If I understand combat will take some Skyrim elements (but still be different more like DnD world). Well and saying it is like Sjyrim no thanks. Unfortunately I did buy Skyrim and the only good thing with that game for me was some community made full nudity mod that made all women n...
If you liked New Vegas, you probably should be fine in terms of "sandboxing". The inspiration for doing Avowed was Skyrim though. And as it came from Obsidian upper management, the reason is naturally: $$$.
I played through Skyrim once, but it's as wide as an ocean and as deep as a puddle. I completely lucked out too. There's no restriction on character progression anyway (the same character can max out everything at once), but I focused exclusively on ranged weapons (bows) and sneaking. This made combat even pretty tactical at points (still remember making a huge ass spider in a dungeon vulnerable to fire via some special bows, shooting it, luring it into a firetrap nearby -- bliss). Both magic as well as melee aren't even close. But at least the world is pretty, GOAT.
Additionally, the puzzles they put into the game are little kids' stuff really (why bother then?) -- the dungeons are built in a way that all ways lead to exit , and generally, it's a game that plays itself via tons of (non-optional) markers, one of my biggest pet peeves with Witcher also (atop of the barely existent character progression systems and you watching a completely passive Netflix expeirence like 70% of the playing time). The few remaing AAA companies on their never ending quest to ever expand audiences (naturally) increasingly develop RPGs for people who previously didn't actually much like RPGs and got nowhere near even games such as Kotor or Morrowind. Which is why Witcher plays very similar to every open world action blockbuster out there, why there's such a huge audience overlap -- and why Fallout more recent had been turned into a shooter with every character stat pretty much only influencing combat anymore and a dialogue system that didn't tasked you with the burden of reading in between shooting).
That's fine and there's nothing at all wrong with that. Westwood tried the same thing with their Lands Of Lore series back then already (but failed due to a multitude of reasons). But: At least unlike 10+ years ago, there's alternatives again after like 70% of the industry had collapsed around the 2000s. And just like "New Vegas" was a glimmer of hope in 2010ish, every once in a while there's still a "Kingdom Come Deliverance" too in the bigger budget space. Maybe Avowed will be one such too.
