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Avowed (2025, Windows) Review


LOOK HOW THEY MASSACRED MY BOY



Obsidian's latest RPG Avowed is one of those games that make me think I've lost interest in this medium. Or, worse yet, that I've fallen into a deep pit of depression. I feel like I'm one click away from ordering a birthday clown and a pallet of Prozac.

The game contains many of those traits I'm draw towards - RPG stats, companions, moral choices - and even takes place in the same fascinating universe, Eora, as two of my favorite CRPG:s, namely Pillars of Eternity and Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire. But instead of the traditional isometric perspective, Avowed displays its world through first person by deafult (it can be changed to third-person). It was clearly designed to rope in fans of The Elder Scrolls.


All-in-all, I should like this game, but I don't. I dislike it in spite of the fact that playing it feels so frictionless. Movement is smooth and fast, the first-person parkouring puts Mirror's Edge to shame and the combat is quite spectacular in its heavy, flashy and hectic flair, with many different weapon types to choose from. I played as an arcane scholar, well-versed in magic, and felt like a Hogwarts graduate running around with a wand in one hand and a grimoire of spells in the other.

But this solid foundation of exploration and combat is let down by the sterility of the written content. There's no meat to the experience; the story is tired and predictable, the disappointing character designs lack personality and the writing lacks punch and grit. Every dialogue scene is dragged out to extreme lengths, encouraging you to listen to endless lore dumps and morality sermons.

It's also presented in the most disengaging, archaic way, with characters rooted to the spot as they fixate on your gaze with their dead eyes, speaking agonizingly slow about every insignificant detail of their uninteresting lives. Whenever you think they're about to stop talking they have another three lines, or more, in store. On and on it goes; my playthrough ended at some agonizing 63 hours, overstaying its welcome by something like 30.



It's a shame because I like the premise. Avowed presents a wild world full of unique sights and magic, an untamed land where nature runs rampant, winning the fight against civilization. Mushrooms of every shape and color protrude from the ground and the cities struggle to hold firm against the tide of growth. Even people are affected. They're afflicted by a disease called the dreamscourge, causing fungal growth from inside the skull. It causes slow, agonizing death, preceded by a bout of insanity.

As an envoy - which is what everyone keeps calling you throughout the game - of the Aedyran empire, you're sent there to investigate and put an end to this scourge. They've also sent the Steel Garrote, led by inquisitor Lödwyn, who is setting the stage for a military coup to secure the entire island.

Being a Godlike, which is what they call someone touched by the gods, your fungal appearance make you look as one of the afflicted. In other words: you're ugly. Exactly how that manifests you can choose for yourself in the character creator. You can wear fungi like a crown, like horns or like flowers around the eyes. It's kinda uplifting for a game to treat disfigurement as something divine.


Thing is, your affiliated god is unknown. Your looks don't quite fit anyone within the known pantheon. But soon upon stepping onto the Living Lands, something starts communicating with you. A weird voice echoes in your skull, which nobody else seems able to hear. It's as if the lands themselves are speaking to you, voicing their opinions on the colonizing races. Who could it be, hm?

This entity sucks. I hated the faux-deep way it only speaks in metaphors, craving your help without giving you clear instructions, and like all dialogue it drags. Soon they start haunting your dreams every time you sleep in the party camp, and I soon started to protest loudly every time it happened. You can choose to be hostile, curious or accomodating to the entity, but apart from pure role-playing, the choices are utterly pointless until right before the end.

It is obviously connected to the scourge and you need to travel the lands from region to region to fix it. Four maps exist, and the first one is by far the best. Apart from the drowsy citylife, the world design is great. The lands do seem alive; weird vegetation spring from trees, grass and cliffs, the monsters seem possessed and the day-and-night cycle paints the world in an ever-shifting beautiful light. There's a uniqueness to the place, a sense that you'll find something entirely new at every turn. Exploration is elevated by simple but fun parkour, which allows for more verticality than usual. If your jump doesn't quite reach the other side of a gap, you'll pull yourself up.



The world is brimming with lore. Documents can be found in every nook and cranny, revealing the political affairs of far-off kingdoms, the mundane lives of farmers, the toilet rituals of the shamanistic creatures in the bandit camps. Well, at least I think they do because I can't remember more than a fraction it. It's too rich, it's presented like homework and the gameplay kinda contradicts the patience and concentration needed to delve into this stuff.

The most interesting bit was the easily-missed sidequest that gave me some insight into important events of the island's past. In order to reach them I had to climb high, tower-like structures and magically enter the conscience of some historical person in the olden days. Through dialogue choices and nicely drawn illustrations I got to decide the events that shaped the island current state. It changed nothing, but... it got me some nice buffs and abilities!

Avowed does its best to mimic the visually motivated exploration of Elden Ring. If anything looks out of the ordinary, it's worth investigating and treasure chests are everywhere, on rooftops, cliff ledges and balconies. Sadly, much of the loot is generic; stuff like crafting materials, standard weaponry and potions littered my inventory, forcing me to constantly break it down into crafting materials. Only occasionally did I find "unique" gear with some nice properties, also useless to me, so I broke that down too. After a while I broke down as well.



Combat, like most things about this game, is a well-functioning, solid mechanic that lifted my spirits - at first. My magic build was hectic and busy, forcing me to avoid incoming attacks as I toggled between my quick commands to unleash spells. Unlocking new magic through the skilltree felt rewarding, as I could utilize my different elemental attacks in new ways. I learned to read the environments, casting shock spells at enemies in water to insta-fry them, or casting a fireball at enemies near oil barrels to blow them up. It reminded me of Bioshock plasmids.

It couldn't sustain much interest past a certain point, though, since all enemy groups, regardless of race, consist of the same types. It was usually a few melee fighters, a big brute, a caster or ranger, and occasionally a healer or assassin. Even named enemy bosses could be dealt with the same way. I peppered them with ice spells, freezing them in place, and blasted an explosive fireball or chained a lightning bolt through a number of them. And ever so often I'd order my healing companion to fix me up.



The most disappointing aspect of Avowed is the writing. Overall, there's a clear lack of character to the characters. Dialogue seems written by the same sophisticated mindset throughout, although it isn't. As you get to know your companions at camp, it often feels like the lines would fit anyone of them. This is not neccesarily bad, but the sophistication doesn't amount to much. It's not a groundbreaking story, nor thought-provoking. If anything, it's a morality fable with little doubt on who is good and who is evil. Your choices aren't nuanced or hard - they're simply a choice between good and evil.

Also, the characters generally lack pathos. Your companions, in particular, feel lobotomized in most matters. Kai is the one people seem to latch on to, probably helped by the familiarity of his voice actor (he also starred as Garrus in Mass Effect). He's the only one with a personal quest. It's about lost love, but this love is talked about almost in scientific terms, as if it's something to be plucked and analyzed rather than felt. Everything about these companions feels just like that - detatched, sedated, scientific.



Even if you contribute to the Aedyran invasion of their homeland, they take a thoughtful approach to it, analyzing your decision and trying to reason themselves into understanding your choice. Little did they know I did it out of pure spite because I hated them, all four of them and their holier-than-thou moral high ground and "reasonable stances".

As soon as I saw the so-obviously-evil-it's-funny inquisitor Lödwyn - the game's major villain - ironclad with a scary mask and a burning gaze (literally), I jokingly said to myself: "I love her! I'm gonna marry her!" At every opportunity, I decided to side with her, which meant siding with my own Aedyran empire. To me, it made perfect sense.

My companions raised some eyebrows but were quick to forgive my decisions to help torch a city to the ground and blow up ancient, unexplored ruins. (By the way, those ruins had laid there for ages. Anyone could've just ventured there at any time, so why hadn't they? What's more, blowing them up saved some lives so why dafuk would they object?!). I didn't hide my intentions. At every chance I explained that I did it for the benefit of my beloved empire. Which made it all the funnier when they acted so surprised, like I betrayed them, when I sided with Aedyr and my darling Lödwyn in the final choice.

Well, at least the game let me be evil, albeit begrudgingly. Some conversations didn't allow me to openly support Lödwyn, so the best I could do was to steer the subject matter away from her.


Much like my disappointment with Bioware for Dragon Age: The Veilguard, I feel let-down by Obsidian for letting Avowed become this kind of streamlined action slog. Like The Veilguard, Avowed started out as a live-service project and changed directions to single-player. Because of such misinformed project beginnings, two of my favorite fantasy franchises are now on life support, if not dead altogether. Worse yet, I can feel my enthusiasm for the earlier entries wane.

Sacrificing depth of character and a thought-provoking story for flashy gameplay and a black-and-white morality tale is a slap in the face of fans. The Obsidian of old would've had one companion in Avowed be a representative of the Steel Garrote, or at least the Aedyran empire. It could've led to some nice drama in the party camp. Now all we got was four shades of hippie on a Schooby-Doo mystery tour. I don't know what I meant by that, but who cares. Everybody just fucking gets along so well - except for me. I guess that's why I had to play the part of boogeyman.

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