Is Avowed worth your time? – Review

Answer the call of a forgotten god and shape the destiny of the Living Lands in Obsidian’s latest epic RPG Avowed. Has it been worth the long wait and can it live up to the hype of similar established titles?

I had mixed feelings about Avowed. Coming from Obsidian, I expected something similar to Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls and kept comparing the two series. However, after a couple of sessions, I realised what Avowed was trying to be and had a slightly better experience. So, first things first, no, Avowed won’t be knocking Skyrim off its lofty pedestal, but in fairness, it’s not trying to.

Avowed is set in Obsidian’s Pillars of Eternity world, Eora, specifically the largely unexplored continent of the Living Lands. You are the personal envoy of the Emperor of Aedyr and have been sent to investigate “the Dreamscourge,” a mysterious plague rampaging the Living Lands, and maybe strengthen the Empire’s claim to the lands.

You are also Godlike. Upon your birth, a god blessed you and bestowed you with the physical attributes of that particular god causing people to react differently to your appearance. Here is where people may have an issue with Avowed.

You play as an already-established character in the world rather than a blank slate you can do anything with. Nothing reflects this more than the character creation, while it is detailed in what it does, all you can customise is the facial features and your Godlike deformities. Your body shape is locked and your race is either human or elf (which is human but with pointy ears). Even the skin tones are non-fantastical and standard human.

This is a real shame because the other races look fantastic, like the adorably fuzzy Orlans or the scaled exotic-looking Aumaua. The only choice in creation is your background and starting stats. I hesitate to use the term meaningful this option because your background only influences certain dialogue and your stats will change after a few levels.

Avowed has a classless system as it lets you specialize in its three combat archetypes in any combination with no restrictions on equipment. The three archetypes are the standard up close melee fighter, the stealthful projectile-focused ranger or the magic-wielding wizard, with a fourth archetype solely for your godlike abilities but this is progress via plot rather than gameplay. You can be a heavy-armour-wearing magic user wielding a giant hammer if you want, you’re just not going to be very effective unless you specialise. You can respec easily enough at any time at a cost of gold though, so experimentation is not too costly or permanent.

Arriving washed up on the beach (standard RPG intro #15) of an offshore fortress and this acts as a tutorial area to teach you combat and introduce your mobility. You turn out to be quite agile, able to run, jump and slide as well as my favourite addiction to games lately; the ability to mantle (pull yourself up) ledges. We are also given two temporary party members where we are taught about our abilities and our teammates.

While we can hotkey two skills, we can also pause time and are given a radial menu to give orders to our party, use our abilities or take a potion or similar consumable. This gave a tactical feel to fights and avoided the common trope of going through menus to “eat a wheel of cheese”.

Once we have beaten our first boss and escaped the fort we arrive at Dawnshore, the port of the living lands where the plot kicks off properly. Here we meet our first permanent companion, Kai, voiced by Brandon Keener (Garrus from Mass Effect) and we are free to explore and discover what awaits us.

Avowed doesn’t have one interconnected map. It does have huge areas with plenty of opportunities for exploration, but each region is separated by a loading screen. This is where another gripe of mine came through as I found once I had checked off everything in an area, I found there was little reason to return.

Obsidian has a reputation for excellent storytelling and stellar writing. I can gladly say it’s on display in full form here. Your companions will banter with each other while you are exploring which feels natural. NPCs are all voiced and have multi-level and sometimes alternate dialogue and there are plenty of lore books and notes to fill out the history of the land.

Quests also have multiple ways to complete with very different outcomes depending not just on dialogue interactions but gameplay choices as well. A prime example was when I was required to retrieve an artefact and because I had slaughtered my way through, it ended in a rather tough boss battle. So I chose to reload and stealth my way there instead and I was able to have a pleasant conversation and leave without facing any combat at all.

However, the main quest itself is really linear compared to previous Obsidian titles. You will always progress through the quest in the same order with very little actually changing the plot, just who you are aligning yourself with. The main bad guy is comically evil, using their Holy order to justify their motives, and outside of the main quest, there’s not much to do.

Don’t get me wrong there are side quests, but they don’t last long and the “bounties” don’t amount to more than “go here, kill that”. In fact, a lot of the objectives rely on platforming rather than puzzles or riddles. There are no guilds to join or even any sort of tavern games to pass the time. Outside of shops, the towns are relatively useless as your party only camps out in the wilderness. It just feels hollow and all style no substance.

It does look pretty though. Unlike most RPGs, Avowed leans into the fantasy elements of its settings. We have bright colourful cities and countryside even the swampy marshlands have shades of purple to break up the otherwise mundane setting. The characters look great; even though most do suffer from “similar face syndrome” there was enough variety to distinguish between them.

The fantastical races are equally detailed with the fish-like scaled Aumaua, dwarfs and the oh-so cuddly looking Orlans. Enemy combatants while being again varied and fantastical offer little to no variation of tactics on how to deal with them. Ranged guys will shoot from the back and run from you, melee users will rush you with no regard and magic users will be, well magic users.

Even though Avowed touts a classless system, if you don’t specialise in a dedicated path you feel pretty useless in fights. Guns and bows are effectively useless without ranger skills, melee is dangerous without stamina regen and some “tankiness”, and anything below level two magic will soon be outclassed. I will give Avowed its due though, it was the most agile of first-person fight engines with the ability to dodge and parry attacks. Also, enemies had a stamina bar which, when depleted, would allow for a strong counterattack. You can equip two weapon sets that can be switched on the fly so you can plan for varied strategies.

Loot was also a concern I had. You see, the first thing I noticed was that barely anything was dropping upon death. I barely had any weapons or armour from bodies and found most items either from shops or chests in the wild. There weren’t even substantial quantities of gold. Then, I noticed that there was just one type of each weapon.

A sword was a sword, not an iron sword or a steel sword, just a sword. The only difference was the quality. Each weapon had up to five levels from common to legendary (with three tiers each) and could be upgraded at camp with increasingly expensive costs. So the chances are the weapon you picked up at the start could accompany you to the end.

The same can be said for your other equipment as well, although there are exceptions. Scattered around the world are “unique” weapons and armour which are usually quest rewards or just lying on the ground near a boss. These named weapons can be upgraded but, more importantly, can be enchanted with unique abilities. This was the only sense I got of loot grinding that Avowed offered.

Although I didn’t finish the game as of writing, I have heard reports from other TYGers that some quest lines were broken, some achievements are unobtainable through normal gameplay and worst of all there is no continuing past the credits or even a New Game+.

Avowed was certainly a divisive game to play and review. On one hand, the moment-to-moment gameplay felt good and I was getting into a groove, but then something would come along and I would question the design choices that were made. The writing and line delivery were superb but then let down wonky animation. It was just a bunch of little things that all built up and were enough to ruin the overall experience.

Overall, it felt like they tried to blend the first-person gameplay with its CRPG roots. I believe Avowed suffers for this and doesn’t come across as its own experience and more like a weird stepchild of Pillars of Eternity.