Avowed feels like a more colorful Skyrim

Obsidian’s upcoming RPG is a pretty one

Obsidian Entertainment

I know we’re all tired of the Skyrim comparisons, but as someone who hasn’t played any other first-person RPGs it’s my only point of reference for Avowed, Obsidian’s upcoming contender. Jumping in front of the keyboard at Gamescom 2024, I played one sequence of the game with two different characters – one skilled as a sorcerer, one skilled as a barbarian. 

Mind you, I’m using these categories to give you a quick impression of what sort of skill set the characters had, but the game doesn’t really constrain you through the concept of classes – in Avowed, you get to mix and match between your usual fantasy archetypes. You can, of course, conform to one of these, building a stereotypical sorcerer or ranger, or veer off the beaten path and try something completely different – like a sneaky stealth barbarian or a mage with strong archery skills.

Tasked with finding a missing patrol in a cave system, me and my companion who looks like a standard background alien from Guardians of the Galaxy – you know the type, basically human but with a vibrant, exotic skin color – advance through the area. It’s a relatively linear map, but with a good amount of optional and hidden side paths with some extra loot as well as alternate ways allowing you to dodge combat entirely and sneak by encounters.

I like having options like that – it helps with role-playing. As a mage, I used the sneaky way to get by some lizardman guards, while I simply waltzed in as a barbarian and made mincemeat out of them.

Avowed has some pretty and colorful environments going for itself. / Obsidian Entertainment

Aside from your abilities, you have a good amount of control over your companion as well. As a mage, I could order him to protect me from enemies, making it easier for me to keep my distance and fire off spells. As a barbarian? Well, I just let him do whatever he wanted – it didn’t really matter. You can make the game a little more complex and difficult for yourself by choosing certain playstyles, as something like a sorcerer or a ranger simply requires some more thinking and resource management than hitting people with a giant ax over and over.

My run through the dungeon as a sorcerer was definitely trickier, though that one was also my first – I had to manage my companion more closely, needed to keep an eye on my resources, and had to keep kiting enemies. But I’d say that was about equally as satisfying as swinging a giant weapon around. What was most fun about being a barbarian was that I could sneak up to an enemy and charge up a heavy strike in the meantime, one-shotting them – which is why the idea of a stealth-focused barbarian sounds intriguing to me.

One aspect I liked was that I was able to change my skills by switching to different weapons, for example by equipping a different spell tome as the sorcerer.

I encountered some light puzzles as well and my companion once more came in handy for that, being able to set fire to the environment. Outside of helping you in combat and playing their part in the story, that’s pretty much their main function. All companions come equipped with a set of exploration abilities to help you advance through areas or unlock hidden secrets.

The mission provided a look at the sort of consequences that await players for making certain decisions. Upon finding a surviving member of the patrol, I could spare a health potion for him to heal him back up or ignore his pleas and let him die – it’s free loot, eh? Presumably, helping the lad out would have brought me some sort of benefit outside of the cave.

Later on, I could decide whether to give to the local insane dungeon inhabitant the macguffin to revive a god (forever imprisoning the souls of the patrollers, which said dungeon inhabitant had killed, with that god) or stop his efforts. Again, I obviously can only guess the ramifications of the decision in the long term – in the short term, the decision leads to fighting the guy or not.

Which brings me back to Skyrim. It’s been a long time since I played that, but I vaguely feel like that’s the same stuff I was up to in Bethesda’s RPG. A major difference, of course, is the fact that Avowed isn’t an open-world game – I couldn’t just have left this cave and walked over to the next town for a shopping tour. 

Another factor dividing the games is their looks. Where I remember Skyrim to be shades of gray and brown for the most part, Avowed is colorful and vibrant, even in areas like caves.

What I want to say is: To any fan of the genre, these two games probably offer pretty different experiences, each with their own nuances. To an outsider like me, who Skyrim failed to convert into such an enthusiast, they seem pretty similar – and I’m still not sure what Avowed could offer to change that after playing an hour of it.

Avowed is coming to PC and Xbox Series X|S on February 18, 2025.