Obsidian Entertainment has built a reputation for crafting rich, choice-driven RPGs—at times by putting their own spin on established franchises. Knights of the Old Republic II and Fallout: New Vegas took familiar worlds and deepened them with Obsidian’s signature storytelling. Avowed continues that tradition, bringing their expertise to the world of Eora from the Pillars of Eternity universe. Interestingly, KOTOR II and Fallout: New Vegas had relatively unchanged gameplay compared to their predecessors, and yet Avowed, as an action RPG, departs from this established tradition. Still, change isn’t necessarily a bad thing, so how does Avowed hold up when judged against Obsidian’s legacy?
Avowed may be set in the same universe as Pillars of Eternity, but the similarities end there. Action RPGs and CRPGs are at near opposite ends of the player agency spectrum, after all. Gone is the intricate party management of its spiritual predecessors where you control each character individually; in Avowed you only control when your companions use their abilities. Instead of painstakingly controlling each moment, combat thrives on real-time decision-making. This is especially true mid-combat when enemy reinforcements spawn in around you, forcing you to rethink and reposition. In these situations, Avowed’s first-person (or third-person) perspective makes you feel like you’re in the thick of it, compared to Pillar’s isometric overview, which keeps players above the action. Thankfully, a tactical pause system lets you catch your breath and coordinate companion abilities.
As far as abilities go, there’s a healthy variety to choose from. Avowed features a classless system, where you start by picking a background that determines your starting weapon (and some dialogue). From there, you can unlock any gear or ability from the fighter, ranger, or wizard skill trees. I started as an Arcane Scholar focused on wizardry for the first half of the game, but eventually developed into a wizard/ranger hybrid slinging spells and spitting shells in equal measure. You can swap between two weapon sets, each with a main-hand and offhand slot, adding a little variety to your build to tackle any situation. My go-to strategy by the end of the game was picking off priority targets—healers, summoners, rangers—with dual pistols built for high stun and critical hits, while using my grimoire to lay down sweeping area-of-effects and crowd-control enemies for easier headshots. There are plenty of fun ability synergies too, like freezing enemies with an ice pillar before shattering them with an explosive attack.
The enemy variety is decent enough that I never got bored of picking fights, and since enemies never respawn I’m fairly certain that I picked all of them. What really kept combat fresh, though, was how units support one another. I still remember the despair I felt when the tanky Xaurip Chieftain I had nearly killed regained his entire health bar in front of me: my first encounter with a Xaurip Priest. Before I could swap my focus to the pesky priest, he jumped backwards and a swarm of summoned spiders from a Xaurip Caller came between me and him, forcing me to retreat and reassess the situation. Charging headlong into battle works pretty well early on as long as you’re properly geared, but once you progress beyond the starting area it helps to think a bit more strategically.
Beyond fighting smart, it’s important to properly gear yourself. Gear comes in five tiers of quality, from common to legendary, and determines how much damage you deal (or receive) based on enemy tier. Attacking an enemy of a higher tier will deal reduced damage, and in return you will be more vulnerable to damage they deal. Your player level doesn’t really matter in combat beyond how many ability and attribute points you have at your disposal, so rather than needlessly chip away at the health of a higher-tier enemy it can help to explore elsewhere in search of better gear or the materials to upgrade your own.
The exploration in Avowed is both intuitive and rewarding. Not precisely an open-world, Avowed features four open areas that you travel between via the map. These areas are quite streamlined in that they have very little space that isn’t utilized for something, whether it be a quest, puzzle, or loot. That means if you can see a path leading to an area—whether you have to dive underwater, scale a cliff, or parkour across some rooftops—there’s likely something worth grabbing there. Besides consumables and quest items (which you can acquire ahead of time), you’ll find unique weapons and armor with special effects like fire damage, increased stealth damage, or homing bullets, alongside upgrade materials and fodder gear that you can break down for materials. Sure, you could sell unwanted gear for a pittance of coin, but the overall scarcity of upgrade materials means you’re probably better off recycling. I was quite thorough in my own exploration, but I still didn’t have my gear fully upgraded until the final stretch of the game.
Upgrading your gear as soon as possible helps with the resource strain, as any uniques you acquire will automatically be of the highest tier you own of that gear type. A good rule of thumb is to upgrade to the next tier before progressing to the next zone, since enemies will be of a higher tier and the materials you need to fully upgrade the previous tier will be more scarce. There aren’t really any quests that send you back-and-forth between zones, and with the way the gear system works there’s not much challenge in the previous area once you’ve progressed to the next. However, certain side quests have unexpectedly large impacts on main story events, so you probably want to tackle as many side quests as you can anyway between each main story quest.
Avowed’s story feels like Greedfall and The Outer Worlds had a love child, and I mean that in the best possible way. You play as a citizen of the Aedyran empire sent by the emperor as an envoy to the Living Lands, a wild frontier across the sea, to cure a plague known as the dreamscourge that is corrupting people and turning them into dreamthralls. The land is in turmoil and its citizens are on the brink of starvation thanks to political infighting, inept management, and perpetual crisis. Having the emperor’s confidence isn’t the only thing that makes you special—you’re also a godlike marked by an unknown deity. You’ve never met another godlike with the same markings as you, but after you arrive in the Living Lands it becomes immediately apparent that the fungal growths covering the dreamthralls in question are reminiscent of your own godlike features.
Your godlike features can be toggled off for aesthetic purposes, although doing so won’t stop NPCs from acting as if your face looks like something out of The Last of Us. What isn’t optional is being a godlike from Aedyr, which those familiar with Pillars of Eternity will recognize as a marked departure from being able to pick your cultural homeland and play as any of the Eoran races: human, elf, dwarf, aumau, or orlan. In Avowed, you can either be a human or an elven godlike, while the other races are only present as NPCs. The character creation system is robust enough that I didn’t have any trouble making a character I liked, although I would have liked to see even more godlike features than we were given. If things are gonna get weird, we might as well embrace it.
As far as the choices you can make beyond your appearance, there are no grand, branching pathways in the story, but rather several crossroads at pivotal moments that determine which endings you can achieve. The story is linear in that you’re going to wind up in the same situations no matter what, but how you solve those situations will be up to you. It’s more about the relationships you build and the lessons you impart than the path you take, really. What does your envoy believe? Your companions will be curious, asking your opinion on things, from philosophy, to politics, to theology.
Companions will generally weigh in during important decisions if you ask them for advice, and they’re quick to voice their displeasure if you say or do something they disagree with. Even if they’re not in your party at the relevant time, companions will often have something to say once you get back to camp. There were several occasions at camp where companions interjected in each other’s conversations with the envoy as well, whether to offer advice, comfort, or disapproval, and that’s besides the general chatter they engage in while you idle by the fire. I appreciated this level of reactivity, as it emphasizes that your companions are part of the journey rather than just along for the ride, which is great since you don’t have a choice whether they come along or not.
There were some choices (or lack thereof) that frustrated me, however. There’s a conversation with a particular zealot where you’re given a dialogue choice to attack them, only the character in question intimates that now isn’t the time or place and simply refuses to fight. The dialogue ends and they just stand there, immune to your attacks should you try to fight them anyway. I can’t even imagine why Obsidian would put in an option to attack them if it just isn’t allowed at that moment. And then later on during a different side quest, a captain poisons their unwitting crew member and your only options are to ask him what happened (and leave it at that) or shrug and walk away. Mind you, this is in the same town where you can report a man for trying to sell drugs, but murder is apparently not worth reporting. That’s only two moments out of many good ones, but they were sore enough spots that they’ve stuck with me.
While Avowed has the bad habit of occasionally railroading the player into certain situations for the sake of the narrative, it succeeds at delivering an engaging, tailored story and features incredibly fun and dynamic combat. While it may not fulfill Pillars of Eternity fans due to its more linear narrative and simplified party management, Avowed is perfect for those seeking a more accessible, action-oriented experience in the world of Eora. The rich lore may be overwhelming for casual players, but for those of us who enjoy deep worldbuilding, I say the more the merrier!
Austin reviewed Avowed on Xbox Series X with a provided review copy.
