Avowed review: Obsidian’s latest RPG is its best

About ten hours into Avowed, I was eager to leave Dawnshore, the fantasy RPG’s first area. I wanted to discover what nail-biting choices, legendary weapons, and wonderfully designed place were coming next. Before I could do that, I had to deal with a major consequence of my actions: The first NPC I met in Avowed was killed.

Obsidian Entertainment’s latest begins with a shipwreck. Players wash ashore on an island just outside of The Living Lands, and a furry blue Orlan named Garryck helps players gain their bearings and get off the island. He wasn’t a permanent party member but served as my gateway into Avowed‘s dialogue system and setting at large. We parted ways after I got to Dawnshore, and I only occasionally spoke to him when I saw him in the city of Paradis.

Eventually, I pissed off a rebel organization by getting their leader to surrender themselves to the inquisitor zealots of the Steel Garrote, who executed him. In response, those rebels killed Garryck and hung his body near the exit of Dawnshore, a place I knew I had to walk. I genuinely felt sad and reflected on how I got to this point, which can only be achieved through good writing, a choice-driven dialogue system that doesn’t function on binary good and evil choices.

With Avowed, Obsidian Entertainment once again flaunts its writing chops with a fantasy story that is contemporary in its themes and combat that feels better than most other first-person western RPGs. Whether you’ve experienced a Pillars of Eternity game before or not, this is a must-play.

Relevant Fantasy

Avowed is set in the world of Eora, which Obsidian created for its Pillars of Eternity games. While those previous titles were CRPGs like Baldur’s Gate 3, Avowed is a first-and-third person RPG more comparable to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. You do not need to play the Pillars of Eternity games to enjoy Avowed, as it’s an well-written fantasy adventure all on its own. If you do feel lost in the lore at any point during a conversation, it’s also possible to pull up a glossary at any time during dialogue to look at the definitions of Eora-specific jargon.

In Avowed, players control the Envoy, a human from the Aedyran Empire. They are also a Godlike, a being blessed with the powers of a God, though the Envoy doesn’t know which exact deity imprinted on them. The Envoy is sent to The Living Lands by the Aedyran Emperor to investigate the Dreamscourge, a plague that corrupts the minds of the people and animals of that continent, which is populated by people who were trying to escape the thrall of the law-and-order driven empires that dominate Eora.

Once the Envoy arrives, things quickly escalate as the fanatical, Aedyran-backed Steel Garrote starts exerting their power more prominently, The Dreamscourge spreads to all parts of The Living Lands, and the Envoy begins conversing with a mysterious being whose voice echoes in their head. It’s a captivating premise all around, with lots of attention paid to every piece of dialogue, from the most obvious missions to the smaller sidequests.

At large, Avowed is a story about Imperialism, how it gets intertwined with religious fanaticism, and how a pandemic can serve as a powder keg for explosive political fallout. If you’ve followed what has been happening in the United States over the past several years, you’ll understand that Avowed‘s story is more relevant now than ever. Art does not exist in a vacuum; best fantasy stories address contemporary real-world issues.

Avowed deftly handles those topics throughout its main narrative, even as it lets players shape exactly what happens through dialogue choices. By the end of my adventure, I truly came to care about The Living Lands and all the people inhabiting it. I was moved when Garryck died and deeply considered the consequences of every important choice I had to make. In turn, this got me thinking about my stance on real-world issues, activating my mind in a way only great art can.

Avowed’s narrative doesn’t just deliver thematically; the moment-to-moment dialogue, character development, and frequent choices with consequences do too. Avowed doesn’t have binary good and bad denotations for each dialogue choice. My Envoy’s background and skill point distribution sometimes unlocked new dialogue options, but these weren’t always the “best” ones for the situation.

Inaction has major consequences at some points, so I always felt compelled to explore every nook and cranny of each new area of The Living Lands. Thankfully, it’s populated by a wide variety of memorable characters, including the ones in the Envoy’s party. There’s Kai, a snarky former Auamuan soldier backed up by a fantastic performance by Brandon Keener, the voice behind Garrus Vakarian’. The second companion is Marius, a gruff dwarf who is excellent at tracking things but struggles to maintain personal connections.

Next comes Giatta, a headstrong human animancer (mage) with a troubled past who sets out with the Envoy after being banished from her hometown. Finally, players recruit Yatzi, a spunky Orlan animancer who’s not afraid to flirt and is deeply knowledgeable about the history of The Living Lands. It’s the best set of companions I’ve traveled with in an RPG since Baldur’s Gate 3, and by the end of the adventure, you’ll come to care for them very deeply.

Obsidian has time and again proven itself as a premier RPG developer, and Avowed shows that the writing players a significant part in upholding that reputation. Few developers can get me to care about a motley crew of ragtag companions like Obsidian, and even as some not deeply familiar with Eora’s lore, I had no problem getting swept up in Avowed’s contemporary yet fantastical story that put the fate of The Living Lands in my hands.

The best combat in an Obsidian game

Where Obsidian’s RPGs can be more hit-or-miss is in the gameplay. The combat in games like Fallout: New Vegas or Alpha Protocol pales next to writing and narrative. Although the combat isn’t quite as fluid as something like Dragon Age: The Veilguard, this is certainly the best first-person RPG gameplay Obsidian has delivered yet.

The simplest way to describe Avowed is that this is how you remember Skyrim playing. In reality, Bethesda Game Studios’ RPG classic has pretty stiff combat. It’s based around managing stamina, blocking, and healing while hacking and slashing at enemies with a wide variety of weapons. Avowed refines that further, giving each individual hit more impact and having the more fluid feel of an action game.

Managing stamina during combat is important, as it’s used for physical attacks and to block. Typically, players want to attack enemies enough to stagger them so they can then perform a more powerful finishing move that deals massive damage. Avowed offers a wide variety of combat styles for players to choose from, including your standard swords and axes, as well as guns that fire slowly but pack a bunch.

By the end, I was mainly using a sword and shield and an arquebus gun to rip and tear through anything or anyone who got in my way. Throughout the adventure, I obtained plenty of Legendary weapons, each of which came with unique abilities, like a sword called Last Light of Day that deals bonus fire damage with every hit and heals me with every kill. To stay on par with the enemies I was finding, I also had to constantly upgrade the quality of my weapons with crafting materials or purchase new weapons and armor with gold. Those resources aren’t overflowing in Avowed, though. Typically, I find that frustrating in RPGs, but here, I appreciated how it encouraged thorough exploration of each area of The Living Lands.

The beautiful Living Lands

The Living Lands is a place I wanted to explore thoroughly thanks to Avowed’s fantastic art direction. The scenic environments look gorgeous thanks to Unreal Engine 5, as the game retains the vibrancy Eora had from an isometric perspective, even though players are now experiencing the world from a new view. Avowed embraces color without going fully cartoonish, and each of The Living Lands areas has a distinct vibe of its own.

Most of the adventure takes place across four large zones. My favorite is The Emerald Stair, which is full of purple hues and corrupted swamps. A giant ornate city in the center of everything. That made sense as this area of The Living Lands was hit hard with plague and famine, yet those in charge there didn’t want to do much about it. Each zone of The Living Lands is essentially a mini open-world full of quests to complete, bosses and caves to explore, and loot to find.

Avowed finds a middle ground between Skyrim and The Outer Worlds in its structure. My first playthrough took me around 35 hours to complete, and unlike some other RPGs, none of that time felt like fluff or filler. I can’t wait to do more playthroughs where I can make different choices and mess around with the vast magic system of Avowed that I haven’t spent much time with yet.

This is certainly the best-looking first-person RPG Obsidian has made, but it isn’t without some warts. The facial animation is particularly uncanny, with a lot of odd mouth movements that are intentionally unsettling if you look at too closely. On performance mode, the frame rate often dips during conversations, as animations play at a significantly slower frame rate.

Some of the more visually demanding late-game areas also tanked the frame rate on Xbox Series X. Avowed isn’t nearly as glitchy as games like Fallout: New Vegas, thankfully, but polish is still the lone sore spot in an otherwise amazing package. Hopefully, these issues are smoothened over time, but they aren’t enough of a deterrent to make me not want to recommend Avowed.

Another fantastic RPG

The best RPGs push back at the player, challenging them to make difficult choices in dialogue and combat to succeed and craft an adventure that feels personal. From Metaphor: ReFantazio to Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, there has been no shortage of amazing RPGs lately that do just this. Avowed is another to add to that pile. It uses its fantasy setting to tell a story that feels relevant to our modern times and delivers entertaining action combat without abandoning the RPG nitty-gritty systems that draw people to RPGs.

I’ve always deeply appreciated Obsidian’s work in this space, so I’m happy to see them confidently succeed in an area where their peers at Bethesda Game Studios and Bioware have recently stumbled. Obsidian continues to embrace what makes its games great — industry-leading dialogue that makes you deeply care for its worlds and characters — while actively working to improve upon historical weak points for their games, like combat.

Avowed is the best RPG I’ve played since Baldur’s Gate 3 and could become my favorite Obsidian game in time. If RPGs like Skyrim have tickled your fancy in the past, I highly recommend you check out Avowed as soon as possible. Just make better choices than me if you want Garryck to live, though.

Avowed was reviewed on Xbox Series X with a code provided by the publisher.