Avowed Will Run At 30 FPS, And Fans Are Upset

Summary

• It's been a busy week for Avowed news, with more and more information coming out as Gamescom rolls on.
• In an unfortunate bit of news, Obsidian has confirmed that its upcoming role-playing-game is targeting 30 frames per second.
• This wouldn't be the first Xbox exclusive to launch at 30 frames, as Starfield and Hellblade II both launched at 30, with only Starfield ever receiving a 60 FPS patch.
• Fans are rightfully upset, given that the Series X promotes 60 FPS gameplay and the console generation continues on.

Despite being pushed back from a 2024 release to February 18 of 2025, it's been a pretty newsworthy week for Avowed. With Gamescom in full force and previews out in the wild, more and more information about Obsidian's upcoming role-playing-game is making the rounds. On Thursday, it was revealed that the game will have multiple endings, with no ending being classified as a "true" or "canon" sequence.

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Unfortunately, Friday's bit of news isn't nearly as positive as that. In fact, it has a lot of fans upset, and the game is still months out from being released. That's because it's been confirmed that Avowed will run at 30 frames per second, and not the 60 that fans have come to expect out of modern AAA releases.

Yes, We Need All The Extra Frames

In an interview on the Iron Lords Podcast, Matt Hansen, Art Director, and Ryan Warden, Production Director, talked extensively about their ongoing project, including the game's performance. The short of it is that the game is targeting 30 frames per second.

When broached about the topic, Hansen had this to say:

“We are targeting 30 frames per second, bare minimum. 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.”

That's not exactly the best way to go about the subject, especially as gamers have come to appreciate 60 frames and have upgraded their hardware (televisions or monitors) in order to experience them. As expected, fans are not having it.

"This is the wrong call. The right thing to do would be to give X owners a performance or graphics/"fidelity" option, then recommend the graphics option in that menu," one user wrote on a Reddit thread.

Meanwhile, another user had this to say: "Why do they do this? They promised 4k 60fps when selling Xbox Series X. It’s on the box when you buy it, but they launch every game at 30fps and claim it’s the most powerful console ever."

For what it's worth, Avowed wouldn't be the first Xbox exclusive to launch at 30 FPS. Starfield only just recently got a 60 FPS patch, and Senua's Saga: Hellblade II launched at 30 FPS with no word on a potential patch. In other words, it's almost par for the course with recent Xbox releases. Still, that doesn't mean fans shouldn't be upset, especially as the console generation continues on.

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