Obsidian's Avowed is Deep, Dense, and Delightful -

Written by Eric Hauter on 11/21/2024 for PC   XSX  

In a recent exchange on the Gaming Nexus Slack channel, a co-worker asked me if I was going to be playing Dragon Age: The Veilguard. “Nope,” I replied without hesitation. “I’ll get to it eventually, but I’m saving all my ‘huge open world RPG’ energy for Avowed.” There are only so many hours in a day, and at my age, I have to be choosy about where I’m going to invest 80-or-so hours. After playing around with an early build of Avowed for about five hours this week, I’m completely satisfied that I’ve made the right choice.

I trust Avowed developer Obsidian more than just about any other company making RPGs. The makers of Fallout: New Vegas, The Outer Worlds, Pentiment, and the Pillars of Eternity series (which Avowed is something of an extension of) have earned my loyalty to the point where I will happily set two weeks of my life aside to fall into one of their fantasy worlds. And Avowed is poised to be the biggest and the best fantasy world to yet emerge from Obsidian's cadre of game-creating geniuses.

This week, I was granted access to a preview build of Avowed for a couple of days. Though Obsidian suggested that it might take about two hours to work through the provided content, I merrily set out in the wrong direction, ignoring the story for as long as possible. I was determined to wring every last moment of exploration and discovery out of the build that I could in the time allotted. When I accidentally stumbled across the finish line after about four hours, I immediately noped out, reloaded my last save, and set out once again into the wilderness. Being able to spend time in Avowed’s world was a wildly exciting privilege to me, and I wasn’t about to accept the (admittedly great) cliffhanger ending as the conclusion of my adventures. I was pushing eight hours with the game when I finally called it quits.

Following a brief jaunt through a prologue that introduces the game’s basic mechanics and chucks a bit of gear the player's way, most of the time I spent in Avowed was in the game’s opening region, Dawnshore. This rather sizable map includes several subregions to explore, including the Fractured Shore and Clavager’s Landing, the dockside settlement where the player first comes ashore after a bit of the ol’ “shipwreck and recovery”.

An envoy from the emperor, the player character has been sent to Dawnshore (and presumably regions beyond in the game's world, known as "The Living Lands") to investigate a mysterious fungal plague that has been infecting the wildlife and populace of the area. It is this investigation that pushes the story through the game’s opening hours. As the plague infects people and animals, they begin acting erratically, eventually becoming violent. Oh, and mushrooms grow out of their faces. It’s not great. It's clear that the player character's status as a "Godlike" is intricately linked to the plague, though those story threads were only beginning to unfold during the preview build.

Y'all see the little highlighted area in the lower left? That's Dawnshore. The rest of that giant map? That's the rest of the game.

The open areas I’ve played around in have been extremely dense with secrets and treasures. I’ve taken to throwing myself off of cliffs and buildings if I see something interesting below, as hidden caves, treasure chests, and monsters are lurking in every crevice of this beautifully rendered living world. There are treasures lurking at the bottom of lakes, secret bosses that can only be accessed by underwater caverns, and endless discoveries to be made by simply wandering around and poking at stuff. I’ve been having a blast meandering through the world just to see what I can see. And I've seen a lot - giant spiders, accidentally suicidal pyromancers, and easily bullied graverobbers are just some of the experiences lurking around every corner; Obsidian's usual wit and effortless environmental storytelling are on great display here. 

What is still unclear to me is whether or not the full game will eventually push players towards some of the content I stumbled upon in my bullheaded quest to uncover all the first region in Avowed has to offer. It is possible that I was jumping ahead on quests that could later be activated in one of the game's hubs. It is equally possible that a lot of this stuff is just laying around the world, waiting to be discovered by intrepid players. 

As promised by early reveals, character creation and combat are incredibly open-ended. The character creation tools are as robust as you would imagine, given Obsidian’s pedigree. But the cool part is that, while you do select a basic background for your character, you don’t need to select a specialty. Players are perfectly welcome to wield whatever weapons or magical objects they please, focusing on whatever catches their fancy in the moment.

I quickly gravitated towards magic wands and grimoires to do my dirt, but some experimentation showed that bows, axes, guns, daggers, and sword and shield are equally effective. The skill tree is wide open, and players can pivot at any time to start dropping points into any career path they are interested in. I’m sure this is going to lead to some fascinating hybrid builds when the game reaches the hands of the public.

Combat is interesting and challenging, though not to "Souls-like" levels. I was able to kite enemies pretty nicely with the combination of my wand and the game's dodge/jump, though that didn't stop me from backing myself into corners and getting clobbered on occasion. Deaths result in a quick reload, and the autosave seems to be pretty liberal; I never went back more than a minute or two when I died. And the longer I played, the more I learned to use cover, stealth, and my handy tanky companion to stay out of the grave.

Companions are once again a large part of the experience in Avowed, and the writing and performances for these folks is fantastic. I made two friends during the prologue, and was actually pretty sad to see them abandon me as soon as we hit the docks of Dawnshore (though I suspect they might return later). Your main companion in the game’s early hours is Kai – a blue fish guy who is witty, self-deprecating, and incredibly helpful in tanking early enemies.

As in common in games of this sort, Kai offers a steady commentary while the two of you run around the world together. You can also enter into deeper conversation with him at your Camp. It is clear that he will eventually open up more and offer his own quest line. But I was surprised when – just a few hours into the game – he offered some training to my character, which resulted in a couple of permanent Constitution points. My constitution was “2”, so getting two extra points just for chatting up my fish buddy was a huge boon.

Despite the game's release still being a few months away, all of my time running around Avowed's gorgeous world was smooth and delightful. Avowed feels very well optimized to run on PC (and of course, it will be releasing on Xbox as well). I ran the game on a GeForce RTX 2080, and was easily able to maintain 60fps on Epic graphics settings. (And please don’t judge the game by my choppy video – I gotta upgrade my capture software). The level of detail on both the world and other characters is stunning; this is one of the best-looking games I’ve played on my PC. The lighting and water effects in particular are jaw-dropping; there were a few moments when I caught sight of my own shadow while jumping around that made me cackle out loud at how cool it looked. 

As much as I wanted to devote weeks to my adventures in Dawnshore, I eventually had to pull myself away from Avowed, as the preview was only available for a limited time. I could have easily spent five or ten more hours tromping around, engaging with side quests and discovering more hidden goodies. But I’m beyond excited to return to Dawnshore and the lands beyond when Avowed releases in February. Get ready, fantasy fans. The best RPG of 2025 might be coming sooner than you expected.