With an Evil Empire's Power Comes Great Responsibility

New York Times

13-02-2025

Most video games are power fantasies. You might have endless lives or be capable of shrugging off mortal wounds and clearing out dozens of bad guys with superhuman prowess.
The role-playing game Avowed wholeheartedly embraces the fantasy, yet stands out as a game that encourages the player to think about what it means to be so powerful. It asks us to engage with our power rather than simply benefit from it.
At its most predictable, Avowed manifests this empowerment with the typical medieval fantasy fare of swords and shields and wands and guns, which you will use to blast your way through any impediment blocking your path forward. But these battles are only a colorful distraction next to your character's real source of power: your mandate, as the envoy of a distant emperor, to decide how things should be run in the wild and untamed Living Lands.
Composed of a few independent fiefs, the Living Lands resemble the Caribbean islands before their settlement by European powers, complete with piratical touches like aquamarine coves, waterlogged ruins and flintlock pistols. You have arrived to root out the source of a mysterious plague and to soften the ground for your expansionist benefactor's future colonization efforts.
It's novel to play a game as, if not entirely a villain, an unsympathetic tool of power. Your empire, Aedyr, has a downright awful reputation in the Living Lands, exacerbated by your bloodthirsty colleagues known charmingly as the Steel Garrote. Throughout the game you'll be tasked with defusing diplomatic flare-ups caused by the Steel Garrote and its nasty leader.
In spite of the obligations placed on your character, Avowed is still interested in being a role-playing game. You can make decisions that affirm Aedyr's quest to conquer the Living Lands. You can try toeing the line and opt for a less violent, if no less hegemonic, version of colonial control. You can even reject your birthright, toss off the yoke of legacy and try to forge your own path forward in this new world. There is generous space within Avowed's narrative for each of these styles as well as various combinations in between.
Unfortunately, Avowed's great narrative wealth — its stories of compromised leadership, of trauma, grief, ambition and faith — is confined by a generic fantasy-game wrapper. A mushroom-laden mise en scène with a wild, Lisa Frank-style color palette cannot compensate for identical armies of lizards, spiders and skeleton archers.
Avowed's most impressive accomplishment is a narrative with weighty player choices, one that doesn't ignore your role as a representative of empire while allowing you to explore the opportunities presented by the power you wield. It's like getting to play as a trust fund heir, as either an oblivious privileged brat or someone with a desire to act ethically from a position of extreme privilege.
The compromised nature of your role, with its ambiguous agendas and split allegiances, does interact elegantly with Avowed's forking narrative structure. Partway through the game I was faced with a choice that would mean betraying my own countrymen. It was the correct decision, but it was made more difficult knowing that it would affect my existing relationships. It was a great narrative moment that highlighted how difficult it could be to challenge your own social group, even when that group was obviously in the wrong.
Not only do your decisions test old loyalties, but you'll frequently see how the ways you've shaped your envoy affect the bonds you make throughout the game.
By the end of the journey you'll have assembled a small team of misfits, all of whom have one thing or another to say about your choices and allegiances. They each have a stake in the Living Lands, whether it's Kai's parallel journey of finding his place apart from empire, Marius's torn attachment to his estranged people or Giatta's task of forming an identity apart from her parents' legacy. Being able to observe the state of things through their individual perspectives enriches the game's narrative and makes your own role that much more interesting.
It is unfortunate that the rest of the 40-hour game by Obsidian Entertainment — which is celebrated for Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, Fallout: New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity — isn't as thoughtfully constructed. When you aren't hashing it out with the various faction leaders of the Living Lands or sharing in a personal story with an ally around the campfire, you'll be playing a watered-down version of better fantasy games.
With its first-person dungeon-crawling, two-handed combat and prolific amount of spells and skills, Avowed owes much to games like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The inclusion of a three-person team that responds to commands selected off a radial wheel feels influenced by BioWare games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age.
There's just enough in Avowed to cover the familiar bases of an open-world R.P.G. experience, but enjoying it requires withstanding the drudgery of an immature game so you can make it to its adult narrative. Playing feels like skimming along the surface of a kid's cereal-colored world, clicking your way lazily through encounters on the way to an interesting story beat.
To reach the rewarding story moments, you are forced to engage in inconsequential and narratively light side quests, bounties and treasure hunts that provide the funds and raw materials necessary to upgrade or purchase the proper armor and weapons.
And unlike the battle mechanics in recent hits like Baldur's Gate 3, Avowed's are too simplistic to require much strategizing. As long as your gear is upgraded and you fire every spell and special ability that's off cooldown, you'll probably make it through most encounters just fine.
Avowed's story is powerful and full of vitality, but like the mysterious entity wreaking havoc on the Living Lands, it is trapped within a prison of convention.