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Obsidian Entertainment's next flagship project, Avowed, is a sprawling first-person open-world RPG, which may sound exceedingly familiar to fans of Bethesda's own Elder Scrolls RPGs. While there are bound to be differences under the hood, sources are now claiming that Obsidian might have a specific trick up its sleeve to keep things interesting.
Specifically, leaker Jez Corden has come out and said that he saw a bit of Avowed's pre-alpha gameplay in 2021 and claimed that one of the game's available weapon classes was muskets. Corden has suggested a 17th-century level of technological development in the game, which could have huge implications for the setting and the core gameplay loop.
While the age gap between Avowed and Pillars of Eternity has been one of the community's most hotly-contested topics since the game was announced, most of the theories posited that Avowed would likely take place hundreds, if not thousands of years before the events of PoE. If Corden's claims of there being muskets and various other similar firearms in the game are accurate, this would suggest that the two series might not be that far apart after all.
Since Avowed may be running on Unreal Engine 5, Obsidian Entertainment's choice of the game engine could lend itself very well to proper FPS gameplay, albeit tuned and tweaked for what is, in effect, a gritty fantasy setting. Namely, the Pillars of Eternity universe does have an impressive array of musket and arquebus firearms, and they effectively function about as well as a crossbow might.
Should Corden's claims about "guns" in Obsidian Entertainment's flagship RPG be true, they wouldn't necessarily be out of place in Avowed's multi-class, Skyrim-like combat system. Developers may choose to balance these weapons by making them rather slow to reload, though it's extremely unlikely that the archetype would be entirely realistic in the amount of time it takes to load a genuine musket/arquebus.
The universe of Pillars of Eternity is unique in that it's not a straightforward fantasy setting. Instead, it combined classic fantasy tropes such as Avowed's strange character races with later technological developments, one of those being musket-type weaponry. Still, while these weapons fit the setting, it's worth keeping in mind that none of the information Corden has shared in this particular case has been confirmed in any official capacity just yet.
Avowed is now in active development for PC and Xbox Series consoles.