Avowed’s facial mushrooms hide a fantasy romp that’s well worth your time: disagree and my arquebus awaits
While I’m not going to argue that Obsidian’s fantasy RPG matches the depth of the genre’s topline measuring sticks, your Baldur’s Gates, your Witchers, your New Vegases, it did provide me a good time in 2025. I found the world of Eora – with its mushrooms, sprawling coastlines, dense forests, arid deserts, and more mushrooms – colourful and varied enough to whet my appetite for exploration. Combat was satisfying enough that I looked forward to each opportunity to whip out my trusty blunderbuss and characters were engaging enough that hanging out with them in camp was a pleasant way to while away evenings.
Putting together a build that wasn’t just fun to play, but unique enough to inform a quirky extra layer to my roleplaying was as easy as slipping into a warm bath. The choices, at least those you make through dialogue, have enough weight to their consequences that they feel satisfying. The fates of multiple cities lie in your hands, and especially in the case of Fior mes Iverno, saving them takes a bit of exploration. There are also a good smattering of different endings to match whatever complex identity you’ve forged for your Aedryan envoy.
The main quest, which sees you trying to unite nations and save the mushroom-festooned land of Eora from a spreading disease, can be a straight-faced fantasy affair at times, but Obsidian’s humour flashes through in the sidequests. I ended one, in which I was charged with clearing a lady’s cabin of reptilian beasties, by instead convincing her to adopt one as a roommate. Another saw me running around with a zombie-attracting meteorite. There were also more poignant adventures, such as retrieving a leviathan’s heart for a dying warrior. I’ll also always appreciate an RPG that lets me be a dick with a dialogue option – a path Obsidian always wholly support.
I really loved the little segments in which your character recalls some ancient memories of locations in years gone by, which they can tap into via their Godlike powers. These reminded me of the sorts of evocative micro-fiction or poetic passages you find in books like Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. In this case, tales of your character’s long-forgotten ancestors and how they shaped the location you’re looking out over. Ephemeral visions of an enigmatic past, conveyed through artwork that evokes ancient tapestries or scrolls and manipulated by the dialogue choices you make as their tale is recited to you.
Avowed’s at its best when it embraces the awe-inspiring, fantastical potential of fantasy and tells grandiose tales of eras and people long forgotten. It’s a game which doesn’t reinvent the wheel or redefine the genre, but it doesn’t need to do that to offer you a thoroughly enthralling month or so of adventuring.
Jeremy: Avowed is a contentious game in the Treehouse. Nic (RPS in peace) thought it was kind of meh, while I enjoyed it. I still like it, mostly because it offers such an interesting environmental-focused plot. Avowed takes its Pillars of Eternity setting of Eora and places the focus clearly on one island that’s suffering from a virus which turns people into walking plant husks. Without giving too much away, said virus is related to the colonisation of the island and the threat of ever-looming imperialism, and you could draw many parallels here to climate change and the plights faced by indigenous peoples across the world.
Even if you’re not particularly impressed by its take on eco-centred natural fantasy, Avowed is still a solid first-person action RPG that sings when you play it as a spell-slinging magus, reminding me of Heretic during its best moments. Plus, not many games let me create an avatar whose entire face is covered by a mushroom-encrusted piece of driftwood.