This is not Baldur’s Gate 3. There will be no romantic relationships in Avowed — Obsidian

The player will not be able to have a romantic relationship in the RPG Avowed by Obsidian. Unlike Baldur’s Gate 3, the developers of this game wanted to make romance «really, really, really right», or not at all — as it turned out.

In the interview Windows Central Obsidian’s game director Carrie Patel confirmed that Avowed will not have romantic relationships with companions. Obsidian recognizes that «is what many» players like, but the company seems hesitant to do so because of doubts about the implementation and scale of the game.

«We wanted to make sure that if we were to include that, we would have an equally meaningful non-romantic path. Given how much we’ve invested in our companions as characters who are really tied to the central story in a way that they weren’t in a lot of our previous games, we wanted to make sure that if we were going to do romance, we were going to really, really, really do it right — or not at all».

Obsidian considered introducing romantic relationships, but the final decision was to focus on other aspects of the companions. This may indicate both difficulties with the plot realization of romantic lines and the decision not to do it for other reasons — but only Kerry Patel’s words are known.

Also, Avowed will not feature multiplayer. The game director praised Larian, the developer of Baldur’s Gate 3 but said that the studio’s goal was to create exactly what the Obsidian audience expects — a quality story, choices that matter and their consequences, and the ability of the game’s hero to change the world.