Avowed Review

Have you ever watched a movie that was so incredible that you talked about it for days or weeks after seeing it? Maybe you went back and watched it more than once in the theatre – maybe you even bought the overpriced popcorn that comes with free refills. Ever watched a movie so bad that, despite possibly being an afront to God, in its badness it was somehow entertaining?

Oh hi, Mark.

I think everyone has a few of both of these examples they can conjure up at the drop of a hat – or maybe a shoe, or pants or something. Now how many movies exist in between those two extremes that saw you spend lengths of time trying to convince your friends to watch them? How many movies mired in mediocrity have come and gone that are barely mentioned not long after they leave the theatre? Who stops to wax poetic about Aaron Paul’s midsterpiece Need for Speed?

Like movies, there are loads of examples of this concept in gaming. I could prattle on about just how incredible and timeless The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is, but I could also talk your ear off about how Deadly Premonition is worth playing even if doing so will make you question how it could ever be so mechanically awful. The point I’m trying to make here, however poorly, is that in the world of entertainment it often pays to take risks – or at the very least measured risks – in that getting stuck in the middle of anything is rarely of any benefit. You’re either so good everyone knows about you or so bad everyone knows about you but is a fan anyway because it’s somehow endearing.

There is a difference between movies and games in this regard, however. Games are almost always significantly longer than movies – and they’re often more expensive unless you buy that popcorn because then all bets are off. Truly great cinematic films can be, by all accounts, quite boring, but there’s some wiggle room there due to the medium for most folks – expectations and all that. Games on the other hand, don’t have quite the same leeway – in fact I would hazard a guess that THE cardinal sin any game can commit is to be boring. In this sense, Avowed’s incessant, creeping, meandering mediocrity demands penance be paid, for if there was ever to be an example of the perfect five out of ten printed to paper in the gaming bible, Avowed could be first ballot for which picture we put on that page.

Before we go any further, I’d like to let you know that despite playing Avowed for 30 hours and giving it ample opportunity, it was one of the first games in years that I didn’t complete before reviewing. It wasn’t for time constraints, it was simply because it was not worth continuing for me. This is exceedingly rare for me, and while I obviously have more detailed thoughts to come, just know that this is based on my time with the game without completing it personally. Perhaps knowing this is valuable in and of itself as far as critique is concerned, but I thought disclosure was appropriate all the same.

Depending on your stance on Obsidian games as of late, I’m either making a lot of sense or a lot of enemies – and for good reason. Historically, Obsidian has been the little engine that could in the RPG space – a team that was capable of doing much with little, and who in some instances outdid the original creators if you ask some people. I don’t know if I’ve ever thought THAT much of their work, but I certainly appreciated what they did with Knights of the Old Republic 2 and Fallout New Vegas. Regardless of where you fall on the line regarding Obsidian’s pedigree, everyone is at least aware that they’ve been at their best when it comes to writing and characters. That seems like a good place as any to start when talking about Avowed, so let’s do that.

Avowed takes place in the same world and universe as Pillars of Eternity and in fact starts only a few years after the events of Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire. Avowed isn’t directly connected to the Pillars of Eternity games narratively, however, so if you do feel you’d like to play Avowed but were uncertain due to having not played them, worry not. Instead, perhaps worry about the fact that Avowed’s story is dull, and so are its characters. Ever had the feeling you had to yawn but every time you try to yawn it never quite finishes and you’re only left needing to yawn again? That.

It stands in stark contrast to the bright, saturated, and colourful visual stylings, but Avowed’s story and characters leave a lot to be desired. The beats are predictable, the characters are one note and archetypal to a fault, and the pacing is shockingly slow. I originally picked up Avowed because I was genuinely interested in it and was curious what it would bring to the table. As such I was thorough in completing side quests, reading books, talking to every character I could find, and explored as much but as naturally as I could. Around the 12 hour mark I started to get a bit worried about how it was all going, and by hour 30 I tapped out.

Between starting the first zone and getting halfway through the second zone in depth, the main story exposition had a mere half measure of progression – that is to say that my knowledge about the core plot essentially remained all but identical across all that time and all of that questing. This might be forgivable if the side quests felt like they fleshed out anything meaningful in the main plot as far as proper world building or character development is concerned but they simply do not in all but one or two instances – both of which were in ways that were entirely too predictable.

As mentioned, you don’t get much relief when it comes to characters either. Your party members specifically will file in over time, but the majority of them are uninteresting both in how they are written and how their stories are delivered – should you seek them out. At least one party member you’ll acquire is mildly intriguing but that’s not a lot to go on when you’re spending inordinate amounts of time having fireside chats with the bulk of the crew. The voice talent is one of the few notable bits, but not even Garrus Vakarian can calibrate his way out of some of the dialogue. You’ve got your dependable one, the grumpy one that says they’re not interested but stays anyway, the conflicted but nevertheless strong in their convictions one, and the overtly sexual Furby. No, the Furby isn’t the well-written one, sorry to say.

If that mention of fireside chats conjured up memories of Dragon Age, or in a more space fairing way Mass Effect, you’ll either be happy or less enthused to hear that’s exactly what you’re getting here. As you explore, complete side quests or parts of the main quest, your party members will eventually decide they have something to tell you. You’ll know this because they’ll often tell you outright while you’re galivanting around town or something, but if you miss that you’ll have permanent icons on the left side of your screen that never go away until you finally release those party members of the burden of their unspoken words. It can’t be THAT important, though, because you can’t just talk to them right there and then. No, instead you have to go to camp first and then you can hear them give you enough information about something to get you mildly interested before telling you that you’ll have to take them out for dinner first to find out more about their deepest, darkest secrets. That is except there are no romance options (sorry, Furby enthusiasts), but if all of this 2010 game design is still getting you hot under the collar, I do have some news that may make up for the lack of steamy, likely unnecessary and oddly timed sex scenes – no intimacy coordinator required.

Avowed, if nothing else, is a love letter to game design from a time gone by. Combat, narrative progression, character development, and more are all ripped right out of the pages of the late noughts and early teens. For better or worse if you’re a fan of that era of game design then Avowed is going to feel very comfortable right out of the gate. That being said, it’s hard for me to say that it’s the best representation of that era of gaming in these core categories – especially the combat.

In the opening portion of the game, it became pretty apparent that combat was unlikely to be particularly strong. Animations range from passable to poor, controls are floaty both on controller and keyboard and mouse, and there is an underlying feeling of clunkiness or latency in everything you do. Enemies are usually sharp as a beach ball, your allies as useful as a wet paper bag, and little if anything you do regardless of combat style feels particularly satisfying. There are some nice spell effects, and the game is very unrestrictive when it comes to changing up your character’s play style, but the combat is as close to lifeless as I’ve experienced in a premium game in years and is ultimately what led to me putting the game down before finishing it. The story and characters just weren’t even close to good enough to make the having to engage with the combat system worth it for another twenty or thirty hours.

Exploration is as middling as everything else thanks to no real dynamic events, sparsely populated areas, and the aforementioned dull, lifeless combat. There is credit to be given, however, for the team having placed lots of little rewards around for those exploring the nooks and crannies both high and low across the zones. It’s always nice to be rewarded with something for going out of your way and not all games do. I wish I could say the music inspired my exploration, or added anything to anything at all, but none of the tracks stood out and just sort of existed in the background. Speaking of high and low, Avowed has a parkour-like system which it uses relatively well – at least when it comes to exploring the world around you. It’s well implemented and thankfully is one of the few mechanical pieces that rarely feels sluggish or overly clunky. Generally, it’s actually very good and adds a layer of fun to an otherwise unengaging gameplay loop.

By now you’ve probably seen enough footage of Avowed to determine whether or not you’re a fan of the art style, and while I personally can’t say I love it, I can’t say I hate it either. Like nearly everything in Avowed, its visuals are middling. Unreal Engine 5 can make just about anything look good at least some of the time, and that’s true for Avowed. Certain times of day, or certain interior lighting situations really stand out as visually impressive. Just as often, however, things can look stark, flat, and cheap. Character models and design range from average to bargain bin with an uncanny number of the already limited NPCs sharing identical features.

It appears that Obsidian couldn’t quite decide if they wanted to go for a painterly look or a semi-realistic feel and so attempted to do both. This works some of the time but I’d have preferred they just committed more to one or the other. Incredibly subjective side note, but I’m never a fan of when non-human species all still manage to have perfect human noses, human teeth, and even human hair and hair styles. Not only do I find it lazy, but it’s just unpleasant in general. It’s ok sometimes, but just make a Khajiit or an Argonian or something if you really want to go that far down the anthropomorphic animal person road.

From a more performance perspective, as this is Unreal Engine 5 your mileage may vary. As with many games using the engine, TAA or other forms of temporal adjacent anti aliasing is either baked in or required to have the game not look like it’s falling apart. Avowed is definitely not a game that you’ll be running natively – not because it’s that heavy of a game and you need frame generation, but because it literally ghosts less and looks better when turning on DLSS or FSR. As usual, at least for the versions included at the time of this writing, TAA ghosts the most while having the worst performance impact, FSR ghosts a little less but still ghosts a fair amount and requires relatively aggressive sharpening to fake a native look even in the 4k I played at, and DLSS will likely provide the least ghosting and closest to native look of the three. Of the handful of games I’ve tested, Avowed is one of the worst ghosting offenders but depending on your hardware, your screen size, your resolution and more it may be a problem for you, or it may not bother you at all. I personally loath Unreal Engine 5 and Nvidia for forcing us down this awkward and awful rendering road but the average gamer probably won’t care one way or the other.

Come to think of it, that’s about what I imagine many people who play, or like me attempt to play Avowed will feel about it – they probably won’t care one way or the other. It’s not the worst game you will have played in recent memory but it’s also not likely to be anywhere near the best either. It oddly feels like a game that, given more time to cook, would have been just as mediocre but on a longer time scale. Avowed occupies that unholy middle ground, it walks the road most traveled and leaves all stones unturned. It paints a dull picture with bright and vivid colours, and ultimately for me it committed the cardinal sin no game should ever commit – it was boring. If you’re invested in the Pillars of Eternity franchise already then Avowed may still be of value to you at full price. For everyone else, especially those not playing it on Game Pass, I’d recommend sitting this one out until the sales season comes around.