Off the Shelf Media

Set in the expansive and lore-rich world of Eora, Avowed emerges as Obsidian Entertainment’s latest ambitious RPG. Featuring a combo of intricate storytelling, immersive combat, and gameplay where your choices impact the story, this game aims to compete with the many other juggernaut RPG’s that have launched in the past few decades. Its ambition gets the best of it, however, as it tries to do many things other titles have done and fails to meet the mark in many ways, particularly at a $70 price tag. 

Gameplay: 1

Let’s start with a positive. I believe that the combat is the best part of this game and where you really find the most fun. There are so many different weapon and perk combinations that you can get really creative. For my run, I was using rifles for long range and a backup sword and shield for close range. I combined this with perks that would root enemies to the ground and allow me to pick them off one by one, while dodging around other enemies and parkouring around obstacles. 

There is also a lot of interesting builds using the magic elements of this game, with basic spells ranging up to larger more devastating attacks. The close combat is fun too but a bit stale. Honestly, I rarely used it because the ranged and magic attacks were so much more interesting. 

A major part of the core gameplay is your companions, who accompany you from exploring dungeons to the more intense main story quests. They also have their own personal side quests. Their use in combat is similar to other Obsidian titles. It does feel a bit rehashed but still is satisfying to use. There is the pretty cookie-cutter Tank, Healer and Damage Per Second (DPS) options for you to bring along with you on your adventure. The best combo will typically depend on your personal build. 

For example, I mainly used a ranged weapon like a rifle, so I brought a tank and a healer with me to help even out my party. I never felt the urge to bring any of the other companions once I locked in on this style as it felt sub-optimal and there isn’t really a great reward for doing it. The companions’ reactions to key dialogue in quests can be interesting, and they can even leave your party altogether if you make decisions that go against their values. It feels very much like every other Obsidian title’s companion system. If you have played any of their other franchises, it’s pretty standard. 

One thing I love about this game is the flexibility in your play style. Every time you level up, there are two skill trees to choose from. One is related to your core “Abilities” such as dexterity and might and the other is related to perks or passive abilities. The core attributes give very minimal buffs but are more useful for the dialogue options, especially at higher levels. The perks are split into three major groups: Fighter, Ranger, and Wizard. There is a fourth one of Godlike that is unlocked through the main story progression, but overall underwhelming and worthless. 

There is the obvious ability to focus on one and be a close-range or long-range fighter, or a magic user. The game also encourages you to have two load-outs so you can mix and match as well, maybe using a rifle for long-range and switching to a sword and shield for close-range encounters. 

When you spend these points to get abilities, you can see how you like them and how they affect your gameplay. If you don’t like it, you can pay a small fee of in-game gold to reset your points and start over. It allows for flexibility and encourages you to try out everything to find what works best, as opposed to having to roll a fresh character. I think this is one of the game’s main plusses. Early on in a game like this one, you want to experiment and see what style you like the most without having to play through a tutorial again hours into the game simply to change to a different style. 

Where this gets a bit trickier is the weapons and armor. Each of the zones you unlock essentially unlocks a new level of weapons. If you are not using at least that level, you will have a lot of trouble in fights. If you decide to switch up and go from using a bow to a sword, you can but will likely have to splurge for a weapon from a vendor or utilize a ton of upgrade materials to it to the necessary level. The issue here is that some of the more advanced upgrading materials are few and far between, and as far as I can tell, may be limited. I would encourage you to really fiddle around in the first zone with your build where the resources are cheap, and try to lock in on your playstyle by the time you enter the next area.

When it comes to upgrading weapons and armor, I must admit, it is a bit confusing at first. Essentially, by exploring, you will find herbs and branches on the ground to collect, plus other rare resources in chests at lootable camps or main story quests. You will always want to chase down every chest you can. You can always hear them with an audio queue so take the time to look around. However, once you have hit your max level of upgrades for a zone and if you don’t want to upgrade any other weapons, it’s not worth the time and becomes more of a chore unless there is a legendary yellow box with a unique piece in it. I would say, for the first half of this game, it was fun and exciting to find a box. Yet, by the latter half, I just felt like it was an unnecessary step that didn’t really give anything rewarding 99% of the time. 

For those who enjoy games like Elder Scrolls or Fallout and the act of finding new points of interest with cool puzzles and storylines, this game certainly has a ton of it. Each unique zone has a good number of dungeons, camps, and side mission areas that are satisfying to explore. The dungeons in particular are unique and have cool story elements to them with interesting puzzles that are fun to work through at times. The biggest issue I took with it was the map was kind of hard to uncover as you can’t fully explore everything, leaving weird areas untouched and unexplored. Outside of the dungeons, most of the other areas are just standard camps of enemies with a chest with no good loot in it. 

Overall, the core gameplay is solid but feels like a shell of many other better games and is not able to carry the game through the many issues with other elements that I will cover below. 

Story: 1

Full disclosure, I did not finish the main story of the game. The main reason is the story itself. There are so many fun parts of this game, but the story just seems to drag it to a halt every time you get on a roll. It is so slow, tedious and drawn out and the dialogue is so boring at times that it just took me out of the world and forced me to skip through dialogue to get back to the actual game. 

This game feels like it has the most dialogue of any game I have ever played and that is a plus and a minus. It is set in the world of the Pillars Of Eternity, which has deep lore and lots of rich storytelling. During some of the missions, it can be fascinating when you are learning how your character is Godlike and was hand-chosen by an unknown deity and cursed with a (customizable) face deformity that impacted how they were treated by those around them and continues to be treated by those in the game. You are the envoy for an emperor going to a foreign land where there are warring factions such as the Steel Garrote and local militias trying to fight over their tyrannical rule. You can side with different people, which impacts the overall story greatly and lends itself to replayability to see all of the potential outcomes. 

One thing I have not personally seen in other games was an interactive dialogue box that allowed you to get more information on a person, place, or thing that was mentioned. Sometimes, NPC’s might bring up something you have not heard of, and you can pause to see exactly what that is and get more detail. This is great at first, but to be honest, there is so much filler dialogue thrown in here that eventually I stopped caring. 

This was the biggest issue I have with the storytelling in this game. There is WAY too much of it. Sure, for a main quest, you may be interested in a deep lore dump that gets into the nitty-gritty of the political intrigue and history of the area of the world you are in. However, they go into this level of detail for every small fetch quest and side objective in the game. I got to the point where I would just skip most of the dialogue to continue on to the fighting or exploring. If you are someone who loves deep games, or is a big Pillars of Eternity fan, you will probably love this. For the average gamer picking up this game for the first time, however, it can be a bit of a buzzkill and seems to tarnish the fun of the exciting combat with deep expositions about stuff I didn’t really feel connected to. 

Atmosphere: 1

The atmosphere of the game is overall decent. It is a deep world where each zone you go to feels very different and it reflects in the people and places you see. The issue is that for every picturesque landscape you stumble upon that has you wowed, you will see just as many NPC’s lifelessly standing still in a city and not moving around at all. Not to mention the graphical bugs and water physics and graphics that are worse than games that came out 10 to 15 years ago. 

That said, some of the imagery and larger scale visuals you will find are breathtaking at times and really do immerse you into this world and make you feel connected to all of the craziness impacting this foreign land you are exploring. I don’t have a ton of feelings on this other than it has its moments that wow you and it has its moments that feel like you are gaming in 2010. 

Value: 0

There is a very short list of video games that are worth more than $60 let alone $70, which is where this game is priced at launch. I was fortunate that it came out on day one on Xbox Game Pass, so I was able to play it without committing that much money to one game in particular. While I did have fun playing this game, I would say it is nowhere near worth that price tag. Honestly, I would probably struggle to say it’s worth more than $20-$30. 

I mentioned the graphical and water issues above but this is a key point of my feelings on the value. In the modern world of gaming, there are so many studios putting out games for $10-$20 that have nowhere near the amount of bugs this game showed me in my time with textures and other artwork not loading properly. The water graphics and physics are so ancient that it actually stopped me in my tracks the first time I saw them. I am not of the opinion that every high-value game needs good graphics, but it feels so out of place with a lot of the other artwork in the game. If you want to charge $70 for a game, I am expecting AAA level of detail, and that includes not feeling like I stepped into a time machine every time I walk by a river. 

Duration: 1

While I disagree with the price tag, I will say you do get a lot of game for what you are buying. There are tons of side quests and the exploration is very satisfying. You can spend hours just running around and not even get deep into the main story as you explore at your leisure. Most publications have the main story at somewhere between 20-30 hours, but there is so much side content and little nooks and crannies to find that it can definitely explode far beyond that. 

Pair that with the unique selections you make impacting the game’s story and character arcs, and there is a ton of replayability for those who enjoy going back to the beginning. You can choose to side with the empire you start with, or the people of the world you are exploring, and all sorts of hybrid approaches in between. If this game is for you, you can easily put a hundred-plus hours into it

Total Score: 4/10 

Despite this overall rating, I really did enjoy parts of this game. There were times when exploring caves and Xaurip camps had me feel like I found the new age Skyrim that was going to hook me back into dungeon crawling, or where a companion side quest had me thinking of the best parts of the Mass Effect series. 

The issue is that this game does a lot of things – ok. It takes a lot of elements from other successful franchises and does them but doesn’t really add anything new or exciting. It’s a cross between Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Elder Scrolls, Pillar of Eternities, and probably a dozen other games. While I know games often take inspiration from each other, it just feels like a jumbled-together game that, while fun to play at times, is trying to re-hash an old formula in a hollow world that doesn’t pull you in. It’s hard to say if this is just my opinion, and that others who enjoy certain elements like deep and lengthy storytelling would disagree. 

One of the largest issues is the price tag. If this was a $20 game, I would think it was a good effort and well worth that price to try it out and see if it captures you, but when you put out a game that is more than triple the cost of many incredible titles, you really need to raise the bar, and Avowed feels like a cobbled together fan project that released decades ago.