Summary
- Obsidian’s Avowed draws parallels to a number of Dishonored’s immersive sim elements.
- Avowed emphasizes player agency in both role-playing and gameplay, offering freedom in character builds, choices, and approaches to playstyle.
- Avowed’s creative level design, environments, and toolset provide a playground for exploration and experimentation, akin to many of Dishonored’s design aspects.
Avowed is now out in the wild. Obsidian Entertainment’s long-awaited FPS RPG action title set in the same compelling fantasy world of its previous series, Pillars of Eternity, had been in the works since 2020, and was delayed from late Fall 2024 to February 2025. Now that it’s arrived, fans can finally dive into the dangerous Living Lands as the Aedyran Envoy, as they are tasked with uncovering the mystery behind the Dreamscourge, a strange supernatural sickness infecting the Lands.
When it was first revealed, Avowed drew comparisons to The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim due to their perceived surface similarities. And while this is understandable given that they do share some qualities, Obsidian was clear in the lead-up to launch about the various ways that Avowed would differentiate itself from Skyrim and others like it. One that wasn’t mentioned much (if at all) in this discussion, though, was Arkane Studio’s Dishonored franchise. However, Avowed displays an immersive sim design philosophy closely akin to Dishonored to an extent that is perhaps unexpected, but ultimately to its benefit.
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Avowed Shares a Lot in Common With Dishonored’s Designs
Avowed’s Focus on Player Agency Extends to Both Role-Playing and Gameplay
One of Obsidian’s major considerations when designing its titles is an emphasis on player freedom and choice. This is usually most apparent when it comes to role-playing, as the studio tends to give players a wide range of character and dialogue options with many possible reactions to NPCs and decisions that result in varying consequences for quest outcomes. Avowed certainly has this in spades, and the studio has clearly given the same careful attention to accommodating fans in this area. But this is also true of its gameplay to a degree that, in many ways, resembles Dishonored‘s mechanics and how it incorporated them to great effect.
How Avowed Channels Dishonored’s Immersive Sim Stylings
One of its main strengths in imparting an exceptional sense of freedom in gameplay is Avowed‘s classless system. By allowing players to choose from among a pool of skills related to traditional archetypes, like fighter or wizard, but not locking them into any specific one, Avowed‘s builds open up a wealth of possibilities. For combat, approaching with measured stealth or recklessly rushing in remain equally viable and satisfying due to the flexibility ingrained in this design. Fans can also have two setups and swap between them on the fly to adjust to circumstances accordingly.
Avowed also mirrors Dishonored in the form of both containing a mix of magic and technology in their fantasy/steampunk worlds and aesthetics.
Where its Dishonored-like immersive sim elements often shine through best, though, are in Avowed’s level design and environments. These provide an excellent playground for exploration and experimentation. Plotting a path through some of Avowed‘s sprawling cities and cavernous temples brings to mind navigating Dishonored‘s luxurious mansions and massive fortresses. Avowed encourages fans to scout locations, and thorough observation usually reveals multiple alternate routes, leading to more convenient angles of entry or attack, while in other cases rewarding valuable loot or interesting world-building lore.
Environments and objects within them are also highly reactive, and Avowed gives players a variety of utility tools in tandem with its selection of skills to interact with them, like ice grenades that can form temporary platforms across otherwise impassable sections to create a path forward. Another example is the Charge ability in Avowed, an attack that doubles as a way to break certain walls and other structures to access additional areas.
Combined with its fluid parkour mechanics and intricate and cleverly laid-out levels, Avowed invites players to make use of every trick at their disposal to engage in exploration and combat in much the same fulfilling way as Dishonored. Along with its other components, Avowed‘s breadth of fun and useful options makes it more of an imm sim than might have been advertised, resulting in elevating the entire experience.
- Released
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February 18, 2025
- ESRB
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Mature 17+ // Blood and Gore, Strong Language, Violence
- Publisher(s)
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Xbox Game Studios