Avowed's Dreamscourge and Pillars of Eternity's Hollowborn Crisis Explained

In 2026, Obsidian Entertainment's Avowed is no longer a distant promise. It launched on February 18, 2025, and players have spent more than a year exploring the Living Lands, confronting the Dreamscourge, and comparing it to the Hollowborn Crisis from Pillars of Eternity. The two maladies share a disturbing family resemblance: both are soul-deep wounds in Eora, both produce fear and violence, and both force players to ask who benefits when reality itself starts to rot. For fans of Obsidian's dark fantasy RPGs, the comparison is not just trivia. It is a window into how the studio builds connected mysteries across eras, regions, and genres.

🩸 The Hollowborn Crisis: A Legacy of Empty Cradles

Pillars of Eternity drops players into the Dyrwood, a region gripped by the Hollowborn Crisis, also called Waidwen's Legacy. Children are born without souls. They do not cry, recognize others, or protect themselves. They are empty vessels that wither and die. The crisis is a nightmare of magic, technology, and metaphysics colliding. Animancers try to help by imbuing animal spirits into the affected children. At first, this seems to offer personality and comfort. Then it backfires. The children become feral, then bestial, and many must be put down. The player eventually uncovers a conspiracy involving the gods and the nature of souls. The truth stops the Crisis, but it leaves survivors shattered. The Hollowborn Crisis is not just a monster to kill. It is a societal wound that exposes the cruelty beneath Eora's divine order.

🍄 The Dreamscourge: A Rot That Spreads Through Everything

Avowed shifts the focus to the Living Lands, a wild and isolated region. The Aedyr Empire sends the player character to investigate the Dreamscourge, a bizarre affliction spreading across the land. Unlike the Hollowborn Crisis, which targets infants, the Dreamscourge touches flora and fauna alike. Strange fungal growths appear on everything it infects. Sentient beings become erratic and aggressive. The game's early marketing described the Dreamscourge as a "symptom of a deeper and more dangerous rot." That phrasing matters. It suggests the disease is not the true enemy, but a sign of something hidden. The fungal imagery also invites comparisons to The Last of Us and its cordyceps infection, though Avowed filters that idea through Eora's soul-based cosmology.

⚔️ Why the Parallels Matter Now

Now that Avowed has been out since February 2025, the debate has evolved. Players have had time to finish the story, dig into lore, and argue about how the Dreamscourge connects to the Hollowborn Crisis. Some see the similarities as intentional echoes. Others think Obsidian is using the new region to ask fresh questions about souls, gods, and empire. The Living Lands are far from the Dyrwood, but Eora's metaphysics are not local. A soul is still a soul. A god's scheme can still reach across oceans. And a disease that attacks the spirit can still look like a plague on the body.

The Aedyr Empire's involvement adds another layer. In Pillars of Eternity, the Hollowborn Crisis was tied to colonial power, religious conflict, and the legacy of Waidwen. In Avowed, the empire sends an agent to contain a problem in a region it does not fully understand. That setup invites players to ask whether the Dreamscourge is a natural disaster, a weapon, or a punishment. It also raises the possibility that the true rot is political. Obsidian has always been interested in systems: how faith, trade, war, and magic shape ordinary lives. The Dreamscourge may be another expression of that interest.

🔮 What Comes Next for Eora?

The biggest question is whether Avowed will recontextualize the Hollowborn Crisis. The reference material hints that the Dreamscourge could be connected to a secret sect, the gods, or something entirely new. If Obsidian chooses to link the two, it could reframe the earlier crisis as part of a larger pattern. If it keeps them separate, the comparison still enriches both stories. Either way, the studio has room to expand Eora's darkest mysteries. In 2026, with Avowed's launch behind it and its post-launch life ongoing, fans can look back at the Hollowborn Crisis with new eyes. They can also look forward to future updates, expansions, or sequels that might reveal what the Dreamscourge truly was. For now, the parallel stands as a reminder: in Eora, the most terrifying monsters are often born from the soul.