Avowed

From the acclaimed developers at Obsidian Entertainment (Fallout: New Vegas, The Outer Worlds), Avowed presents itself as a promising first-person RPG set in a vivid fantasy world known as the Living Lands. The game boasts impressive visuals, with rich textures and fluid animations that reflect current-generation capabilities. Initially, the world-building is engaging, with interesting lore and a solid pace during the first quarter. Unfortunately, that momentum doesn't last.

Gameplay is where Avowed shines. Combat is fast, fluid, and varied, giving players plenty of freedom and avoiding the usual pitfalls of stat-heavy RPG mechanics. The progression system feels balanced, letting your weapons and skills grow naturally as you advance. That said, this strength becomes a weakness later on: weapon upgrades become almost mandatory to proceed, and the dependence on gear progression begins to overshadow skill.

The experience starts to unravel in other areas. Conversations with NPCs begin promisingly but devolve into repetitive and shallow exchanges. Many characters feel lifeless - more like set pieces than personalities - which hurts immersion. Enemy encounters suffer a similar fate. Initially diverse, foes later become repetitive, and the challenge turns into a numbers game, with difficulty ramping up through sheer quantity rather than thoughtful design.

Narratively, the game struggles. While side quests and lore exploration help elevate a weak premise, the central plot involving gods and an internal entity becomes muddled halfway through. Too many concepts are poorly explained, and by the time the finale arrives, it's underwhelming and anticlimactic - a missed opportunity for a story that had potential.

Overall, Avowed delivers exciting gameplay mechanics in a beautifully crafted world. But for a title with such high narrative ambitions, its weak story, forgettable characters, and uneven pacing ultimately hold it back. Still, it's worth trying if you're looking for a fresh combat experience in an RPG setting.

Rating: 7.5/10.

Going into Avowed, I had very low to no expectations. In fact, I didn't even know Obsidian Entertainment (one of my favorite devs behind the amazing Fallout: New Vegas) made this game until a few weeks before its release. In truth, I played this game for no more reason than it was available on GamePass.

With that being said, there are absolutely worse games to play, and because I didn't pay $70+ for it, it just makes things all the sweeter.

The game takes place in the fantasy world of Eora. You play as a "Godlike," people born with the touch of one of the gods in this world. Your quest is to bring an end to the plague that curses the Living Lands. Along the way, you will make friends and foes as you, the player, make choices that will shape the fate of the Living Lands, for better or worse.

Great synopsis, right? Sounds like an exciting time. Well, I'd say hang your expectations because this game isn't all that great.

While Avowed offers a lot of fun in its gameplay and exploration, it has issues and is not as interesting as it may seem.

The story is playable and offers choices that one would expect from an Obsidian title, but the game's events aren't all that exciting, or at least the world doesn't quite make you believe this. Case in point: during some high-stakes events, NPCs don't react properly or at all. During the climax of the storyline of Galawain's Tusks (the homeland of the Dwarves), NPCs just stand around talking of mundane things like it's just another day while quite literally their homeland is potentially coming to an end.

That's what hurts this game a lot. The NPCs in this game don't do anything; they just stand around "looking" like they're busy, but in reality, they don't move or walk or provide any feeling of life in the city you are exploring. Sure, there are plenty of NPCs to talk to as they provide, albeit interesting quests, but it would help with immersion if these characters had any sort of routine of their own. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and NPCs in Oblivion had these things, and those two games are vastly older.

The writing is fine enough; it manages to keep your interest when conversing with companions. Unfortunately, though, the four companions you make throughout the game aren't all that interesting either. My favorite companion was Kai, and that was just because of how much I liked the voice actor, Brandon Keener. He played Garrus Vakarian in the Mass Effect trilogy, if anyone is curious.

So why play this game if it's so average? Well, quite honestly, because I had fun. Right out the gate, the game brought me back to my childhood days of playing The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. The exploration and combat made me feel that nostalgia. Plus, the weapon combinations Avowed has to offer are quite stunning. I couldn't decide how I wanted to play: a dual-wielding swordsman, a warrior mage, or a bowman, or perhaps sword and pistol, or dual-wielding pistols. The possibilities are almost endless, and every combination was satisfying and unique, and the game naturally encourages experimentation as it doesn't limit you to any class or sets of skills.

Finally, I will say this game is way more stable than anything Bethesda has released in recent years. In my 70+ hour playthrough, I encountered all of two, maybe three, hard crashes and almost zero bugs and glitches. However, I encountered plenty of framerate drops and stutters. I saw these things both while playing on my Xbox Series X and PC.

Overall, while Avowed does offer plenty of fun, the story, uninteresting NPCs, and companions dull this game down. Nonetheless, Obsidian has made another worthwhile game, and perhaps with stronger writing and better development, this could be a potential franchise for them.

Final Score: 6/10.

The game is technically and mechanically good, it plays well and it does not have irritating mechanics like stamina loss while exploring or weapon decay that makes them need repair.

... but the writing, oh god the writing and storytelling!

The absurd amount of made up words that we have to memorize to just keep track of what's being talked about is appalling!

Then sometimes different words spoken by different people have the same meaning and we are supposed to keep track of all this convoluted internal structure just because a character one time said that word.

The amount of interruption in the game just to spit a meaningless dialogue in our face is also absurd. After a few hours I just stopped even reading and skipped everything because it was just time lost, it amounted to nothing.

Mind you, I have the suspicion that all the interactions with "the voice" will decide the ending of the game, but they irritated me so much that at this point I'm more eager to get it over with than to care for how the game end.

EDIT: After finishing the game I have to say the writing is even worse than I thought just because it has no actual influence on what happens, it's literally hours of mindnumbing armchair psychology that does nothing but change the slideshow at the game's epilogue.

There are 5 or 6 choices that have minor gameplay consequences, the rest of the dialogue can be skipped and the player would see no difference.

As a big fan of RPGs such as Fable and Dragon Age Origins, this game came out of nowhere as a very pleasant surprise.

• Beautiful atmospheric world.

• So much fun to discover.

• Good gameplay with a lot of variety in weapons and abilities.

• Swap between 1st and 3rd perspective with the push of a button.

• Intriguing story with interesting characters.

• Lots of freedom in choices with dialogues and events.

• Atmospheric music and very good audio.

Especially the combat is one of the best I've encountered in a RPG. Speaking about the 1st person pov. But game is also very playable in 3rd person. I loved switching between pov on certain locations and situations.

Tried it on Gamepass and after a few hours I bought the premium edition by my local store.

Truly one of my favourite new game since Lies of P.

Fun game, some weird decisions.

Finaly finished Avowed, the game is definitely fun to play, some RPG mechanics are quite basic but the punchy and varied combat makes up for it for the most part. If you feel the combat is getting boring, switch up your load outs and re-spec and it changes enough that it rarely gets boring (at least so far).

The story is okay, nothing ground breaking but overall good enough to keep you engaged and you decisions throughout the game have an impact on the ending.

The companions are a bit on the boring side unfortunately, most are one dimensiona and annoying, it feels like their opinions change so that some always agree with your decisions and others disagree. Only 2 of the 4 have companion quests for some reason and even these are not really fleshed out. They might have kept the companions down to 2 instead of 4 and made them more interesting and complex.

The writing is okay for the most part as is the acting, but some dialogue is cringe and takes you out of it by being to "21st century" and too grounded on our reality for the setting (you will se what i mean as you play it).

Another small critique i have is that like 95% of all characters with any power (captains, leaders etc.) are women, I'm not exaggerating here, I thought it was just the first zone or something but the more I played the more i noticed this. While there is nothing inherently wrong with that, this paired with poor writing for these female characters (they all have basically the same personality, abrasive, arogant, short tempered and aggressive) makes it stick out like a sore thumb.

Another thing that I found a bit disappointing is that you cannot harm NPCs, I noticed this in the first few hours but it only really bothered me when, after helping an NPC with a fetch quest, he does something completely evil killing another NPC. The scene just ends with you and your companions commenting that he just killed the guy and no dialogue option pops up so you can kill this evil NPC. I just stood there hitting the NPC with my sword as nothing happened.

These things however did not detract from my overall enjoyment of the game and after a while I just started finding it funny if somewhat frustrating too.

One of the best things about Avowed is the exploration, firstly because you are always rewarded for exploring with useful loot or surprise boss fights. If what you are exploring is tied to a quest you haven't started, it will automatically pop up notifying you you completed a step for a quest and the quest will become available in your journal. This is a great quality of life decision from the developers. Another great thing about exploration is that you can go almost anywhere without need to "come back later" with a specific item or something (as long as you stock up on lock picks) so if you come across a cave or building that seems inaccessible, just keep exploring and you will find a way in. So far i have almost never needed to back track to a previously explored area unless I ran out of lock pics (I started buying them everywhere after that and never had this issue again) or a chest was hidden behind an ilusion that one of your companions can dispel but was not with me. Exploring is fun, rewarding and the parcour mechanics offer mostly fun vertically to the exploration (some exceptions here and there were it feels like you are floating and just fall, sometimes to you death, because the ledge/rock you are climbing on is not climbable).

To summarise.

Pros: Fun combat Great exploration Vibrant world Good visuals Okay story

Cons: Boring and annoying companions; Bad dialogue writing; Simplistic RPG mechanics.

7.5/10.