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Title: Avowed preview: Classic Obsidian fantasy on a AAA budget

Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2024 14:00:56 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/avowed-p...

It looks like 2025 is going to be an excellent year for action role-playing
games. WeΓÇÖve already started things off with a big Dragon Age: Veilguard
bang, but next year will also bring Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, Fable and
the subject of todayΓÇÖs dissection, Avowed. Each title offers something
distinct for single-player RPG fans, and Avowed is poised to provide top-tier
dialogue trees and rich worldbuilding, courtesy of Fallout: New Vegas, The
Outer Worlds and Pentiment studio Obsidian Entertainment. This is the
studio's first tentpole title under the Xbox Game Studios banner and its
first AAA fantasy game ever.

While I couldnΓÇÖt determine its full scope in the preview I played this
week, IΓÇÖm pleased to report that so far, AvowedΓÇÖs world is as gorgeous as
its writing.

The preview included the gameΓÇÖs first two hours or so, from character
creation through the initial main missions. Avowed is a spin-off of the
Pillars of Eternity series and itΓÇÖs set in the Living Lands, an area
unexplored in the existing games, giving Obsidian a blank canvas for an epic
original story. A blight called Dreamscourge is spreading across the region,
infecting plants, animals and people with a prismatic fungus that induces
madness, rage and death. You play as the envoy of the emperor of the Aedyr
Empire, which has a deep history of invading and colonizing the surrounding
lands.

Of course your protagonist is special, even by the standards of this magical
world. Players are a godlike, meaning theyΓÇÖve been touched by the divine
and marked by facial growths of rainbow fungus. Generally, your godlike
status and relationship with Aedyr automatically instills respect and
suspicion in the people you meet. As you learn more about the Dreamscourge,
it becomes impossible to ignore its similarities to the godlike marks you
carry, and this existential terror builds beautifully in the gameΓÇÖs first
few hours.

Are natureΓÇÖs mutations madness or divinity? ItΓÇÖs a thin distinction with
a long and dark history, and Avowed wallows in this gray area. Its first few
hours introduce multiple narrative themes that can be mined throughout the
game ΓÇö the violence of colonization, palace intrigue, spiritual visions,
insanity and religious fervor form the most prominent talking points. These
arcs play out in conversations with supporting characters and in interactive
pieces of lore scattered around the environments, each concept unspooling in
a natural and intriguing fashion. There are plenty of opportunities in the
dialogue trees to investigate these ideas and learn more about the world or
your companions, with specialized responses that unlock if you have the right
stats. In general, dialogue in the Avowed preview is nice and quippy, and
each new character comes with a distinct, believable personality. Already,
IΓÇÖm curious to know more about the people of the Living Lands.

There are no strict classes in Avowed. Instead, players freely level up their
abilities across fighter, ranger, and wizard using acquired skill points.
ThereΓÇÖs also a godlike tree, a page to upgrade your companionsΓÇÖ
skillsets, and a character sheet with classic RPG attributes that you can
place points into. I focused on building up my magic, health and damage, and
it took a minute to find my preferred combat style. There are two weapons
loadouts you can swap between on the fly, a pop-up radial with extra
abilities, and four programmable spots on the D-pad. ItΓÇÖs a lot to manage
in the frenzy of battle, but new weapons and tools are added to your
inventory at a steady pace and itΓÇÖs easy to experiment with different
builds. In terms of weapons, I stumbled across a knife, spear, bow, shield,
grimoire, wand, pistol and giant hammer, but I suspect there were even more
tools hidden in the world. The bow and pistol have unlimited ammo, but
reloading the pistol is a lengthy process, and the hammer is incredibly
powerful, but its swing takes a moment to connect, leaving you vulnerable
between hits. Combat is chaotic ΓÇö especially when fighting hordes of giant
spiders ΓÇö but the game responds well to rapid-fire inputs and generally,
each encounter feels like a real skills test.

Obsidian Entertainment

For me, everything felt right once I found the wand. I closed out the preview
with the bow in one loadout, and the grimoire and wand in the other, and I
was starting to feel like a real badass. The wand is a quick midrange weapon,
and combined with the rechargeable spells in the grimoire and the long range
of the bow, it worked really well for my preferred fighting style. One
annoyance I noted was the fact that I couldnΓÇÖt draw my bow while taking
sustained toxic damage, as each small hit made my character lose focus ΓÇö
this was a tough lesson to learn while trying to fight off a gang of rat-
toothed reptilian creatures, but I definitely absorbed it.

In any RPG, I have a hard time leaving an area without smashing every vase,
breaking every box and exploring every path. Avowed rewards this behavior
with bits of worldbuilding, potions, strange animals, coins and tools hidden
in the corners and crannies of the Living Lands. Or, sometimes, thereΓÇÖs
just a breathtaking view. Either way, it makes me excited to see what secrets
the full game is hiding.

I also played Avowed for about 45 minutes at XboxΓÇÖs Gamescom event in
August, starting with a pre-built mage character in the middle of a search-
and-rescue mission a few hours into the game. I had a good time flinging
spells from my grimoire and chatting with characters in the caves I was
exploring, but I sensed a slight disconnect that I attributed to the rushed
and public nature of the demo. Now, I know what was missing: Character
creation.

Obsidian Entertainment

Rich character customization is a massive reason RPGs can feel so immersive
and emotionally powerful, and it was a treat to play around with this system
in AvowedΓÇÖs latest preview. As a godlike, your characterΓÇÖs face is dotted
with technicolor fungal growths, and tweaking the placement and appearance of
these details was delightful, allowing my brain to build the foundations of
my characterΓÇÖs story immediately. I chose a face with fuschia butterfly-
wing paddles covering my eyes and forehead, and a crown of neon ridges draped
over my skull. I then started molding my characterΓÇÖs backstory as a witchy
scholar with a logical mind and a heart of gold, and swapped a dexterity
attribute point for constitution. All of the expected customization mechanics
were there, allowing me to tweak the size and shape of each facial feature,
and change my hairstyle and color, skin tone, body type, voice, background,
basic skills, pronouns and name. Put simply, the Monster Factory boys could
have a lot of fun with this one.

That said, itΓÇÖs hard to find anything ugly in Avowed. ItΓÇÖs shaping up to
be a beautiful game, and the preview showcases expansive medieval vistas,
shimmering psychedelic spores, rainbow-flecked animals and highly detailed
NPCs. I was particularly impressed with the skin textures in the preview: Our
main companion, Kai, has snakelike teal skin, and I very much enjoyed
watching the light shine on his scales as we chatted by the fire of our party
camp. Maybe IΓÇÖm developing a reptile fetish, or maybe Avowed is just a
really pretty game ΓÇö at least when running on a PC with an RTX 4070 Super.
I havenΓÇÖt had the chance to try it out on an Xbox yet, and IΓÇÖm curious to
see how it will perform on both the Series X and Series S.

Obsidian Entertainment

I have it on good information that Pillars of Eternity players will recognize
the rainbow fungus and its infesting ways, but I donΓÇÖt because IΓÇÖve never
played those games. Avowed is my introduction to ObsidianΓÇÖs dark fantasy
universe, and IΓÇÖm not alone in this position. Developers at Obsidian are
keenly aware that Avowed will be the first Pillars game for many players, as
art director Matt Hansen and production director Ryan Warden explained to me
in August.

ΓÇ£We don't want players to feel like there's required reading,ΓÇ¥ Hansen
said. ΓÇ£So everything that we do should be accessible and fun and enjoyable
on its own. If you're just playing Avowed and that's the only game you play,
you'll have a good time. And then on top of that, we're finding ways to weave
in little winks and nods.ΓÇ¥ He specified that these take the form of
documents, books and even a few familiar faces. He continued, ΓÇ£We just
wanted to make sure that this is a game that's fun for everyone, and
thankfully the world is rich enough that it's easy to inject someone in at
any point. It's also part of the reason we picked the Living Lands. Its
unexploded territory gives us a lot of freedom.ΓÇ¥

Warden added, ΓÇ£Even on the quest front, we try to keep it enriched by lore,
but youΓÇÖre not completely lost when you're a new player.ΓÇ¥ He said that
characters in Avowed offer more information on the history of any given
situation if youΓÇÖre interested in asking them for it, and thereΓÇÖs a lore
tooltip feature that allows you to look up terms mid-conversation (which is
also a thing in Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire, so itΓÇÖs kind of like a
meta wink).

Obsidian Entertainment

Hansen and Warden also shared some thoughts about the scope and layout of the
full game, something that canΓÇÖt be conveyed in a two-hour preview.

ΓÇ£The game is structured similar to Outer Worlds, where there's open zones
that are open-world in structure, but not one contiguous open world,ΓÇ¥
Warden said. ΓÇ£So it allows the critical path, the main story to be more
focused and have key moments that happen at a cadence that doesn't feel
weirdly paced, but it also allows a ton of freedom for player choice. You can
go off and do side quests and the regions are just small enough to be
manageable. You can do a lot, you can explore, but itΓÇÖs not just checking
off a bunch of icons. Everything is bespoke. It's hand-done. There's not much
reuse of things.ΓÇ¥

Hansen nodded and said, ΓÇ£Lots to explore, but you're not punished for not
exploring it. I mean, frankly, I'm becoming an old man. I don't want to spend
120 hours on a game anymore. I like being able to play through our game
relatively swiftly. Or, I've had playthroughs that were like six times as
long as other playthroughs because I started to get into the nitty gritty.
And that's a nice accommodation.ΓÇ¥

ΓÇ£It can be as long as you want it to be,ΓÇ¥ Warden finished.

Avowed is due to hit Steam and Xbox Series X/S on February 18, 2025.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at
https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/avowed-p...
on-a-aaa-budget-140056761.html?src=rss

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