After playing Obsidian’s Avowed, it’s now one of my most anticipated games

Avowed has really surprised me.

Truthfully, I didn’t quite know what to think about the latest game from Obsidian Entertainment at first. On the one hand, a new RPG from the studio behind Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, Fallout: New Vegas and The Outer Worlds is certainly exciting. But on the other, some of the gameplay footage we’ve seen has been a bit… underwhelming.

But after playing about two early hours of Avowed and speaking with several Obsidian developers at their studio in Irvine, California, I’ve come away far more confident in how the whole experience is shaping up. So far, it feels fresh, ambitious and inspired in ways I didn’t expect, and I’m now incredibly excited for the finished product. Here’s why.

A promising narrative that balances thorny politics with spiritual mysteries

My demo began with a short cinematic that efficiently set the stage for the first-person action-RPG. In the game, you’re an envoy for the Aedyr Empire who’s been sent to the Living Lands to investigate a mysterious plague known as the ‘Dream Scourge.’ Right away, this started to assuage any fears I had about Avowed being set in the world of Pillars of Eternity, a series I’ve always heard great things about but have never actually played. Fans of those games will be familiar with the Aedyr Empire, which only adds more colour to the world for them, but Obsidian’s smart decision to set Avowed in the Living Lands — a largely untapped part of the franchise’s world of Eora — means it’s also still a solid starting point for newcomers like me.

“The Living Lands was an opportunity to bring players back to that world, but in a setting that would be fresh for us as developers and also fresh for our fans as well,” explains Carrie Patel, game director of Avowed, in a group interview with MobileSyrup.

After that brief opening, we’re taken to the character customizer, which looks as in-depth as you’d hope for an RPG thanks to a suite of tools that let you fine-tune all kinds of bodily attributes through various sliders. But what really stood out to me here was which ‘Godlike’ characteristics to choose from. Returning from Pillars, Godlike refers to a race of people, the envoy included, who carry distinct physical traits associated with gods, like gold skin tones or peacock-esque feathers. As the narrator explains, these unique conditions have led to some people of Eora viewing the Godlike as having been “blessed,” although for others, it’s more of a “curse” due to the discrimination they face.

Throughout the demo, this really resonated with me in ways I wasn’t expecting. As someone of mixed race, I’ve often had people I’ve just met intensely study my face to try to figure out my background before jumping into a game of 20 Questions. (I’m half-Indo-Guyanese and part Scottish and Irish, for what it’s worth.) While I generally understand the curiosity on their part, I won’t deny that it can still feel tiresome at times to go through that same song and dance, almost like I’m being dissected. Therefore, I really appreciated seeing the little ways that sort of scrutiny manifests in Avowed‘s NPC conversations. Many people are overly preoccupied with the envoy being Godlike, while some are simply mildly curious and others refreshingly don’t really care — all of which felt pretty authentic to interactions I’ve had.

But even if you don’t come at Avowed with that kind of personal connection, the envoy’s Godlike status offers quite a lot of narrative promise. Unlike many others from this race, you’re able to directly communicate with one of the supposed gods, which forms the basis of one of the game’s core mysteries. In my demo, I had two conversations with this ethereal voice, the latter of which had me making a major decision towards the end of the demo regarding whether to make a deal to exchange powers with it. I didn’t get to see the ramifications of choosing to align with it, however, as the next and final part of the demo saw the envoy — who had been sent to meet in the capital city with an Aedyr ambassador I’d rescued — getting unexpectedly shot with an arrow before everything fades to black and the preview ended. Throwing in the political intrigue of an apparent assassination attempt on your player character with the more supernatural mystery surrounding your position as a Godlike, plus all of the ways those two beats potentially intersect, has me eagerly looking forward to seeing more.

One of the other Godlikes you’ll meet.

“The way we’ve designed stories in the Pillars IP, there’s always this really neat mix of a very grounded political story, and then this more mysterious, esoteric, metaphysical story about souls and past lives and the gods and all of these weirder mysteries,” says Patel of Avowed‘s narrative. “I remember [narrative designer] Kate [Dollarhyde] and I actually brainstorming for several days on the whiteboard a couple years ago — ‘How do we give the player stakes in both of those stories and a foot in each of those worlds?’ And without spoiling later events, we realized that by making the player both a Godlike and the envoy of Aedyr, we could give them that unique perspective.” Colour me intrigued!

Dual-wielding has never been cooler

As much as I enjoyed what I saw from Avowed‘s story, though, it’s the game’s surprisingly robust and dynamic combat that’s truly won me over. It already had my attention thanks to the headline-worthy ability to dual-wield wands, but in practice, it’s so much more than that.

First and foremost, Avowed doesn’t have typical RPG character classes like ‘Warrior’ or ‘Mage’ in favour of the more freeform two-weapon system. Instead, you have a main-hand and an off-hand in which you can hold a weapon each, with the option for two active loadouts. This means that you’re actively encouraged to experiment with different weapon combos and swap between loadouts on the fly.

“A big core pillar for us was flexibility in combat actions. I think there’s a lot of ways where games can restrict and limit the player, and I think we found that as we started to reduce some of the restrictions and allow for the combinatorics or whatever of things to come together, we saw that players were able to mix and match from moment to moment and flexibility in combat actions is key,” says gameplay director Gabe Paramo of the decision to forgo classes. “It feels like it stands out amongst other action-RPGs.”

You can also always go for a good old-fashioned two-handed approach.

Based on my time with Avowed, I’d have to agree. Sure, there are some familiar elements, like your basic melee weapons, such as swords, axes and daggers, which naturally pair well with different kinds of shields. And admittedly, I wish these types of bladed gear had just a bit more oomph when you swing them, although charged attacks certainly have a satisfying crunch. That said, you’re absolutely not relegated to melee weapons. For instance, you can opt for an old-fashioned two-handed bow or even brandish a pistol in either hand — or both — alongside a sword or dagger. The use of guns is particularly inspired; we don’t often see this kind of anachronism in Western fantasy RPGs, and it’s really refreshing here. And because of the dual-wielding setup, that juxtaposition is especially prominent when you’re simultaneously using a gun and a wand. Harry Potter, eat your heart out!

Indeed, it’s in those magical elements where Avowed‘s combat truly sings. If you want basic spellcasting ability, wands are a great option that don’t use up Essence, Avowed‘s version of MP. As a result, they’re more about minor-yet-steady damage. Conversely, you can acquire various grimoires that let you cast more advanced magic in exchange for Essence. These spells are an absolute delight, even in this early-game stage, packing them with all of the impact I wanted from the melee weapons. Large flames erupt like they’re coming right out of a dragon’s mouth. Ice shoots forward as razor-sharp dagger-esque projectiles. Luminous purple orbs of energy scatter the battlefield, pummelling groups of enemies as they go. And while I didn’t get to try them, some of the trailers have shown off one spell that shoots off noxious clouds and another that conjures a deadly vine trap to ensnare enemies. Obsidian even teased a “meteor shower” move during the preview.

If Avowed had just focused on magic, it would be a satisfying combat experience, but then there’s the dual-wielding, which adds so much more to it all. There’s an unmitigated thrill in being able to pepper a giant spider with ice to freeze it in place, dash towards it for a quick dagger stab before retreating and launching a purple energy missile salvo. But maybe you don’t even want to get close to the spider at all, so you can instead replace the melee weapon with a wand or pistol. What’s especially welcome about the pistol is that it’s balanced with a lengthy reload instead of any ammunition system. “[Ammo] just caused friction in an unintentional way,” says Paramo.

Kai is such a bro, just like Mass Effect‘s Garrus.

As I played, I also came across a different type of grimoire in a forest that allowed me to conjure up a shield that reduced Essence upon taking damage instead, which, naturally, adds all kinds of defensive strategies. Ironically, that would have helped me in a nearby encounter with a large encampment of lizard-like Xaurips. After my Companion Kai (who I was pleased to discover is voiced by Brandon Keener, who played best Mass Effect bro Garrus) was downed, I found myself nearly out of HP and Essence. This led me to frantically dash around the area to avoid incoming arrows and spears before ducking behind a tree. From there, I opened the menu and quickly created a pistol-and-wand loadout so I could methodically pop out from cover to fire off low-damaging spells in between reloads of my more powerful pistol. In the end, my slapdash strategy paid off, as I made it out with literally a sliver of HP and no more healing items.

But of course, that’s just how I played, and many others might have done it differently. For Paramo, his go-to loadout is pistols in the primary hand and shields in the off-hand. “I feel like I don’t see that a lot in games where I’m able to block, I’m able to parry, and I’m able to open up with shots. It’s a really fun combination,” he says. “And then couple that with either Companion abilities or even other abilities and you find yourself freezing characters, following up, parrying that guy, dodging, mixing it all together. And it comes together in a pretty cohesive way.”

For Max Matzenbacher, senior combat designer, it’s all about two Grimoires in each loadout with a pistol in one and a melee weapon in the other. “Being a lighter, more vulnerable build, but getting into melee, it had to be very agile, and then really leaning on my Companions to ‘pull agro, pull agro, save me, save me,'” he says of his strategy. “And then crowd control an enemy, route them to the ground. And then using my grenades and things like that, it forces me to really use as many tools as possible. But that one just felt really interesting — that mix of sword and magic spellbook.”

The only time you’d ever want to read mid-battle.

They also touch on something I only got to play around with a little bit: Companion abilities. Like in Mass Effect, you can pull open a radial wheel to direct your Companions — who otherwise are CPU-controlled and act on their own — to perform special moves. For Kai, who’s a mercenary, he has all kinds of handy special ammo shots, including an incendiary round that can deal a lot of damage and even clear cobweb and debris barriers for you. In the demo, I only had Kai with me, but Obsidian says you’ll eventually be able to have up to two Companions with you, and I’m excited to see how the addition of other party members will continue to shake up the already excellently varied combat.

A stunning world filled with exciting secrets and unsettling terrors

So, we have an intriguing narrative and fantastic combat, but what about the world of Avowed itself? To be honest, I was the most bullish about this aspect of the game going into the preview, and it actually exceeded my expectations.

Above all else, my favourite thing about Avowed so far (besides its combat) is that it adopts an “open zone” structure, which means that it has multiple segregated-yet-expansive regions, rather than one massive “open-world” one. In general, I vastly prefer this approach because it makes the world design feel purposeful; instead of having a single sprawling map simply for the sake of it, Obsidian can focus on quality over quantity with comparatively smaller areas.

“We took the open zone approach with The Outer Worlds, so it’s obviously a structure that we were familiar with. We knew how to build [that], both technically and creatively, in Unreal [Engine]. But also, a couple of things that it does is it allows you to create a distinct aesthetic and distinct set of characters and storylines and sense of place in each region,” says Patel. “So one thing you’ll see as you play through the game is [the] Dawnshore [region] looks very different from Emerald Stair and very different from Shatterscarp. And these are regions that we’ve shown clips of in previous previews, but they all have a very different look, a very different set of geography and foliage. And by building them as separate zones, we’re really able to lean into each one as its own thing.”

Dawnshore.

“The scope of the game has allowed us to be a lot more handcrafted about everything. So every single aspect of the game was placed by somebody deliberately,” says Berto Ritger, region director. “And so you’ll come across stuff that, from a team perspective, we can actually populate the world at a density that we feel is good for the world. And also, it’s meant to be a game that respects your time, and there’s a lot of depth to it if you really want to engage with it.”

In the demo, we got to explore the Dawnshore, a coastal region filled with rolling hills, woodlands and beaches, giving it something of an island paradise vibe. There are several things I appreciated about this region. For one, it’s simultaneously dense and varied yet manageably sized. In one chunk of the demo, I set off west of the main quest objective, which was in the forest, and found myself stumbling upon a large and eerie graveyard. While there, the leader of a motley crew of gravediggers stormed over to me, and I was able to glare at one of the henchmen using my high Resolve stat (which I’d upgraded upon each level up) to scare him off. It was a bit of campy fun in a decidedly spooky and atmospheric area.

But what surprised me even more was that exiting the other side of the graveyard revealed one cliffside that took me to a creature-infested mountaintop catwalk area. As I ran and jumped between the rocky platforms, I arrived at a strange hut which I realized was part of a sidequest I had taken that tasked me with clearing out the home of a woman in Dawnshore’s port town. Because I had already gotten a key from her, I could just walk right in and take out the lizard-man, but I also spotted a destructible wall should I have stumbled upon this early. Now that the job was done, I started to head back to the city, only to find a shortcut through the mountains into a quaint flower-filled field and right into a different section of the port. All told, it felt like I had travelled pretty far due to all of the geographical diversity I experienced along the way, but in actuality, it was still reasonably close.

What a pretty dungeon.

“Almost every, if not every, quest in the game has more than one way to start it. You can do things out of order. You can pick up items and give them to the people that want them, or kill a character or whatever. You can play things out of order. You can come at a dungeon space or vice-versa, from a different direction than you normally would,” says Ritger. “And we want you to be able to do that just based on however you naturally progress through the world, and we want to just constantly foster that sense of exploration, wanderlust and just getting lost pleasantly.”

And on the subject of pleasantness, that aforementioned sidequest proved to have quite an amusing outcome. I won’t spoil exactly what it was, but suffice it to say the woman wasn’t entirely truthful about what was going on and she ended up having an unexpected connection to the Xaurip. Between this, the graveyard shenanigans, Kai’s occasional Garrus-esque banter and the overall gloriously picturesque region, there’s a winning playfulness here that surprised me. After all, this post-Game of Thrones world we’re in has led to a lot of dark fantasy stories, and while I enjoy those from time to time, they can start to feel overbearing. With that in mind, I was overjoyed to see how well Eora, so far, is striking a tonal balance. Of course, there’s the inherent darker undertones of the Dream Scourge plague, but there’s still a sense of whimsy and adventure to be had as you explore and meet all kinds of colourful characters.

“We wanted to bring forward the tone that we had sort of established in Pillars of Eternity II. That was slightly more, not irreverent, but [it had] a little more levity than Pillars I, which was quite serious,” explains Dollarhyde. “And so Avowed, I think, is closer in the Pillars II realm where it’s still grounded in the world and the political intrigue and the story of the Living Lands, but also, there’s fun and humour, and there’s life, because even when things are really bad in real life, you’re still laughing with your friends, you’re still [spending] time with your family and stuff like that. So the most important thing for me and the content that I worked on was making sure that things felt grounded and real in the world, but also not overwhelmingly grim.”

You probably don’t want to eat that.

Nowhere is that tonal balance better exemplified than in the game’s stunning art direction. The Dream Scourge itself can be frightening in how it slowly turns people mad, but there’s also an undeniable sort of naturalistic beauty to how that corruption physically manifests on them through a part-fungal, part-crystalline outgrowth. According to art director Matt Hansen, this was inspired by the “unsettling” multi-coloured bubbly visuals seen in the 2018 Alex Garland film Annihilation starring Natalie Portman.

“My mantra and selling point of the more vibrant aesthetic for the game is in the real world, the most dangerous stuff is the most colourful. You look at stinging insects, you look at stuff you shouldn’t eat — it’s usually very vibrant. Don’t get me wrong, there’s some gloomy, nasty things out there as well, but allowing ourselves to tap into that component of human psychology has been really, really cool,” says Hansen.

“Without getting into too much spoiler territory, because there’s lore reasons why it looks the way that it does, you’ll note it’s every shade of the rainbow at times. This is not just a plague that affects the body and the world, it impacts the soul, and in Eora, spirit energy is what is responsible for how everything exists, and that includes all of the colours of the rainbow. So we’re like, ‘All right, how do we take that and make kind of a sickly version of it? So we leaned towards those sort of paler, almost pastel soap bubble tones that feel a little weird when you’re exposed to it.”

And outside of the more “civilized” areas that are (for now) free of the Dream Scourge, I was routinely impressed by Avowed‘s parkour system, which I haven’t really seen in RPGs like this. It’s by no means fantasy Mirror’s Edge, but it adds a nice degree of verticality to level design. In the aforementioned cliff area or even a dank, spider-filled dungeon, I found it brought an extra bit of adventure and discovery to the proceedings. Even the town area had several buildings with locked doors, leading me to have to find a way to climb up to nearby structures and hop over to find a rooftop hatch or window. It’s refreshing to see this focus on adding detail to environments and encouraging you to interact with them in different ways, rather than just giving you a giant and largely empty map to run through from Point A to B. It also means there are lots of missable secrets if you’re not attentive enough, with both me and at least one other journalist having completely bypassed the big Dawntreader sidequest that the team has hyped up.

“Whether it’s like something really simple, like a skeleton with a health potion [and] there’s the tiniest micro story there, or a huge piece of content, like with the Dawntreader dungeon — that’s completely missable content, and it’s an enormous dungeon in the middle of [Dawnshore]. It’s just there if you’re poking around,” says Dollarhyde, who led the writing team on the Dawntreader quest.

Admittedly, I need to see more to gauge just how well Avowed handles the branching outcomes of sidequests like Dawntreader, but on the whole, it’s exciting to see this thoughtful approach to optional content in the world map.

After spending the better part of a day learning more about Avowed, I’m very impressed by what Obsidian is doing. From the purposeful, hand-crafted and beautiful world to exceptional free-flowing dual-wielding combat and intriguing narrative, this looks like another great RPG from the developer. Even if you’re someone who’s been on the fence about Avowed due to some marketing material, I would absolutely recommend keeping this on your radar. I went in cautiously optimistic and came out genuinely feeling like this is now one of my most anticipated games.

Avowed will launch on Xbox Series X/S and PC on February 18th, 2025.

For more on Avowed, check out my other feature unpacking how Obsidian is making the game more accessible, including through an optional third-person mode.

Image credit: Xbox

Update: 21/11/2024 at 1:48pm ET — This feature previously listed Carrie Patel’s role on Avowed as “creative director,” but her correct title is “game director.” We’ve updated the piece accordingly.