Nilay Kamu wrote | Avowed from the developer of Fallout New Vegas, Pentiment and more: What kind of gameplay does it offer?

Obsidian Entertainment's new game Avowed, which we know from the games Fallout New Vegas, The Outer Worlds, Pentiment and Pillars of Eternity, met us in February. Avowed, which excited us with its trailer when it was announced in 2020, initially felt like it would be an Obsidian-quality answer to RPG games like The Elder Scrolls, and the fact that the game takes place in the Pillars of Eternity universe and expands this universe also attracted the attention of CRPG (classic or computer RPG) fans. Let's see how it is? Let me tell you from the beginning, the review will contain information about the story and details of the game and may spoil the surprises.

Our story begins with the speech the king gives us. We are a godlike character born in the Aedyr empire in the world called Eora and who gained certain features in our appearance when a god touched us in the womb. From what we have learned from what has been said, the Aedyr empire is a very expansionist kingdom and the new region it has set its sights on is The Living Lands, which is untouched, untouched and has high resources. The emperor has embraced us in his heart and taken us under his protection, now it is time to pay us back…

We must go to The Living Lands as the king's ambassador and investigate the epidemic called Dreamscourge, securing the future of the Aedyr empire.

After this short introduction, we are left alone with the character creation screen, this part is quite satisfying in terms of cosmetics and contains enough features to satisfy most people. We also choose our Godlike appearance features here, you can make these additions invisible so that your character remains cute, but the fact that you are Godlike will always be expressed by the characters in the game, I did not turn off these features to better fit the atmosphere.

The game offers us the choice of five backstories, and these affect our character's class selection to a certain extent, as well as having important roles in our dialogue options as the game progresses. In short, these are the war hero, trained mage, noble, explorer/hunter, and the palace fortune teller. While I was a war hero at first and preferred a close combat-focused gameplay, when I started later, I was curious about the palace fortune teller and wanted to look at her.

These backgrounds first affect your starting weapons and the types of weapons your character is prone to, but you can always change your skills and use different weapons during the game. The only problem here is the weapon development system. I will talk about that later. Oh, before I forget, in the game we can use gunpowder weapons in addition to the classic sword, shield, magic and bow/arrow weapons, and they are very fun.

Where backstories really matter is in how they affect dialogue options.

After creating our character, we are thrown into the story, we have been shipwrecked near the Living Lands and we need to escape this area and reach the port city of Paradis as soon as possible and investigate the outbreak. This area actually serves as a tutorial area. We get a preview of many things, from fighting mechanics to looting and dialogue options. The soldiers in the area are affected by the outbreak and lose their consciousness and start attacking each other, on the other hand, creatures called Xaurip, which look like a mixture of lizards and humans, are also haunting the place. Here, you have the chance to test different types of fights for a short while. You can also test the camera angle.

Although the game was originally designed to be played from a first-person perspective, you can also play it from a third-person camera, I didn't prefer this because I wanted to use guns, I tried it on my second playthrough, it can be played like this too, but it didn't seem ideal to me. After getting used to the mechanics in this area, when we move on to Paradis, side quests, bounty hunting quests and a medium-sized map await us to explore.

The game includes four main regions, Dawnshore, where the city of Paradis is located; Emerald Stair, which includes the city of Fior Mes Iverno; Shatterscarp, where the city of Thirdborn is located; and Galawain's Tusks, where the castle of Solace Keep is located. The variety and visual design of the regions are really satisfying, both the geographical differences in these regions are striking and the variety of races living in the regions are different from each other.

Moreover, the problems that each region is trying to deal with (except for the epidemic, every region is affected by it) are different from each other. For example, in Emerald Stair, there is a conflict between Animancers (people who do scientific research on spirits) and the local people, while Animancers are trying to develop technology to use the dead in the region as agricultural workers and many other functions, the local people are against this.

The Thirdborn area and Shatterscarp are crawling with pirates from the Aumaua race, and when we go to Galawain's Tusks, we see the dwarf race, who are dealing with internal strife and are about to go into famine. However, there is a very annoying point that this visual and narrative variety is unfortunately lost when you move on to the main material of the game, the combat area. All of the Living Lands are crawling with Xaurip or you come across the odd skeleton or spider, and towards the end-game areas, there are more humanoids affected by the Dreamscourge epidemic, but the enemy variety is quite limited for a game of this caliber.

Speaking of enemies, let me elaborate on the combat a bit. No matter which class you choose to continue with, what makes combat more enjoyable is your progress in the game and your weapon upgrades. In this respect, the basic mechanics are well-designed. Especially if I explain it with the pistol example, when you unlock the necessary skills, you can slow down time when you aim with your pistol during combat (essentially you unlock the bullet-time feature), and thus your chance of hitting the enemy's head increases, combat rises to levels where you are stronger and enjoy it, similar RPG mechanics are available in other weapons.

I noticed on different platforms that players often criticize melee combat, I think the solution here is not to play melee combat alone, it becomes much more dynamic and fun when you combine it with weapons or magic. Otherwise, I think it remains cumbersome on its own. The variety of weapons is not bad in general, even though the game often drops ordinary weapons on you, they actually serve as resources, because you use the raw materials you get by breaking them down to develop your better special weapons.

If you want to change the type of weapon you are using at some point in the middle of the game, this can be a bit less than ideal if you have other weapons that you have not developed enough, because at this point you may not have enough raw materials to develop other weapons. Although it requires a few tedious shopping and raw material conversions, this transition is not impossible.

One of the most prominent features of Avowed is the fighting mechanics, while the other is definitely the importance it gives to the player's impact on the story, in other words, 'player-agency'. However, we can only see this, that is, our impact on the events and situations in the game's world, at the story level, which is a disappointment in a sense. Because we know Obsidian for its deep role-playing games, but the new games they have released in recent years show that they have weakened their focus in this regard. Moreover, while we expected the budget to increase and the scale of the games to grow with Microsoft's acquisition, we see a development in the exact opposite direction in terms of content. Of course, there is progress in the voice acting, game engine and graphic quality, but unfortunately this has not prevented the superficiality of the games.

One of my favorite examples of player agency was in the Fior mes Iverno area. This area plays a major role in the main story of the game, and at the end of the Emerald Stair section, the Steel Garrote destroys Fior mes Iverno, wiping it off the map, and it is impossible to go back there for the rest of the game. Since people who play this section don't know this at first, there is no way back, but saving Fior mes Iverno is possible if you attack the Steel Garrote early on.

In summary, the game is not the best RPG of the year, but it still has an atmosphere that draws you in as you play. However, on the other hand, it does not have enough variety to keep the player for a certain amount of time. The game, which lasts about 35 hours with the way I played it, does not try to show anything we have not seen before, so if you do not have high expectations and are curious about this world, you can have an enjoyable time. The game is available on Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass for PC, and is priced at $41.99 on Steam.