I want to start this game review by talking about reading. Over the last few weeks, I have been reading a certain book. Its name is not important, but getting through it has been a slog. So much so, in fact, that I sort of just felt that it was the status quo. That’s just how reading is. However, last night, as I cleaned off my bookshelves, I stopped to stare at some of the books in my collection that I had already read. Ones that grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. Ones that begged me to read just one more chapter before bed and stayed in my mind long after I put them down.
I have been looking forward to Avowed for a few months now and, having developed a real itch for an immersive role-playing game, I was hoping Obsidian’s latest would scratch it. However, after nearly thirty hours with the game, I find my experience with Avowed to be similar to the book I have been trying to get through since February. It’s not a bad game by any means, but I find it lacking in a few areas that impeded my otherwise strong first impressions.
Avowed is set in the fantasy world of Eora, home to Obsidian’s Pillars of Eternity games, of which I admittedly have no prior experience. You play as an Envoy to the Emperor of Adeyr, who is sent to the Living Lands to investigate the Dreamscourge that is spreading like a plague and could eventually reach the Empire. Along with representing the might of the Emperor, you are also a Godlike, someone who has been touched by the Gods and has growths on their head to show for it. The game begins in a fallen fort that acts as a tutorial area and showcases some key aspects of the journey ahead.
For starters, there are the visuals. Avowed is a stunning game that often had me stop or slow down to smell the roses. A lot of credit goes to the level design and art direction, with really beautiful vistas that are framed naturally by the architecture and landscapes. Despite being an open world game (though open area might be more apt), Avowed feels crafted like a linear game with routes leading players to key vantage points that showcase a given set piece or location. Details within the world, such as the skeleton of a large creature that once used to roam around the Living Lands, add a nice sense of wonder to the experience. However, it’s hard to always appreciate how good the game looks because although it does always retain its vibrance, the same cannot be said for the performance.
I played through the entire game in Performance Mode on my Xbox Series X and ran into frequent frame drops when entering new areas and, most peculiarly, during stagnant dialogue sequences. Lip movements would often fall out of sync with what was being said, and characters would sometimes stutter in their animation. And then there are the wandering NPCs, who struggle to maintain a steady framerate in movement in some of the late-game areas like Solace Keep. The game also crashed on me once, and while no crash is good, it happened on a particularly interesting story beat that undercut the impact for me.
Going back to the start, you also get a good sense of the action right from that opening level, and, I am pleased to say, the gameplay remains the one consistently good part about Avowed. There are really two parts of the gameplay to talk about. The first-person combat in Avowed is very fun, giving players the chance to mix and match their weapon setups to their liking. Although it’s a fantasy title, the game has everything from one-handed and two-handed melee weapons to ranged bows and even rifles. Not to mention the Tomes you can equip for magic builds.
You can equip two setups at any given time, so I juggled a typical melee build with an axe in one hand and a shield in the other while my second was often a bow. Weapons and armor all have their own rarity, with Unique items giving special buffs such as increased movement speeds or reduced status afflictions. The idea of new (better) loot was always motivating for me, and I enjoyed experimenting with new weapons in the latter half of the game. I don’t like sitting and staring at menus to compare item stats, and thankfully, the game UI is easy to understand, which makes it pretty simple to see what you need quickly.
The other part of the gameplay is the movement. Unlike the typical fantasy first-person RPG, Avowed has parkour, and it’s a great way to get around. The game’s increased movement and mantling not only made it fun to traverse the map but also encouraged me to go off the beaten path in search of secrets to find. To that end, Avowed can get a bit overzealous with its loot. Every chest or bag you can loot gives off a shimmering sound that can be heard as you approach it. While this was cool at the start, I did find it a little excessive just how much stuff littered the map.
To make matters less interesting, stealing isn’t really a thing here. In my entire playthrough of the game, I believe there were only ever two or three instances of NPCs reacting to me stealing. One of those moments was a comment made by a person standing next to me as I ransacked her bag, and there was no other repercussion to me taking everything she had. I wanted to play through the game in character as the Envoy to the Emperor, and any restriction on looting everything in sight was entirely self-inflicted. There’s really no consequence at all here. Which consequently doesn’t incentivize the use of stealth and removes any suspense from thievery.
Let’s return briefly to the topic of menus. Along with customizing your build, sorting through equippables and consumables, and tracking quests, there is also levelling. As you level up in the game, you will get points to upgrade character stats and unlock new abilities in an easy-to-understand skill tree. These led to some interesting powers and upgrades that I did like playing around with. Avowed is also a party-based RPG, and while that doesn’t mean you have to organize your cohorts’ inventories, you can still unlock new abilities for them as well. They can use their abilities on their own, but you can also command specific moves through a radial wheel by pressing RB.
Speaking of parties, as you progress through the game, you will make a few friends who decide to join you on your journey. You can bring up to two of them on the adventure with you while the rest wait out at camp, which you can visit at night by interacting with Adra stones. As a side point, if you’re also new to the world of Eora like me, the game does have a handy lore keeping feature where significant words (such as names or places) will be highlighted in dialogue and pressing X on the controller will give a short summary of that word to get you up to speed. The game can feel like it’s info dumping on you at times, but this is a great feature to help you keep track of it all.
Alright, now let’s return to that starting area one final time. Along with getting a taste of the visuals, the gameplay, and character progression, you also get an idea of the narrative you’re in for. Although brief, the game throws a sort of moral conundrum at you right away to gauge the sort of decisions you might make later on. (Granted on a much larger scale.) While it is fair to say that there are consequences for your actions in the game, I don’t (personally) feel that Avowed empowered me to fill in the blanks for my Envoy. I mean, yes, you do get to choose your own background, and that does give you unique dialogue options, but by and large, you’re witnessing the Envoy’s journey unfold, occasionally nudging it in one direction or another, not moulding them through consistent actions. That’s not an outright negative, by the way, but something you should keep in mind when heading in.
Now it’s time to talk about the narrative. I already briefly explained the story of Avowed, and I won’t go into any major spoilers, but I wanted to establish the other major points I had before talking about my biggest gripe with the game. Something that I feel really impeded its impact for me. As soon as you touch down in the Living Lands, you hear a voice in your head. This voice comes back often throughout your journey, reacting to dialogues or events. I found these moments to be narrative speedbumps in my playthrough for two reasons. For one, the voice speaks in riddles, and by the end of the game, it was a bit tiring to hear random Gollum-esque mutterings sporadically whispered into my ear. The other is that the game cuts to a close-up shot of your Envoy with a filter on top to emphasize that it’s all in your head when this voice speaks. But like a poorly edited movie, the shots tend to hold a bit too long, often even after the voice has stopped speaking, and it really kills the pacing.
What sucks about not caring for the voice in your head or the riddles with which they speak is that it’s baked into the package. As you play the game, you will get icons next to companions who have something to say to you. This means you can go to the camp and interact with them to get some input on current events or character backstory. However, after a certain point, every time you leave the camp to continue your adventure, you get a mandatory dream sequence where you talk to the voice about something or another. I don’t know what the significance of these moments is (I don’t think it impacts the ending, for example), but listening to them both speak too much and say too little counterbalances interacting with the companions in a negative way.
There are a few more random points I want to make before wrapping up the review. I’ve talked about visuals, but the audio is also good all around. Barring moments where the music seems to overpower the gameplay (which you can obviously tune to your liking in the settings), there weren’t many issues to report. The score from Venus Theory fits the setting and captures the tone of the world well. Similarly, the game has great voice acting, with special mention given to the companions. Their writing isn’t always great, but their delivery makes the most of it.
The last note has to do with the enemy variety. For a majority of the game, you will be facing off against hordes of bipedal reptiles, gigantic beetles, and determined skeletons. While the combat is so much fun that you won’t mind the repetitiveness, at a certain point (about 20 hours in for me), running past optional enemy encounters will be the better option.
To reiterate, Avowed isn’t a bad game. For me, it’s just not an overly memorable one. Good combat, fun traversal, and gorgeous visuals are too often hampered by performance stutters and immersion-breaking moments that took away too much from the storyline to keep me fully invested. At the start, I mentioned the book I was reading and the feeling of indifference it gave me. The longer Avowed went on, the less I found myself invested and the more I wanted to just get it over with. Instead of convincing myself to play through one more quest, I would set myself a stopping point once a given mission was over. While I know this review might have seemed overly critical, it does represent my experience with the game. I can’t recommend it outright to all RPG fans, but if you have Xbox Game Pass, it’s worth a try. Avowed is available now on Xbox Series X|S and PC.
