Preview: Folks, Avowed may actually be quite good

Avowed is more than just a cheap imitation of an Elder Scrolls game

Obsidian / Microsoft

Obsidian’s games have always been  hit and miss. Pentiment was a straight banger, as was Pillars of Eternity, but The Outer Worlds fell quite flat. It was the Beyond burger of Fallout games — mostly okay-ish, but the entire time I was left wishing I was eating the real thing. Avowed, from the trailers and previews we’ve seen so far, looked like it was set to be the Beyond burger of Elder Scrolls games, but after having sunk my teeth into it, I’m realizing that not only is it more than just a cheap imitation of an Elder Scrolls game, but it may actually be better than the real thing. 

Avowed starts, as all good RPGs do, with a character creator. That’s a lie, it actually starts with a cutscene telling us that our main guy was an outcast brought into royal service as an envoy to the king, thanks to having been touched by a god. After that, Avowed has a character creator. Options are a little limited – I unfortunately wasn’t able to make a short, fat unit of a wizard – but I imagine some of that is due to the game being in an early state. 

What’s interesting about this character creator is that you kind of have to be a bit ugly. As you were touched by the gods, your face and hair are covered in mushrooms and growths that make you look more like a cordycep-infected clicker than a hero of legend. You can turn these off visually, if you want, but they’ll always be there, and characters will absolutely react to your hideous deformity. Honestly, it’s a bit rude that the second person you meet in Avowed immediately says “what the hell is wrong with your face?”, but I can’t fault her for that — my Envoy definitely has a messed up face, and she was right to call it out. 

Obsidian / Microsoft

In this early stage of the game, I can’t comment much on the story, except to say that the characters seemed fun and the writing is pretty good. I was sent to an island on a mission from the king to investigate a soul infection and ended up shipwrecked, helped a very rude smuggler so she’d take me back to the city, and then started exploring. It’s a fun start and within the first hour I already got to see a few varied locations, and given I am intrigued and want to play more already, I don’t have anything negative to say about it. 

The way you interact with characters is pretty good, too, with plenty of dialogue options that let you craft your Envoy’s personality in fun and interesting ways. I admit, I did yell at the rude smuggler woman for a bit after she dunked on my shroomed-up face, but my friendly loyalist was being annoying, so I started teaming up with her to dunk on him instead. Some of these dialogue options are locked behind your stats too – an option to intimidate is locked behind your strength stat, for example – which is not particularly novel, but always nice to see. It means that everybody’s playthrough is probably going to be a bit different, and I’m very much down with that kind of variability. 

Combat is another point that was a pleasant surprise. It’s hard to get a feel for combat in a trailer or video from somebody else, so I was a bit worried about it going in, but Avowed’s combat feels mostly great. It’s not a far cry from something like Skyrim, with light and heavy attacks for different situations, but swings of the sword feel suitably hefty, slinging arrows with a bow is sharp and satisfying, and firing off spells is an absolute blast. 

Obsidian / Microsoft

On the topic of magic, this game has an interesting system where magic can be accessed through two different methods. Equippable magic tomes are scattered throughout the world, which can be used to sling a selection of spells depending on the tome, but speccing into magic upon a level up lets you learn spells independently of tomes, which can then be equipped to hotkeys on the d-pad. I’m a big fan of this approach, because it means that everybody has access to magic if they want it – at the expense of holding a shield or off-hand weapon – but mages have innately more options without having to juggle spellbooks constantly. 

You can also equip two different loadouts, and quickly swap between them at the press of a single button, which is a nice addition. In one loadout I had a sword and a shield, while in another I had a bow, with mage spells on my hotkeys, giving me access to just about everything I could want to do in combat all at once. With more equipment this seems like it could be a huge boon, because it seems like you effectively get to craft your own multiclass character depending on the equipment and skills you spec into. Alternatively, you could go full mage, filling all your loadout spaces with tomes in addition to your innate spells, or full warrior, with a sword-and-board in one loadout and a giant two-handed hammer in the other. 

The world design is almost as appealing as the game design, and everything gives off huge Morrowind vibes. This is a good thing, because Morrowind is a fantastic game, but Avowed manages to feel fresh and unique at the same time. It’s good stuff. 

Obsidian / Microsoft

I spent every moment in my two hours with Avowed being surprised and delighted by just how cohesive, enjoyable, and exciting it was. It’s not that I had low expectations, but I was entirely on the fence — it truly could have gone either way. Now that I’ve dismounted, I’ve landed on the side of excitement for the full release, with just a slight pang of concern mixed with hope that it’ll stick the landing. With The Elder Scrolls 6 still seemingly years away, Avowed looks ripe to fill the gap with something that could be just as good, if not better.