Obsidian Entertainment, one of gaming’s busiest developers, has announced a delay for this year’s remaining Avowed update. This was to include a Photo mode and New Game Plus mode, among other things, and it will now be held back – as well as enlarged – for the game’s anniversary on 18th February 2026.
“If you’ve been following our Update Roadmap, you’ll know we planned to release an update this fall. To break the bad news first: Avowed will not be receiving a fall update,” Obsidian announced on X. “The good news is that we’re shifting our efforts toward a larger update coming next February, timed with the anniversary of the game’s release.
“This update will include everything originally planned for fall, plus additional features that will make it our biggest update yet. Stay tuned as we head into the new year for more details on what’s planned for the Living Lands.”
The features listed for the Anniversary update include the New Game Plus mode, the Photo mode, a new weapon type, “changing appearance in the world” (which I think means the ability to change your character’s appearance in the world), new character presets, more Godlike feature presets, “and many more”. The other two updates this year – one in the spring, one in the summer – brought new abilities, items, NPC behaviours, an arachnophobia-safe mode, and other improvements.
Avowed was a very pleasant surprise when it arrived at the beginning of the year. A carefree action-adventure which delighted in exaggerated fantasy, it used smaller open-world areas to provide a sandbox exploration experience, and matched them with a tactile and experimental combat system to strong, and very enjoyable, effect. I was very complimentary of Avowed in my review.
Avowed wasn’t Obsidian’s only big RPG released this year, however. The studio also released sci-fi RPG The Outer Worlds 2 in October, which Alex reviewed and liked, and the studio released Grounded 2, which was a collaboration with Eidos Montreal. That’s an early access release so Grounded 2 is still finding its little insect legs, but it’s a powerful new foundation for the game and franchise to build on for, potentially, years to come.
