Avowed is a jack-of-all-trades action RPG with a rare attention for the little details

GamesRPGAvowedAvowed is a jack-of-all-trades action RPG with a rare attention for the little detailsWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Obsidian Entertainment, Xbox Game Studios)

Kai and the player character walking through the city of Paradis in Avowed.

I walked through the front doors of Obsidian Entertainment with a singleminded mission: find a gun in fantasy RPG Avowed as quickly as possible.

So much of Avowed—which Obsidian hastaken pains to point outisnota sweeping open world game like Skyrim—looks deeply traditional. Cozy. Unsurprising. But then there are the guns. Where else might it diverge from the stock fantasy playbook?

“The things that set Avowed, and really all the [Pillars of Eternity] games we’ve made in the world of Eora apart in the fantasy RPG genre, are that blend of a very grounded political story and a very philosophical and mysterious metaphysical story,” says director Carrie Patel. “You almost always have a player character with one foot in the world of the gods and souls and these strange, mysterious things, and another foot in the conflict between nations. That enables us to tell stories where the characters feel very grounded and relatable, but also still have some color, and the quests you’re encountering can mix those feelings of groundedness but also scale and epicness and wonder.”

Patel has had the tricky task of reigning in expectations for Avowed to approximatelyThe Outer Worlds-sized while also making a convincing case that it still has vast branching roleplaying (where Obsidian historically excels) and action-heavy combat (where Obsidian historically doesn’t). If the dev team is feeling any pressure for Avowed to be a smash hit after five years in development, though—and Microsoft’s last big RPG,Starfield, not exactly matching up to Baldur’s Gate 3—there’s no sign of it.

Obsidian seems eager to give as many developers as possible a chance to dish on their contributions, those million unsung details that go into a game. Ten developers take me through art and combat and writing and quest design; everyone namedrops someone else’s great work. During breaks between interviews the chatter quickly goes off the rails. At one point Patel pulls out her phone and playsa remix of Busta Rhymes rapping over the Wii Shop Channel music. (I don’t remember how we got there.) I know I shouldn’t read too much into Busta Rhymes, yet it was an oddly encouraging moment: Vibes can only prove so much, but seeing a team abuzz with kindred energy is at least a strong signal that they work very well together.

As I played Avowed I kept hunting for the one special, amazing thing that would wow me. And, well, I didn’t find it. But after a few hours, I started to think maybe I didn’t need to.

Avoweddetails: Everything we knowAvowed companions: Party’s all hereBest Avowed builds: Freeform skill buildsAvowed best weapons: What to dual-wieldBest RPGs: The greatest you can play now

Avowed detailsAvowed companionsBest Avowed buildsAvowed best weaponsBest RPGs

Avoweddetails: Everything we knowAvowed companions: Party’s all hereBest Avowed builds: Freeform skill buildsAvowed best weapons: What to dual-wieldBest RPGs: The greatest you can play now

Grimoired and dangerous

One of Avowed’s many UI options: hiding skill checks you can’t pass.(Image credit: Obsidian Entertainment)

Avowed

We want to allow you to look up, see a lighthouse and wonder ‘hmm, I wonder if I can climb up there.’ And you can.Berto Ritger

We want to allow you to look up, see a lighthouse and wonder ‘hmm, I wonder if I can climb up there.’ And you can.

As soon as I got clear of Avowed’s tutorial I found the first merchant in the sunny port town of Claviger’s Landing and bought myself a cheap pistol. Then I equipped a grimoire in my off hand, which let me cast clutch elemental spells without any actual proficiency with magic. The flexibility of Avowed’s classless system is exciting even at the start—I can’t think of many RPGs I’ve played that mix magic and melee so freely.

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Combat vaguely resembles Skyrim on the surface, but in the hands it feels much different, with a snappy dodge and an action RPG-style stun meter on enemies that lets you fire off a special attack when it maxes out. It feels outrightgameyin a way I didn’t expect, with charge attacks, bursts of hitstop and arcadeypings!on critical hits.

“The challenge in RPGs is we want you to feel this progression throughout the game, but it can’t start in a way that just feels crappy,” says combat designer Max Matzenbacher, who’s spent a great deal of time hand-tuning the feel of Avowed’s weapons. “We play with the timing of the animations, and we’ve spent a lot of time having the animation state change based on the type of hit. If it’s a normal hit we’re trying to get that connection to feel right; if it’s a hit where you’re fighting an enemy that’s too strong for you, we kinda try to make it feel like you’re hitting an immobile post. Camera shake in first-person makes the game too disorienting, so our UI team has gotten the HUD to shake. Directional blood and VFX, all those feedback cues—I could geek out for hours.”

At level one Avowed’s combat weighs in as a versatile welterweight—not quite manic Japanese-style character action, but not as weighty as a melee-focused brawler like Warhammer: Vermintide 2. I can’t tell if it’ll excel in either weight class as I level up and gain abilities, but I think mid- and late-game Avowed is going to be a whole different fighter than what Obsidian has shown in its trailers. Even early on it feels better than it looks in video, particularly when I’m ice-blasting charging enemies with the grimoire in my left hand and then popping off a headshot with the pistol in my right.

I spent about half my playtime trying Avowed’s third-person camera, and it works with only the occasional floatiness or awkward animation. Patel says the third-person camera was always planned, but it’s listed as an accessibility option for those who struggle with first-person, the mode the game was clearly designed for. There’s a hint of Deus Ex-style immersive sim DNA to the environments, which are brimming with climbable ledges and rooftop rewards for exploration. Where Skyrim’s jump button existed exclusively for stuttering up barren mountainsides, Avowed’s is constantly useful and enriches the compact spaces Obsidian has designed.

I do love the mini-accomplishment of clambering my way onto a rooftop, but more importantly there’s shit to do when you make your way up there; when I returned to that shantytown for a more thorough look, I barged into a second-storey door and discovered a quest awaiting with the nervous hideaways inside.

“In a top-down game we know what you’re going to see,” says Berto Ritger, who serves as a region director on Avowed, helping shape its environments. “In this world you can look around, see the sky, see the moon for the first time in Eora. And you aren’t always going to do what the devs necessarily want you to do. We want to lean into that and allow you to look up, see a lighthouse and wonder ‘hmm, I wonder if I can climb up there.’ And you can. We want to encourage that exploration.”

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(Image credit: Obsidian Entertainment)(Image credit: Obsidian Entertainment)(Image credit: Obsidian Entertainment)(Image credit: Obsidian Entertainment)(Image credit: Obsidian Entertainment)(Image credit: Obsidian Entertainment)