing one of its most devoted fanbases – and whether the studio is underestimating the appetite it built.
The DLC Void and What Fills It
Obsidian has a complicated history with post-launch support. The Outer Worlds received two DLC expansions – Peril on Gorgon and Murder on Eridanos – and both were well-regarded. That precedent gave Avowed players reasonable grounds to expect something similar. Instead, months have passed since launch with no announcements, no roadmap teases, and no community updates that hint at expanded content. The studio has been publicly focused on other projects, which is fine, but it leaves Avowed sitting in a strange limbo.
When an RPG goes quiet after launch, players don’t simply stop playing – they migrate. And the most natural migration for someone who loved Avowed’s world is backward into the isometric Pillars games, which are richer in lore, longer in runtime, and still mechanically rewarding. Deadfire in particular holds up well. Its naval exploration loop, companion writing, and faction politics offer a depth of world engagement that Avowed, by design, didn’t try to replicate. The comparison isn’t unflattering to either game; they’re just doing different things. But right now, Deadfire is doing something Avowed cannot: it’s giving players more Eora to inhabit.
Deadfire also had its own rough launch in 2018 – low initial sales, a crowded release window – before building a reputation as one of the better CRPGs of its generation. Players discovering it now through an Avowed funnel are experiencing it without that baggage. They’re finding the game’s three substantial DLC expansions, its turn-based mode (added post-launch), and a fleshed-out mod scene that gives the experience real longevity. For someone starving for more Eora content in 2025, Deadfire is genuinely generous.
This kind of reverse discovery is worth paying attention to. It’s not just about nostalgia or filling time. Players returning to or finding Deadfire are actively deepening their investment in Obsidian’s world. That’s an asset the studio could be building on. Instead, the lack of communication around Avowed’s future means that community energy is being channeled into a seven-year-old game rather than something new.
What Obsidian Might Be Weighing
There are real strategic reasons Obsidian might be holding back on Avowed DLC announcements. The studio is owned by Microsoft and operates within a publishing structure that doesn’t always move at the speed fans want. Development resources get allocated, priorities shift, and announcing DLC before it’s greenlit creates its own problems. Obsidian also has The Outer Worlds 2 in development, which presumably commands a significant share of internal attention. Splitting focus publicly between two major RPG projects is a communication challenge studios often prefer to avoid.
Still, silence carries its own cost. Players who finished Avowed and are actively seeking more Eora content right now are a captive, motivated audience. They are exactly the kind of players who will buy a DLC at full price on day one. Every week that passes without acknowledgment – even a brief “we’re exploring options” post on the official forums – is a week that audience disperses a little further. Some will move on entirely. Others will settle into Deadfire and feel less urgency to return when something does eventually drop.
Pillars II as an Accidental Lifeline
There’s an irony in Deadfire functioning as Avowed’s de facto extended content. The two games share a universe but operate very differently – different cameras, different systems, different pacing. A player who loved Avowed’s fast-action combat and first-person exploration might find Deadfire‘s deliberate, pause-and-plan combat a genuine adjustment. But the lore connective tissue is strong enough that many players are making that adjustment anyway. The Watcher, the gods of Eora, the factions and history that Avowed referenced – all of it runs deeper in the Pillars games, and that depth is clearly worth the learning curve for a portion of the player base.
It’s a pattern that other franchises have seen play out when newer entries go quiet after launch – fans circle back to older titles not out of preference but out of need. The community around Eora is active on Reddit and Discord, and post-Avowed threads pointing newcomers toward Deadfire have become a regular feature. That’s an organic recommendation engine that Obsidian didn’t engineer and can’t fully control. It could just as easily carry those players toward a competitor’s next big RPG release if Obsidian waits too long.
The Clock Running in the Background
RPG audiences are patient compared to live-service players, but they’re not infinitely so. Avowed’s post-launch window is not closed yet, but it is narrowing. The games releasing this year are substantial, and attention – even devoted fan attention – has a finite bandwidth. An announcement, even a vague one, would cost Obsidian very little and buy back considerable goodwill. The tools are there. The audience is clearly still engaged enough to seek out seven-year-old games in the same universe. That’s not a fading fanbase – that’s a hungry one.
What Obsidian does with that hunger over the next few months will shape whether Avowed becomes a franchise with momentum or a single-entry curiosity. Right now, Deadfire is the only thing keeping that energy inside the Eora universe at all. It’s doing the work. The question is how long a 2018 game can carry a 2025 release before players stop waiting and walk out of the world entirely.
