Avowed is shaping up to be one of the most immersive, and certainly one of the biggest RPGs of 2025. Coming from Obsidian Entertainment, expectations continue to grow, as the loved developer marches towards its release on February 19.
We’ve spent a decent amount of hands-on time with the epic adventure so far, along with having a great chat with its Production Director Ryan Warden. Now, we’ve had the opportunity to dive a little bit deeper into the soundscapes of Avowed, and its stunning score.
Checkpoint Gaming sat down again with Ryan Warden, along with Avowed’s composer Venus Theory, and Senior Sound Designer, Dylan Hairston, to chat about how the audio plays such a crucial part in building such a fantastical, wondrous world.
Checkpoint Gaming: I know there was a quote at PAX last year, Ryan, when we spoke, you were excited about the soundtrack and the composition in particular, and one thing you said was you wanted to make sure that it was for a fantasy game “recognisable but not generic”. So I thought I’d throw that out at the start and just talk about what you mean by that.
Ryan Warden: Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that distinguishes Avowed from say the previous Pillars of Eternity games, and we talked about this at PAX Australia, is going from this sort of isometric view of the previous games to a more first-person view, which allows you for a little bit more immersion. And while the soundtracks for Pillars are great, I listened to them all the time, they were a little bit more suited towards that isometric view.
So this was an opportunity for us to really get immersive and develop that world of Eora as it’s going to unfold before you in first person perspective. And in order to do that, there’s kind of an undercurrent of mystery that happens over the course of Avowed and I was looking for something that had sort of a cinematic beauty with also just a delicious undercurrent of tension. And frankly, there’s nobody who does that better than Venus Theory as far as I’m concerned. So I really wanted to work with them for a long time, and then it was awesome. Stars aligned and we were able to make that happen.
Venus Theory: Yeah, I mean, that was the elevator pitch I got from Ryan; it can’t just be fantasy game stuff, and I’m absolutely not the choice for that sort of… sweeping strings vibe, because I just find that boring, and it’s been done really well by other people, significantly more qualified than I am, and I’m just going to be a diet version of that. So to me, it came down to just embracing the idea that whatever I did musically should not be able to be put over the top of another game like gameplay footage or anything, and still function as well.
We talked about this a lot, the idea of just finding something that was not the easy answer, but the natural answer and trying to explore what expectations are set by the genre of largely a fantasy game, and how do we utilise that to find other ways to twist the formula a bit and explore some more different ideas. There’s lots of stuff on the soundtrack that’s heavily sample-based, lots of weird tape delay and tape looping things coming from the more experimental music side. One of the regions in Shatterscarp has very much a dark ambient piece, which is super weird, but it fits the game really well. But if you took all those musical moments and put them over another fantasy game, it would just feel like this is completely wrong and does not work at all.
Checkpoint Gaming: And I mean, I saw that you have had a love of RPGs growing up yourself there. So how did you tackle that challenge of like, “Okay, I love this genre, I love playing these games, but now I’m going to be composing for one, which isn’t really my style.” How did you even come to grips with that? How did you infuse your style into that fantasy RPG world?
“…trying to explore what expectations are set by the genre of largely a fantasy game, and how do we utilise that to find other ways to twist the formula a bit and explore some more different ideas.”
Venus Theory: Yeah, I mean, I’m really into very experimental music stuff like Ben Frost and Tim Hecker and the Nine Inch Nails Ghost stuff is really influential for me, and I’m very into electronic sound designing music and things like that. I pretty much exclusively listened to film and game soundtracks. So growing up being a very, very avid gamer, all those moments in the games and the soundtracks meant a lot to me. And I’ve always had that, as Ryan mentioned, that cinematic leaning to everything I do. But it became a question of looking at my influences and my lens of things; what would it be if Ben Frost or someone scored a fantasy game, what would that sound like? How do they approach things and how could I utilise that to again, frame things in a fantasy lens, but subvert every expectation you have to create something that feels really unique?
I think it came together pretty well, and it encapsulated a lot of that fantasy style while trying to do everything in a way that I felt sounded like my music instead of just trying to throw myself into another framework. And thankfully, although there are some nods to Pillars in there, we weren’t too stuck on that. And there was a lot of creative freedom to explore everything in a new light. A large part of that was the shift in perspective of “if we’re going to commit to this idea and that’s something we’re going to say that’s important, we have to follow through on that on every layer”. And I think the music was a big part of that as well.
Checkpoint Gaming: And with Avowed, there’s this thing with the music, the fact that it dynamically shifts and adapts to the world and what’s going on. How was that for you? Was that a challenge to think about the composition in that way? Was it a fun challenge?
Venus Theory: It was very fun and I appreciate the opportunity for everyone around! (laughing). Yeah, it was a nightmare to figure out, to be honest. And I think we did have the advantage of not working with a tonne of live players and session musicians and stuff where I did all the instruments in live playing and everything myself. So I was free to experiment with things and I knew what I was getting into.
It was a matter of developing a system largely through Ryan and the area designers, and we came up with a volume-based idea where you get to certain things, the music should reflect exactly what you’re seeing. A lot of games probably due to the limitation of using live orchestral arrangements and such, you can’t really make dynamic orchestral music because it’s just too much to record in a way that would sync together and adapt nicely and feel good without it just being like, “oh, this is the same song, you’re just taking out the brass or something”, for example.
So in this, we really developed from the ground up a whole system where there’s always these elements happening and the ambient music, and then the bigger moments, it’s all the same song. So it was effectively writing the same region’s music like five different times and then putting it together in a way where whenever you do get to those big vista moments, the lighthouse and things like that, the big overlooks, that’s when the music swells up. Because on an emotional level, those are the things that resonated most with me, not only in growing up playing games but when I was playing this game where I would just turn off all music stuff and any other audio systems and just walk around and look and figure out “What am I feeling here?” And we would just kind of note that down as this is when the music needs to be big, but otherwise, it needs to just flow and let everything work alongside it.
Ryan Warden: One of my favourite scenes is at the top of the lighthouse when the music swells to the full mix, but also Dylan’s work with the seagull that flies by, and you can hear the waves lapping at the bottom of the lighthouse, the wind rustling… all of those small details coming together, to really support what you’re seeing on screen and make it feel larger than your character. You feel like this is a big bold world that you just want to go and explore.
I want to give Dylan a shout-out here because the sound effects go such a long way in making the world feel lived in. They really support the music when it does go more ambient as well; when it does get pretty quiet and pretty chill, all the sound effects really take over and do all the heavy lifting. And it flows together so nicely that it feels very transparent and I think that’s really important.
Dylan Hairston: Yeah, especially during the later stages of this game, when we come down to start mixing and stuff, a lot of work goes into the interplay between music and sound effects and how those two things complement each other when one should be more prominent than the other and so on. And I’m really happy with how it turned out. And I think that we came to something like with the lighthouse example, I think we reached something that the end result is greater than the sum of its parts. If you just take the sound effects track and you just take the music’s track, what happens when you combine it all is greater than just the sum of those two things.
Checkpoint Gaming: And Dylan, what was your approach in terms of creating these soundscapes in collaboration with the musical compositions? I mean, you’ve got this giant experience, I think there’s so much opportunity for sound design in this, but at the same time, you need to be restrained in certain moments as well.
Dylan Hairston: So I think that, okay, that’s a big question. One important aspect here is that the timeline that we faced for this project was very fast. It was very, very fast and high octane, everyday matters. As a result of that, there wasn’t as much, me meeting with Venus Theory and Ryan and going “Okay, Shatterscarp, what are we thinking?”. It was more, and I don’t mean this negatively, it’s more just the reality of this project versus other projects. I was more reactive in that Venus Theory would be like, “Okay, music just got put in for Shatterscarp”, and I would take a listen to it and then kind of let that inform my take. For example, “The music here is a little bit more subdued, so I think we can go a little bit bigger with ambience because of that. There are some nice peaks and valleys in this track.”
Or vice versa; it’s like, actually this track in Dawnshore is pretty big and bombastic. It’s taken up a good bit of frequency range, so let’s be reserved, and not go crazy with ambience here. And so I tried to be more reactive to the music that was going in the game and then facilitate everything with mixing systems that basically say, “You know what? It doesn’t matter if the music’s loud and the ambient SFX is quiet or vice versa.” These mixing systems will support any sort of configuration of that and it’ll sound good, it’ll sound appropriate. That’s what I’ve really been focused on these past few weeks, is trying to put a button on that so that no matter where you are in the game, it all sounds appropriate. And Dawnshore isn’t way louder than Shatterscarp isn’t way louder than Emerald Stair or whatever.
Checkpoint Gaming: And Ryan, what’s that process like for you, when it’s all coming together, you’ve been working on this game for so long and building how it looks and how it feels, and then you’re adding in all these talented people like Venus Theory, composer, you’re adding in Dylan’s work and the rest of the sound team and stuff like that. How do you coordinate and give feedback?
Ryan Warden: So it was really neat to see the collaboration between Dylan and Venus theory, particularly in some of the cut scenes that we were doing. There were a couple of instances where I, as the all-knowing producer said, this is a hundred per cent going to work, and the idea that I had in my head is exactly going to work out. And Dylan to his credit said, “I think I’ve got a different idea. What if we tried it like this?” And I said, “I dunno, we’ve already got some music that’s laid down and that doesn’t really fit what I have in my head, but let’s sketch that out.” And then you two started getting together and very much talking about things. There’s one in particular that I’m thinking of that I’m not going to get too specific about because it gets kind of spoilery, but it happens late in the game and there’s sort of this earth-shattering kaboom that happens.
And I love the way that you two were talking about carving out space, making sure that the sound effects can come through. But then we also want to evoke enough emotion when the music does come in as a great big sweep, that we really nail that moment for the players. And so one of the things that we did is we just had a great big public – I say public, but public to the team Slack channel – where any member of the team could come into the music Slack channel and just say, “Hey, I was noticing something. Is this what you were intending to do? Is this what’s going on?” We had Dylan and a couple of other members of the audio team in there about as early as possible, and they were very, very quick to give feedback and ask questions. And that back and forth enabled us to make something better than what just I as a singular person could come up with. And to his credit, Dylan was right. The cutscene as it is now in the game sounds so much better.
“…the faders need to be moving all the time, so that things stay dynamic and tasty with the music and sound effects and not have one overpower the other.”
Dylan Hairston: Well, just to kind of tack one extra thing on what Ryan was saying, so at least personally, I’m very passionate about cut scenes. I think that those at times can be some of the most impactful moments in video games. They’re very narrative-heavy and carry a lot of narrative weight to the player. So I think the onus is on us to also make sure that the audio for those things is as awesome as possible because we really get a lot of bang for our buck there if we make those really cool. And so Ryan was saying, I think that is one of the areas that there was the strongest sense of immediate collaboration between the two of us. And I tried to treat the cut scenes basically the same as the ambience that I was just talking about earlier, where there needs to be a back-and-forth relationship between music and the sound effects.
If one is dominant the whole time, it’s an off-weight thing that the average player might not notice consciously, but it will wear on them over time. If you’ve been playing the game, if you’re on a 10-hour session, it’ll be like, “Dude, I’m sorry, the music’s kind of banging me over the head.” Or “Why is the wind here so freaking loud? Can the wind please shut up? I’m getting tired of it.” And so the microcosm of cut scenes is of the same principle where there needs to be, the faders need to be moving all the time, so to speak, so that things stay dynamic and tasty and not have one overpower the other.
Checkpoint Gaming: Venus Theory, I’d love to know a bit more about just your own soundtrack inspirations and the kinds of things that you were thinking of when you were pulling this together.
Venus Theory: Yeah, I mean, obviously listening to the Pillars stuff was really important just to figure out what universe sonically this fits in. And listening to Justin Bell’s work is always super inspirational and also terrifying because then it’s like, no big deal. I just have to follow up Justin Bell, whatever. (laughing) All good, no problem there. But yeah, listening to a lot of just world music was really helpful to break up different rhythms and things like that and find different grooves and pockets and ideas because over the course of the game, again, not to get too spoilery, we start off much more orchestral leaning. It’s not really super traditional orchestral music. There’s a lot of flavour and things thrown in there to make it interesting because again, I’m just not an orchestral guy, but as we get further into the game, we break away from the idea of a western orchestral ensemble.
So instead of brass strings, winds, and percussion, it’s like, okay, I’m using Armenian instruments and things like that. Then, I’m using the Chinese Xiao flute and things like that. I’m bringing in Greek Bode instruments along with Chinese percussion ensembles and using the strings, but instead of flowing in a chord progression, I’m focusing more on the idea of Ragas within Indian classical music theory, just to really morph and twist over time.
So the soundtrack evolves quite a bit, and a lot of that stemmed from listening to pretty much anything other than fantasy game music, because I am very into film soundtracks and game soundtracks. So listening to African percussion ensembles was fascinating. A lot of experimental ambient music, and trying to bring those ideas in, and even just a lot of bluegrass and other things, and trying to find different musical microcosms that have their own textures and ideas and trying to figure out how can I implement those there.
And a lot of it too was just the way the game looks. It was walking around the city of Paradis, for example. I was looking around and thinking of something like buskers, like street musicians. If there were people playing music here and there were musicians in this world, what would they be playing? And to the visual team’s credit with the regions, it’s like everything feels different. So it was like, what would this region sound like? Just as Dylan knows with wind, you can’t just have one wind sound in every region. That would be weird. So musically, it was important to get the identity, and I think a lot of that just stemmed from absorbing everything through osmosis that was as far removed from fantasy music as possible to try and bring something really new to the table along with my own more self-indulgent tendencies.
Checkpoint Gaming: It’s funny you mentioned in each region, the wind would sound different. I didn’t even consider that. Wind just sounds like wind, right? But I guess obviously not when you’re working so deeply on it like you guys are, it’s totally next level.
Dylan Hairston: I try to think of something that a lot of people don’t think about… you can close your eyes, and if you imagine pouring water into a glass, you can tell if the water’s hot or cold and that you’re pouring water into a glass. The sound of a hot cup of tea being poured into a glass versus just regular cold water.
It’s the same thing with the wind. If you’re on a ski slope, the wind is going to sound a certain way instead of if you’re in the Sahara Desert, the wind’s going to sound a certain way. And so audio down to the idea of what birds, what flora and fauna are in this area, what little critters would be shaking about in the sand and all this stuff. It is all contextual and it’s all very thought about. There’s a lot of thought that goes into every little detail.
Checkpoint Gaming: How do you balance that need for realism in sound design and how things sound different that we all know from day to day… and then balancing that with the fact that this has got these fantastical elements in this game, and there’s probably going to be sounds and things that you wouldn’t normally hear walking down the street. How do you balance it all?
Dylan Hairston: Well, it’s interesting because there are certain things in a game like Avowed that have very strong real-world precedents. If you’re walking through a town and a blacksmith is pounding on an anvil, there’s a strong preconceived notion of what that is supposed to sound like, from Hollywood even. There’s just a specific sound that you’re looking for. But then we have a creature that’s like a Beatle; it’s literally a Beatle, but it’s like 10 feet tall. It’s this huge Beatle. So then you have to stretch your brain a little bit and just kind of be like, “If that thing existed, what would it sound like?” There is no real-world precedent for it, so we can’t just go into our sound library and type ‘10-foot-tall Beatle’ and get some sounds.
You have to really think about it. So yeah, it is very much a balance, but I think it’s just important that you recognise where those real-world precedents are and lean into those. And then also on the more fantastical stuff, that’s where you start to create a sonic identity for Avowed. That, in my opinion, is what makes Avowed’s soundscape. It’s like there are billions of real-world references where you can go out and just hear what that sounds like. But as for shooting magic and fire out of your hands, there is no real-world precedent. So how do we want that to sound in the world of Eora? And also how do we respect the sound of Pillars 1 and 2? Because magic is already defined in this universe, and there is precedent for how it’s supposed to sound. So yeah, I could go on, but that’s kind of the gist of it; I feel like the fantastical stuff is where we actually create identity for ourselves.
Checkpoint Gaming: Avowed is out very soon. How excited are you for people to play it, to hear it, to hear all these elements coming together? It must be very, very exciting.
Ryan Warden: I could not be more excited. We’ve been cooking for a long time. It is time for the world to experience this, and it’s really neat. You can feel that buzz around the team right now where everybody is just ready for the game to be out and for the world to experience it. And hey, I hope you all like it.
Avowed releases for Xbox Series X|S and PC, included in Xbox Game Pass, on February 19, with up to 5 days early access for pre-ordering the Premium Edition or Premium Upgrade Edition.
About the Author
Luke Mitchell
he/him
Luke spends his time making radio, playing video games, binge-watching TV, getting unreasonably invested in wrestling, hosting bear events and hanging out with his beautiful pets.
