It’s been seven years since we last got a new role-playing adventure set in the Pillars of Eternity universe. But a lot has changed since the days when the Deadfire RPG was launched back in 2018, with its final sequel, Beast of Winter, released later that same year. Now developer Obsidian Entertainment has migrated that universe over to a fully 3D and spectacular environment with the release of Avowed. Besides the big uptick in graphical quality, Avowed brings new systems and companions, plus a whole new storyline with a unique main character separate from The Watcher of the original series.
However, it’s worth noting that while there are many changes with Avowed, it remains very much an RPG from Obsidian in tone and flavor. All the little details like lore and deep characterization that made their games so successful before are present in Avowed to the point where veteran players will still feel at home even as they experience its new world and its many RPG quests and systems. It’s an Xbox Series X exclusive title, although you can also play it on the PC through Steam, which is where we picked it up for this review.
The plot of Avowed is that players take on the role of a special envoy to the Emperor of the Aedyran Empire. In theory, that means that you get to speak for the emperor on your mission with their full authority, but in practice you basically start out with a staff of one, especially after a shipwreck drowns most of your expedition. You also have very little in the way of starting resources or support, but it’s a nice title, nonetheless.
You are sent to the Living Lands, which is a continental island out in the Deadfire sea. The Living Lands houses some weird and diverse landscapes and also holds a lot of promise in terms of resources and other advantages for the empire, if only it could be fully conquered and tamed. So, it’s basically like how Australia was to the British Empire. The Living Lands are in a terrible state, however, more so than normal. In addition to all the rebels and empire-hating people who live there, there is also a deadly fungus-like infection/monster called the Dreamscourge which is killing both people and animals, turning them into zombie-like killing machines before they die. So, no pressure, but the fate of the Living Lands and probably also the world at large is placed in your hands.
The character creation system is extremely deep in Avowed, as one would expect from an Obsidian RPG. You can pick your character’s appearance and background, with each of the latter choices contributing to special dialogue options later in the title. For example, if you choose to be an arcane scholar, you will get to pick really smart-seeming answers at different points in the story, while a court augur will get glimpses of the future which they can choose to share. Your background choice also influences your starting statistics, but ultimately anything and everything is available to every character without restrictions as they level up. Once you actually start playing, you can build out your character however you want. Combining different skills and abilities in search of the “perfect” build is part of the fun. Avowed also makes resetting your advancement points very easy, with only a small monetary penalty to pay if you want to try something new.
One thing that you can’t choose is the fact that your character is a godlike, which means that they were touched by one of the many gods of Eora before being born, leaving strange markings that easily identify them as such. Strangely enough, most godlikes are very much aware of their patron god, but your character is not, which is another mystery to be solved as you play Avowed.
Avowed can be played in either first or third person, with players being able to switch back and forth at will. The default is first person, and that’s where I stayed almost all of the time, although third person can be good if you want to get a better look at a cool new outfit or maybe to help with some of the parkour-like sequences when exploring out of the way places, rooftops and Avowed’s many hidden areas in search of loot and treasure.
The world of Avowed is absolutely gorgeous, with the many strange and diverse environments of the Living Lands represented in all their otherworldly beauty. It’s not photorealistic, but more of a fantasy or cartoon-like environment. People have been comparing Avowed to Skyrim quite a bit, but it’s really more like Oblivion in terms of how the world looks. Quite a few of the environments also seem like they were taken from the strange planets found in Obsidian’s The Outer Worlds sci-fi adventure.
This is all complimented by a long day and night cycle that changes how everything looks when the time passes. The nighttime in Avowed is exceptionally beautiful with quite a few plants and other objects glowing or blazing away under a sea of colorful stars to add even more atmosphere to the mesmerizing environments as the sun slowly sets over this enchanted world.
You can also go pretty much anywhere you want in Avowed. If you can see the top of a wall or the roof of a temple, then you can probably get up there by some method, although it might require quite a bit of climbing or a round-about route. You can also swim in the azure seas and even dive down underwater for extra exploration. I’ve found quite a few interesting treasures and forgotten chests hidden deep in that clear blue water, so feel free to look around everywhere if you need a bit more loot or just really enjoy exploring in a world that very often rewards you for doing so.
The graphical quality is only matched by the sound. For one, the soundtrack for Avowed is amazing and perfect for a fantasy setting. For another, every single character has a full voice, and most have lots to say, even the minor characters. As a really special treat, Brandon Keener, who plays Kai, one of the first permanent characters to join your party, is also extremely well known for playing Garrius Vakarian in the Mass Effect trilogy, voiced Detective Harold Caldwell in L.A. Noire and has done a lot of voice work for other titles.
One interesting thing is that Kai tends to share a lot of his gritty, learned wisdom at key points in the story or even when just traveling around the world of Avowed with you. That is exactly how Garrius used to act in Mass Effect, and it’s why he became the favorite character of many players in that series. And I have to admit that I sometimes felt like I was back with Garrius again exploring strange planets in Mass Effect once more, which was great. In any case, Keener does an amazing job with Kai and is perfect for this new role. But even though Kai has a nice gun too, I kind of wish we still had that big sniper rifle that Garrius used to carry.
Keener is clearly the standout performer in Avowed, but everyone in the voice cast is equally as good. Some of the other voice actors include Anjali Bhimani playing Yatzli, Mara Junot as Giatta and Scott Whyte as Marius. Even most of the minor characters and vendors take on big personalities though their voice acting. They also sometimes engage in deep conversations with the player that you don’t normally find in most RPGs. So, instead of a vendor just talking about their wares or saying the same few lines over and over again, you might learn about why one vendor is fighting with their husband or how another vendor is in a competition with their sister to see who can sell the most wares. Sometimes vendors will even provide side quests or activities that can help them out. It’s just one more way that Avowed presents a living world for players to enjoy.
The combat in Avowed is fast and plentiful, with enemies literally everywhere outside of the relatively safe city of Paradis where you start your adventure. You can fight with melee weapons, magic or even pistols and rifles. And like in Deadfire, the combat is done in real time, as one might expect from a game with a shooter interface. You can, however, pause time to give special orders, which adds a tactical element to each fight should you choose to employ it. You can also change the difficulty of Avowed’s combats at any time to your tastes, making fights either trivial, brutally hard or anything in between. When set to normal difficulty, the combats are generally tough but fair, with boss battles really posing a challenge.
The one slight negative with Avowed is that there are not a lot of options when it comes to leveling up. Besides your core attributes, you only have three main choices of adventuring professions to put your leveling up points into: Warrior, Ranger and Wizard. You can, however, mix and match those skills for maximum effect. For example, I built a pretty powerful character who was basically a spell-slinging wizard, but with a few skills from the warrior tree to make them a bit beefier and better with heavy armor, plus a few ranger skills to improve their ranged weapon attacks.
Leveling up in Avowed is really as much about upgrading your gear as it is building up your skills. It’s actually really critical that you improve the quality of your gear. Besides making it more powerful or protective, the level of quality determines how much damage it deals or receives from monsters. For example, if a monster with common-level equipment attacks you and you have fine quality armor, all damage is halved before anything else is even calculated. And if you use fine quality weapons against enemies with common gear, you get double damage. Most weapons and armor have five levels of quality, so collecting the many required components to upgrade them will become a full-time job.
You can obtain leveling components from chests and monster drops, so there is a good bit of grinding required in Avowed that kind of drags down the adventure around the mid-game. Vendors also sometimes randomly have components for sale, and I would totally recommend buying all that they have whenever you find any kind of crafting components in stores. There are never enough to go around, and the requirements to improve higher-level gear are punishingly steep.
Avowed is really fun to play and is easily one of the best action RPGs to release in years. If you do all the side quests that it offers, there are probably about 35 to 40 hours of gameplay. And if you explore everywhere looking for the title’s many hidden secrets like we did (they are literally everywhere like a massive Easter egg hunt), then you can probably add another five or 10 hours on top of that. It will be time well spent.
Obsidian Entertainment has given players one heck of an incredible world to explore in Avowed. It may draw heavily from the Pillars of Eternity series for its lore, but it also stands tall as its own unique world and experience, and something that no role-playing game enthusiast will want to miss.