When I started playing Avowed, I went into the game, as I’m sure a lot of it will be upon release, treating it as “Elder Scrolls-lite.” But I wasn’t ready for the breadth of lore and world-building here that would have me both enamoured by this game, its characters, and setting and now wishing I could find more time to go back and play Pillars of Eternity, the games that came before this one.

Let’s tackle the confusing question that most have struggled to get ahead of, which I don’t think Microsoft has done a good job addressing. Avowed is set in the same setting as the two Pillars of Eternity games, Eora, however, it’s not a continuation of the story there. Instead, this is its own side-adventure in a location not visited in those games. My desire to dive into Pillars post-finishing Avowed wasn’t to fill in holes I felt I had but to continue living in this world, which I found very intriguing and unique for a high fantasy setting. If anything, Avowed does a great job at answering any callbacks and references it might have, as you can bring up an information box when talking to characters, and keywords will be explained. The first time I heard someone say “the Deadfire Archipelago,” I knew that was the name of Pillars of Eternity 2; the information gave me a very quick run-down of the events that happened there and why characters would be displaced now.

Playing as the ‘Envoy’ for the Aedyran Empire, you will have some control over your character class and what they look like; however, you don’t have a choice about what race you are, which is a ‘Godlike.’ These are beings that are touched by a god and usually look something like the god that’s chosen to stick their fingers on your head, but the protagonist of Avowed is Godlike for a god no one knows. You’re also showing up in ‘The Living Lands,’ as nearly all Godlieks have begun to disappear, so it’s bizarre for you and everyone around you. Nonetheless, the job here on this untamed island that has, until now, been left to do whatever it’s doing without a government or input from outside is to find the source of ‘The Dreamscourge,’ a disease that sends people mad and murderous, and also help build a relationship between the people of The Living Lands, and Aredyr, for your Emperor, of course.

To make things even more confusing for the player and the Envoy, upon reaching The Living Lands, you begin to hear a mysterious voice in your head that asks you very cryptic and philosophical questions about the people of The Living Lands and the choices you make. Further in the narrative, this voice is explained, but without spoilers — I would suggest you pay more attention to what you’re telling the voice.

From the outset, how you choose to play your Envoy is up to you. The game gives you plenty of opportunity to either be a neutral voice here to stop a disease, a surprising voice for the people, or a Godlike coloniser with zero respect for the different cultures within The Living Lands, and it happens to offer displacement as an option at some point in the story.

One of the earliest things I loved about Avowed was feeling like the choices I made mattered and that none of them came particularly easy. The story felt particularly poignant, even with the fantasy setting, and was also welcome. The game does a great job of not particularly judging you if you choose to be ‘good or bad.’ Most players choosing to be evil are probably aware of it, and you’ll see the choices you make have their effects on the story; we don’t need a red or blue colour here to explain which one is evil. The ambiguity sometimes makes each choice you make in the game feel potentially life-altering, and a lot of the more minor decisions in the game come back to play roles in the last act of the game.

I’m spending a lot of time talking about the story and world, not because the gameplay is bad. But it’s a game I was genuinely playing to discover more about its world and characters, and that’s something often missing in a lot of the larger fantasy RPGs that want to be the next Skyrim. However, a lot of what you’ll be doing mission-to-mission is what you’d come to expect here, and it’s how Obsidian Games frames it with a focus on upgrading gear and allowing guns and wants to exist together that makes combat and exploring more thrilling.

You can play your Envoy as a very straight and boring sword and shield kinda person if you want to hate fun. I loved using a spell book to hail ice, and fire spells down upon my foes, which also allowed for simple combos like freezing an opponent and then cracking them into ice cubes with my sword. Pairing up a wand to cast spells with a pistol in the other hand is also very satisfying, while I also have a soft spot for grabbing the two-handed Arquebuses’ over the bow and arrow when I wanted to take pot-shots from afar at enemies to get some cheap damage in.

However you choose to play Avowed, you can build into the weapons and style you prefer with the game’s skill system, and you can reset it at any point for a small amount of gold that’ll enable you to re-spec if you change your mind. You can permanently unlock spells and use them on a hot-key if you don’t want to use a spell book all the time, for example, and I chose to pick up a charge ability for defensive purposes rather than its very obvious offensive one in the melee attackers category.

Much like their previous game, The Outer Worlds, companions play a big part in Avowed. You can have two join you on your adventures. They’ll attack on their own, but you can also pause the game and bring up a reception to choose which abilities they use and on which enemies.

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Be prepared to be yelled at by your party members for basically all of the game about how crap your armour is, as Avowed uses a system where fighting enemies with a rank above your current weapon class gives you decreased damage and your armour less protection if it’s also below. I did every side quest I could across as I played, and I still felt like I struggled to keep up with my weapons and armour being the correct class, but this did make the combat at least harder and required me to use strategy, slowing down and thinking more than just spamming my sword and spells in any direction. With that said, by the time I reached the end game, that was precisely what I was doing: AOE fire and ice spells were doing huge amounts of damage, and my sword was bought in for the clean-up. I didn’t mind by this point as I enjoyed feeling strong in the game’s last act.

Exploring The Living Lands and completing those side quests, I came across as I did, and it all felt worthwhile. Each area of The Living Lands you explore on your quest is a new biome from rich forest to cruel desert and lava flowing where once there was water. Enemy types are pretty similar across all of them, however, which was a little disappointing. Giving me a different coloured spirit of spider isn’t entirely different enough to keep the enemy-type counter growing.

The areas you head to in some of the optional quests often felt bigger and with the story than the main ones. Especially any to do with your companions, who you’ll get to know more by choosing to engage with their history and troubles at camp, where you can rest, upgrade gear and cook meals to take on your journey. With the four companions, you bring on your journey all were great, but one of their stories is so heavily focused on dealing with anxiety and the strength this character shows in pushing forward to discover their past even as they mention their inability to breathe and dry lips spoke to me the most. All-in-all making me think of my own panic attacks.

When you finish Avowed, it runs you through what happens to you, The Living Lands and your companion’s post-final boss fight. It’s as I sat in front of my TV glued to see how every decision played out, only disappointed in how it went for one of my companions, that I knew I had been sucked into this world of Eora; what happened next! What happened before? Please tell me more about these other gods that have just been mentioned in passing. I’ve got two other games to explore, even if my YouTube history is now just “explaining the world of Eora.” Having not played either Pillar of Eternity games, and knowing they didn’t do financially well. Hopefully, Avowed is what Obsidian needed to engage players. A more approachable and self-contained story that will, as it has for me, tickle players’ intrigue into a deep dive into this intriguing original world that is brimming with ideas and history.

(Review code provided to Explosion Network.
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