Hardcore RPG fans are no stranger to replaying the same game over and over again just to see what they missed in their first playthrough, and Avowed is perfect for that kind of approach. For one, as is usually the case with RPGs, there are quite a few endings depending on your choices throughout the game, some of which might be hard to encounter if you’re not specifically trying to get them.

It’s also not an especially long game – How Long To Beat pegs a completionist playthrough at under 60 hours, which is pretty short considering that other behemoths in the genre can take upwards of 100.

But I’m not really interested in all those endings, at least not yet. I’m not even far enough into the game yet to have come across any pivotal choices, let alone to regret the decisions I made earlier in the game enough to want a second go of things. I’m more taken with the depth of the roleplaying and just how much I can define my characters’ story.

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Your Background In Avowed Actually Matters

I know, I know – roleplaying is supposed to be par for the course in RPGs, but as the genre evolves, it increasingly feels like player freedom is being whittled away bit by bit. Avowed feels like the first big RPG I’ve played in a long time that actually lets me create widely varying types of characters, from backgrounds to dialogue choices.

Obviously, that’s with the exception of Baldur’s Gate 3, but that game was an outlier in its implementation of player freedom and we won’t see another game like it for a long time.

For example, right now I’m playing a Court Augur, which is an unsettling, mystic figure with powers of foresight. I therefore roleplay my character as being a bit aloof and dreamy, even kind of navel-gazy and self-deprecating, while still being empathetic to others’ struggles and fairly level-headed. This is true to the kind of person I think I’d be in a fantasy setting, but it’s also the most milquetoast character I could possibly make. Everybody wants to be a good guy that’s kinda weird.

I’ve noticed that in Avowed, dialogue options that correspond to your chosen background do a lot of heavy lifting in influencing your characterisation. I tend to pick those options when they’re offered to me, and they’ve largely helped me shape what kind of character I want to play. Other backgrounds should offer me different things to say and at different times, which will in turn open up even more interesting roleplay options in future runs.

In The Flow Of Conversation

On top of that, I’ve been picking dialogue options that suit my current character’s personality, but there are a lot of options I skipped over that made me laugh out loud with their sarcasm or just how rude they are. In this game, you have the option to be a jerk, or be cruel, or be apathetic. There are even Achievements for lying or resorting to violence via dialogue. The possibilities, at least on the surface, are endless. That’s the sort of impression an RPG of this caliber needs to make in order to make us care.

Or you can just be funny. Even if that humour is just flavour, it’s a way for me to experience the Obsidian sense of humour that I enjoyed so much while playing The Outer Worlds.

But perhaps the biggest pull is that Avowed’s conversations don’t hold your hand. There’s no way to minmax conversations for your desired outcome – even skill-checked dialogue options don’t necessarily give you good outcomes, and there’s no indication of what the ‘right’ thing to say is. I failed one early side quest because of this.

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You also can’t always exhaust every dialogue option, meaning you have to choose what you say carefully. The game isn’t hugely reactive to your dialogue choices and most conversations will lead to the same end. In practice, this means that instead of prompting you to try and metagame your way through the whole story for the best outcome, Avowed encourages you to act according to how your Envoy actually would. I love this, because it makes conversations feel more organic and real.

While Avowed doesn’t feel like a perfect RPG, it does feel like one true to the genre – I’m roleplaying to my heart’s content, knowing that I’m largely safe from any cascading consequences of choosing a particular dialogue option just to see what will happen. Finally, I’m free from the shackles of metagaming every conversation. I can just inhabit a character and see what happens.

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Avowed

Action RPG Adventure RPG Systems 3.0/5 7.8/10 OpenCritic Reviews Top Critic Avg: 80/100 Critics Rec: 83% Released February 18, 2025 ESRB Mature 17+ // Blood and Gore, Strong Language, Violence Developer(s) Obsidian Entertainment Publisher(s) Xbox Game Studios Engine Unreal Engine 5
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