Developer Obsidian Entertainment has revealed that the upcoming first-person RPG will aim for a “baseline” of 30 frames per second on Xbox Series X and S consoles. According to the studio, this decision was made very early in the game's development and allowed the studio to get “a lot more juice” out of the visual effects.
“We’re shooting for 30 frames per second, the bare minimum,” art director Matt Hansen said on the Iron Lords podcast (via IGN). “That’s what we expect. It’s a first-person single-player game, you don’t necessarily need those 60 frames. And that allows us to get a lot more visual content, lighting, and everything else. It’s a tradeoff that we made relatively early on, and we’re really happy with it. The game runs pretty well for its visual density, and that was always our goal.”
Avowed joins a list of several first-party games launching on Xbox Series X|S with a more cinematographic Frame rate is a notable example. 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 finally added for Xbox Series X consoles in May, and Xbox Series S owners received 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 the delay is that Avowed will no longer be competing with 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 appears to offer a lot of replay value, as it features at least 10 different endings for players to experience.