Purging the plague
It feels like a lifetime ago when Avowed was announced. Back in 2020 Xbox showed off the first trailer for Obsidian’s latest RPG adventure. It gave off vibes of the Elder Scrolls set in the Pillars of Eternity Universe, and people were excited. Fast forward almost five years later, and we are finally here. I have played through the game, and while it isn’t quite on the scale of its inspiration, this is one of Obsidian’s most exciting games. It has great characters, wonderful set pieces, and diverse combat that only gets better as the game goes on. Avowed will scratch that itch for a lot of players, even with its few shortcomings.
As I mentioned, Avowed takes place in the Pillars of Eternity universe. I have not had a lot of experience with this world, so a lot of the races and locations were unknown to me. I can imagine a lot of these will excite fans as they see them realized in this game. Players take on the role of the Envoy from Aedyr on a mission in the Living Lands to stop a plague that is infesting the land known as the Dreamscourge. Players are able to create their Envoy, which is a godlike that has been spawned from an unknown God. The idea behind these characters is that they are rare across the lands, and the story follows their adventure in discovering who their God was alongside stopping the Dreamscourge.
MSRP: $69.99
Platforms: Xbox (reviewed), PC
Price I’d Pay: $69.99
Along the way the Envoy will join up with a collection of companions, and this is where the game excels. Each new one I teamed up with was exciting. Kai is by far my favorite. His approach to the world feels like a longtime vet of combat who has a rational head on his shoulders. Marius is the fun quippy fighter who hides his emotions. Giatta is a wizard that has compassion for her people and Yatzli is another wizard with plenty of sass and a colorful vocabulary. Each one brings their own flavor to the party, and I loved chatting with them at camp, as well as partaking in their companion quests that let me learn even more about each one.
The world of Avowed takes place in the Living Lands. As opposed to the Elder Scrolls model, this world is broken up into large zones. Each one has a ton of points of interest, various biomes, and plenty of side content to explore. There are fast travel points scattered across the map as well as camps that I could set up with my companions to have conversations, upgrade gear, and craft items. These camps are great for those that want to dig into the companions’ back stories. I loved cooking recipes while chatting with my party and uncovering new quests for them. This really evolves the relationships with the team.
Each zone is very large, and the map slowly uncovers as you explore it, which makes fast travelling less enticing. I wanted to uncover the whole map and discover all it had to offer. I loved finding little quests off the beaten path. Some of these stories are really interesting and the characters I met had a lot to say. This game has a ton of dialogue, and every character is voiced. Some of them are better than others of course, but a surprising amount of them are really good. There are definitely some reused character models and assets in some areas, but the world feels alive and the variety in enemies and areas is much appreciated. There is a lot to explore, even if you prefer a more open world.
Combat is where I really got into the game. A lot of these types of RPGs lock players into one role. Avowed doesn’t do this, and I really appreciated that. There are several weapon types including all the staples such as sword and board, two-handed weapons, bows and daggers, and of course magic. At any point in the game, I was able to set two loadouts that could be swapped during combat with the tap of a button. So I could wield a two-handed sword, then swap to my wand and grimoire to deal some magic. I also loved that if I unlocked those wizard abilities in the skill tree, I could perform them from the weapon wheel even when I didn’t have the grimoire equipped.
There is a lot of variety to the combat, including skill trees for each type. Points are earned per level that can be assigned to various active and passive abilities. These can be refunded for a moderate amount of gold at any time, and as I mentioned all the powers can either be quickly mapped to the d-pad, or accessed via a weapon wheel. This also works with companions. You can set their abilities to your quick menu or access them from the wheel. It is overwhelming at first, but once I figured out what I like to use regularly, I just kept those mapped, while hitting the wheel for lesser-used skills. There are a lot of ways to customize the game play, and I loved it.
Avowed can also be played in either first or third person. I switched between these two regularly throughout the game, but settled more with the third person, mostly because it gave me a wider field of view to see enemies from all sides, and some of these battles get larger as the game goes on. It also helped me once my spells upgraded and covered more area, I was able to set fire to more enemies in the wider view. Attacks feel good, and there is a slight lock-on for ranged attacks, which is nice. Enemies also have different elemental weaknesses, the combat is a fun puzzle that I never got tired of throughout the game. There were always new ways to tackle each situation.
As I mentioned earlier there are camps where weapons and equipment can be upgraded. As with most games like this, it requires materials found from enemies or throughout the world. The armor system is simple, but effective. There is main armor and then greaves and boots. The armor and weapons are color-coded, but this is not a loot-focused game. You can find plenty of items, but none of them are masked with a ton of effects. They have minor passives on each one, but finding one and upgrading it, or enchanting it, will do for a while. Also love the transmog works right out of the game, just select the item and pull the left trigger. Simple and appreciated.
Presentation wise this game hits all the right notes. I really enjoyed the music and as mentioned the voice work is outstanding. So many of the characters land their performances. Visually the game looks good with a nice variety of environments and enemy types. I was not a fan of my character, being a godlike they have some weird scars and things growing out of them. I get it is part of the story, but I never loved it. Especially when comparing them to the rest of the characters. I really loved some of the designs.
Technically the game has three modes. There is a performance mode that runs at 60fps, and holds up, mostly well. There are definitely dips and stutters, but it never affected my play. There is a quality 30fps mode, which works, but my preferred mode ended up being the 40fps mode for people who have a 120Hz TV. This mode felt like a nice balance between the two other modes. It looked great and felt awesome to play, so I stuck with this.
Avowed is a game that I was cautiously optimistic about. The Outer Worlds was fine but didn’t hit me as well as I hoped. I am also not a big fan of spending more time chatting with companions unless they are truly interesting, and here, they definitely are. This game just clicked with me and felt like the perfect marriage of stuff like Elder Scrolls and Mass Effect. Great story, great characters, and a world that is fun to explore with combat that never got old. I had a great time in the Living Lands, and I cannot wait to go back to a previous save and explore some more. Sadly, no continuing after credits roll and no new game plus, but hopefully that comes down the line. Definitely recommend checking this out when it hits Game Pass, Xbox has another winner on its hands.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
