Microsoft ended 2024 with an absolute bang compliments of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Now for the first time in longer than I can remember, the company behind the Xbox has a chance to establish some real momentum thanks to a suddenly packed first party slate following years of famine that would’ve made “The Duke” shrivel up into something resembling an NES controller. Luckily for them, they have passed the baton over to the steady hand of the veterans at Obsidian for a new epic set in the Pillars of Eternity universe.

Continue reading to find out if Obsidian managed to translate their first person RPG magic from the desolate wastelands of Fallout: New Vegas and The Outer Worlds into a magic-filled fantasy setting with Avowed, or if Xbox Boss Phil Spencer is going to need to buy a few more studios to turn this ship around.

The Good

Combat

The Living Lands are a harsh place full of enemies ranging from dreamscourge inflicted “zombies” to religious zealot soldiers to weird lizard people. Mix in a healthy assortment of combat styles for them, and having an encounter devolve into violence never gets old. You have a wealth of tools at your disposal to take them on including axes, daggers, swords, shields, wands, bows, and, oddly enough, even guns for you to make a name for yourself. It’s crunchy and physical combat that you can tailor in so many ways to maximize your fun and destructive powers. Combine this with an unrelenting upgrade system, and you can never get complacent in your dominance for too long.

Another reason the combat is so thrilling, is that you’re able to quickly switch your weapon/shield load-out with the push of a single button, allowing you to seamlessly shift from ranged to close quarters combat as the situation or your bloodlust requires.

You’re a Wizard, Harry

With so many weapon varieties and styles at your disposal, it’s easy to dabble in a little bit of everything, but throughout it all, nothing ever felt quite as good as wielding magic in the Wizard class. Lesser games would have confined this to simply doing spells like shooting fireballs, but Avowed knows half the fun of being a wizard is playing with your wand.

The result is an incredible power trip where you shoot magic from your wand like a medium-range weapon while waiting for the spells in your grimoire to finish their cooldowns and unleash maximum carnage. By the end, I had a devastating combo of hitting my enemies with lightning that also stuck them in place for several seconds followed up by raining down a meteor shower and finishing it all off with catastrophic stun blows from my wand, as any poor soul who managed that onslaught was assuredly stunned at this point.

Your Companions

I would gladly lay down my virtual character’s life for any of my 4 companions because throughout all our adventures and time spent shooting the shit around a campfire, I really felt like I grew to know them. Each character brings something useful to a fight and can even give genuinely helpful advice when you are having trouble deciding what option to choose in a conflict. Because they kept the scope small at just 4 companions, each has a chance to shine especially in some region specific quests relative to each that will make you mix and match your party instead of sticking to any specific pairing for too long.

The Garrus of It All

The first true companion you get after the tutorial instantly makes you feel like you’re in for a truly grand adventure while also seeming oddly familiar. That’s because Kai is voiced by the same actor who played Garrus in the Mass Effect series. I do not know if this was intentional on the development team’s part, but it sure helped things get off to an incredibly strong start.

Role Playing

Bluntly put, my character was a big old nerd modeled after my actual kick ass wife. They were an “Arcane Scholar” specializing in wizardry, and throughout my hundreds of interactions with NPCs, I was constantly able to provide the nerdiest answers possible thanks to that built in archetype. I felt like almost every encounter gave me ways I wanted to respond to as my character whether I was feeling angry, sarcastic, tired, or just plain deserving of a wedgie. I never felt like the game was shoehorning my experience in to something I did not want it to be.

Side Quests

If you really wanted to, I am sure you could mainline the critical path and ignore the needs of your fellow man, but you would be missing out on the biggest sources of fun in the entire game. Early on, the side quests grab you with entertaining color of the surrounding regions as you do things like secure an illegal shipment of contraceptives for the brothel or help a trapped soldier who is desperately afraid of dying a virgin (don’t worry, he celebrates surviving by loudly declaring he’s on his way to said brothel). Overall, the side quests were a constant source of amusement and much needed experience and resources that you should set out to complete. And at a scant 15 or so minutes a pop, there’s no reason not to dive in headfirst.

Regions

While most massive RPGs these days opt for vast open worlds, Avowed is split in to 4 main regions each featuring their own relatively independent side quests. The result makes the world feel far more lived in and dense rather. Each area has its own unique biome and problems that all fit into the greater struggle, and being able to focus 12 or so hour chunks on them keeps the momentum going strong throughout.

The Scale of the Game

In a gaming landscape where studios are being shut down and staff are being laid off en masse seemingly every other week, seeing Obsidian’s approach that is more akin to a AA type of production is a breath of fresh air. They’re releasing somewhat smaller (it is quite hilarious that a 50 hour RPG is on the small side these days) games at a lower budget that are still being met with tremendous success (over 6 million players as of this writing). Where many other studios would have opted for something three times as large, Obsidian knows how to craft an exciting yet sustainable romp that does not need to sell 20 million copies just to make up for 10 years of development.

Now, some may be a little turned off by this and find themselves disappointed if they come in expecting Skyrim meets Baldur’s Gate 3. I think the game benefits from not trying to do it all, though, and letting things sometimes be simple and not overwhelming you with systems pays dividends in making sure the things that truly matter are all in top shape.

Game Pass

Avowed is an A+ Game Pass day 1 release. It’s incredibly low risk and high reward to download the sprawling adventure and see if it is for you after several hours without having to worry about buyer’s remorse and being out $70.

Exploration

Seemingly every path you take pays off in some worthwhile reward. As a result, I found myself constantly ditching the main quest to just see as much of a new region as I could before the enemies began to get too strong and signaled it was time to focus. The game has been rightfully praised for its verticality as getting from point A to point B is often about climbing and jumping and not just moving in a straight line. Entering a new building to plunder a treasure chest usually requires some minor environmental puzzle solving that surprisingly enough can often be accomplished in a couple of different ways, making sure any build or mindset can have a rewarding trip.

Opening Treasure Chests

The sound of a chest opening accompanied by the brilliant glow of its contents never got old and kept me checking out every last corner to get my fix.

End Game Empowerment

The last several hours of the game felt like well deserved player empowerment. The experience and resources are flowing like wine at a book club, and you are just blasting through levels and upgrades as you prepare for the final showdown to determine the fate of the living lands.

Decisions

There are plenty of game-altering decisions to be made, and I never tired of making them. Often times, games of this ilk create the illusion of your choices mattering, but here I always felt like my actions had some sort of impact on the world thanks to the heading directly below this section. More importantly, I never felt like the writers were trying to get overly cute with how the consequences played out. While always interesting, they were typically fairly easy to tell where they played out on the good versus evil scale, so you could readily act as your character would. Sure, not every decision had a true winning option, but they employed this infrequently enough not to make it come across as deceptive.

Callbacks

Many big RPGs have grand finales where all the NPCs you helped along the way show up to lend support or you get to catch up and see how they’re doing. Avowed does an outstanding job of callbacks in the final chapter that served as a great reminder of everything I had done and every one I had helped over the previous 50 hours. It really made me glad for going the extra mile and trying out all the side quests.

This magic is not just saved for the end game, however. Frequently I would find notes or hear quips from NPCs referring to my deeds that made me feel like every little choice had a larger impact than they probably truly did.

The Mixed Bag

The Map and Mini-Map

Avowed opts for a beautiful hand drawn looking map and relatively sparse mini-map for your Hud. The mini-map is extremely helpful for finding resources and bodies that need pillaging but oddly does not highlight chests you have come across or any sort of actual geographical information. The map itself really misses out by lacking the ability to add points of interest for custom navigation. With all the verticality present in exploration, this can make it difficult sometimes to realize what you have and have not explored or how to get to where you want to go. It never gets overly burdensome, but it does feel like a missed opportunity.

The Never-ending Upgrade Cycle

Easily the biggest complaint coming out of this game’s Early Access was the non-stop need to be salvaging upgrade materials. This was supposedly addressed with a large Day 1 patch, and I will say, for the most part it added to the fun. You will do more damage to enemies below your current weapon grade, and you will take more damage from enemies above your current armor grade, providing plenty of incentive to be scavenging the world for resources and breaking down items. It is a surprisingly enjoyable cycle to try to get ahead of the evolving strength of the enemies in each region, but it does have some downsides.

It means you probably won’t experiment with new items as much unless they are already at or ahead of your current weapon since resources are scarce-ish. I stuck with a very basic wand for the longest time because it was upgraded beyond anything I was finding through exploration and quests. It also meant that my secondary weapons like grimoires and swords tended to lag behind in the upgrade cycle. Most noticeable, however, was the effect of constant upgrading on the game’s economy. I felt like until probably 3/4 of the way through the game I was often low on funds for actual purchases because instead of selling gear I did not want, I would opt to break them down for resources. I had to make a conscious decision to start selling over breaking things down before it finally felt like I had the financial backing the envoy of an emperor deserves.

The Pillars of Eternity Lore

The Pillars of Eternity series has been around for a decade, but I have never even attempted to learn the slightest thing about it. As a result, there were times where I felt a little lost on all the lore being thrown at me. However, it did kind of make me want to check out the rest of the series since there were some fun and novel takes on the tried and true fantasy RPG genre.

Encumberment

Becoming encumbered in a video game is one of the most annoying systems that has somehow gotten a foothold in RPGs. I was shocked to discover that it never became stressful in Avowed thanks to the devs handling it extremely well. You start off with enough carry capacity that you will probably forget the system even exists until 5+ hours in when you finally have opened enough chests to make it close to your max. Given the emphasis on resources for upgrading, you will likely be breaking enough items down that you’ll rarely even get close the the threshold. And when you do, it is incredibly easy to just stash items at camp from anywhere, so you will never find yourself slowed down to a crawl and unable to fast travel like some games ::cough:: Starfield ::cough::.

The Bad

Performance on a Series S

While I do love my cute little Series S that I affectionately call my Baby Xbox, I did occasionally curse its lack of power playing Avowed. When explosions and the number of enemies got too high, I could expect some jerky frame rates, and every couple of days I would choose to restart the game completely to prevent weird things like the sky going in and out of existence. The most hilarious and prominent, though, was when my favorite spell which produced tons of lightning would appear as an absurdly pixelated black cloud that was laughably ugly. None of this ever really took away from my enjoyment of the game, but it made a strong case for why Xbox should not have gone with this two tiered console approach this generation.

Attempting to Make You Feel Like There’s Any Sort of Decision to Be Had Between the Rebels and the Empire

Given the state of ::gestures exhaustedly at everything:: there was never a moment’s hesitation when deciding whether to side with the Empire or the Rebels. Early on when I knew nothing of the rebels plans, there still was no real decision to be made in my mind. For instance, I was inspecting a cart being brought into the city by rebels that contained grenades, and I took the grenades for myself and pretended I saw nothing sending them through to have a pleasant day sowing unrest. I know there are some people who will opt to go the full dark empire route, but the game and the real world make it pretty clear which side you should be on.

My Inability to Just See How Things Go

When playing a big, decision-heavy RPG like this or Baldur’s Gate 3, I lack the ability to just see where the RNG or my poorly thought out decisions take me. I am too quick to save scum and look up how things play out on the internet. While this does lead to better outcomes in my endings, I feel like I deprive myself of some of the wild rides these games can offer. Maybe one day, I won’t anguish over the need for a perfect run, and I can see if going with the flow really does make for a more immersive and memorable experience.

The Verdict

Despite a few minor rough edges, Avowed is yet another astonishingly successful swing by the team at Obsidian. It may not be in full GOTY contention, but it seems destined to appear on a decent amount of Top Ten lists when the year is finished. Compelling and lively combat and exploration keep things interesting throughout, and the consequential decisions will be what slams your foot on the gas, refusing to let even the tiniest squabble go untouched. Just remember not to come in expecting the second coming of Baldur’s Gate 3, and you will be in for a fantastic 30-50 hours of fun that will help convince you to keep that Game Pass subscription active for at least a little longer.