Avowed Review: a Wondrous Adventure That’s Missing Just a Little Magic

Avowed is the latest game from the RPG masters at Obsidian Entertainment, the Microsoft-owned studio behind hits like The Outer Worlds, Pentiment and Pillars of Eternity. The team has once again created an open-world RPG that seemingly hits all the important aspects of what constitutes a great role-playing experience, but I can’t help but feel that there’s something still missing from the formula. 

The game takes place in the same world as Obsidian Entertainment’s 2015 hit fantasy game Pillars of Eternity, itself a spiritual successor to older Baldur’s Gate games. In Avowed, players step into the role of a Godlike, a person whose soul has been blessed by one of the gods of Eora. This blessing is the source of your character’s fantastical appearance and power. You’ve been sent by the emperor of the powerful Aedyr Empire as his envoy to investigate the mysterious Dreamscourge that’s spreading through the Living Lands — a vast region filled with mystery and wonderous environments. 

While there’s a lot of freedom in character creation and combat is dynamically engaging, Avowed’s big ambitions are halted by a so-so story and more than a few quest-slowing bugs. Experiencing the game’s huge world is a joy, but without a strong narrative, I lost interest as I progressed — which is a shame considering Obsidian’s resume of popular games beloved for their story. 

Still, there’s enough of the game I enjoyed outside its story, starting with the many ways you can make and grow your character.

Read more: 9 Tips to Help You Start Avowed, Obsidian’s Next Big Action RPG

Creating your godlike: Be who you want, fight how you want

Since Avowed is an open-world RPG, how your character develops is incredibly important to the game, which all starts with player creation. Being a Godlike means your character will have their face adorned with this colorful lichen that varies wildly from having some color around your eyes like a masquerade mask to a prismatic crown on your head. After you figure out your character’s appearance, then comes picking their background, which provides only some unique dialogue choices and your starting weapon. Then you need to figure out what stats you want to focus on: Might has you do more damage and carry more items; Constitution increases health and resistance; Dexterity determines your attack and action speed; Perception increases critical hit chance and range distance; Intellect increase the amount of essence you have for magic spells and magic resistance; and Resolve gives you more stamina and lets you recover from lethal attacks quicker to get back into the fight. 

From this point, your character development is really up to you as there’s nothing stopping you from playing the character how you want. If you’re tired of being a glass cannon magic user who can’t take many hits, you can reset your stats to become a Might-focused warrior with a great ax and plate armor. Gaining levels grants points for stat increases and unique abilities to unlock, such as access to more spells, an unarmed specialist to create a monk or the ability to go invisible to unleash powerful sneak attacks. 

I started off with a traditional fighter class but then noticed that magic was easy to wield — which was just a matter of equipping a Grimoire arcane tome. Then I discovered the Iron Fists ability, which let my character deal big damage to enemies with just my fists. Yet, I still wanted to stay defensive, so I equipped a shield. Eventually, I came across a unique pistol and decided to combine that with magic to let me do major damage from afar, and when the enemy gets close, I can switch to my mace and shield to parry their attacks while stunning them with strikes to their head. The ease of jumping from one playstyle to another so quickly makes Avowed so interesting to play. 

As for combat, Avowed has a default setting to play in first-person mode, similar to Skyrim or Fallout, but there is an option to play in third-person view. Combat is dynamic and action-packed. Enemies typically rush you in a group when alerted, and the fights can be challenging if you rush through the game and don’t routinely buy new equipment. At your disposal are weapons, magic and throwables like grenades to do extra damage. Since you can switch your weapons so quickly in a fight, I decided to keep a shield handy to defend against an attack as well as parry enemies to increase their stun meter, which is found under their health bar. Once that fills up, the stunned enemy will be open to a special attack that deals huge damage — which is just one way to take on fights. 

Exploring the Living Lands, bugs and all

Accompanying you in these battles are companions you meet throughout the game. There’s Kai who can help defend against attacks for you, Marius who’s a scout that will attack from afar, Giatta who heals and the wizard Yatzli to deal more damage to the enemies. They act on their own during a fight, but you can order them to unleash certain attacks and abilities during a fight. These companions show up throughout the game one at a time, and they have their own stories that develop further along you go. 

Traveling in the Living Lands is itself eye candy. The world is so beautiful and feels alive. The first hub you travel to is Paradis, and as is the case with RPGs, there are plenty of people who need help with something. It’s up to you to help them out to gain some money, items or experience points as you work through the main quest line, which will require you to travel to a different part of the Living Lands. Something I enjoyed while playing was how you’re rewarded for exploring. Whether it’s the down or dungeon, there is treasure scattered in the world if you can find it. This big world, however, does lead to one flaw with the game and that’s the bugs. 

Obsidian Entertainment has a reputation for releasing buggy games at launch, and Avowed is no exception. I encountered several different issues with quests, from seeing quest items properly marked on the map to NPCs not accepting a quest item needed to complete it to other strange continuity errors. There are occasional graphics issues too, like when I was exploring a dungeon and there was an entire wall of just black empty space yet there were adornments hanging off it. Obsidian says different bugs will be addressed through patches when the game launches, but it’s something to be very wary about, especially for PC gamers (I played on an Xbox Series X) who have a wide range of hardware available and shouldn’t be surprised if the game doesn’t play properly on release day. 

While I can overlook the bugs as they didn’t stop my progress, my biggest gripe with the game is the story. It starts off strong and there is one early game narrative choice that had me glued to my TV, but then the story kind of trails off. There are points in the game where I felt like I was just completing quests for the sake of getting further in the game, and not because I really wanted to see how the story unfolded. That said, I didn’t play Pillars of Eternity, and I’m sure, as evidenced by the talk on the game’s subreddit, there is plenty of excitement for those who played the game to learn about this magical world. Those who have that experience will likely be thrilled at the various references in the game that went over my head. 

I was also surprised by the lack of a virtue system to determine if you’re doing something good or evil. When talking with NPCs, there are multiple dialogue choices that range from good to neutral to being a jerk, and in some cases, you can select to attack the person you’re speaking with if it makes sense in the quest line, such as when tracking down thieves. There still, however, weren’t real consequences for my actions. I can loot anything I see with impunity, my “evil” dialogue choices at worst had my companion make a comment that what I was doing was stupid, and if I did make a decision in a quest that angered the quest giver, it would just end the quest early without any reward even though I received a sizable reward earlier in the quest line. It’s just surprising how seemingly few ramifications there were in this RPG from Obsidian Entertainment. 

Avowed had everything I wanted in an epic, open-world RPG except for that steady flow of narrative. I want the RPG I’m playing to suck me in with its story and keep me playing with its gameplay. When one of those elements is lacking, the game feels like a chore for long periods. 

Avowed comes out on Feb. 18 for PC and Xbox Series consoles and costs $70. The game is available on day one for Game Pass subscribers. 

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