Obsidian have always been an interesting developer to me, ever since their breakout success with Fallout: New Vegas they have been hotly anticipated for anything they release, and to some them may feel like Bethesda-lite. Well the comparisons unfortunately aren’t going away anytime soon with their latest release, Avowed, a first-person fantasy RPG that many will no doubt compare to the Elder Scrolls series, as unfair as that may be. How does it match up and is it a worthwhile title on its own? Let’s delve in and find out.
The story of Avowed see you playing as an Envoy to a great empire who has travelled to an island known as the ‘Living Lands’ to investigate a mysterious force known as the ‘Dreamscourge’, a soul plague that turns people into mindless spore-infested zombies. From there, you are embroiled in metaphysical discussions, political situations and generally a whole lot of fighting things to find the source of this plague and stop it before it makes its way to your empire. While the story starts off simple it quickly starts spiralling into a complicated and lore-deep adventure that, even for someone like me who never played any of the Pillars of Eternity games which share this game’s lore and world, I could understand and enjoy for what it had to offer. Unlike other open-world RPG’s however you kind of have to stay with this story and most of the side quests and additional tasks you can do almost always directly tie into the main plot, meaning you don’t get a lot of chance to roleplay outside of your already assigned backstory and duty, though I did enjoy that several side-activities had effects on the actual main quest, such as doing a certain quest meaning that a city fight had much less enemies to deal with because of my actions. I don’t know if I would say the story is for everyone, as it’s very clear that the game wants you to go in a specific direction, but for what it was I enjoyed my time experiencing this world and I’d be interested to learn more about its lore in the future.
Presentation-wise this game is gorgeous from a pure art-direction focus. It’s very much a game that focuses on the themes of nature, bright colours and an almost dream-like aesthetic with so many colours and palettes that it is a visual delight. I liked how there was very little to no grey or washed out areas and you really felt as though you were visiting a location that was untamed or in tune with nature, a druid’s paradise. I also loved the lighting and how it helped to emphasise the brightness of these locations, I didn’t feel as though anything was too dark or didn’t stand out enough which is great for a game that focuses on a variety of colours. I also am happy to report that it played very smoothly, with my FPS keeping stable throughout the experience and while I did encounter the odd crash it didn’t feel impactful enough to say was an issue, meaning this game achieves the rare distinction of a Triple A release of not being broken and patched later, which is sadly a more common occurrence as time goes on. One way the game did fall a bit flat on though was in music as these types of games typically have great soundtracks but I can’t remember a single piece of music from my entire playthrough. Voice acting was great and I enjoy almost all the performances, but in terms of sweeping and epic fantasy pieces, there just wasn’t anything I really felt was noteworthy.
Gameplay is where I had some of my most enjoyable experiences with the game, specifically with the combat. As it is a first person fantasy RPG you can expect the usual stuff of engaging in conversations, learning more about the world, exploring, getting into combat, upgrading your equipment and selling and buying things. Combat and movement in particular felt great, as there was a much larger emphasis of moving around the environment, climbing onto things and finding secrets through combing through the environment, I particularly liked how secrets had an audible sound to them, encouraging you to look around for them. Combat consists of the usual swords, bows and magic but also had guns, wands and other godlike abilities to make it more interesting. I actually started out as a magic user, but respecced into a warrior shortly into the game and played like that for the rest of the experience. Enemies have a ‘stun’ meter that fills over time when they are hit, and when full it allowed you to do a critical blow on them, usually killing them. Each melee hit felt impactful, magic was beautiful and very strong when correctly utilised, and while I didn’t use stealth on my build it certainly was a viable playstyle. The game actually felt a lore more like an MMO rather than something like Skyrim, with enemy red areas of death for special attacks, roles, taunts and other such things, with each area of the world feeling like an instanced and level restricted part of an MMO rather than a large-sweeping landscape that you could explore all of from the get-go. That will certain colour other people’s judgements if they came in expecting something like that, but for a lover of both genres this was fine to me. I did feel as though some of my dialogue and quest choices didn’t end up doing much, I still ended up in a lot of combat, but it didn’t feel particularly uninteractive or anything, just something that could have been better implemented. Overall, I think this might be some of my favourite combat in a game of this genre, with this system implemented into a more impactful and open world it could end up being something truly special.
Now onto the bad points, and there are a few. The main issue I faced, and again this is sadly a comparison to other games in the genre when it clearly wants to be its own thing, is that I didn’t feel as though the world was something I could truly interact with. You can’t really commit crimes or attack people outside of quests, enemies felt level-scaled and non-interactive, cities and towns felt more like glorified vendor and quest dumps without much in the way of culture and interaction, and even some of the bigger choices I made in the main story didn’t end up changing much in the world. As mentioned before, it felt like an MMO world with not much changing and your impact on the world being very minimal, almost like they wanted to keep the world static so that it didn’t conflict with other players, but it’s only you experiencing this. As an example, I could see myself living, breathing and walking around in the world of Cyrodill and could imagine myself as a regular person there, I could even roleplay as such, but here the world feels more like a backdrop for me to do quests rather than a living, breathing world. It’s clearly not what the game is going for, but in that case I feel as though it could have gone for a more linear-style of gameplay to emphasise this and streamline it into a better experience. I also found the story to be a bit forced, requiring you to do certain things or act in certain ways even if you want to roleplay in different scenarios. There were certainly certain parts of the game where I had to make difficult choices, and they were indeed well implemented, but I felt as though there could have been other solutions that could allow me to express my unique skillset. Finally, while I did enjoy some of the companions you picked up along the way they didn’t quite grip me in the way other games have. It goes for a very Mass Effect feel to how you interact with companions at camps and such, but I just didn’t find the majority of them too interesting. This also extends to a lot of the NPC’s which felt more like quest-givers rather than anything you would remember.
In conclusion then, while I did enjoy my time with the game and feel as though the team really hit onto something interesting here, I don’t think I will be returning to the game anytime soon. There just isn’t a gripping enough world here for me to feel fully invested, and for a game like this that is truly a shame. It’s clear that a lot of love and effort went into this experience, and I really appreciated what they built here, but at the end of the day there’s a reason why games like the Elder Scrolls continue to have impacts on games and culture well past their initial release, and I just don’t think this game has that spark. Is it unfair to compare it to those titles? Perhaps, but it’s going to be done regardless at the end of the day, and I feel as though the main things it did better were visuals, stability and combat, but those things do not make it a superior title. I’d be interested to see another entry in this series taking another stab at a game in this genre with a bigger emphasis on world interaction, or even double down what they currently have and just go full MMO, but at current what we have is a weird hybrid that was an enjoyable experience, but probably not one I will end up returning to for some time. Keep at it though Obsidian, you’re on the right track!