Gosh, haven’t done one of these in a while, have we? Or possibly one of these. Or these?! The silly amount of tags for this semi-regular format are surely proof of its enduring appeal, so we’re back in Hivemind form to talk about Obsidian’s latest RPG Avowed. We’ve all played it, and we all have mildly different opinions on it – the stuff that thrilling conversations are made of. Onward!
Nic: James did you work out how to freeze things yet?
James: I’ll explain this quickly so Nic can get on to complaining about Avowed having the wrong kinds of boxes. But yes, I did get stuck on an early main quest that required me to use ice magic to create frozen platforms for crossing water, an otherwise neat little systems thingy that had not been communicated or hinted at before that point, but was communicated and hinted at during the following main quest.
Otherwise, I’m having an okayish time? It doesn’t have the Skyrim-tier expansiveness I always hope for with these kinds of games, but its world is a pretty one, and it’s got some quality close-quarters mageing.
Nic: Look. I feel passionately about those crates. There are two types of crates. You can only smash the crates that have the special ‘smash me’ icon on them. I don’t want a crate to “come hither” me. Takes all the fun out of the petty vandalism.
It’s funny though because those two qualities you mention, James – the world and magic – are the same ones I thought were Avowed’s strongest elements. How are you both finding the actual questing?
Jeremy: I think I like Avowed the most out of anyone here. Mostly due to the world of Eora, which as Nic said is one of the game’s strongest elements. It’s just full of all kinds of weird, multicoloured plants and mushrooms growing out of dryads and other forestry things, and the overall plot – which involves healing an island of an ecological dream plague – is the sort of thing I’ve dabbled in half a dozen times with multiple TTRPG systems (I like druids).
You wouldn’t know it unless you were paying attention, but Avowed doesn’t deserve all the credit for its world. This is a spin-off of the Pillars of Eternity games, a fact that I wish Obsidian would advertise more. I’m reminded of Redguard, that Elder Scrolls spin-off from 1998…but even that one had the words Elder Scrolls on the box! Anyway, I’ve owned the Pillars games for ages but still haven’t played them, and the biggest endorsement I can give Avowed is that it’s bumped them up my priority list.
That said, the actual quests (and there are a lot of them, as the game kind of expects you to dabble in side quests or at least upgrade gear to reach gated-off areas) can feel run-of-the-mill at times. It’s all better than ‘kill X number of plant thingies, collect X number of magical lily pads,’ but it’s still fairly mundane stuff that usually requires chatting to a few NPCs, exploring a dungeon, maybe fighting a boss. There’s no Witcher 3-level writing, in other words. This mundanity is definitely disguised in a pretty world that’s lucky enough to have been fleshed out by two very in-depth CRPGs, but it’s still there.
James: I think – and granted I’m not as far in as either of you two – a lot of the quests take interesting enough turns, or at least conclude with a silly enough twist, that they feel like they were worth doing even if they weren’t interesting/surprising/silly in a structural sense. Specific examples would be spoilery, of course, but even the rote “Please clear my house of beasties” sidequest you can get straight off the tutorial thinks up a pretty funky story for itself.
Still, yes, ultimately it plays more like a ground-level, first-person ARPG: your primary means of interacting with the world is to hurl low-cooldown spells at its inhabitants, with pure speechcraft or stealth approaches made impossible. That’s not an incorrect way to make an enjoyable fantasy adventure, but probably will require some expectation management on how much role-playing you like in your role-playing games.
Jeremy: So I have managed to do a little bit of speechcraft and stealth, though they’re definitely not the easiest approaches to take. Getting your way out of scrapes via diplomacy seems doable, but I’m not sure if there’s a skill check system going on under the hood or if it’s simply a case of choosing the right dialogue option. Every time I tried to use words to keep the big bruisers in the rough part of town from bashing my head in, it ended in failure, for instance. But I was successfully able to sneak into a delemgan (big mean dryads) encampment by hiding in tall grass and backstabbing the occasional shroom mook for an instant-kill, so there’s that.
Hurling low-cooldown spells is definitely the way to go, though. There’s a speed and ferocity to Avowed’s first-person magic-casting that reminds me of Heretic or Hexen in its best moments, complete with you seeing your character’s hands/wand/grimoire of doom floating in front of you. (If you’re playing in third person, which I prefer due to motion sickness reasons, it feels like the good parts of Heretic II.) This combined with parkour-style movement and what Nic described in one of our meetings as ‘boomer shooter level design’ makes traversing Avowed’s dungeons and blasting away baddies a lot of fun.
That said, if you’re not playing as a wizard – or at least as a multiclasser with a smattering of spells – whacking lizard people with a mace over and over again probably gets dull fast. I definitely stress investing in magic with this one, folks. The gameplay is 100 times more engaging if you do.
James: Actually I was hoping Nic would elaborate on the boomer shooter comparison. Largely because during that meeting I was distracted by casting flame-hands at people on my second monitor.
Nic: So I think I traditionally associate dungeon crawling in an RPG with quite deliberate, methodical exploration, but Avowed’s dungeons felt designed in a way to encourage momentum. Lots of vaulting and jumping. Lots of secrets. Lots of combat. It creates a real flow that, combined with chucking spells in first person, put me more in mind of a traditional FPS. Plus they do feel really handcrafted, the dungeons. Closer to what I’d expect for an action game than an RPG.
I’m glad you’re both enjoying it though. I think a lot of my disappointment comes from a place where I can find a lot of the sort of fun Avowed offers in other places. But the uniquely Obsidian stuff – the stuff I’m there for – just felt either de-emphasised or just not that potent. I will say though, in terms of the worldbuilding, obviously I loved the visual design of the world, and you can’t really have that without strong worldbuilding to support it. So I wouldn’t say “the writing is bad” because obviously that’s part of it, and there’s a strong history there from the Pillars games as Jeremy mentioned. I was just never excited to speak to anyone, nor felt able to express myself in quests or dialogue how I’d have liked. Do either of you have a favourite quest so far?
Jeremy: Honestly, I do not, and this likely proves the point we’ve been making about how the questing isn’t necessarily the strong suit here – it’s the fast-paced movement, exploration of environments, spell slinging, and minute-to-minute interactions with a fleshed-out fantasy world that add up over time to make up for so-so quest design. I did end up inadvertently selling my body to science at an undead revenant farm over the course of one quest though, and that was pretty neat.
At the end of the day, I have a feeling that Avowed will be something of a sleeper hit. I dunno if it’ll do as well as Obsidian and Microsoft hope, but I think the people who like it (this includes myself) will sing its praises for some time. It’s hard to tell if we’ll see an Avowed 2, and I’m not sure if it’s better than Obsidian’s recent offerings, since I skipped The Outer Worlds. (Maybe Nic and James can chime in on whether this is an improvement.) But at the very least, Avowed’s an intriguing (albeit occasionally rough) nature-infused side story in the saga of Eora. If there’s not going to be a Pillars of Eternity 3, I think fans of the world will be pleased with what’s on display here.
James: It’d be hilarious if Obsidian became this Bethesda 2.0 studio by just alternating between Avowed and The Outer Worlds sequels for a decade. Speaking of which, this doesn’t feel as incongruously cramped as The Outer Worlds, and its action is a bit more satisfying (again, so long as you’re a Wizard – melee combat feels like you’re hitting a plexiglass box containing each enemy rather than the enemy itself). Have to agree with Nic about the dialogue, though, which lacks a certain… I dunno, liveliness? That Obsidian scripts have often had. TOW wasn’t packed with memorable debates either but it at least had some good jokes.
Nic: There is actually at least one really good joke in Avowed, but I won’t spoil it.
James: Was it an unsmashable crate with the “smash me” icon painted on it?
Nic: It was that exact genre of joke, actually.