Avowed developer Obsidian Entertainment has revealed that the upcoming first-person RPG will be targeting a “baseline” of 30 frames per second on Xbox Series X and S consoles. According to the studio, this decision was made early on in the development of the game and has allowed the studio to get “a lot juicier” with visual effects.
“We are targeting 30fps, bare minimum,” art director Matt Hansen said on the Iron Lords podcast (via IGN). “That’s the expectation. “It’s a first-person, single-player game, you don’t necessarily need that 60 frames. And that allows us to get a lot juicier with VFX and lighting and all this other stuff. It’s a trade-off we opted to make relatively early, and we’re really happy with that. The game’s running pretty smooth for how visually dense it is, and that was always our goal.”
Avowed joins a list of several first-party games that launched on Xbox Series X|S with a more cinematic frame rate. Starfield is a notable example, as the space-RPG was locked to 30fps on Xbox Series X|S for performance consistency. A 60fps mode was eventually added for Xbox Series X consoles in May, and Xbox Series S owners got a performance update this week.
Originally scheduled to launch later this year, Avowed is now set to launch on February 18, 2025. The silver lining to this delay is that Avowed will no longer be competing against several other AAA games like Dragon Age: the Veilguard, Metaphor: ReFantazio, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. The game also looks like it’ll have plenty of replayability, as it has least 10 different endings for players to experience.
