Avowed is picking up the torch of Pillars of Eternity in many ways and translating everything that makes the franchise great into a first-person open-world RPG. The Living Lands itself is a good example because it's an iconic piece of Pillars of Eternity lore, but one never before seen in a game. Another is how the development team has reimagined key concepts or enemies in a brand new way, such as the Sporelings.

After the Xbox Games Showcase, Game ZXC sat down with Avowed director Carrie Patel and art director Matt Hansen regarding the story, world, and artistic direction of the game. Part of that artistic direction is bringing franchise-familar enemies into a new game with a new point of view. As Sporelings have always been a personal favorite, I asked about the design process behind bringing enemies such as these into the game, with Hansen discussing not only the challenges but the perhaps unintended side effects as well.

Avowed main art The Slumbering Fields
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Hansen explained that it was a "real treat" to bring these creatures to life because the process was a bit of a unique challenge. In Pillars of Eternity, creatures such as Spores and Sporelings would be relatively low poly with undefined textures, but their "striking silhouettes" would make the process of reimagining them within Avowed's art style and framework pretty fun.

Avowed - Xbox Games Showcase Story Trailer

At the same time, it also meant that the team had to look at these creatures and imagine what they'd look like from all angles for the first time, since that wasn't really possible in Pillars of Eternity's isometric perspective. As Hansen said,

"We, for the first time, have to think about what the underside of those creatures look like, right?"

Going from an isometric perspective to first-person means the development team had to account for what players would look at, as opposed to the "frame" that was always being strictly controlled. This means being prepared for a player to look up, look down, and look at everything in-between, and specifically in the case of Sporelings, this involved imagining what the underside of a Sporeling would look like. During development, Hansen and another artist had spoken specifically about this and what to do because the concept of the Sporelings' underside, which again had never been pictured by the development team before, ended up as a "juicy booty." Hansen's response perfectly captures the occasional absurdity of video game development:

"Can you make it juicier?"