By now, you’ve probably heard a good amount about Avowed. Obsidian’s open-world RPG launched to premium edition customers on February 13 before trickling down to the rest of us five days later. And in that time, it’s already being hailed as one of the great RPGs of the decade. Everything from its impactful combat to sharp writing and clever world design have gotten endless — and deserved — praise, but Avowed is also full of tiny details that add up to make it great, even if they don’t sound as exciting.
The first time I booted up Avowed, I was immediately awed by its gorgeous world, and combat that feels better than I thought was possible in a first-person RPG. But it wasn’t long before the game’s most attention-grabbing features started being overshadowed by smaller choices. This first struck me when I walked up to a bush highlighted to indicate that something could be foraged from it. It was Thronfruit, a consumable that restores health and mana, but what stood out were the button prompts. I could jam a handful of the spiky fruit into my pockets, but I also had the option to pluck them off the vine and eat them right there without getting my inventory involved at all.
It’s a detail so minor that it could pass without notice, but at the same time, it’s shocking that this isn’t the standard for similar games by this point. The ability to chow down on consumables without sifting through menus might save you only a second or two each time, but over the course of a dozen hours or more, that’s a lot of time you get to spend actually playing the game rather than flipping through menu tabs to heal up. After that admittedly minor revelation, I couldn’t stop noticing similar decisions that make Avowed a much better experience without really drawing attention to themselves.
Avowed is full of inventory-based innovations. Most equipment in the game comes in one standard flavor — one common pistol is the same as any other — so you don’t have to do any fiddly comparing of almost identical weapons. Stats are limited in number, too, and you’ll see the difference between what you have equipped and a new piece in your inventory just by hovering over it. You also have the option to break unneeded items down right from the menu, which is equally useful and funny to imagine your hero tearing a great axe down into iron ingots with their bare hands. If you have enough materials to upgrade any piece of equipment, an anvil icon will appear next to it in the inventory, further saving you the trouble of checking each piece manually.
The best part of Avowed’s equipment system is that you only have one true piece of armor. Gloves, boots, rings, and other items classified as clothing don’t offer damage reduction at all, instead opting for unique bonuses. These might increase your stats, let you dodge further, or grant you bespoke abilities, making it both easy to decide which suits you best and far more exciting each time you find a new one. Since each of these items is unique, they often come with small stories in their descriptions, explaining that this pair of boots was passed down through generations of adventurers, or these gloves once belonged to a mysterious assassin.
By far the biggest unexpectedly helpful feature comes in Avowed’s dialogue. While it’s not technically a sequel, Avowed is set in the world of Obsidian’s Pillars of Eternity, a series as dense with lore as you’ll find, filled with living gods and intractable political turmoil. As the envoy of the emperor, your character in Avowed is meant to be pretty well acquainted with the world’s history, even if you as the player are not.
Obsidian solves this problem with perhaps the best in-game encyclopedia I’ve ever come across. At any time during dialogue, one button press will pull up a transcript of the entire conversation, plus a glossary of any terms specific to game’s world. It’s yet another way Avowed keeps you focused on the action rather than scrolling through menus, and it helps you roleplay an intelligent, high-ranking official rather than someone who has total amnesia about the world they live in.
Some of these features are certainly not as small as others, but the common thread between them is that they’re far from “back of the box” features but contribute as much to the game as any more attention-grabbing addition. Well-organized menus and more convenient ways to eat fruit aren’t going to sell more copies of Avowed or get players excited to dive in, but they add up to make it a far more satisfying game than it would be without them. Avowed has plenty of more big-picture ideas that make it great, but it’s a mountain of small details that make it the one-of-a-kind experience it is.
