AVOWED Review

When I started my first Avowed playthrough, the truth is that I didn't really know what to expect. The gameplay trailers pointed towards a first-person RPG (with the option to switch to third person with the press of a button) set in the world of Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity games, but it was a given that we were no longer talking about a "Skyrim clone" as it was called in the days of its initial announcement back in 2020, and that, as a result of a more or less troubled development cycle, the game's overall scope had changed towards something much more constrained and limited.

By coincidence, though, "something more constrained and limited" was exactly what I was looking for after many days of playing Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. Therefore, under the circumstances, even if it was practically a plunge into the unknown, a return to the world of Eora seemed like a most welcome prospect.

Avowed's story takes place a few years after Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, with the later's story events and participating factions and characters being occasionally referenced in the former but without really playing a central role in the plot overall. The game's setting is the Living Lands, an island that is located to the north of the vast Aedyr Empire and that exhibits a remarkable degree of diversity, both in terms of the races that inhabit it and the ecosystems that comprise it. Our character in the game is an emissary of the Aedyr Empire, who is authorized by the Emperor himself to travel to the Living Lands in order to investigate the causes of a strange plague called the Dreamscourge, which is affecting the inhabitants, fauna and flora of the island alike.

A notable feature of the protagonist is that he or she is a Godlike (people who have been "branded" by a deity before their birth, resulting in appearance characteristics that refer to that deity). Even more remarkable, however, is the fact that... he doesn't know exactly which deity has "branded" him, which ends up playing a crucial role in the events that unfold.

The plot's central threads, therefore, are threefold: on one hand the investigation into the causes, consequences and possible ways of dealing with the Dreamscourge, on the other hand the protagonist's Godlike nature, and finally the political and social conflicts between the various factions operating in the Living Lands. Predictably, of course, the three threads above end up intertwining and influencing each other, with the player's decisions in the course of the game determining the very existence of the Living Lands in the ending.

The roleplay options regarding the above decisions was one of the things that surprised me positively in Avowed. Aside from choices regarding his moral standing, the game's dialogues provide the options to steer the Envoy protagonist in the directions we want regarding the main plot issues, with our decisions having a variety of short and long term consequences. Many times also NPCs echo these decisions, approving or disapproving of them throughout the game's course (for example, NPCs just before the final Act of the plot may still be commenting on our actions in the first or second Act).

A similar degree of variety exists in several of the game's available quests. Some of them have more than one way to resolve, others have optional objectives that affect their outcome, and there are some that offer the option for violent or non-violent resolution, each with their respective consequences.

The game's quests are divided across the 5 visitable zones of the Living Lands. It was already mentioned above that the "Skyrim-like", fully open-world orientation of the game was already reversed and replaced by a zone-based approach, with 4+1 relatively large but finite maps (4 biomes, each with a city hub and various points of interest in the wilderness, plus 1 separate "endgame" biome). Proceeding from map to map is done by following the plot, but there is an option to return to any of the previous maps at any time.

When it comes to exploring the world, another fact that surprised me positively is that the game encourages and rewards exploration, with chests, lore items, unique gear and other "prizes" tucked away in even the most obscure corners of the world, motivating players to seek them out. On top of that, the verticality of the maps should be pointed out, with underground tunnels and climbable ledges that are scaled in... parkour fashion. Especially in the cities, climbing on scaffolding and crates in order to get from street level to rooftops and from there to reach a hidden room with loot, almost brought to mind scenes from Arkane's Dishonored or Deathloop.

Now that I think about it, the real-time first-person combat system is also very reminiscent of Dishonored, in terms of movement flow and animation at least. Especially when you factor in the availability of pistols and arquebuses, the combat animations are almost exact copies of those in Arkane's titles.

Actually... this should be noted. In a recent interview, Avowed's Lead Dev stated that her favorite games Dishonored, Mass Effect, and Morrowind. So I'd say that Avowed has influences from ALL THREE.

The Dishonored factor is found, as already mentioned, in the first-person animations and the parkour during exploration. The Morrowind element obviously refers to the variety of biomes in the game. An influence that becomes even more obvious when we consider that one prominent feature of the Dreamscourge that plagues the Living Lands is the creation of vegetation that includes giant mushrooms, which brings to mind clear images of Vvardenfell.

I guess the Mass Effect factor is found in the way companion NPCs behave, meaning that, as in the recent Veilguard, they function more as automated Pets whose skills can be activated from the respective skill wheel, rather than as full-blown party members. Also as in Veilguard, companion NPCs have 1 environmental ability each which makes exploration easier. Unlike Veilguard, of course, the environmental abilities of the NPCs in Avowed are essentially skills/spells and status effects that can be applied on the world anyway by the player if they have the right weapons/items. In some ways Avowed goes even deeper than Veilguard in automating the companions, as the ability to put gear on them and modify it isn't even offered. We can pick the abilities they'll be increasing while leveling, and that's about it.

Another similarity with Veilguard is the broader action orientation of combat, which is quite intense and, especially in first-person perspective, quite reminiscent of the combat in Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (a game that Arkane Studios made a few years before Dishonored - a pattern is clearly emerging here). In terms of combat, it should be mentioned that there is the option to carry weapons in the main hand and off-hand (2-handed weapons are obviously excluded). This, combined with the fairly free-form nature of skill point allocation during leveling (there are 3 different classes in the game in theory - Fighter, Ranger and Wizard - but we can dedicate points to any of these classes we want), creates a fairly customized and fun combat style.

For example, apart from the "traditional" sword+shield builds, it is entirely possible to have a Grimoire in the main hand and a pistol in the off-hand, a situation in which we cast spells with one mouse button and fill our enemies full of lead with the other. Or similarly wearing a one-handed sword in the off-hand and absolutely nothing in the main hand, in which case we use one click to attack with the sword and the other to throw punches. Obviously, in addition to the points we devote to each ability tree, the power of gear is affected by the character attributes we raise (thus, for example, raising Perception will lead to better utilization of firearms), so a character who is even slightly specialized towards a certain class and fighting style will be more efficient than a Jack-of-All-Trades who raises everything by a little bit. But even so, it's impressive how viable the combo builds are, even if one weapon out of the 2 ends up having more of a supporting role in the larger context.

In conjunction with combat, the necessity to upgrade weapons and armor region-to-region through the game's crafting system should be mentioned. According to this, each area of the game corresponds to a weapon rarity level from Common to Legendary (correspondingly, the level of enemies on the map is zone-based, with no level scaling), while unique items are obviously a separate category in themselves. So, in order to be able to, say, do decent damage to enemies in the 3rd area, we either need to upgrade our weapons and armor to the 3rd rarity level, or find different gear of higher rarity than our current one somewhere in the world. Crafting materials can be located by either exploring the world, "breaking" gear items, or upgrading lower tier to higher tier mats in our camp.

In general, I entered Avowed without the slightest expectations and I can say that, in the 40 or so hours it took me to complete a fairly full run with very few quests unresolved, I had a surprisingly good time. And this fun nature of the game inevitably makes me wonder how much better it would have been if everything had gone according to plan during its development and it had been released as a "Skyrim clone" from the start instead of being so limited in terms of scale. Something that 100% echoes the feelings I had after I finished playing The Outer Worlds by the same company, in the review of which I wrote that "I had a good time, but... something was missing". Indeed, Avowed gives the feeling of being... 3/4 of a really good game. Those 3/4 are quite streamlined and worked out, but the missing 1/4 hits pretty hard.

Something is missing in character creation/development, as there are only 2 playable races (humans and elves) and, as already mentioned, 3 character classes to which we can dedicate points. Classes that are also the most basic and generic ones and that could exist in any other fantasy game, instead of being able to play as, say, a Cypher or Chanter, two of the most unique classes from Pillars of Eternity.

Something is missing in terms of visitable locations, as, despite the satisfactory size of the 4+1 maps, at the end of the game (and while observing the full map of the Living Lands) comes a feeling that they are too few in number and that there should have been at least 1-2 more extra maps to really flesh out the game's world.

There is definitely something missing in terms of writing quality. The writing is generally tolerable, it has its ups (Envoy's RP options, some good quests plus some pretty dark moments involving the socio-political strife of the world) and its downs (aspects of the main story and how incompletely the game portrays the results of some world-changing decisions we make, some fairly underdeveloped aspects of companion NPCs and plot protagonists, plus the existence of a moderate amount of cringe in some dialogue, FORTUNATELY far from Veilguard-level cringe), but it won't really be remembered for its depth or as a return to Obsidian's glory days.

As an example of another "lacking" element one could also name the use of Unreal Engine, the shortcomings of which are well known and sung about, whether we're talking about open-world games or any other. If you look past the "cartoony" vibe that the game's graphics seem to exude, the environments are beautiful (inspecting the land from a distance is a real treat), but NPC and enemies' character models radiate a kind of inexplicable mediocrity, and there's no shortage of some, thankfully rarer than one would expect, unjustifiable stuttering.

I suppose that ultimately how much fun one has with Avowed depends on whether one is a fan of the games that influenced it and the gameplay elements it draws from them, whether one is a fan of the Pillars games and seeks to delve further into the lore and intrigue of the world of Eora, and, perhaps most importantly, whether one expects it to be just a fun game or... a life-changing experience, which I objectively don't think will be the case for anyone. Avowed is by no means the Skyrim clone we expected back in 2020, nor is it the thrilling and super deep RPG that will take the medium to the next level in terms of gameplay and content, nor will it win a Nobel prize for writing quality. It's just a fun Action-RPG, with its ups and downs. And, again as I wrote in my review of The Outer Worlds, that's perfectly fine.

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