Skyrim is great, but there’s a reason we all gravitate towards stealth archers, and it’s not because they’re interesting. The Elder Scrolls has never nailed combat. Oblivion feels like fighting with foam swords on a bouncy castle, Morrowind’s invisible dice rolls are frustrating and overly punishing, and Skyrim? Well, ramp up the difficulty and see for yourself.
With enemies who deal absurd damage only getting spongier the higher your level, most fights become an awkward tap dance of swinging your sword, stepping back, stepping forward, swinging your sword, ad nauseam. We all inevitably become stealth archers because hiding in the shadows and one-shotting everything to avoid melee combat is more fun.
But then we have Avowed. Even though it’s a Pillars of Eternity spin-off, it builds on The Outer Worlds, which builds on Fallout: New Vegas, which builds on The Elder Scrolls. At its core, Avowed is a TES game through an Obsidian filter.
Its clunky, archaic combat often reminds me of Oblivion, as I strike enemies and watch them ragdoll into the air like weightless goblins stuck on the moon. The awkward way my character holds their weapons out in front of them, like a waiter at The Bannered Mare juggling too many drinks, is oddly nostalgic. I can feel Bethesda creeping through Avowed’s bones, but Obsidian found a way to make The Elder Scrolls’ combat more dynamic and engaging, rather than the awkward mess we all put up with from Bethesda.
Magic Finally Feels… Magic
One of the most interesting changes Avowed makes is to how magic works. In Skyrim, you find books which you ‘consume’ to learn a spell. These are added to a menu which is divided by each school of magic. Like with weapons and potions, you can ‘favourite’ certain spells and assign them a hotkey, otherwise changing spells mid-combat means sifting through menus to find the right one. It’s boring just talking about it, which is hardly ideal for a power fantasy — magic should be exciting! Menus upon menus is not.
Casting spells in Avowed isn’t actually that different. But each spell is added to a hot bar when you level up, so you can more easily combo abilities to devastate opponents. Instead of scrolling through your favourites or frantically trying to remember which hotkey does what, you can hurl shards of ice at a bandit to freeze them mid-axe swing without breaking a sweat, only to turn around and zap their little troupe with electricity, jolting from one to the other while your companions rain steel. No menu required.
Magic is also fairly weak in Skyrim, and doesn’t scale in the same way melee combat does.
That’s not even the best part. There are also grimoires scattered throughout the Living Lands, dusty old domes full of spells that can be summoned from the flurry of pages. Conjuring a fireball from a leatherbound book is cool. It’s that simple.
Dodging Makes Combat Less Tedious
You can’t dodge in The Elder Scrolls. Modders have tried to retrofit rolling and sidestepping into the series, but it’s almost always inspired by Dark Souls, which is just nauseating in first-person. And even then, the I-frames and hotkeys are often unreliable, which makes the whole thing feel too janky to bother with.
Avowed adds a dedicated dodge button that allows you to sidestep or backstep depending on what direction you aim for. You can even toggle slow motion for successful dodges, making it easier to strike your opponent when they’re left wide open. It’s far more intuitive than the awkward shuffle you have to do in Skyrim to avoid attacks, and yet it feels distinctly TES – the step back, step forward rigmarole is simply condensed into a single button.
Avowed doesn’t reinvent the Wheel (wahey). It’s The Elder Scrolls, but tighter. I rag on the combat of Oblivion and Skyrim, but they are the remnants of the ‘90s dungeon crawler dragged kicking and screaming into the modern day. Dig back far enough and you can trace Avowed and Starfield to Arena, a product of a much jankier era where standing with a sword and swinging over and over, occasionally moving back and forth, was the hottest thing in RPGs. But we’ve come a long way since then, and Avowed finally makes that style of combat feel natural. Take note, Bethesda.
- Released
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February 18, 2025
- ESRB
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Mature 17+ // Blood and Gore, Strong Language, Violence