I recently played and eventually completed the game Avowed. Overall I enjoyed it, but I found myself having a unique love/hate relationship with it, more so than any other game in recent memory. I was not familiar with the Pillars of Eternity games prior to this, so I was going in blind in terms of knowledge of the setting.
The thing that struck me immediately was how truly weird you could make your character. You play as a godlike, or someone who has been directly touched by one of the world’s gods at birth, and your physical appearance reflects their otherworldly influence. Lots of fantasy games/settings make that “freakish” influence into something disarmingly attractive, like angel wings or sleek antlers or alluring fur patterns in strategically sexy places. Not in Avowed. You have mushrooms growing directly out of your face. It’s gloriously bizarre and spoke to me in ways I was unprepared for.
And then there was the Living Lands, where the game takes place. Like your character, it is also covered in mushrooms, and it’s gorgeous. Beautiful vibrant colors everywhere, and the somewhat alien appearance of some fungi really emphasized the natural weirdness of the place. I’m a huge fan of unconventional settings and the mushroom-covered Living Lands was also gloriously bizarre.
Artwork plays a large part of the game’s narrative presentation, but I don’t want to spoil how. Just seek out the Ancient Memories and you’ll see the clever implementation of spectacular illustrations for yourself.
What I didn’t enjoy was the massive amount of side-quests you needed to do. I was very invested in the main story of the game and, if I thought it was possible, I’d have skipped the side-quests and focused on it. But the game assumes you want to do tons of side-quests first (which isn’t an unfair assumption, honestly) and hides most of the game’s other narratives among other things to be discovered across the large maps. And I’d hardly call what you find in these quests “optional.” I’d have had a very different game if I wasn’t grinding lengthy quest lines across all the major zones.
Combat was a little on the repetitive side. The game doesn’t have a huge variety of enemies so fighting skeletons and spiders, again and again, made for a bit of a slog.
The companions you meet, however, are fantastic. Small in quantity but high in quality, I actively swapped out my traveling companions because I found myself missing those who stayed back at camp. Usually with a crew of companions there’s usually one I roll my eyes at, but everyone in my small squad was well-written, very likable, and excellently voiced.
Despite the quality of the voice acting I found some of the dialogue to be just a touch long-winded. No shade thrown to the actors, they were reading their lines, but more than once I found myself saying “they’re still talking?”
But then I reached the ending, and this is what pushed me over to decidedly enjoying the journey.
Avowed gives you a lot of seemingly innocuous choices, from the dialogue options you choose to who you choose to help and how, and you don’t realize you’re slowly shaping how a major character (again, no spoilers) is being affected by your actions. At the end, since I always choose to be as good a person as possible in these types of games, I was greeted by a tale of forgiveness and compassion, and how those qualities can affect and ultimately heal someone. All my aforementioned aggravations felt like it was worth powering through them to reach the story’s end, which felt more satisfying than I was prepared for. Not a lot of games can deliver a satisfying “The End” but Avowed managed to make me feel like this was the conclusion to a story I truly shaped.
I recommend Avowed. Maybe you’ll make different choices and be greeted by a less heartfelt ending. Maybe you’ll find all my grievances to be enjoyable. Maybe you’ll love the same things I loved. However you choose, give the journey a try. I think you’ll like it.