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Yahoo
13-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Avowed review: Elder Scrolls? I don't know her
Sorry, beefcakes, but this review isn't for you. All the fighters and rangers out there will still get a sense of how phenomenal Avowed is, the lushness of its environments, the clarity of its combat systems and the depth of its conversation trees — but at its core, this is the review for Avowed players who want to spend their time in the Living Lands learning how to become a master of mushroom-powered magic. This is the Avowed review for wizards. And, sure, all of their friends. To be clear, I would happily play Avowed as any mixture of classes, and I'm likely going to boot up a new campaign and do exactly this very soon. But in my first runthrough, I wanted to see if the game would let me live out my fantastical spell-slinging dreams, and it absolutely did. Avowed is a first-person, open-world RPG from Obsidian and it's a spin-off of the studio's Pillars of Eternity series, but it introduces an entirely fresh storyline and map, and doesn't require any existing knowledge of that universe. You are the envoy to the powerful Aedyran empire and you've just landed on the shores of the Living Lands, a lawless region occupied by outcasts, criminals and refugees from the wider world. Aedyr and its goon squad, the Steele Garrote, are making inroads in this land and attempting to wrest control of its settlements in the name of law and order. You know, classic colonizer shit. However, that's not why you're here — you're on a mission to uncover the source of the Dreamscourge, a rapidly spreading illness that consumes the minds of people and animals, covering their bodies in bright fungal growths and turning them into rabid killing machines. It's kind of like cordyceps in The Last of Us, but with rainbow face mushrooms and rambling spiritual breakdowns preceding the full zombie phase. Advertisement The Dreamscourge's growths look eerily similar to markings on your own face, but you've carried yours since birth and they signify you as a godlike, someone who's been touched by one of the many deities of this world. This is a rare and special status, and part of your journey involves uncovering the identity of your god, a mystery that's haunted your entire life. What's more, as you interact with aquamarine pillars of spiritual power called adra, a booming voice interrupts your thoughts and dreams, begging you to trust it and claiming it can help cleanse the world. Avowed This complex foundation forms a tapestry of twisting, interlocking narrative threads that span politics, military strategy, religion, occultism, science, trust, relationships, duty and identity over 45 hours of playtime. That's for a fairly focused run, too — I skipped plenty of sidequests in the interest of finishing the game before my deadline, and a full, leisurely playthrough could easily have tacked on 20 more hours and oodles of narrative intrigue. The lore runs deep in Avowed and each of its storylines is handled with supreme care, as are all of the notes, letters, poems and plaques scattered across the Living Lands. There are thousands of completely optional pieces of writing to find here, and each one is delivered in its own voice, serving its own purpose. Avowed is full of life and its history was written with a deft hand. After creating my character with purple and pink hair, yellow freckles and big coral mushroom paddles across my eyes, I chose to be a Court Augur — the most mystical option — and started building out my interpersonal and mana-generating stats. Mana in this game is called essence, and you also have health and stamina gauges. Leveling up certain characteristics unlocks their associated dialogue options in conversations, and throughout my playthrough, I focused on Perception, Intellect and Resolve because I hate being made to look a fool. Also, as the game progressed, I realized I needed as much stamina and essence as I could get. The Living Lands comprise four main regions: Dawnshore, Emerald Stair, Shatterscarp and Galawain's Tusks. Their landscapes range from lush, water-logged forests dotted with iridescent fog and glowing mushrooms, to blackened, craggy spires and bone-like structures in a hellish volcanic wasteland. Each area is gorgeous in its own way and packed with people to help, bounties to secure, secrets to unravel and so very many shiny items to pick up. As someone who absolutely can't resist a glowing outline or the tinkling of a nearby lockbox, Avowed is a buffet of delight. The game encourages you to pick up absolutely everything in sight, and though there is an encumbrance limit, it's generous and never caused me any real problems. There also seems to be no such thing as 'stealing' with your character, no matter how destitute or hostile the surrounding NPCs may be. Avowed The dialogue system offers ample opportunity to forge a distinct personality and apply it to every scenario, whether you want to be a hardline government simp, religious zealot, socialist vigilante or some combination of all three. The choices you make in conversations with townsfolk, your companions and the voice in your head ripple across the campaign, altering the outcomes of major narrative points in tangible ways. Treat each decision as if it really matters, because in this game, it probably does. Advertisement Avowed let me live out my anti-colonization, pro-contraceptive, magical underground rebellion fantasy, but I found it just as enjoyable to talk to kith — the humanoid creatures of the Living Lands — just for the sake of talking. My favorite dialogue moments happened while standing around the fire of my party camp, learning more about the lives of my companions, shaping my own personality and swapping scary stories. Also, the way the firelight glints off of the slick turquoise scales of my companion Kai's chest is endlessly mesmerizing. Ahem, speaking of — there is no romance in Avowed and I have to say, I didn't miss it. Horny characters abound in the Living Lands, so there's no shortage of flirty dialogue options if you care to partake, but there's enough happening at all times that a roll in the hay never feels like top priority. Your party maxes out with four companions: the aforementioned Rauataian nomad Kai, the mountain dwarf and tracker Marius, the defiant animancer human Giatta, and the talented wizard-in-training Yatzli, a hearth orlan with pink hair and big, fluffy ears. I know who I would start a romance with — Giatta and I had some lovely fireside chats — but more than anything, I'm happy to have these characters as my friends and reinforcements throughout the game. Avowed Advertisement Some of Avowed's best storylines are sidequests about your companions' lives, fleshing out their personal demons, helping them find closure, and providing context for their behaviors and beliefs. Kai's sidequest involving his old friend, Tama, stands out as a particularly moving vignette. Play it when you see it. You can take two companions at a time on your adventures, and the campaign touches on their backstories in turn, making certain party members more useful in specific missions. Kai is a tank with a fire-starting gun; Marius has a bow and shadow-step assassin ability; Giatta heals, shields and buffs; and Yatzli uses magic to control crowds and deal devastating damage. Once I realized that playing as a wizard meant I didn't have to use a grimoire to cast spells, I was completely committed to maxing out that class tree, ignoring the fighter and ranger skills entirely. There's also a godlike ability tree that fills up as you discover memories of your past lives in hidden locations around the Living Lands. Godlike moves include things like passive boosts, area-of-effect spells and attacks. Finding one of these is a treat, because it triggers a moment of introspection between your character and the voice in their head: A beautiful, hand-drawn image of an ancient event fills the screen and the voice asks how you acted in past moments of extreme tragedy and triumph. These conversations nurture your relationship with the voice and help establish your personal history, and they're quietly, deeply satisfying. Avowed In combat, I ended up with two main loadouts: A wand and one-handed staff as my main, and a flaming sword and pirate-y gun in the other. Every now and then I swapped my secondary loadout for a bow, which takes two hands to fire but never runs out of arrows, and I had a lot of fun landing headshots from afar. I upgraded my chosen weapons and armor at the party camp throughout my adventure, and added enhancements to the objects that could handle them. Upgrading and enhancing is its own little game, and this feature made me feel less insane as I ran in the opposite direction of my waypoint marker, compulsively picking up every single shiny thing on screen. This is for upgrades, I whispered to myself while gathering my 166th twig. Yes, yes, upgrades. Advertisement The action wheel was also a critical tool. Opening it during combat pauses the scene, allowing you to browse consumables, godlike abilities and, most importantly for a young wizard, spells. I mapped health and three spells to the D-pad, but the rest of my magic abilities were added to the wheel as I unlocked them. It became second nature in the heat of battle to pull up the wheel, down some wild mushroom stew and then pick a spell to fling at incoming enemies, whether ice, fire, lightning or pure magic damage, laser-focused or area-of-effect. And then, I'd watch my foes fry. Truly, I loved being a wizard. Managing my stamina bar, essence meter and health gauge was the trickiest part of combat, but I quickly fell into a groove of stabbing, dodging and spell-slinging that worked against a range of enemy types. My overall combat tip is simple: Kill the healers first. By the end of the campaign, I really did feel godlike. Avowed Enemies in Avowed don't level up relative to your own experience. This means those level one lizard bros in Dawnshore will always be level one, and the level five beetles in Galawain's Tusks will always be level five. I appreciate this approach because it's immediately clear when you need to spend some time grinding, and it's easy to plan future raids and sidequest runs. That said, I'm a fan of grinding (hey-o), so this choice plays into my open-world RPG preferences nicely. My time in the Living Lands wasn't without bugs, of course, and I'm not talking about the giant spiders. I played on Xbox Series X and experienced four hard crashes in 45 hours, and three of these were in the same area, which happened to be a big boss fight, so that definitely wasn't ideal. I restarted the game each time and didn't lose any real progress. There were also consistent animation issues with close-up dialogue scenes, where it seemed like the game had trouble rendering characters based on how much hair they had — Yatzli was particularly stuttery from a visual standpoint. The flame animation on my Fan of Flames also cut out sometimes, but the damage kept spewing out, so this wasn't a huge deal. None of these issues ruined the game and none of them are above further optimization from Obsidian, hopefully in a day-one patch. But honestly, by the time the end credits rolled, I'd forgotten that any of these things had happened. I simply felt warm and fulfilled, like I'd just completed a fantastic game. Advertisement The third line in my review notes says, 'I would like to be a mushroom witch pls,' and Avowed let me be exactly that. I played the game as a kind and self-righteous chaos demon, but if I'd wanted, I could've been a staid enforcer of colonial expansion, a hubristic wannabe king or something in between. The Living Lands easily support all of these realities, thanks to a universe filled with fabulous writing, exciting secrets, breathtaking views, intriguing characters and smooth mechanics. Though Avowed is set in the world of an existing franchise and it's yet another entry in the stacked genre of open-world fantasy RPGs, it feels like the start of something new.
New York Times
13-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
With an Evil Empire's Power Comes Great Responsibility
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.
