LOOK HOW THEY MASSACRED MY BOY
Obsidian’s latest RPG, Avowed, is one of those games that makes me question my interest in the medium—or worse, makes me feel as if I’ve slipped into a pit of quiet despair. At times, I felt one impulsive click away from ordering a birthday clown and a pallet of Prozac.
On paper, this should be my kind of game. It contains many of the elements I usually adore: RPG stats, companions, moral choices. It even takes place in Eora, the same richly imagined universe as Pillars of Eternity and Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, two of my favorite CRPGs of all time. But instead of the familiar isometric view, Avowed opts for a first-person perspective (with an optional third-person mode), clearly designed to lure fans of The Elder Scrolls.
And yet—despite all this—I don’t love it. I don’t even like it.
This is especially frustrating because Avowed feels exceptionally smooth to play. Movement is fast and frictionless, its parkour systems making Mirror’s Edge look clumsy by comparison. Combat is flashy and weighty, offering a generous selection of weapons and playstyles. As an arcane scholar, I felt like a Hogwarts graduate—wand in one hand, spellbook in the other, hurling magic with theatrical flair.
But this strong mechanical foundation is sabotaged by sterile writing. The story is predictable, the characters painfully flat, and the dialogue relentlessly verbose. NPCs stand frozen in place, staring through you with lifeless eyes as they unload lore dumps and moral lectures about even the most trivial details of their lives. Scenes that should last a minute often stretch to ten. My playthrough clocked in at 63 hours—at least thirty of them unnecessary.
It’s a shame, because the premise is genuinely compelling. Avowed presents a wild, untamed land where nature pushes back against civilization with feral magic. Mushrooms of every conceivable shape and color burst from the ground, cities cling desperately to survival, and even people are afflicted by the dreamscourge—a fungal disease that grows from the skull, slowly driving its victims mad before killing them.
You play as an envoy of the Aedyran Empire, sent to investigate this phenomenon. The Steel Garrote, led by the inquisitor Lödwyn, is also present on the island, staging what amounts to a military coup. As a “Godlike”—a being touched by the gods—you bear fungal markings yourself, allowing you to pass as one of the afflicted. Character creation embraces this elegantly, letting you wear the growths as horns, a crown, or flowers framing your eyes. It’s a small but inspired touch, reframing disfigurement as something divine.
The story gestures toward depth through a mysterious entity that speaks to you in metaphors, echoing in your mind and invading your dreams. Unfortunately, it’s more tedious than intriguing—pretentious without payoff. Your role-playing choices rarely matter until the final act, rendering most decisions emotionally hollow.
Exploration, however, is where Avowed shines brightest. The game is divided into four large maps, with the first easily being the strongest. Outside the sleepy city hubs, the world feels alive: strange flora overtakes cliffs and ruins, monsters appear possessed, and the day-night cycle bathes the landscape in shifting light. Parkour enables vertical exploration rarely seen in RPGs, and while treasure and lore are plentiful, the rewards are often underwhelming. Most loot is generic, and the avalanche of documents feels more like homework than world-building. One standout side quest, which allows you to inhabit the mind of a historical figure, is genuinely fascinating—even if its mechanical rewards are modest.
Combat, at first, is exhilarating. My magic-focused build demanded constant movement and quick thinking. Shock spells frying enemies in water and fireballs igniting oil slicks made me feel clever. But repetition sets in quickly. Enemy compositions barely change, and named bosses fall just as easily as regular mobs. Eventually, even the spectacle grows routine.
The true disappointment remains the writing. Characters are almost uniformly devoid of personality, all speaking in the same overly polished, pseudo-intellectual tone regardless of background. Companion quests are shallow and emotionally inert. Kai’s personal storyline, centered on lost love, is discussed with the detachment of an academic paper. Moral choices are blunt and simplistic, rarely offering genuine nuance or discomfort.
Even when the game allows you to side with the morally dubious Aedyran Empire, your companions respond with predictable, polite disapproval—never challenging you in any meaningful way. My personal low point came when I gleefully aligned myself with the openly villainous Lödwyn, burning cities and destroying ancient ruins, while my companions reacted with mild gasps and raised eyebrows.
Much like my disappointment with BioWare’s Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Avowed left me feeling let down by a studio I once admired deeply. The Obsidian of old would have given us a Steel Garrote companion, or an Aedyran loyalist in the party—someone to create real ideological friction around the campfire. Instead, we get four variations of bland, well-meaning “hippie” companions tagging along on a Scooby-Doo-style mystery tour, while the player is forced to supply all the chaos alone.
Avowed is a game that looks fantastic and plays beautifully, yet feels hollow at its core. Its lush world, slick combat, and agile traversal cannot compensate for wooden dialogue, predictable morality, and companions who feel like blank canvases. It’s a technically impressive RPG that ultimately left me frustrated, underwhelmed, and mourning the squandered potential of the Eora universe.
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