Avowed Art Director Explains Why the Studio Went with a Vibrant, Colorful Style

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When Obsidian Entertainment first unveiled Avowed with a CGI trailer in 2020, the game looked a lot like Skyrim in terms of the fairly dark, gritty art style. However, the 2023 gameplay reveal showed a different, more colorful artistic direction that initially didn't sit too well with some fans.

Speaking to Screen Rant at Summer Game Fest, Obsidian Art Director Matt Hansen finally addressed the studio's aesthetic choice for Avowed. He also explained that players will experience a variety of biomes within the Living Lands.

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For me, I am a big fan of fantasy games and fantasy genre. I'm also a big fan of vibrant worlds. What you often see, and it's a really useful effect, is a lot of fantasy games will go with a more muted palette, a grimmer look, because it's an instant draw to nostalgia. You immediately feel like you're being transported to an older world because we associate that color palette with history, even though in reality, history was just as vibrant as today minus all the LEDs and things like that.

I wanted to tap into that just because I think conflict is so much more interesting when it's in color, in full color. Also, just the world is a wonderful palette to draw inspiration from. The other half of that is the Living Lands itself, as it's referenced in our prior games, is this exotic and very dangerous place. When people think of exotic and dangerous, they think of things like poison dart frogs and all of these very vibrant forms of danger. We wanted to tap into that here as well, but also, within Avowed, there are areas where it is a little more muted. We can play into that duality and play into those contrasts.

Humans perceive contrast - that's how we perceive everything, the contrast between things. Having an area that's a gloomy swamp, and going from that to a vibrant red desert, to an ashy waste and flipping between all