Stepping onto the docks of Dawnshore I was instantly met with scorn and disgust by its citizens, with an alien world awaiting me just outside its palisades. Welcome back, Morrowind.
Playing roughly four hours of Obsidian Entertainment’s Avowed, I couldn’t shake the way the game continuously reminded me of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind — a downright bizarre world to explore, filled with fascinating sights, weirdo characters, and yes a little bit of jank. Between Baldur’s Gate 3 and Dragon Age: The Veilguard, fantasy RPGs feel like they're in the middle of a renaissance, and I’m pretty sure Avowed is the next step of that.
Our Avowed demo was split into two halves, one where we played through the lengthy, and mostly, linear prologue — and another where the game’s world became fully explorable after reaching the first open area, Dawnshore.
Avowed is a spinoff of Obsidian’s Pillars of Eternity franchise, a pair of computer-RPGs in the spirit of the Baldur’s Gate games. Pillars of Eternity, and its sequel Deadfire, are absolutely rich in lore and storytelling — with complex worlds made up of various nations, peoples, religions, etc. No prior knowledge of Pillars of Eternity is needed for Avowed, but as someone who’s sunk hundreds of hours into those games, I can already tell you that if you go in with that prior experience, you’ll be handsomely rewarded.
Avowed takes place on a huge island called the Living Lands — a location that’s known for its intensely diverse biomes and tropical, almost alien, plants and animals that populate it. You play as as the Envoy, sent to the Living Lands by the Emperor of Aedryn to investigate a “Soul Plague,” that has devastated the island. In the universe of Pillars of Eternity, Souls are vitally important — a kind of energy that binds beings to their bodies.
Unlike Pillars of Eternity, Avowed is a first-person action-RPG in the same vein as Elder Scrolls, where your character can equip every weapon and use every spell, and the way you level up highly affects your build. The prologue takes place after a shipwreck, as you and a survivor try and navigate your way through the hostile wildlife. The whole section works well as a primer to the basic systems and setup of Avowed.
The easiest way I can describe this game is like how The Outer Worlds feels like Obsidian’s original take on the Fallout formula, Avowed inherently feels like its take on The Elder Scrolls. It’s easy to look at Avowed and make that snap judgment, but it goes deeper than just riffing on Bethesda’s formula. Avowed is clearly playing to Obsidian’s strengths — tight writing and plotting, dynamic choices, and complex characters — but filtering all that through the familiar structure of the version of open world game Elder Scrolls popularized.
The most compatible element is the first-person combat, which feels a bit like a mish-mash of Elder Scrolls and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (a seriously underrated gem). Combat feels crunchy and gives you a wide array of options to play around with, especially in how you combo elemental attacks.
Early on I found a build I really like, where my first equipment slot was a massive hammer that could blow back enemies, and my second slot was a combo of a single pistol and a magic tome. Using the tome, I could swap between fire, ice, and lightning spells, and I quickly found a delightfully fun combo of freezing enemies then using my charge ability to shatter them into a million pieces. It never stopped being satisfying. Combat feels crunchy with each blow delivering a satisfying whack or splat, but at the same time, it’s a bit unwieldy, in a way I can’t really put my finger on. The stamina system feels a bit imprecise and the amount of options can be overwhelming — but combat still simply feels good.
Where the game really clicked was when I reached Dawnshore. Minutes after arriving in the town of Paradiso I was badmouthed by its military commander, giving me a satisfying little moment of letting her know I’m actually the Envoy she was just ragging on. Directly after that, I stumbled into a market where a divorced couple had opposing stalls, with each one telling me not to trust the other. Fifteen minutes later, I undertook a quest where a woman had me drive away lizard-like Xaurips from her home — only to find out she’s been keeping a diary obsessing over Xaurips, and how one’s been appearing in her dreams as a Kindred Soul (an in-game soulmate). Each of these delightful events drew me deeper into Avowed’s world.
An interesting extra wrinkle is how people perceive your character as a Godlike — a race of people said to be blessed by the gods. In the character creator, you can choose if your Godlike has physical features of the race, including plant-like growths on your face. Because of the similarity these traits have to the Soul Plage, characters will constantly voice their unease or distrust of you, giving you an extra hurdle you need to grapple with.
Another highlight is the first party member I recruited, a lizard-like man of the Aumaua race named Kai. At various points on the map you can make a party camp to upgrade weapons, cook food, and talk to party members. The conversations I had with Kai already yielded the kind of complexity I crave from these RPGs — talking about his checkered history with the military, how he believes in self-reliance to a fault, and a few hesitantly shared personal details. Kai clearly has a shell you’ll need to break through to earn his trust. The Outer Worlds had phenomenal companions, and I can already see shades of that here.
Obsidian’s games are consistently known for one thing, good writing — and Avowed already has that in droves in just a handful of hours. There’s a real sense of charm and whimsy to the game’s world that has me dying to uncover more, and see how many weirdos populate its cities, jungles, and caves. At the same time, there’s a satisfying amount of exploration packed into the Living Lands, with Dawnshore having plenty of alternative treasures to find and dozens of little notes and books to help flesh out lore and story — something Pillars of Eternity fans will likely eat up.
My time with Avowed wasn’t without its hiccups; I had to play around with the graphical settings and ran into a handful of bugs and moments of slowdown. But there’s undeniable charm seeping into the game — that trademark Obsidian whimsy that makes every one of their games so special. The landscapes impart a sense of wonder and bewilderment that I haven’t felt since stepping onto the shores of Morrowind. For me, that’s more than enough to make me excited.
