Avowed's massive anniversary update adds new playable races, but they don't get any unique dialogue because there were 'no dedicated narrative people available'

Avowed's 2.0 update, also known as the anniversary update, is a meaty one. New stat bonuses, custom difficulty modifiers, NG+, the new staff weapon type, a photo mode—it's a lot. The most significant new addition, though, is undoubtedly the arrival of three new playable races.

If you've not played Avowed yet, you might be surprised to hear that, until now, only humans and elves were playable. This is a significant departure from Obsidian's previous games set in Eora, the Pillars universe, which offered plenty of choice at character creation.

The in-fiction reason for this limitation is that, where the main character is from, elves and humans are the dominant peoples. But that's a bit of a bummer for roleplayers, so now you can also play as a dwarf, an orlan or an aumaua.

It's pretty common in RPGs for your choice of race to have an impact that goes beyond your stats and skills. This is also true of Avowed, where there's some unique dialogue based on your race. Not so for the new additions, however, which offer a mechanical and aesthetic difference only.

Chatting to RPG Site, gameplay director Gabe Paramo explained this omission. "It was actually quite difficult," he said of introducing the new races. "It took a ton of work from our gameplay engineers and character artists to make sure all of the character customization options worked across the new races, and that our in-world interactions all synced up properly regardless of the player's height or proportions."

But while gameplay engineers and character artists were involved, nobody from the narrative side contributed to the update. "On the writing side, because our post-launch team was primarily made up of people focused on the PS5 port and gameplay, without dedicated narrative people available, we weren't able to add unique dialogue choices based on the player's race."

Picking one of the new races means you get to enjoy "different gameplay attribute bonuses depending on which race the player chooses, so there's still a meaningful mechanical distinction tied to that choice," said Paramo.

Well, that's taken the wind out of my sails a bit. Don't get me wrong, it's fantastic that Avowed players are getting some significant new options a year after launch, and all for free, to boot. But Obsidian is known for creating some really detailed roleplaying opportunities, so it's a shame that the update doesn't really cater those of us more interested in that side of things.

Avowed's anniversary update is available now.