Summary
- Avowed embraces ambiguity in dialogue, offering uncertain outcomes, challenging players to make personal choices.
- Dialogue in Avowed is not bound by skill checks or ‘right’ answers, providing a more authentic role-playing experience.
- Avowed offers a multitude of complex dialogue options, making each conversation weighty and difficult to discern the ‘best’ path.
Avowed developer Obsidian Entertainment has always placed a supreme amount of emphasis on the lore, story, and characters found in its games — all of which are generally fleshed out through dialogue. As players converse with NPCs in Obsidian games, not only are they often given opportunities to expand their relationships with said characters, but they are also more deeply immersed in each game’s world. This makes dialogue an important part of the role-play in an Obsidian game, which happens to be one thing that Avowed excels at.
History has more than proven the difficulty of making sure the dialogue in an RPG contributes to the game’s overall role-playing experience. More often than not, dialogue choices are bound by the duality of “right” and “wrong,” thereby encouraging players to prefer one choice over another for the gameplay benefits they often provide. However, Avowed takes a refreshing approach to RPG dialogue, ensuring almost every outcome remains a mystery and that players are left to fend for themselves in every conversation. In the end, this results in an authentic role-playing experience in Avowed, where players can feel like they truly have a hand in the flow of dialogue.
Related
Avowed’s first-person combat and respect for player choice make it a journey worth having, but flaws in its story and design make it a one-way road.
Avowed’s Dialogue Allows for Authentic Role-Play
Avowed’s Dialogue Isn’t Bound by Skill Checks or ‘Right’ Answers
Far too often, RPG dialogue is a bit too helpful, all but spelling out for players which options are the “best” for them to choose. This is generally reflected in one of two ways: either the options are very minimal and extreme, with one very clearly being a “good” answer and the other an “evil” path, or the choices are overshadowed by a skill check that almost guarantees players will end up with a better outcome. Avowed foregoes both of these conventions by, firstly, offering skill checks that don’t always result in an outcome that players might find preferable, and secondly, providing dialogue options that are immensely shrouded in ambiguity.
Avowed takes a refreshing approach to RPG dialogue, ensuring almost every outcome remains a mystery and that players are left to fend for themselves in every conversation.
It is true that most of Avowed‘s skill checks may lead to a more interesting outcome than the other options it provides, but there are many cases where mindlessly choosing the skill check dialogue option will lead to what could be seen as an objectively bad outcome. Furthermore, there are rarely any “right” answers in Avowed. It’s possible that many players may find themselves blankly staring at the screen as they are caught in a crossfire between two characters, and they have no idea which path is the best one to take. That’s really because there isn’t an optimal path in Avowed, with its companions even stating multiple times that what matters more than anything else is that the player is confident in the route they’ve chosen.
Avowed Offers a Multitude of Dialogue Options in Every Conversation
Avowed is ultimately able to pull this off through the multitude of dialogue options it offers, making every conversation far more complex and layered than most modern RPGs. Avowed‘s conversations aren’t just about exhausting every line of dialogue, as that’s often not even possible. In other words, whatever choice players make in a conversation is permanent, thereby adding weight to each option. The fact that there are then a plethora of options to choose from makes it more difficult to discern what the “good” path might be and what the “evil” path might be.
The less dialogue options there are in an RPG conversation, the easier it is to distinguish between the best and the worst.
Avowed‘s approach to dialogue is a major step forward in RPG storytelling, reinforcing the idea that role-playing is at its best when choices feel uncertain, personal, and permanent. By foregoing the binary of “right” and “wrong” responses and openly embracing ambiguity, Avowed ensures that every conversation carries real, often emotional weight. This design philosophy not only immerses players in its world but also challenges them to be their own person, making Avowed a standout representation of RPG dialogue done right.
- Released
-
February 18, 2025
- ESRB
-
Mature 17+ // Blood and Gore, Strong Language, Violence
- Publisher(s)
-
Xbox Game Studios