Avowed: The Definitive Review
Nice and Tasty.
Sometimes it’s really nice to be riding the wave of current discourse when discussing a game and as this is an increasingly rare experience for me, I’m enjoying this ride with a considerable degree of satisfaction. I often deliberately miss the curve for the sake of getting my teeth well and truly into the meat of something before committing my opinions to text, but Avowed shares the same status as Starfield in being something I could have got for ‘free’, but caved and paid for early access. In Avowed’s case, it was with somewhat more trepidation than the must-buy urge I had with Starfield, as I wasn’t too sure I’d be happy with getting in early. I was tearing through Sniper Elite: Resistance to clear both my mind and my Series S for Avowed’s arrival and, as luck would have it, was able to draw the curtain on Rebellion’s stopgap/insurance policy for 2025 the very night that Avowed unlocked for the greedy and impatient. Hence, I was very much ‘in’ and squeezed enough playtime in to be confident in pushing my opinions on it. The upshot is this: Avowed is nice. Really nice.
Avowed’s opening area is in love with the vertical. And it’s got something of the assimilatory being about it, a Thing of sorts that’s happily mimicking whatever it’s seen before and deploying retools of what it needs without having to lazily copy. Thus, the verticality and exploratory clambering of Dying Light et al seems to echo through the starter city of Paradis, but in a free and frictionless manner. And it all feels tastefully judged; the nooks and crannies suitably masked for discovery if you’re just passing through, the balconies and rooftops only entering your mind as explorable once you’ve already poked around. Yet there is plenty to be found; it unfolds gently, invitingly even. The game has drawn remarks of its similarity to all sorts of others, notably perhaps Mass Effect, only without the utterly bland ambitions and bitingly cringeworthy horniness. It’s perhaps best understood as a good Far Cry to ARMA, as in the way Avowed relates to the grandest of Bethesda or CD Projekt Red’s open-world RPGs. Oddly, the lack of true open-world map streaming hasn’t jarred at all. Perhaps I’ve inoculated myself against that with so many hours of Starfield map loads under my belt, but in Avowed’s case, it seems that offering yourself as free-roaming is just as good as true open-worlding when the load times are short enough.
It has to be mentioned that Avowed is uncommonly beautiful to witness; the environments are cartoonishly dramatic, but dressed with a refined taste that steers a nice line between the excesses of comic book fantasy and the painterly realism of post-renaissance landscape art. And they’re lit beautifully. There’s almost a sense of some 90s pre-rendered SGI whimsy1 in the overall effect. The dungeons and caves are similarly excellent in their rendering and mood - given that 3D representations of the stereotypical enclosed tunnel date all the way back to Dungeon Master and Ultima Underworld, Avowed’s deployment of the well-worn standard is wonderfully done where it could so easily default to tiresome generica. Again, the lighting steals the show a lot of the time, but there’s a deft touch in a sense of the splendid with so much of the environmental architecture, which makes it all quite the delight to be stepping through. It’s in the hewn rock and the ancient brickwork, but also that diffusion of coral and fungi forms throughout the world. Without ever verging on the twee, it brings together a fantasy aesthetic that feels wonderfully rich and, like so much else in the game, tempered by a well-considered and incredibly mature sense of taste. Certainly as I’ve become older, the experiential aspects of navigating environments have become nearly as valuable as the mechanical joys of risk, reward, acquisition, power fantasies and so on. The joy of touring a wonderfully-realised space is something that Avowed seems to recognise and place value in. Again and again, I find myself marvelling at the taste on display. The stylistic virtuosity, the mannered deployment of what it knows will always work, the highly-experienced smoothness with which it finds its rhythms. I mean, fuck - it’s just really nice.
Avowed was the last of the big Game Pass titles that lured me into Series S and Platinum ownership. And of the other three, Forza Horizon 5 was the only one that disappointed and bored me. Starfield I have proclaimed undying love for several times, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 awaits my return as I absolutely fucking adore what it is. Avowed was more of a conciliatory olive branch towards Obsidian, it was the second chance I gave following The Outer Worlds and the bitter little pit of disappointment that was constantly stuck in my teeth throughout that game. I wrote a while ago about the sadness at its core, and my disdain for some of its choices. Avowed feels far more confident, far more fit for its purpose and this is tangible from the tutorial level alone. It drips with a UE5-powered quality that gives it a thoroughly modern air, it feels up-to-the-minute, if a bit too conservative to be considered cutting-edge. Nonetheless, it seems to have learned the valuable lessons needed from The Outer Worlds’ shortcomings. The content fits the space so much better, the world much more in tune with what the game demands of it. As you can imagine, a true Bethesda cultist like myself wants to see its template proliferate across a thousand new titles, and seeing Obsidian deploy the next step in its take on the classic American open-world RPG is fascinating in its own way. Taking The Outer Worlds as some truncated starting point, the maturation of Obsidian’s template, specifically as a divergent streamlining of Bethesda’s, is what we find. Even though fat chunks of the Bethesda corpus have been hacked away,2 Avowed rightly expands its minimalist core with a surprisingly slick and pleasing combat systome3 and a somewhat brighter and more complex set of skills. It has environments of surprising density that reward the constantly curious, and more importantly, it has a world that seems to ideally fit the scope of its interactive design, story and setting.4
It was interesting to hear Total Playtime taking time in this week’s episode to discuss the fracture in Avowed’s review scores. As with Starfield, I see this split between adulatory praise and ‘meh’ shoulder-shrugging as proof of maturity in the medium, that scoring becomes more about personal taste than any creaky attempt at objective reviewing criteria. What I think stands out most with Avowed, and certainly something that probably wouldn’t cross the mind of the average mainstream reviewer, is how very human the game is. It seems to bend and accommodate its flaws in a way that softens the blow; it’s a game that acknowledges its shortcomings and offers a minimally frictious, delight-focused pathway to reset the balance. That may come across as under-ambitious, or overly-conventional to those seeking innovation in AAA fast-food fodder, and perhaps that would push some to consider Avowed as unengaging and unexceptional. Yet that misses that key aspect of the taste, of the manner in which Avowed is expressed. As with a particularly well-considered funk groove, it may seem predictable or unexceptional with a dispassionate ear, but those in the know would nod along with restrained admiration. I’m nodding along with a lot of Avowed’s choices, be that a particle effect for some combat spell or the arrangement of props in an NPC’s rural home. The game has its own, peculiar charisma, and that’s borne of its humanity; it gives the game a soul that feels weightily distinct. I would point to the amount of expertise on display as much as the taste with which it’s executed. In this sense, it almost, almost approaches the likes of Deathloop in qualifying as cuisine rather than mere food. Avowed’s charisma isn’t quite so intoxicating. I doubt it resolves with quite the same orchestration as Arkane’s celebratory masterwork, and I also doubt it conjures up the same artful personification of itself as Deathloop did with Julianna, but I feel like it works in the same sphere, at the same altitude. There’s a charm in its charisma that’s so wonderful, so valuable, that it outweighs any petty, grounded concerns. It was interesting to read community praise for the game, especially in with the ‘free’ Game Pass audience now involved, of how unfussy and pure the game actually is. How it slips easily into the lifestyles of those with limited playtime, as if it was designed for middle-aged players who can muster 30-min bursts here and there. There’s a real magic in its bones, which as I’ve repeated so many times above is found in the tastes of whoever controlled what Avowed would come to be. It’s a lumbering RPG unshackled with uncommon grace, and one that skips to its own tune, much to the delight of those who want to stop and appreciate its music.
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That's Silicon Graphics Inc, not Computer Generated Imagery. I once blagged a demo VHS of Alias’s Wavefront, an early-90s raytracer for SGI machines and marvelled its contents. On reflection, its steps beyond the capabilities of Lightwave 3D and the then-current 3D Studio 2.0 almost defined the parameters of CGI in the 1990s, leading us up to the arrival of Maya, 3D Studio Max and more boutiquey applications like Bryce. At times, Avowed seemed to absolutely carry that spirit of the 90s high-end CGI landscape.
Largely the interactive resolution of the world, or the thing I love most about Bethesda open worlders. I long for Obsidian to let me hoard a bunch of props in a house I can call my own, but I guess that's not what Obsidian cares about. But the curve of complexification is positive so who knows what Avowed 2 may allow?
This is my neologism and I'm not ashamed to force it. It is the combined set of all interactive systems in a videogame.
Perhaps more critically, the quality of Avowed makes me much more excited about The Outer Worlds 2. I feel much more confident that it’ll right the wrongs of the original.