It’s easy to set unrealistic expectations, especially when it comes to the things you love. When I hear the words ‘Obsidian Entertainment’ and ‘first-person RPG,’ my mind wants to believe that Avowed will be a mash-up of Fallout: New Vegas, Skyrim, and Baldur’s Gate 3. Let me preface this by saying that no one ever suggested this was going to be the case, but it’s important to remember how quickly some people create unrealistic expectations. Now that I’ve played through the first two hours of Avowed, I have a much better idea about what this game is and what it’s trying to accomplish.
Upon starting up Obsidian’s latest, the character creator reveals that I’m playing as a ‘godlike,’ someone who has made a connection to, you guessed it, one of the gods. Godlike have special facial and hair features that look like multicolored fungal growths, oftentimes meaning that they’re viewed with “suspicion, reverence, or curiosity.” As a Black man, Avowed hits close to home with that description, so naturally I choose the boldest godlike features on offer.
In terms of my character’s background, there are five options to pick from, each with a unique set of dialogue options. I went for the Court Augur, described as someone who blagged their way from a back-alley fortuneteller to become the Emperor’s personal mystic – a proper rags-to-riches story. As the Envoy of Aedyr, I’m sent on a quest to the Living Lands to learn about a mysterious plague.
It’s just my luck that the boat we were traveling on capsizes, killing almost everyone on board except myself and Garryck, a strange little blue beast who has gone out of its way to save my life. Garryck explains that we’ve landed on an Aedyran outpost called Fort Northreach, and that our ship was brought down by cannon fire from the soldiers stationed on said island. Using my intuition as a Court Augur, I deduce that the soldiers were likely not of sound mind; why would they attack their countrymen? We decide to explore the island to find potential survivors and devise a new route to our destination.
Wielding a nearby club I find on the shore, I’m ready to start smashing things to pieces. Wooden crates? Easy. Blocked off pathways? Simple. Scurrying lizards? Absolutely not. To my confusion, my barrage of attacks phases through the reptiles. I try again, this time with my bare hands. Still nothing. My attention turns to Garryck – surely NPCs can feel my wrath? Nope. It appears that’s not the kind of game Avowed wants to be. It’s okay, we move.
After some basic platforming around the island, I finally encounter my first batch of enemies: weird humanoid reptiles. Garryck refers to them as Xaurips, but I take little notice as I begin to xau-rip my way through them. The attacks from my club feel weighty, dragging the creatures in the direction of my swings. Within two hits, one of my foes has already had enough as it floats away in the wind. The second slashes at me, and just like its brethren, I crush it within seconds.
Searching the environment for clues, I find a table with several items, including prisoner shackles, a candle, and a large glass container with a human skull inside. Naturally, the first thing I try to do is smash the glass with my club. Again, my attack phases right through the container. As I swipe at the objects on the table, my club leaves behind a mark, but the items stay completely still, as if they’re nailed down.
Judging by the way Avowed’s physics work, I was quick to assume that interactivity with random objects would be a given. While I don’t play every RPG out there, I’m not sure if I’ve played one in the past decade that feels as restrictive as this. It’s a shame, but it’s clear that Avowed wants to focus on the combat, dialogue, and quests. If that’s the case, I hope the combat drastically improves after the opening section because what I experienced wasn’t anything to rave about.
The melee combat is your standard ‘attack, dodge glowy moves, and avoid draining your stamina bar’ affair. There are health and mana potions if you need them, though the combat is so rudimentary that you can easily escape any danger. Magic doesn’t seem to help things either, although I may just have been unlucky and there’s actually an opportunity to play around with any interesting combos using the environment à la Bioshock. Outside of combat, you’re encouraged to use magic to access different areas; you can burn special brambles to clear a path, for example. However, there are plenty of identical areas where you might see overgrown plants blocking a window, only to discover that your flamethrower ability does nothing.
As I try to get off the island, I find a prisoner locked in a cage. I attempt to talk to her, and the first thing she says is how disgusting my godlike features are. Alright, love. She tells me her name is Ilora as she spills the beans about her secret boat, hoping we’ll work together and sail off to the city of Paradis. Sadly for her, I intend to let her rot in this prison for being a judgmental, good-for-nothing, two-bit criminal. After finding the key to her cell, I decide to confront her for insulting me and take her out. To my horror, the game cuts to a dialogue sequence where every option I have forces me to not only let her go free but to also let her join my party. I swing my club at Ilora in desperation, hoping I can undo this action. Sadly, nothing happens.
From what I’ve experienced in this preview, there are a lot of dialogue choices, including some options that are locked due to the stat composition of your build. However, I’ve yet to see how meaningful these decisions really are. Even during my time in Paradis, I never saw any dialogue options that looked like they might give me a drastically different result. Ultimately, my decisions were always going to lead to me taking on a quest, no matter whether my response is positive or lukewarm. Given the size of Paradis, there’s a good chance I missed some of the quests with multiple outcomes, so I won’t blame the game just yet.
By the time we get off the island, Garryck and Ilora are replaced with one of Avowed’s proper companions, Kai. Now, Kai may look like he’s fresh off the set of the latest Avatar movie, but he’s actually a Coastal Aumaua, one of the many races in the Pillars of Eternity / Avowed universe. Equipped with a blunderbuss and saber combo, he can hold his own in combat, considerably more so than the likes of Garryck. As a true companion, you can speak to Kai whenever you set up a Party Camp at Adra Waystones found throughout the Living Lands. Based on my short chat with Kai, it’s clear he has a lot going on in his personal life. Since I can’t simply kill him and become a lone wolf, I might as well get used to his presence as he becomes a staple of my party.
The port city of Paradis is bustling with activity from the workers on the docks and the citizens in the area known as Claviger’s Landing. This area really showcases Avowed’s impressive visuals, showing off the gorgeous lighting effects, colorful flora, and plant-covered buildings. I was playing with the graphics settings maxed out, including ray tracing, which a lot of GPUs struggle with. Performance-wise, Avowed ran smoothly on my computer, but I would expect that given my specs (i7 13900k and a RTX 4090). Other than some strange animation quirks, like the critters that scurry around the environment running at 30fps, it’s clear that this game is ready to go from a technical standpoint.
It’s unfortunate that I wasn’t able to spend more time exploring Paradis to learn about its people and the overall story. The main quest was starting to heat up after speaking to ‘The Voice,’ a mysterious blue light that begged me to help it. Just as I was ready to start the next part of the main quest, the game ended with my character being shot in the stomach with an arrow; a dramatic end that left me wanting more.
Now that I know the type of game Avowed is trying to be, I can temper my expectations accordingly and embrace its strengths the next time I get a chance to play it. While the combat is more of what we’ve seen from other RPGs, Avowed’s world and story are intriguing enough that I’m keen to see more of what it has to offer.
The Avowed release date is set for February 18, 2025, for PC and Xbox Series consoles.