I’m much more excited for Avowed after hearing the team say that the thing about RPGs is “watchable content.”

“Confident” game design is one of those vaguely vague critics’ words that I sometimes tentatively reach for, even though I know I’ll have to – sigh – do all sorts of hideous nonsense like “Back up my vague claim with concrete examples.” “are for the reader useful” when I do it. Yuck. However, if there’s one type of design that deserves this distinction, it’s role-playing games that are so confident in the richness of their worlds that they don’t feel the need to add a clue to every discovery.

It’s a feedback loop of charitable sentiment: the game says, “We think you’re smart enough to find this stuff yourself.” “You’re right!” You answer. “I Am clever! And anyone who realizes that must be a smart cookie.” The joy is great, it’s raining Tunnocks Caramel Wafers, hedgehogs are hopping gracefully in the street and all is right with the world. So I have to say, I’m very happy to hear Avoweds Berto Ritger, head of the environmental region, emphasizes to GamesRadar the benefits of missable content.

The “core thing about RPGs that makes them special is, to be honest, unmissable content, and that makes the experience feel much more personal depending on how you play the game,” says Ritger. You may find something special, but a partner finds something else instead. “It creates a very interesting dialogue about the game,” says Ritger, “and it makes your experience feel more personal to you.”

At Avowed in particular, the goal is to make this possible with vertical environments. “We want to draw your attention to things that we want to keep you busy with,” says Ritger. “The lighthouse, for example, is very high, and everyone will want to see and climb a big, big thing. And that’s why we want to support that. And you can do that, and you can jump into the sea if you want. And so we try to get your attention.

The irony that I just said that I like games that trust my intelligence and then Ritger says, “Gamer brain makes you achieve great things,” was not lost on me. But he’s right, damn it.

Of course, this design approach triggers a certain Schrödinger’s Cat: How am I supposed to enjoy content that I don’t know exists? But the example I keep going back to is the Mass Effect Renegade/Paragon puzzle. It’s well-documented that about 90% of players chose to role model Shepard, which on the surface sounds like a huge waste of resources, but the ability to equip a reporter made your restraint seem all the more heroic.

On the development side, it’s also a question of resources – which, as Larian’s Sven Vincke previously pointed out to PC Gamer, can be a hard sell for publishers:

When you see it, it will scare you, as a shareholder, as an editor. The very first thing you will try to do is to control it – you will try to contain it, you will try to contain it, you will try to control it, which is exactly the opposite of that , what we want to do. Because it’s like this: Why are we spending a million dollars on a dragon that no one will ever see except five people who made this obscure decision? Because when they see it, they must be happy too. That’s why I put the damn dragon there, because it’s the logical consequence of the things they’ve done.

We’ll have to wait and see how well Avowed will actually deliver on that promise, and how much of this talk can easily be based on the anticipation of another game that surpasses Baldur’s Gate 3. It looks like the game may also have major problems. “The whole thing also has a broken inertia,” is how Edwin felt about the fight. “Animations don’t flow together very charismatically, giving the ducking and diving a strange, stuttering rhythm.”