You know, you could never accuse Obsidian of not putting the effort in. Sure, they have a fairly consistent track record of piggybacking other developer’s IPs, but they also have a fairly solid penchant for improving certain aspects of those IPs (Fallout New Vegas, for example). And when they do new things that don’t feel necessarily “fresh” (like, say, The Outer Worlds), they usually come off as knowing homage rather than any kind of shameless rip-off. With Avowed, they’ve kind of combined all their usual powers into one.
It’s set in the world of the Pillars of Eternity games, for a start, so Obsidian has a universe’s worth of established lore to work with. And while the plot and mechanics are technically theirs, it borrows heavily from both Dragon Age and The Elder Scrolls. And I do mean heavily. This isn’t just borrowing your neighbour’s hedge trimmer, this is living in their house without them knowing for several weeks and eating all the cream eggs while they’re at work.
But before you start sharpening those knives (or fluffing my pillows, depending on which way you lean), I’m not throwing shade at Avowed. In fact, it’s pretty fantastic in a lot of ways. All I’m really doing is giving fair warning to go into this expecting to see a lot of things you’ve seen before, and very few that you haven’t.
In creating the player character, Obsidian spun the wheel on generic fantasy titles, skipping past Adventurer, Warden, Champion, Inquisitor, and Traveller, to land on Envoy, as that is what you are and what everyone calls you the moment they meet you, whether you’re currently exercising diplomacy or picking bits of their mates out of your boot treads. For you are indeed an Envoy, representing the Aedyran Empire, a big collection of bastards currently invading the neighbouring country with a fairly genteel approach. There’s resistance, of course, and you can bet your last gold coin that you’ll be embroiled in it somehow, particularly thanks to a rogue faction of the Aedyran military who really like burning things down. They’re headed by an Inquisitor (second spin of the wheel there) who’s 6 feet of bitch in a 7-foot armoured suit, and manages to stay just a few quests ahead of you throughout the story.
Your tale begins when your boat sinks during the journey over from Aedyr, naturally, which is unfortunate but also fairly predictable and, ultimately, pointless to the story. It’s not long after you wash up on the shores of the Living Lands that you find the country in the grip of a Blight that corrupts wildlife and poisons magic, and immediately get to business saving the local Ambassador. You’re joined right away by Kai, a big fella with scaled skin and a knack for one-liners who acts as your guide. What follows is The Outer Worlds by way of Skyrim, with a setup that will be familiar to anyone who’s played either game, or any of the Fallouts since 3.
You’re also a Godlike, which in the world of Avowed is an individual marked by one of the myriad gods to be an avatar of their power. The first problem is, the Blight is sending them doolally and making them highly dangerous. The second problem is you don’t know which god is your patron, a mystery which forms the backbone of the story. The third problem is that being a Godlike makes you grow weird plant-like appendages on your face which at best look like you’ve got gills above your eyebrows and at worst like you’ve wrapped a tree trunk around your entire head. I’m not keen on any of the designs you can choose from, so I opted to not show them. It’s only cosmetic though and NPCs will be able to see them, although how they react varies madly. Some look at you like you’re growing a second head, others like they’d really like to put you in a tank and prod you to see what happens, while others simply couldn’t give two nuggets of shit.
Avowed is a game of choices though, at least on the surface. Things you say and do carry weight, albeit not as much as you might believe. Your companions (of which there are four) will follow you everywhere regardless, and even offer special quests to let you help them out in a personal matter. Well, Kai does; for some reason I never triggered the companion quests of the others. The thing is though, a lot of the rare dialogue options will be locked off completely because of how restrictive the skill system is.
Now, before you remind me that actually, the skill system is totally free-form and very un-restrictive, allow me to explain. While you are not locked into any of the three main disciplines of Fighter, Ranger, and Wizard, and are free to cherry-pick skills from any tree with very few stipulations besides your character level, Avowed does nothing to explain the downsides of this. You’re encouraged to try a bit of everything, using a Fighter skill to conserve stamina while dodging in heavy armour, or using a Wizard skill to wield that crazy powerful fireball, or a Ranger skill to increase the damage of the ridiculously satisfying flintlock guns. But you’re also punished heavily for doing so, as you’ll struggle to fight even low-level mobs, and if you don’t focus on just two core stats you’ll soon get dialogue checks you’ve no chance of passing.
It creates a weird dichotomy where it’s impossible to resist trying a little of everything because the skills and abilities here are just so good, but where the game slaps your plate away if you pile it up too high. At times I really struggled with the combat, made all the worse by the constant comments of your allies.
“Your weapon is totally ineffective!”
“Yeah no shit, Kai, thanks for the update!”
Upgrading weapons and armour is hard work too though. You’ll need to grind a lot of resources, including very rare Adra, to upgrade normal weapons and armour through five rarity levels, while unique gear has special skills attached that require even scarcer resources to unlock. And earning money simply isn’t that easy when high-tier gear is so expensive.
Combat in Avowed is primarily 1st-person, although you can opt to play in 3rd-person if you want to. I wouldn’t recommend it though. While it’s nice to see how sexy your armour looks and marvel at the frankly hideous Godlike growths on your face, it’s not a game made for 3rd-person. Movement is slidey and imprecise, while simple acts like collecting a health potion from beneath a table or mantling a ledge become Crystal Maze challenges for your clumsy limbs. In first-person you lose a few little things but gain some much-needed grace in return.
The sheer number of combat options is impressive and highly satisfying though. You can wield anything you want in either hand (with the exception of specifically two-handed weapons), so you can carry a sword in your right and a spellbook in your left, maybe rock a pistol and shield, or dual wield daggers, axes, guns, or swords. There are also greataxes and hammers, greatswords, rifles, bows, staves and spears, and unique weapons come with their own special buffs and boons that trade build diversity for raw damage. Combined with a staggering number of spellbook cantrips and abilities unlocked on the various trees, the options are dizzying. Different spellbooks have different specialties such as poison, fire, ice, or electricity, and you’ve also got multiple grenades, and Godlike powers unlocked through story progress.
Exploring Avowed is a joy though. Fast travel is unlocked early and is pretty forgiving, while regular autosaves ensure you rarely lose progress if you wander into a nest of giant spiders three levels too early. It’s also gorgeous to look at, from seaside meadows to an almost fairy-like forest and a sprawling desert. My only complaint is that the world map isn’t fully explored, and there are areas on it that were either cut out, or will be added later as DLC. There’s a lot of verticality, tons of ruins to explore, caves, dungeons, monster dens, and if it looks like you’d hide a treasure chest in it, someone has. Exploration is incredibly worthwhile and rewarding, and the world is just stunning sometimes.
Which of course leads to a fair amount of jank. Besides the aforementioned ice-skating combat in third-person, there’s also a good deal of clipping into rocks and walls, unresponsive enemies, bizarre physics and some good old-fashioned framerate-tanking. I was booted clean back to desktop more than once, and encountered a regular bug that stalled progress terminally while downloading shaders. Running on a 4070 RTX I was able to play at 4K with the ray-tracing on and few direct performance issues, but there’s some built-in jank regardless.
Yet despite a few issues, Avowed kept me hooked throughout. It’s a beautiful, incredibly charming game that does its best to fill a gap where the Elder Scrolls 6 should be, even if it’s not quite vast enough to match Skyrim’s scope and scale. Great voice-acting, likeable characters, an interesting world, and really enjoyable combat and character progression add up to deliver a superb RPG experience only held back by a few niggling shortcomings.
