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
abandoning the traditional isometric perspective of those games, Avowed instead displays its world
through immersive first person (by deafult; it can be changed to third-person). It's
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, and that nothing is procedurally generated. 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 (Brandon Keener 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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