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: $$$.
Feargus’ mention of Eora Skyrim comes from before Deadfire’s release. We really have no idea into what the project evolved into, or what Feargus meant when using “Skyrim” in the pitch. Yes, he could have literally meant Skyrim but with Eora flavour. But it might have been as simple as “First Person RPG”.
The closest we got to some reliable information is Windows Central preview and that is an old preview of an old vertical slice, and according to Jason Schrier it went through some reboots and change of directors.
