Avowed review — The garden of dreams

The Dreamscourge is ravaging the Living Lands. It’s a disease that takes over the mind and body of the infected, giving them strange thoughts before losing their minds entirely as fungal growths sprout from their skin. You are a trusted advisor to the Emperor of Aedyr, sent to the Living Lands as an envoy. Your task is to find the source of the Dreamscourge and eradicate it, though that’s easier said than done. The Aedyrns have slowly been colonizing the Living Lands, whether the people who were already there like it or not, so they may not be amenable to your help. On top of that, upon arrival on the continent, a mysterious voice begins speaking in your head. Whatever lies in the Living Lands holds the answers to the Dreamscourge, to your Godlike heritage, and the ancient civilization that once inhabited the continent. It’s just a matter of living long enough to find out.

I think most people consider Fallout: New Vegas to be Obsidian’s masterpiece. That’s for good reason, as the game’s story, combat, RPG elements, open world, and roleplaying potential are all a cut above most games to this day. Sadly, the company hasn’t really had the chance to make a similar game since, until Pillars of Eternity and The Outer Worlds. The former allowed them to establish their own fantasy universe with a game in the style of classic CRPGs like Baldur’s Gate. The latter took more of a sci-fi bent, satirizing capitalism in space. The former’s genre might not have wide appeal, but it and its sequel were both great games. The latter disappointed some, but was also enjoyable and a big step forward for the studio.

With this in mind, Avowed feels a lot closer to New Vegas, in both good and bad ways. Its story is gripping, with wonderful characters and conflicts that constantly ask you to roleplay and use your character’s backstory and build outside of combat. It also slowly falls apart on a technical level as you get further into that story. You’ll be enthralled by the philosophical conversation you’re having with a party member, discussing the game’s main themes of nature vs. nurture and a person’s capacity to grow, when you notice that their lips aren’t animating anymore. One line sounds a lot louder than the others, and others are cut off in the middle. But if you can push past the technical issues, and some of the core design issues too unfortunately, you will absolutely love Avowed.

Avowed begins with you, the Aedyran Envoy, being shipwrecked on an island off the coast of the Living Lands. This serves as a tutorial, teaching you about all the different weapon types, spells, and even a bit of stealth. You can make a character who dual wields a sword and spear, rushes into combat with a greatsword,  hangs back slinging spells, arrows, and bullets with a gun and spellbook, or any combination of those options. For the most part, whatever you choose will feel great to use with satisfying animations and feedback for each attack or spell. Sword swings and shield bashes have a nice crunch to them that makes combat feel a lot more visceral, whether you’re on the receiving end or dishing out damage. 

Any of these options can be used to deplete an enemy’s health, but some will also fill their stagger meter below their HP. Once this yellow bar is filled, you can attack once more to deal a decent amount of damage with a bespoke animation. It won’t kill an enemy outright, but it’s free and you’re invincible while doing it. 

I tried a little bit of everything in my playthrough, ending up on a classic sword and shield with an arquebus for ranged attacks from stealth. You might think using a gun for stealth kills is a bad idea, but Avowed really doesn’t want players to become a stealth archer like in Skyrim. For one, bows are absolute garbage with very intense falloff. This might improve later on in the game with certain perks, but the other issue that prevents me from using bows is how enemies become aware of you.

In short, the moment you attack one enemy, the entire group becomes psychically aware of your current location, your social security number, your mother’s maiden name, and those three funky digits on the back of your credit card. The same goes for the dedicated melee stealth kill, though it did let me stay in stealth exactly once. I don’t mind this too much, as the combat is a lot of fun and lets your companions shine, but it makes stealth feel like an afterthought. 

There is one other issue with combat, and it unfortunately permeates the whole game. Enemies and equipment all fall under five tiers of quality. The game wants you to be upgrading your gear, either through literally upgrading your current equipment or buying new ones, but at the same time it seems dead set against your progression. Upgrade materials, especially those for breaking into new tiers, are hard to come by and I never had enough money to purchase new stuff. You can either break down equipment you don’t want for materials or sell it for money, but neither option really helps. Either way, you’re constantly strapped for cash and missing materials. 

The reason this matters is because enemies above your current tier will deal a whole heck of a lot more damage to you while your damage to them is reduced. On top of that, melee attacks a tier below won’t play out their full animations, and instead bounce off. It’s incredibly frustrating, and persists for almost the entire game thanks to the scarcity of materials and money. I genuinely think the game would be better off if this system were removed, since the encounter design will always pit you against enemies a tier above you. 

For the first two areas of the game, I was doing every side quest and bounty mission I could to combat this, but I would still only reach that area’s tier right when I was about to leave. Blasting through the main story to get access to the next zone’s materials and weapons actually makes it easier to progress in general. 

While we’re on the negatives, I did have some control issues that persisted throughout my playthrough. I mostly stuck with mouse and keyboard, but every time I closed and opened the game it would reset all of my custom keybinds. Playing on a controller feels fine in theory, but in both first and third person I found it to feel just a bit unwieldy. The game was probably designed around a controller, but it just feels better with a keyboard and mouse. You also get two more ability shortcuts with that configuration, which means slightly less fooling around in the quick select menu. 

As mentioned before, the game does feel unfinished in some ways on top of the traditional Obsidian jank. I can deal with some glitches or oddities, but you can definitely feel the exact moment they started to run out of money and/or time. Only two of your four companions have companion quests, with just one progressing over the course of the game. The other starts and finishes in the final major area. The two who get left out, both of your lovely ladies, have conflicts introduced in the story and in conversations with them, but are resolved through a single conversation in the final dungeon. As usual, their ambition outstrips reality, but that’s part of why we love Obsidian.

And despite the issues, there is a lot to love about Avowed. For one, your companions are a blast to get to know. Yatzli’s charm and sass makes her the standout character, but I grew to really love all four of these goofballs. Their stories focus a lot on their past traumas, and you can influence how they deal with them. In turn, they’ll start to influence you, either through roleplay or mechanically through permanent stat buffs. It feels incredibly gratifying telling my companions to make their own choices the whole game, then have them genuinely want my opinion on something by the end. It may sound a bit cheap on paper, but in practice you really feel like you’ve all grown to know and care for each other. 

One of the most impressive things about the game is how much your choices matter. I could see the ripple effects of choices I had made dozens of hours earlier continuing to haunt me, and it’s not just dialogue choices either. At a certain point in the game, I was exploring and stumbled upon an enemy encampment hidden in a cave. Figuring they were up to no good, I slaughtered all of them and, what do you know, this had a big impact later on in the story. There were times where that jank came up and characters would talk like I hadn’t prevented a disaster, but I usually felt that action I took mattered.

Sometimes, side quests will also have an effect later down the line. You can help people in one place, then see those people again in another or a character in the main quest will know your reputation for helping every stranger you meet. Those side quests may be fewer in number than a lot of games, but they’re all a joy thanks to some masterful writing. It does rely a bit too much on proper nouns a lot of the time, but it's still easy to get invested in the characters and world no matter what you’re doing. Context matters a lot here, as you can make a standard go kill five rats quest compelling if you frame it correctly, and Obsidian clearly understands this.