An Obsidian employees LinkedIn page hints that Avowed will be running on Unreal Engine 5.
Although we've known about Avowed for quite some time now, we know remarkably little about it, as we've only had a small CGI teaser so far. Considering Xbox and Bethesda's showcase is coming up in the near future, it's likely we'll see it properly soon, but for now we might have just gotten a hint at what engine it'll be running on.
As spotted by IdleSloth84, Paul Miller, a tools programmer at Obsidian, updated their LinkedIn profile page to give a bit more detail about their role at the studio. The updated profile reads, "Responsible for enhancing the Unreal Editor 4/5 experience via plugins". Although Unreal Engine 4 is also referenced here, it's clear that the studio is moving forward with Unreal Engine 5 and has likely swapped over for Avowed.
That's not the only hint towards Avowed running on Unreal Engine 5, however. As reported by Pure Xbox, another Obsidian employee's page, lead VFX artist Aaron Dubois, gives a little more detail on the project. Dubois' page lists his time as a lead VFX artist at Obsidian and specifically notes "Lead VFX artist on Avowed. Working with Niagara fx in unreal 5".
Although the first find from IdleSloth84 made it seem as if the studio was in the process of swapping to Unreal Engine 5, Dubois' page specifically mentions that he's been working with Unreal Engine 5 for Avowed, which implies that it's already swapped over to the improved engine.
This isn't the first time that information about Avowed's engine was found on LinkedIn, as similar posts were spotted last year that had employees talking about using Unreal Engine. It wasn't clear what version of the engine they were using at the time, but Dubois' most recent post makes it clear that it'll be using Unreal Engine 5.
Although The Outer Worlds 2 isn't mentioned on either of the Obsidian employees' pages, it would make sense for that project to have also been moved over to Unreal Engine 5, as it seemed a lot further behind the Avowed was.