Avowed will run at a “baseline” of 30 frames per second across Xbox Series X and S, developer Obsidian has confirmed.
Speaking on the Iron Lords Podcast, art director Matt Hansen said Obsidian is “targeting a baseline of 30fps” for the first-person fantasy RPG. 60fps sounds unlikely, however, even on the more powerful Xbox Series X.
Explaining, Hansen said Obsidian decided to go for 30fps in order to facilitate fancier visuals, and that because Avowed is a first-person, single-player game, “you don’t necessarily need that 60 frames.”
“We are targeting 30 frames per second, bare minimum," Hansen said. "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.”
But, Obsidian is still figuring out the nitty gritty of performance: “It’s one of the last things you do,” Hansen said.
Avowed is due out in February 2025 on PC and Xbox Series X and S, and joins a list of Xbox Series X and S games that launched at 30fps in recent years. That list includes Bethesda’s Starfield (which now runs at 60fps following a post-launch update), Arkane Austin’s Redfall (which also now runs at 60fps following a post-launch update), and Ninja Theory’s Hellblade 2, which has yet to receive a 60fps update.
Indeed, Obsidian’s reasoning for targeting 30fps echoes comments made by Bethesda development chief Todd Howard in explaining why last year’s Starfield launched at 30fps on both Xbox Series X and S.
“I think it'll come as no surprise, given our previous games, what we go for,” Howard said at the time. “Always these huge, open worlds, fully dynamic, hyper detail where anything can happen. And we do want to do that. It's 4K in the X. It's 1440 on the S. We do lock it at 30, because we want that fidelity, we want all that stuff. We don't want to sacrifice any of it.
“Fortunately in this one, we've got it running great. It's often running way above that. Sometimes it's 60. But on the consoles, we do lock it because we prefer the consistency, where you're not even thinking about it.
“And we don't ever want to sacrifice that experience that makes our games feel really, really special. So it feels great. We're really happy with how it feels even in the heat of battle. And we need that headroom because in our games, really anything can happen.”
As was the case with recent Xbox games, Avowed may end up with a 60fps performance mode post-launch. There are also questions about Avowed eventually launching on PlayStation 5, following Obsidian's Pentiment and Grounded jumping to the rival console this year, and Microsoft's confirmed plans to release Id Software's Doom: The Dark Ages and MachineGames' Indiana Jones and the Great Circle on PS5 next year.
Avowed was delayed to February “to give players' backlogs some breathing room,” Microsoft has said. It was due out later in 2024. IGN recently went hands-on with Avowed and we came away impressed.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
