Avowed — A Safe RPG in an Era of Exceptional Releases
Avowed released earlier this year to a mixed reception, but how much of the negative response was warranted?
Before we go anywhere, I have to preface that it feels almost impossible to review Avowed without mentioning the hate that the game received in some way shape or form.
In the lead up to and throughout the launch of the game Avowed was met with a negative response from many but you could very easily center the complaints down to a specific crowd of people, we all know who I am talking about when say that. The game was very specifically targetted for its lack of “attractive women” a sentiment that seems to have festered within the gaming community for a while.
I’m here to say that Avowed very nearly soars above that weak and meagre criticism, while I will say that this is my first Obsidian game that I have played through to completion, that doesn’t mean that I am blissfully ignorant of what makes their games tick. Avowed is teaming everything you’d expect from an Obsidian game, from an interesting world to a compelling narrative and larger than live NPC that make you smile as you traverse the open world.
Now that the housework is in order, lets begin. We’ll start as we always do with the story, then move in the gameplay before I wrap it all up with an overall conclusion and a score out of 10.
A Story That is Well Intentioned if a Little on the Nose.
You enter the world of the Living Lands as an envoy to the Aedyran Empire, who has been sent on a fools errand to stop a plague that is gripping the living lands. Within the first few hours of the game it becomes very clear that the Emperor doesn’t expect you to succeed in your mission, but rather it is more a way to get you out of their hair.
Right out the gate you learn that you are a Godlike, someone who essentially has a small piece of a god inside them from birth. The fact that you are a Godlike affects how pretty much everyone within the game will react to you as there aren’t many Godlikes left in the world.
However it isn’t only the fact that you are a Godlike that makes you different, you also start the game not knowing which god you belong too. Something that will weigh down on your character until the pivotal reveal occurs.
Meanwhile the core plot of Avowed can be split in very neat segments, they aren’t acts but they may as well be. You first start making your way to Paradis, a city on the ocean that has become a new settlement for the Aedyran empire.
After interacting with an Adra stone, which is said to be a stone that is capable of storing the very essence of life a voice in your head start to talk to you, this is where the mystery first starts to unravel. The mysterious voice will often talk to you in important moments throughout the story but also as you’re about to rest for the night, they will always talk in riddles and code at first but at you progress through the game and your connection to this presence grows they begin to open up to you.
I’d strongly argue that Avowed basically spells out its thematic values to you as you progress through the game and whether or not that is a fault of the Pillars of Eternity universe itself or Obsidian for watering down the lore I'm not sure. But the point remains that it is very obvious where the story wants to guide you and you will have figured out the ending to the game at least half way through the game.
That isn’t always as bad thing, knowing where you are going doesn’t always spoil the journey. After completing everything that the game has to offer I can safely say that the journey is far more satisfying than the conclusion that the game came to for me. Now that could very much be down to how I built my own character as a lot of the solution that the game tries to present to you are often locked behind a stat barrier that requires you to have specked into a specific stat more than the others, which isn’t how I approached the game.
As I said before while the game isn’t split into three acts that are spelt out to you, it does still fit into that narrative structure. The way that the game achieves the three act structure is done through location story telling, you will go to distinct locations throughout the game and settle conflicts within the region which will then allow for you to progress the main plot of the game.
Like with any game of this sort I do highly recommend that you do every side quest that the game throws out at you, not only because the game is really short without the added run time that the side quests give you. But because it will only elevate the ending of your game if you gain the added relations with the various side characters throughout the game.
An example of this arises when you meet Marius, one of the companions for the first time. If you have done the various side quests through Dawnshore then you will have expanded dialogue options which will help you to enrich your relationship with one of your companions. The same is true for Kai in Shatterscarp.
Furthermore companions and their stories are definitively the best part of the game, which for a game like this is the life blood of what makes the story tick. The companions are your ride or die, they are the ones you spend a majority of your time with. Its just not something that you can mess up in a game like this and Avowed delivers on that front.
The first companion that you come across is Kai, someone you essentially meet right off the boat. While at first like most of the companions Kai can come off as cold and uncaring, the more time you spend with him the more he will eventually open up to you eventually leading to his companion quest opening up for you. This follows you through two of the main regions in the game as you help him seek closure after the death of his squad leader and best friend.
Going in order of when you meet them that puts Marius next, a dwarf you meet who helps you investigate you’re own death. Oh yeah did I forget to mention? You die in this game, straight up. I won’t get into it too much but the quest that surrounds that plot element is probably one of the best in the game and you really should experience that for yourselves.
Getting back to Marius, much like Kai he is also cold and uncaring for you or pretty much anything you have to say. This wouldn’t usually be an issue but when you’re developing a cast of characters especially in a game like this you do want their personal journeys to be independent to the characters. But throughout the game it very much feels like both Kai and Marius are going through the game struggles, the same story with the details changed around. Both have to learn to live with their guilt for leaving and become better people for it.
Giatta is a younger animancer that you meet in Emerald Stair, she is very outspoken within her own craft, she is driven by very personal goals which are eventually made clear to you right at the start of her quest when you find her parents “dead” in her basement, victims of her mothers ambition. However you won’t learn the emotional core of her story until you spend enough time with her building her character back up to the point where she is comfortable enough to talk about what happened, this allows her character to grow beyond just wanting to fulfil her mothers ambitions and lets her form a destiny of her own.
Yatzli is the companion you spend the least amount of time with in the story, you only really have three or four main story missions with her before the game actually ends, however that doesn’t mean that she isn’t as developed as the other side characters as she is introduced to you as a character right as you enter in Emerald Stair, you’re able to help you retrieve a vase that she isn’t able to reach. She is presented as a very out going character, which is a massive change of pace compared to the other companions who are each carrying their own traumas with them.
Having a character that is able to command a scene so effortlessly really adds to every scene that she is in as without her a lot of these scenes could genuinely fall flat. Boring line delivery is an issue that plague Avowed, as several times through the games 30 hour run-time I found myself reaching for my phone as the cutscenes are playing. As I didn’t want to miss out on important story but at the same time the way that the information is presented to you within the cutscenes is so boring.
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Then when you do actually finish the game, the story still isn’t fully wrapped up and the game then needs to spend the next five minutes showing you where each of the main characters ended up after the conclusion of the story in a cutscene that is just artwork that is partially animated.
If you can’t wrap up your own plot within the confides of the game and need a post game wrap up to make sure everything is in order then there needs to have been some serious story reworks somewhere down the line.
To sum up the story of Avowed is interesting, but the way that Obsidian have gone about delivering the story to you the player could’ve used a lot of work to make it less of a drag. The actual story itself doesn’t feel like it gets out of second gear until you reach the Garden, a story beat that is virtually the end of the game.
The story of Avowed scores a 6/10
A Repetitive Gameplay Loop?
When crafting the gameplay of Avowed it is clear that much like Pillars of Eternity, Obsidian wanted you to fit into one specific niche of character. Those characters being a fighter, a wizard and a ranger, this is made clear through the three made upgrade tree paths presented to you as soon as you level up.
Choosing to not fit into one of these roles will heavily impact the story choices that are presented to you as stated as you won’t have the neccesary stats to be able to pull of some of the solutions that the game is trying to present to you, virtually killing off multiclassing before you even leave character creation.
This is where my personal experience of the games comes in as I went through the entire game attempting to build a multi class hybrid type character, picking stats that I needed in order to enhance my specific build I was trying to make and taking various abilities from all three skill trees. In doing this I essentially locked myself off from most of the solutions in the game that don’t just resort in violence which I think is a huge misstep.
Not necessarily because they put in stats that influence story choices, as other games like Fallout or Baldurs Gate 3 have made this work to their favours. But because they chose to make these specific options such high stat requirements, if they had lowered the stats needed by just a few points it would have been a much fairer system allowing the player to take virtually anything they wanted.
Moving into the core gameplay itself, the game often falls into the very stale gameplay loop of whacking the enemy until your stamina drains should you choose to use any melee weapon or a similar scenario with the wands that you are able to use.
Now you are able to weave in spells into this combat, along with Godlike abilities that you find throughout the world and some that are granted to you throughout the story. But other than that you end up falling into the loop of just hitting the enemy over and over again which little enemy diversity and enemy types that pretty much serve the same purpose gameplay wise it can lead to the late game feeling quite boring.
I will say that should you choose to fully spec into one of the three core character types then your experience with the combat in the game may differ from my own, but I can only really speak from personal experience and for me while the gameplay started out really fun and enjoyable. Progressing into the late game and just being able to spam sword shots into for example the final boss of the game felt really underwhelming.
While the gameplay of Avowed isn’t anything to write home about I would say that it does fall in with a lot of games within the genre that it is inhabiting. This in and of itself has its positives and negatives. As not standing out can be a blessing and a curse as you will inevitably attract the crowd of players that do enjoy games like this but at the same time you aren’t really doing anything to bring in new players. Which is does feel like Avowed as a game was trying to do, especially since the last game in this world was Pillars of Eternity; a game that was in a completely different genre with a completely different audience.
This leaves Avowed in a tricky spot as I’m not really sure who the game is supposed to be for, as the Pillars of Eternity crowd might not like the simplified gameplay of Avowed and the crowd of people that do like Action RPGs might find the gameplay too repetitive to finish the game.
Overall the gameplay of Avowed scores a 6/10
Is Avowed Worth Your Time?
The answer to this question truly comes down to what you enjoy as a player, since as I previously stated there will genuinely be people who will find a lot of enjoyment out of Avowed for what it is. I was one of them for a good two thirds of the game, but the lack of diversity when it comes to the endgame really killed the game for me.
As ever first impressions are always important but its how you finish that will leave a lasting impression in the minds of the players and Avowed does nothing to cement itself within the minds of its players. While there are some genuine highlights throughout the game, such as the companion side quests or the Emerald Stair portion of the game. The overall package of Avoweds story just drags to an unsatisfying conclusion unless you play into one of the three main classes that the game wants you too.
So to finally answer that question of “Is Avowed Worth Your Time?” I’d say yes it is but not at the full asking price, like with most games that come out these days the value of the games story will increase dramatically the lower the price of the game itself goes. However if you have Game Pass, then I’d say yes Avowed is worth your time every day of the week.
The final score for Avowed is a 6 out of 10. Not something I’d recommend right away but definitely something worth checking out in the long run once you have played all the games you were already interested in playing.
Check out Avowed on Xbox Series X/S, Xbox PC and Steam now!
