I have been looking forward to Avowed ever since it was announced. I’ve played other Obsidian titles, like The Outer Worlds, and I also love fantasy RPGs, but without having delved into Pillars of Eternity, I wasn’t sure what to expect from the world of Eora. It didn’t take long to find out: Avowed is incredible. It’s absolutely brilliant. I’ve been glued to it like I haven’t been for a game in some time, and it just feels like a joy to play.
Heidi’s Review —
Obsidian's excellent fantasy RPG is a delight
- Avowed early access begins February 13, with the full launch on February 18
- Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, Windows
- Xbox Game Pass tier: Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass
First, a bit of context: in Avowed, we’re sent to The Living Lands — a wild and dangerous place — to investigate rumors of a strange, corrupting plague known as the Dreamscourge. Not only is our character the envoy to the Aedyran emperor, but they’re also a godlike; someone blessed by one of Eora’s gods at birth. Godlikes all have special abilities and an altered physical appearance reflecting their deity — and yet our character doesn’t know who their god is.
After setting up the story, we go through a pretty extensive character creation to choose our appearance, background, and godlike features (you can also choose to hide your godlike appearance if you fancy, without it impacting the game). Admittedly, most of the customisation options refer just to facial features, but there’s enough variation with those and the godlike options to still allow for some vastly different outcomes.
Right from the start, I had a feeling that I’d be hooked. What you immediately notice when you’re unleashed into The Living Lands is that it’s beautiful. Seriously, everything in this game is gorgeous. There are darker undercurrents to this story, as there are in many fantasy RPGs, but I love that this didn’t play into the visual side of things: Avowed embraces the vibrancy of its fantasy setting and everything is bursting with vivid color.
Bright sunlight fades to a star-filled purple sky, and over and above all that is the abundant, multicolored foliage. We’re told time and again about the unpredictable ecosystem of The Living Lands, and this is clear everywhere: abandoned buildings are covered in vines and huge, glowing mushrooms; flowers hang over every building, and even in major settlements, tree roots and fungus erupting through the pavement and walls give the impression of almost-instantaneous growth, forcing people to abandon those areas back to nature.
Avowed is just drenched in color, and the level of detail means there’s something gorgeous to see around every corner. Our character is on a pretty urgent mission, but a lot of the time my companions had to just stand around, bemused, while I gawked at buildings, bridges, patches of flowers; everything.
Avowed's excellent storytelling
This also plays into Avowed’s excellent environmental storytelling. While the game is packed full of scraps of lore, there’s also so much to gather from what the world is showing you: why a place was abandoned, for example, or what became of the people that lived there. Often, you can follow these threads to a tangible outcome: a body, a letter, a magical item, to discover the resolution of a long-ago story. These aren’t side quests or points of interest; they’re just waiting there as lovely little side stories to be discovered through our own exploration.
The main story is fantastic so far, and some of the side quests I’ve done have been wonderfully intricate in their own right, feeling as though as much attention has been lavished there as on the main tale. Elsewhere, it’s broken up as usual with activities like bounties and treasure maps, and running through all of this content is Avowed’s extensive dialogue.
A wealth of dialogue
NPCs have a lot to say, as do you — there’s often a wealth of dialogue choices, even before considering the extra speech options you might have depending on your chosen background and attributes. Sure, a few of these options might occasionally feel like variations of the same response, but you can usually run the gamut from sassy to snooty when responding to people. NPCs react to things you’ve done or recent events (and your godlike appearance), again emphasizing that feeling of an active, alive world.
Your companions also chat away as you travel through The Living Lands, and you can often bring them into conversations too. Even when I just had Kai as my first companion, he still talked about areas he knew or chimed in with his own deadpan jokes.
On that note, I do appreciate that the game doesn’t bug you too much with hints. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is incredible, but it does occasionally fall into that pitfall. It has the most beautifully detailed environments, but it’s hard to take in those crumbling ruins and temples when Gina’s “Dr Jones”ing at you every five seconds to do the next quest thing.
It’s a pretty small flaw in an otherwise excellent Indy adventure, but it’s nice to see that so far, the companions who have travelled with me in Avowed simply share their thoughts on whatever situation we’re in without harping on at me to do the next urgent thing.
Avowed gives you a lot of freedom in how you want to progress (especially once you’ve done the initial story quests to access Paradis). Enemies don’t scale with you, so you still need to keep an eye on their level, but aside from that you’re free to roam.
I love the unpredictability of those enemy fights: one area had a unique weapon hanging about in plain sight with a tantalising, “pick-me-up-if-you-dare” look about it. We all know what that means, but I couldn’t resist going for it, only to instantly be plunged into an intense battle with higher-level enemies. I got that unique weapon and an awesomely-chaotic fight into the bargain, and I'm only more determined now to search through all of The Living Lands’ mysteries.
Rewarding exploration
And exploration is thoroughly rewarded in Avowed. There’s loot, resources, lore, and secrets scattered in every nook and cranny. It’s just like the original Spyro games, which used to make you think, “can I get there?” Avowed rewards you for that same line of thinking.
Your weapons and abilities, too, are helpful outside of combat. Freezing water to make an icy platform, for instance, might help you reach a far-off area, although remember to watch out for your companions — poor Kai often stands just far enough behind my character that he’s still on the ice platform when it dissolves.
A fair few Skyrim comparisons were made when Avowed was first revealed. Avowed is entirely its own game, but I do often get a similar sense of grand adventure and of embarking on an epic fantasy tale when exploring Avowed’s world.
Another thing that reminded me favourably of the beloved grey-bearded RPG was the self-contained dungeons in Avowed. After playing through games with repetitive layouts for enemy areas, making it feel like you could map the same run for each one, it’s wonderful to find something as fresh and enjoyable as these.
While we’re on the Skyrim note — the soundtrack in Avowed is excellent. Remember being off in the mountains somewhere in Skyrim, adventuring in some far-off, hidden corner, and the music fit so well with the experience that you lost track of time just exploring? Avowed’s music lends itself to a similar feeling of getting lost in exploration. The soundtrack and visuals together mean that, like in Skyrim, I often prefer to journey on foot instead of using fast travel.
Combat versatility
When it comes to combat, I’ve been relying more on magic and wands to fit with my chosen background (Arcane Scholar). I wasn’t sure at first if I should be able to lock onto enemies, and this did make my first fight feel almost too hectic. I quickly got used to it, however, and if there is an option for locking onto enemies, I’m no longer fussed about finding it.
The variety in combat styles, and the mix-and-match freedom you get with them, is just fantastic. You can have two weapon loadouts and swap between them with the Y button, so you could have a two-handed ranged weapon, for instance, and then switch to a sword-and-shield combo. (Side note: I’m loving Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2’s realism, but it’s nice, when embarking on a pure fantasy adventure, to be able to rely on infinite ammo).
Sure, it might be better if there were three loadouts, like you have in KCD2. It’d allow for three combat approaches at your fingertips rather than going into your inventory to equip a bow when you want long-range stealth, for instance. This is a minor gripe, though, and doesn’t really come up much for me, since I’m pretty hooked on the grimoire/wand combo anyway.
I especially love the mix of grimoires and wizard abilities. While you can level up your wizard skills and unlock spells permanently, you can also access them with the grimoires you find. You’ll have the grimoire equipped in your off-hand, and can cast any of its contained spells while wielding a wand, for instance, to deal damage alongside it.
So, while I hadn’t yet unlocked the early electricity spell which sent bolts of electricity shooting between enemies, if I had the grimoire equipped, I could cast it anyway. It’s a good way to make sure that even if you want to play as an archer or rely on melee weapons, you can still whip out a grimoire and unleash some magic (and, if you do miss Skyrim, you’ll enjoy the spell-yells you do for casting magic).
I wasn’t sure at first about the usefulness of the wand as a weapon. Spells are cast with grimoires, or your own abilities, while the wand initially seemed sort of like the wands in the Harry Potter movies when they stopped bothering to attach spells and just treated them like magical guns.
However, combined with a grimoire, the rapid, prismatic blasts of color you can shoot at enemies works well to allow you to keep fighting while waiting for cooldowns or replenishing the essence you need to cast spells (not to mention it just looks incredibly magical), and the grimoire/wand combo is now my favorite way to fight.
It’s still easy to have trouble with multiple enemies if you’re just relying on spells, since you can be interrupted while casting. It’s then a good time to switch to a shield and sword or similar for the usual block and parry business, or else stun enemies for a more powerful attack (with an equally impressive animation to go with it). These moves do feel like there’s weight and power behind them, and you can wield anything from two-handed firearms to daggers.
Weapons and armor can be upgraded and improved, along with unique pieces of gear to find. Aside from looking very cool, these unique items come with their own excellent backstories, as well as useful abilities or special perks. Some of the unique items I’ve found are already among my favorite pieces of gear, and since you usually need to embark on a fun bit of exploration or combat to claim them, it adds yet another lure to exploration as you set out to find them all.
Your chosen background doesn’t prevent you from spending points across the ranger, fighter, and wizard skill trees, so you can cultivate the playstyle that suits you best. On top of these, you also have your godlike abilities. These unique powers unlock either through story beats or, (which I really love), on the choices you make, so you might never know what other godlike powers you could have had until you start a new playthrough and choose differently.
The first godlike ability I tried was this assassination-type move. Sneaking up on an enemy undetected gives you the chance to use Divine Thorn, which basically explodes the target into prismatic color shards and scatters them to the wind. It was a bit of a shock at first — I didn’t realise I was going to literally obliterate the poor guy — but it looks awesome.
I was too panicked-chicken at the start to think through combat tactics, but there’s plenty along that line too. You can focus on using your own or your companion’s stealth abilities or shooting down various plants for elemental damage. Finding new ways to make your magic work for you also opens up a whole wave of opportunities: electric magic to electrocute enemies in water, freezing enemies and shattering them, or trapping them in roots, for instance.
Another big thing to note in combat is the radial wheel. Using this effectively pauses the fight while you navigate through to use consumables, select an ability or throwable, or command your companions to use their own abilities.
It feels odd at first to basically press pause in combat, but it quickly becomes more natural. After a while, I settled on a setup that worked well: binding my favorite abilities and spells to the arrow keys, so they could be used instantaneously, and saving my consumables and companion abilities to use in the radial wheel.
Avowed’s companions have their own abilities to level up for use in combat and exploration. I wasn’t sure at first how useful these would be when fighting actually broke out, because it seemed we’d be too busy at that point to be directing them, but that’s where the radial wheel comes in with a chance to direct them and make the best use of their skills.
I like all of the companions, but Kai is my favorite so far. They each have their own experience of The Living Lands, and their varied backgrounds add a layer of richness to the whole experience. They’re involved in dialogue, they chat to each other and to you, and locals react to them depending on the reputation they have.
You have to keep an eye on your own health and essence levels in combat, but the different buffs and stats of armor, weapons, charms, rings, and meals (which we can also cook at the party camp) all play into this. That party camp is where you can also upgrade your gear, enchant unique weapons, chat with companions in more depth, and collect things like god totems for helpful buffs.
Enemies often display after-effects of what killed them, so finding a pile of ash, a patch of scorched earth, the roots of an explosive plant, or a wizard’s gear might point to a battle of fire magic. Enemies spark with purple light for electric shocks or dissolve into a pile of snow after frost attacks. The level of detail in every aspect is brilliant, harking back to that wonderful environmental storytelling.
If, like me, you’re new to the lore and lingo of Eora, worry not; Avowed does a great job of onboarding us to the chaos. All of that extensive dialogue, coupled with the scraps of lore scattered throughout The Living Lands, are a great way to bring us up to speed on the world of Eora without smacking us in the face with an info dump. You can also press X during dialogue to see a collection of definitions and explanations for key terms used in that conversation, which is great for quick-checking info without having to look it up elsewhere.
Performance
I have come across a grand total of maybe two glitches in my playthrough so far. Avowed is running like a dream (I’m currently playing in Balanced mode, with other options for Quality and Performance) with no crashes, and aside from odd typos, everything seems polished up.
It’s a nice change to find a game feeling this polished before release, but we’ll need to wait until launch to see the general smoothness of the experience across the board. Quick Resume is also behaving itself, and feels like it’s meant to: I just start up the Series X, Quick Resume Avowed, and am straight back in The Living Lands.
There are plenty of accessibility options too, and, gameplay-wise, there is an option to play in third-person, but I thought first-person looked and felt much better. Third-person might give a wider surrounding view, but it looks a bit more stiff and unwieldy, especially in combat, while first-person view gets you up close to see all the magical effects and world details.
When it comes to potential cons, the only things I can think of are that lack of locking on to enemies, no options for romance with companions, and no option to place map pins (meaning you need to remember where loot is if you don’t have enough lockpicks). A third loadout option would also make combat feel a bit more streamlined. For me, these are minor gripes, but if you loved the romance options in Baldur’s Gate 3, for instance, it’s worth bearing in mind.
The last thing seems like a toss-up as to whether it’s a pro or con: Avowed feels like an old-school fantasy RPG. I love that about it and think it’s one of its biggest charms, but it depends on what you’re looking for from the game.
It feels like there’s so much content layered in every nook and cranny, and that it’d be easy to spend ages just exploring one small portion of one area (and you can easily spend hours just soaking up the scenery). However, Obsidian has compared the scope of Avowed to The Outer Worlds. This won’t be hundreds of hours like Baldur’s Gate 3. But it’s not merely a Skyrim stand-in or BG3-lite: Avowed is entirely its own wonderful game, and already a personal GOTY contender.
Summary
The result of all this is that I’m pretty much obsessed with Avowed. After overinflated maps, exploration without reward, and other frustrations encountered in the last few years, Avowed feels like a dream to play. It fully embraces the fantasy elements for a wonderfully old-school RPG, and I can’t wait to keep playing.
* Heidi spent around 25 hours playing Avowed on an Xbox Series X with review access provided by Xbox.
