Avowed

What the hell happened here? I've just finished a really enjoyable playthrough of PoE 1 and 2, and now playing Avowed feels like slogging through something outsourced to a third-party studio. The writing would be subpar for any other developer, but coming from Obsidian, it's downright abysmal. Dialogues are full of MCU-like quips and it seems most people you meet (companions and NPCs alike) are always playfully sardonic regardless of who they're speaking to or how grave their situation is. Even leaving quippiness aside, people in the Living Lands have the mannerisms of 30 year old redditors from L.A., not of colonists eking out a living in a supernaturally deadly frontier in a 16th century analogue. Avowed seems like it takes place in a different Eora from Pillars of Eternity I (and even II), with PoE 1's attempts at depth, groundedness, melancholy, and grittiness completely gone. Speaking of groundedness, I'm not a fan of Avowed's atmosphere. The environments are ultra-colorful, vibrant, shiny, and completely different from what I'd expect from the PoE setting (even considering the Living Lands' distinct quirks). It is closer to Outer Worlds or Borderlands than anything else. I don't mind evocative and fantastical landscapes - e.g. Tainted Grail was fantastic in that regard! - but here the aesthetic just seems haphazard, kitschy, and out of place. On a technical level, the graphics look good but are very unoptimized for their level of fidelity and the game runs worse than much better looking products. Gameplay-wise, Avowed is not good so far. Playing on Path of the Damned, the combat is not at all hard, but the progression mechanics are supremely annoying. Player skill and character talents are largely secondary behind equipment upgrades, which determine most of your character's combat performance. Continuously having to upgrade my same old equipment feels like the grinding of Berath's Wheel itself, as if I'm playing some sort of engagement-baiting crafting/survival game rather than an open-world RPG focused on finding interesting and diverse loot. Instead of being a way to keep using one's favorite weapons throughout the game, or to tweak gameplay styles, or to break the game by crafting ridiculous items/echantments, the crafting mechanics here are an MMO-like progression blocker. Ultimately, I have to wonder what Avowed's claim to fame even is. It lacks the freedom and exploration of Elder Scrolls games, it lacks the well-written story of Obsidian games, it lacks the combat of e.g. Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, it lacks the immersiveness and cinematic charm of KCD, and its 'vibes' do not appeal to me at all. Maybe the point is to have a good all-rounder that does not revolutionize any one aspect but does a bunch of things well? Even in that regard, Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon blows Avowed out of the water, unfortunately. Avowed really makes me worry that Obsidian is going down the Bioware route, cementing a fear has slowly been building up since 2018. I'll say one good thing, and that is that blowing xaurips away with a flintlock feels very good on a primal level. Also, the music is nice! 6/10. I'll update this review if my opinion changes as I play more.

Personally, I'm having a lot of fun with this game. It really scratches the Elder Scrolls itch, even though it's not an Elder Scrolls game. But like with any good grenade...ehh...close enough! Also enjoy the fact that it's part of the highly-praised Pillars of Eternity story and world, so it already has a well-developed massive lore and history to build upon. Thirdly, even though I do tend to play it via GeForce Now, it runs great on both my antiquated PC, and the Steam Deck. And fourthly, your first true companion is Garrus, from Mass Effect, who really bulked up for this game! So no other point needs to be made, other than you should obviously own it for that fact alone.

The game itself is fun to play. Exploration, combat, and aesthetics are wonderful. The conversations take on a homosexual tone in each area and it's frustrating to see in a video game. Games used to be spaces where normalcy prevailed. It's overall okay to play, but I wouldn't let my children play it.

A good game, not a great one. Not as polished as it could have been, but still fun and I really like the world and its backstory. Pity that Avowed 2 got canceled.

Bug ridden mess.

I wish I could write a positive review but I can't, and I realised that after around 10 hours of playtime. Simply because of the constant never-ending dialogue. The last straw happened when I did the main story quest in the 2nd zone that took around 5 minutes to finish the dialogue, just to make me continue the conversation elsewhere that took another 5 minutes to finish, and then I had to talk to several NPC's in town... The game itself is gorgeous and colorful but the immersion breaks after a while (at least for me) because of the dialogue when talking to questgivers/NPC's.

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