Now Playing: Avowed

My review of Avowed is likely going to come across more negative then positive, but don’t let that fool you – Avowed is a good game and one I thoroughly enjoyed my time with. But it’s certainly not without its flaws and frustrations and that’s what my review will primarily focus upon because they do, I feel, prevent Avowed from being as good as it could be.

Avowed is a first person (or third, I suppose – but I never really bothered playing in third person as the game doesn’t feel properly designed for it) action role-playing game set in the Pillars of Eternity universe. I’ve not played the Pillars games so I went into Avowed without any prior knowledge and it was, I must admit, tricky to get into at first.

A lot of early conversations were constantly interrupted by my use of the (handy) in-game glossary to explain various terms, events, names and locations. It’s not an ideal way to introduce a player to the world, but the game sensibly front-loads all the important details so once you get over that initial hurdle, you’re pretty much good to go.

And there’s a ton of lore to be found in Avowed in the form of countless books, notes and conversations. I think if you are a fan of the Pillars games, then Avowed is a game you’ll get a lot more out of than I did from a story and lore perspective.

But even without any familiarity of the Pillars universe, I still enjoyed and was engaged by the main quest. There’s a couple of major aspects to it that – without spoiling things – I felt were rather obvious and as such, the ‘reveals’ fell flat. But despite that, there’s interesting choices to be made throughout the game and they all build to an exciting final conclusion and a satisfying epilogue that reflects upon those choices and what you’ve achieved.

There’s also a lot of fun side quests on which to embark, although I do wish each ‘zone’ of the game didn’t adhere to the same rigid (and repetitive) structure of side content. There are also two companion related quests . . . which is a little strange considering you have four companions to pick from.

Why only two of your companions have bespoke quests I really can’t say. Time? Budget? I did come to like all of the companion characters but I must admit, I’m not convinced the game needed so many. I feel the game would have been better to focus on a single companion or two with more extensive (and flexible) skill trees. The other companions would then be relegated to act as temporary comrades for specific quests or areas – kind of like what you have in the initial tutorial zone of the game.

A bad idea? Maybe. But honestly, the companions from a gameplay perspective don’t really seem to add much. They contribute little to combat and their skill trees are extremely limited. I do like the characters, I just never found them very useful and I was not particularly convinced of their necessity within the plot beyond certain events.

I think my main criticism of Avowed is that it’s just too big for what it offers. The game is split into four main ‘zones’. The first large, open zone – Dawnshore – is great. I’ve written before about the importance of structure to open maps in games – about how breaking up even the largest of maps using natural boundaries can lead to them feeling more approachable and less daunting to the player.

Dawnshore does this perfectly, using rivers and mountains to break up the map into more manageable chunks to explore. And exploration is something Avowed does brilliantly – there’s always something to be found in practically every nook and cranny and there’s a lot of verticality to the maps so you’re always searching high and low for treasure. The only thing I really hate is the actual in-game map that doesn’t mark clear boundaries to the playable area of each zone.

This makes it somewhat deceptive (and there’s nothing worse than a map that’s deceptive) as it may appear you can can travel a certain way, only for you to hit the map ‘wall’ without realising it. You also only clear the map ‘fog’ around a very small area of your movement, so your map ends up incredibly (and annoyingly) patchy with where you have and haven’t travelled – down to just a few feet.

But as I said, Dawnshore, as a zone, is great. Great pacing, interesting quests, the right balance of combat and conversation . . . but then you get to the second zone and that’s where the game takes a wrong turn. Emerald Stair is bad. Just bad. The map is terrible – it’s too open, there’s little to no structure, the colour palette is bland and the quests are largely dull. It’s where you meet the feisty Giatta so it’s not all bad, but it’s a significant step (excuse the pun) down from Dawnshore.

Thankfully, Avowed picks up a lot in its third zone – Shatterscarp – with more varied and interesting terrain, quests and characters. It’s as good, if not better than Dawnshore. And then we have the fourth zone which – whilst not as good as Dawnshore or Shatterscarp, I felt was still pretty good but the problem is, the game became a bit of a tedious slog for me at this point.

I think this is a result of two things – the first is the combat which, whilst very fun, also doesn’t have a great deal of depth to it. I love the flexibility of the skill tree, how you can essentially custom build your own class with your own combination of weapons and magic. That’s great – but the skill tree is still very limited. However, in a shorter game, you wouldn’t really have time for it to grow so stale.

But grow stale it does. By the time you reach the fourth zone combat will be a matter of routine. You’ll have unlocked all of your (limited) skills and nearly upgraded your weapons to their maximum level. There’s a lot of combat in the fourth zone and I felt like I was navigating fights on auto-pilot. I feel like they really needed weapon specific skill trees to help mix things up.

Avowed needed something more, something to help keep the combat feeling fresh in the latter stages of the game. And new enemies certainly would have helped which is my second point – the fourth zone features all of the same enemies you’ve already fought in the previous three. The game does that old trick of: same enemies – but more of them! But that’s no substitute for having the player encounter something new to tangle with.

And that’s why I feel Avowed is too big for what it offers – if you cut out that tedious second zone and shorten the overall game, the limited skill trees and shallow (but undeniably fun) combat wouldn’t have time to get stale because the game would be wrapping up at just the right moment. Unfortunately, Avowed drags things out for way too long and the cracks really start to show.

I also feel like Avowed was an opportunity to really drive home the consequences of your choices. With a smaller scope, I feel like it would have been easier to make your choices in the game have more meaningful and impactful results. I feel like that’s the hook Avowed needed – something to really set it apart.

I’m not saying there’s no consequences to your actions – in fact, the game does a decent job of all your actions (both big and small) having an impact throughout the game. But it just doesn’t push it as hard as I’d like. I feel that’s where Avowed missed a trick. As a game of more limited scope I think it could have gone hard on choice and consequence in a way few RPGs can. Where entire regions can be reshaped, where characters or even entire settlements can die, and where the game world is shaped in a far more tangible way by your decisions – and in ways that directly impact your progression.

Visually, Avowed looks great and runs smoothly. The movement and combat also feel great and I did absolutely everything I could find in the game across my 50 hours which gives you some idea of how much I still enjoyed it despite all my criticisms. Because Avowed is a very good game – it’s just not quite the great game that I wanted it to be or felt it had the potential to be.

7/10