Avowed, Obsidian’s next title set in their fantasy IP of the world of Eora, or the Pillars of Eternity franchise if you’re unfamiliar, this time brings what is classically a CRPG franchise into, of course, first and third person. Although there’s a reason this isn’t called Pillars of Eternity 3 but rather Avowed. So, let’s get on to my video game review of Avowed.
Check out our beginner’s guide for Avowed here.
Avowed Video Game Overview
I’ve got quite a bit to say about Avowed—some good, some bad—but it’s a game that covers a lot and is trying to do a lot. Namely, it aims to reimagine the world of Pillars of Eternity, or Eora, as a place you can actually run through, explore, and interact with all of its lore. For the most part, I think they nailed that part.
However, with the more action-oriented focus that this game has, certain parts of it, in particular the fighter approach to the game (e.g., basic melee combat with a fighter-oriented skill tree), feel a little underwhelming compared to the other options. This makes the absence of certain options from the Pillars franchise especially noticeable.
I would hesitate to ever call what is not here from the Pillars franchise, like classes and things like that, as ‘missing,’ since I don’t think they were ever planned or implemented to begin with. In fact, some of that stuff not being here makes perfect narrative sense because its presence otherwise wouldn’t have made any sense, such as being a cleric or a paladin.
However, things like a Chanter or Cipher—unique classes to that world that were really interesting—not being here is a bit of a bummer, especially for fans coming from Pillars. Of course, how much that bothers players who have never played that franchise is obviously up for debate, especially when you consider the wealth of different ways you can customize this game to suit your approach.
The State of Avowed: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly
The technical state of this game is quite polished. You can play it in either first or third person; that is an option you can toggle. There’s also a host of UI customization options to discuss, but first, let’s touch on the more negative aspects.
Broadly, I didn’t experience any major problems while playing Avowed. If anything, it is quite polished, which isn’t a huge surprise given that Obsidian has taken great lengths to handle bugs and technical issues, as we saw with The Outer Worlds. You can say many things about that game, but it launched in a very polished state, and the same applies to Avowed.
That said, it is not perfect. Across about 110 hours with the title, I experienced one crash. More annoyingly, every time I closed the game and returned the next day, it would rebind the keybinds I had changed, resetting them to their default state. Hopefully, this will be fixed with a day-one patch, but it was certainly an annoyance.
Otherwise, I didn’t encounter many problems. In fact, there are several things this game does well that I want to highlight. As mentioned, first and third-person modes are available, but the heads-up display is also highly customizable. You can even turn it off completely if you want to.
The default option displays floating damage numbers, but I personally didn’t like that, so I turned it off. If you dislike how loot glows or is outlined, you can adjust that in the settings. There’s also a field-of-view slider for first person. If anything, the game offers an impressive number of accessibility options, including UI and text scaling.
This attention to detail likely stems from Obsidian’s dialogue system, which they have expanded and improved over the years, as seen in Pentiment. If you’re concerned about any of that, rest assured that much of it is extremely customizable.
That said, third-person animations can sometimes look a little wonky, especially if you significantly increase your movement speed. This likely stems from the fact that every third-person animation conforms to the master set of first-person animations, which might explain the occasional awkwardness.
For the most part, however, the game offers a ton of options. There are some minor issues, like the key rebind bug I mentioned, but I otherwise had a great time with it and encountered no major issues. Of course, with this being pre-launch, we’ll have to see how it runs for everyone else with various hardware setups.
Avowed: Difficulty Options
Regarding the difficulty of this game and my own playthroughs, I played Avowed extensively during the couple of weeks of early access I had. I completed a full playthrough on normal difficulty in first person, followed by a second playthrough with a different background and third person on Path of the Damned, the hardest difficulty.
Additionally, I did three very quick playthroughs on story difficulty just to run through and see the different story options presented for the different backgrounds. This allowed me to gather a variety of feedback on the different ways you might approach this game.
The difficulty options range from Story to Path of the Damned. Much of what changes is damage and health, though health changes are relatively minimal. The main adjustment lies in enemy tactics. On Path of the Damned, enemies are much more aggressive, focusing on you heavily and putting pressure on the player to react swiftly.
In this more action-oriented system, enemies on Path of the Damned can kill you quickly, especially if they are higher level. The occasional one-shot death was not unheard of if you ventured somewhere beyond your level. On the flip side, Story difficulty is as expected: enemies die quickly, deal minimal damage, and provide more breathing room.
One thing to note is that, at least at launch, there is no New Game Plus or anything similar to worry about.
Character Customization & Backgrounds Increase Replayability in Avowed
Character creation in this game simultaneously offers some really cool elements alongside aspects that feel quite restricting. In the world of Eora, or the Pillars universe, the Kith—or the civilized races that typically make up the playable races in previous games—are humans, elves, dwarves, orlans, amaua, and the godlike. Now, godlike can essentially be a subrace of any of the other races. However, in Avowed, the player character is always a godlike of an unknown deity. This means an unknown god in this universe blessed your character while still in the womb, which is highly relevant to the story, as you might imagine.
This manifests in fungal growths all over your face—if you want them. You can turn those features off entirely and just look like a normal human or elf. The inability to pick any of the more interesting races is because your character is an imperial envoy from the Aedyran Empire. The Aedyran Empire is primarily made up of humans and elves. So, while the racial options are fairly restricted, you do have those godlike features, which are themselves limited to a variety of fungal abominations. You can choose to either show these features or hide them. Even if you turn the features off, your character is still godlike, and NPCs will comment on it. Visually, though, you will appear more normal for those who prefer seeing their character in third person.
Beyond that, character creation proceeds like many other RPGs. You start with a quick preset before moving on to sliders that allow for precise customization of your character’s appearance. This aspect seemed pretty good to me, but I am more interested in the RPG elements of character creation. When it comes to RPG elements, two aspects stand out: your background and your starting attributes.
Backgrounds in Avowed
Your background is by far the most important decision in terms of story and narrative when creating your character. Each background defines who your character is and how they caught the attention of the Emperor of Aedyr to become the Aedyran Envoy. As a result, each background grants unique dialogue options and alternative quest resolutions. For example, the War Hero background unlocks additional dialogue with one of your companions, Kai, and an NPC named Inquisitor Ludwin, a returning character from previous games. These options are exclusive to the War Hero background. Similarly, the Court Augur background provided me with quest options and resolutions only available to that specific character type.
If you truly want to experience everything Avowed has to offer, you would need to play through the game five times to explore all these background-specific options. This alone creates a substantial amount of replayability for those with the patience for multiple playthroughs.
Next, let’s discuss attributes. The world of Eora has a unique attribute system compared to other RPGs. For instance, everyone has a Might stat, which increases damage output. Instead of a wizard relying on intellect for damage, Might universally governs damage across all classes. Intellect, on the other hand, improves spellcasting and ability use by increasing your maximum essence—the resource pool for using abilities. Each attribute impacts different aspects of gameplay, and fans of the Pillars CRPGs will find this system familiar.
One key difference in Avowed is that attributes at character creation range from 0 to 3. These values are initially distributed based on your chosen background but can be freely adjusted. During gameplay, attributes can be increased to a maximum of 15. Even though equipment and other methods can boost attributes beyond 15, any values above this cap will not provide additional benefits, making it unnecessary to push beyond this limit.
What the game doesn’t explicitly tell you is that dialogue and skill checks are tied to attributes. For example, Might checks can be used to intimidate NPCs, while Intellect checks can help recall information. These checks operate alongside background-specific dialogue choices, adding another layer of narrative depth.
However, one of my minor complaints is that many attribute-based checks are quite low. This makes it easy to min-max your character if you know the requirements in advance. While most players won’t encounter this on their first playthrough, I wish the checks were a bit more challenging to maintain the sense of exclusivity. Given the game’s inherent replayability, this would have further encouraged multiple playthroughs. That said, this is a relatively minor issue in an otherwise engaging system.
Avowed Lore & Story
I’m just going to talk about the story setup and some general notes. Now, if you’re having trouble following what’s going on in the game because of all the lore, you may not be aware that the game has an in-game glossary that explains what all these terms mean.
Our character is the Imperial Envoy of the kingdom of Aedyr, and we are being sent to a place called The Living Lands. This region has been mentioned but never previously shown in the CRPGs, making this our first look at a brand-new area. We are going to The Living Lands to investigate a plague of the soul known as the Dream Scourge.
In the world of Eora, souls are a very quantifiable thing. When people die, their souls get sucked into large green pillars known as the Adra Pillars, or the Pillars of Eternity. From there, souls move into the Beyond, where they hopefully await reincarnation into another life. In Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, this cycle was disrupted, but that issue is not addressed here, as this is not Pillars of Eternity III—as you might guess from the title Avowed. However, the game does tackle various elements of Eora’s lore and its general state at the time. This game takes place about three years after the previous CRPG entry.
As an Imperial Envoy and the Godlike of an unknown deity, our job is to get to the bottom of this crisis in The Living Lands. What happens to The Living Lands, as well as our status as an Envoy, will largely depend on the decisions we make. These choices lead to a wide variety of different endings. There are two major decisions that shape the game’s conclusion, along with numerous smaller choices that impact the story.
Writing Quality and Themes
In terms of writing quality, the game does a fantastic job representing the world of Eora, which comes as no surprise since the game director and many of the developers also worked on the previous Pillars titles. The story serves as a medium to explore various themes, including second chances and colonialism—both of which have been recurring motifs throughout the Pillars series. If you enjoyed these aspects in previous games, you likely won’t be disappointed here.
Many choices force players to consider not just what they as a player are willing to accept, but also what their character is willing to accept regarding The Living Lands and the people within it. These decisions can lead to good or bad outcomes. Players can choose to pursue an evil playthrough, a more pragmatic approach, or fully embrace their role as an Imperial Envoy serving Aedyr’s interests. The game handles this very well.
Before even considering the impact of backgrounds, the choices available offer varied options. Some backgrounds may encourage a more aggressive approach, while others open paths for deception, diplomacy, or manipulation. For example, one background might favor direct confrontation, while another allows you to turn an NPC into a spy rather than disposing of them outright. The game does an excellent job of centering its narrative around player choice and following through with meaningful consequences.
That said, the pacing of character development can sometimes feel off. One notable example is the companion Marius. He is introduced early in the game and accompanies you throughout the entire journey, but most of his character development and backstory are only revealed in the final hours. This makes it difficult to connect with him on a first playthrough, as he remains somewhat distant and unapproachable until the very end, when a flood of lore and character revelations are suddenly dropped on him. A more gradual character arc might have improved his development.
Avowed Progression System: Attributes, Gear, and Loot Explained
Levels and Attribute Points
Levels in Avowed work as expected in most RPGs. Killing enemies and completing quests grants experience, which levels up your character. Each level-up rewards attribute points and skill points to allocate into the game’s various progression systems.
Attributes cap out at 15, and there is no benefit to pushing them beyond this limit through bonuses. Initially, attribute points are awarded generously, but this slows down significantly after reaching level 10. Once past this point, attribute points are granted every other level, and the intervals become even longer as progression continues. As a result, attribute points become scarce in the later stages, but this is counterbalanced by the increasing availability of gear that enhances attributes.
Skill Trees
Upon leveling up, skill points can be distributed across three primary skill trees: Fighter, Ranger, and Wizard. Additionally, there is a unique Godlike skill tree tied to your character’s divine heritage.
- Fighter Tree:
- Focuses on passive upgrades and basic abilities.
- Includes skills such as a Parry ability, weapon damage boosts, and a later-game spinning attack called Clear Out.
- Generally considered underwhelming compared to the other trees, serving more as a stat booster.
- Ranger Tree:
- Supports a ranged playstyle.
- Features abilities like slowing and zooming during bow power attacks, summoning a bear companion, and enabling stealth outside of combat for sneak attacks.
- Wizard Tree:
- Offers the most variety.
- Grants access to spells via both skill unlocks and Grimoires, which expand spell selection.
- Supports diverse gameplay and spell combinations.
- Godlike Tree:
- Represents the character’s divine powers.
- Contains passives and active abilities tied to story progression and character choices.
- Abilities may vary depending on player decisions, adding unique character development paths.
Mixing and matching between trees is encouraged, as there are no strict minimum requirements for abilities. For example, a player could unlock high-level Fighter skills and combine them with Ranger or Wizard abilities. However, due to the Fighter tree’s limited offerings, it often feels more like a stat-boosting path than one defining a unique playstyle.
Gear and Equipment
Gear progression is another key aspect of character growth. The character can equip multiple armor and accessory slots, including:
- Main armor
- Boots
- Gloves
- Trinket
- Ring
- Two weapon sets for quick swapping
No Head Slot: Godlike characters cannot wear helmets, a feature carried over from the Pillars of Eternity series. This restriction is due to the Godlike’s often unusual head shapes, which would prevent helmets from fitting properly.
Gear Tiers and Unique Effects
Gear is divided into tiers, ranging from Common (Tier 1) to Legendary (Tier 5). Higher-tier gear greatly influences combat effectiveness. Enemies of a higher tier will take significantly less damage from a player with lower-tier equipment. Enemies do not scale with the player’s level; they retain their set tier when first encountered. This allows players to return later with better gear to overcome previously difficult foes.
Weapons and armor follow the tier system, but accessories such as rings, trinkets, gloves, and boots often have unique effects unrelated to gear tiers.
Gear Upgrades and Uniques
Basic gear can be upgraded to Tier 4 (Superb), while unique items can reach Tier 5 (Legendary). Upgrades require materials gathered from the environment, which are also tiered based on region. Unique weapons and armor have distinctive appearances and additional properties.
- Enchantments: Unique weapons can be further customized through enchantments. Each weapon offers two upgrade paths, allowing players to select effects that best suit their playstyle. While this system is somewhat less expansive than the Pillars of Eternity games, it still provides meaningful customization.
- Breaking Down Gear: Unneeded gear can be dismantled into materials, including rare resources like Audra, which are essential for upgrading high-end equipment.
Transmog System
Players can alter the visual appearance of their armor through a transmog system. This allows the character to retain preferred stats while maintaining a desired aesthetic, particularly beneficial for players using third-person view.
Totems
Each region contains a unique totem, consisting of a base and multiple collectible pieces. Once assembled and placed in the player’s camp, the totem provides significant buffs to combat and attributes. While not essential, these bonuses can greatly enhance performance, particularly on higher difficulties.
Avowed World Building & Gameplay
Avowed uses several explorable sorts of hub areas or zones. These are fairly large; in fact, some of them, if fully explored, are larger than what we saw in The Outer Worlds, which was comparable in terms of its overall structure—that is to say, several explorable zones. Now, while you do have to advance the story to go from one zone to the next, once that’s done, you can freely go back to any of those zones you’ve been in previously to explore more, complete quests, or do whatever your heart desires.
Zone Design and Biomes
Each zone is absolutely packed with stuff to do and things to find. There are plenty of quests and things that you might expect, but really, exploration and seeing this world in a manner in which you can fully explore it—as opposed to the top-down look of the CRPGs—is really something. Especially since the Living Lands, as the name might subtly imply, is meant to be overgrown and lush and crazy. There are several different biomes within very nearby distance to each other, which doesn’t make a ton of sense, but that’s the point. The Living Lands are supposed to be this overgrown, crazy, dramatic landscape type of place. They even fed that into the story, explaining why this is the case.
I mention that specifically because I’ve seen people talk about the sort of oversaturated, vibrant colors—that is actually very lore-accurate to what this place is supposed to be. What’s more, they had the opportunity to take that even farther and follow up on lore entries about what the Living Lands is and what went on here, such as the Society of the Godless. This group of people is known not to have followed the main pantheon of deities in this universe—or seemingly any at all—which is, of course, why they’re called the Godless. You can find their ruins everywhere. You can explore all of that stuff. It even connects a little bit to a previous lore teaser in the CRPGs about a continent called Yezuha.
Vertical Exploration
Not only are these zones packed and filled to the brim with all sorts of lore and things to see, but they’re also very vertical. This game is really good about letting you climb basically everything you see. While you can’t freely go absolutely everywhere, you’d be surprised how often—if you are determined enough—you can find various ways to climb up all sorts of structures, only to be rewarded with materials, weapons, upgrades, or anything else for your effort. This entire section feels really rewarding to explore—both literally in terms of the rewards you’re getting and what you’re seeing, but also from a lore perspective. You’ll get the opportunity to learn more about the world, especially when you’re doing side quests and the like.
Side Quests and Hidden Content
One of the first side quests you’ll run into, for example, explores the concepts of Soul Twins, which is something that can go wrong with the cycle of reincarnation that is inherent to this world. You’ll see little stuff like that that’s really interesting all throughout the game.
To make it even better, if you were to merely go around exploring the main points of interest and not talk to anybody or follow up with anyone, you would actually not be seeing everything. There’s so much here that is unmarked or unmentioned that you can discover for yourself. One of the easiest examples of this is actually with completing quests. Sometimes, when you do a quest, it will complete without ever directing you back to a big plot character for that quest. But if you go back and talk to that character, you’ll often be rewarded with dialogue or interesting outcomes.
That’s especially interesting later into the game when you can potentially go back and revisit areas you previously were in and talk to NPCs who may have something very interesting to say about your current goings-on. If you actually take the time to explore and watch how the world changes and evolves around you, it really is pretty interesting to see.
Player Freedom and Limits
In that exact same vein, it does have its limits. This is not something like The Outer Worlds where you can just go crazy and kill everybody you meet. The game simply will not let you do that. Now, I don’t necessarily mind that. I think the other content that is here is worth not being a full-blown murder hobo. What’s more, you do usually get your chance to be a murder hobo and kill important characters, etc., when the time is right. You just won’t necessarily be able to do it right away.
Companions and Camps
Then we have our companions and our camp. We will find campsites all throughout these zones, usually marked by an Audra Pillar. We can set up and rest here or fast travel and do the same.
Camps primarily serve as a point to talk to your companions when they want to have a conversation, but also to upgrade your gear that we mentioned earlier. Naturally, you can also rest and recover your health here and even cook up various food. You’ll find all sorts of ingredients while you’re out exploring. You can bring that back to your campsite and cook it into various meals, which can give you all sorts of useful buffs—not unlike the CRPG in that regard.
This is also going to help you alleviate your potion usage. You can restore health and essence in combat via potions much more quickly, but you can also eat food in combat to restore it slowly. Outside of combat, that’s actually increased, and food is a great way to recover health that way you’re not burning through all your potions every 5 seconds.
Avowed: Combat & Playstyles
The combat in this game is especially interesting due to the switch from an isometric CRPG to a first or third-person, action-oriented system. There’s a lot going on here. As I mentioned earlier, some aspects from the Pillars franchise are simply not present. For example, you can’t be a shape-shifting Druid, a Paladin, or a Cleric. Some of that is for story reasons, but there are other classes like the Cipher and the Chanter that I don’t see why they couldn’t have included, aside from things like scope, etc. I’m not sure how much people will enjoy that answer, given that Obsidian is owned by Microsoft these days. However, I don’t expect the audience for AOW to be the same as the audience for Pillars, so it’s hard to say how much that’ll bother anyone else.
Unique Playstyles and Class Abilities
What is available, however, is more unique ways to play and combine abilities than you might expect. While there is only one summon available via the skill trees, there are actually a lot of items that will summon things as well. So, if you set everything up properly, you can run a sort of mini summoner build. You can also play as a battle mage, stealth archer, or stealth assassin—whatever suits your style. Depending on how much you’re willing to experiment with these systems, you can do a surprising amount with them.
Weapon Sets and Combat Mechanics
To get some of the more basic mechanics out of the way: there are two weapon sets that you can swap between at any time, though it does take a second to do so. Each hand can equip different weapons—some things can only go in the offhand, like a grimoire or a shield. Otherwise, you can dual wield or use two-handers, with a good amount of weapon variety including spears, bows, pistols, arquebuses, etc. All of that, combined with unique weapons and their enchantments, means there are a variety of ways to play the game.
That being said, for me, just playing a straight-up melee character is probably the most boring way to do it. That tree feels a lot less interesting in comparison to Ranger or Wizard. If you just want to play a fighter, it’s honestly not as rewarding. My only complaint is that I wish the melee combat had more compelling abilities to activate. While you can block and parry, most of the time it’s just passives, which was honestly a little boring. So, if you go this route, you should definitely combine it with other stuff from the other trees to make it more interesting.
Ranger and Stealth Playstyles
The Ranger tree is super fun, mostly because of the variety of weapons you get. You have your usual bow, but also options like pistols and arquebuses, each with their own unique effects, especially when using unique weapons. For instance, if you dual wield pistols, you can get into a flow with the reload times on each one, so you’re constantly shooting one weapon while the other reloads. Add in abilities in between, and it creates a fun rhythm. I got a unique pistol called Koox Pride early on, and I upgraded it so that it had a 25% chance to launch an electric bolt that bounces between enemies when it kills someone. It caused a lot of mayhem.
Rangers also have skills to facilitate a stealth-oriented playthrough, like the ability Shadowing Beyond, which turns you invisible for a short while. This helps you break combat to perform another sneak attack. You can often perform stealth attacks to start combat, but it can be difficult to play a full stealth character from start to finish. Sometimes your sneak attacks won’t kill the enemy, which will trigger everyone nearby, and if you’re in range of other enemies, they’ll either see or hear you. So, if you want to commit to playing a stealth character, you’ll have to go all in.
Mage Tree and Grimoire System
The Mage tree is by far the best for me, not just because of all the spells you can cast, but also because of the grimoire system. The grimoire system was actually from the CRPGs, though it’s slightly different here. Basically, you can pick up all sorts of grimoire-style weapons, equip them to your offhand, and use them to cast spells that your character otherwise doesn’t know. When you meet the level requirements and have the grimoire, you can learn those spells and cast them even when you aren’t using it.
Moreover, if you have a spell in your grimoire and have invested skill points into it, you can cast an upgraded version of that spell. To access higher-tier spells with a given grimoire, you’ll need to put points into Grimoire Mastery, which will let you learn and use those upgraded spells. There are so many ways to combine spells with other abilities that it just makes the Mage tree feel like the most complex and enjoyable playstyle.
Customizing Playstyle with Gear
You can freely swap between different trees and combine them with your gear, so I think it’s extremely likely you’ll be able to find a playstyle you like, as long as you understand the system enough to gear up properly and not get decimated by enemies who are several tiers higher than you due to lack of gear. The real key is combining your gear in inventive ways to craft a playstyle that matches the character you want to roleplay. I think the game does this in a way that feels pretty natural. The consensus is still out until people get their hands on it, but I really enjoyed it overall. While I do wish there were some options from the Pillars series, I still think they did a great job here. It’s a fun experience and allows you to explore a world that takes choice and consequence seriously.
Conclusion
I think Awoved could improve the combat, like I mentioned earlier, particularly the fighter skill tree and those smaller nitpicky things. However, by and large, I had a great time with Avowed. It’s very replayable—I went through it several times to explore all the different options. In that respect, it’s definitely worth your time if that’s what you’re looking for. If you’re coming from the Pillars series, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how much this really captures the essence of the world of Eora. I know I loved that part more than anything else.
Genre Shift and Post-Launch Potential
While the genre shift obviously comes with a few growing pains, I think, especially if this does well, and they keep up with post-launch support and really flesh some of this stuff out, it’ll be a great time. For all these reasons, the game gets a buy from me. It’s currently $70 on Steam for the base game, with the premium edition priced at $90. The premium edition comes with 5 days of early access, some skins, the art book, and the soundtrack, if you’re into that.
Pricing and Xbox Game Pass Option
If the price is a concern, I totally get it. Honestly, I’m not a huge fan of the $70 price tag everyone is trying to push these days. But if that’s an issue for you, the game is also available on Game Pass, which will make it much cheaper. I imagine that’s where a lot of people will end up playing this one, where hopefully, you’ll get to enjoy the world of Eora.