Avowed review – Annihilation meets Oblivion in a vast, intricate fantasy
Every time I have to switch between fantasy realms I feel a little like the workers in Severance. Who am I again? What am I here to do? Who are all these people? It's been a golden time for fantasy lately and having inhaled Dragon's Dogma 2, Metaphor: ReFantazio, both seasons of House of the Dragon and all of Rebecca Yarros's Fourth Wing novels in less than a year, I'm starting to blur the finer details of one kingdom with another.
Avowed's fantasy universe comes ready-made, from developer Obsidian's other Pillars of Eternity games. The lore is dense, the in-game text plentiful and characters verbose, but thankfully The Lands Between is fascinating to look at and the realm of Eora full of political tension and cool monsters. I remember precious few names or historical details, but I will remember several of my experiences in this game – the view from the rickety path hugging the walls of an underground cavern big enough for a mad priest to have built as gigantic automaton inside, and the skin-crawling secret I discovered in the basement of a companion's family home. The look is Annihilation-meets-Oblivion, with fungal and floral detail embroidering the structures and peoples you encounter, and and ever-present tension between the organic and the corruptive.
The Lands Between is being ravaged by a disturbing plague that sends people mad, before they are consumed by mushroom-like growths. You, an envoy from a distant centre of empire, have been sent to investigate. You are a godlike, touched by the immortals, and you are guided through this strange place by a divine voice in your head and a range of native companions, whose chatter I found genuinely edifying. There's a lot of choice and self-direction in Avowed, and it's a game that always respects your intelligence. Characters are interestingly (if densely) written and there are plenty of ways to respond to them. It's a lot less patronising than the cringeworthily Whedon-esque good guy/bad guy/joker responses that other games force out of you.
I expected a brisk 20-hour adventure in the vein of Obsidian's sci-fi comedy The Outer Worlds, but reader, this is not that. This game is immense. I took my time in the opening area of Dawnshore, having a fine old time probing into spider-webbed caverns (there are lots of those, this is not a game for the arachnophobic) and combing through ornate, abandoned ruins and climbing lighthouses looking for loot. (This was partly because I stalled on the main quest, having forgotten a vital piece of information that popped up once in a text tutorial for about five seconds.) Only after 15 hours in this pleasant coastal land did I meet one of the central antagonists, an impressively frightening warlord in intricate armour and a mask with smouldering eyes. I then found myself in a dense and rotting jungle-swamp full of surprisingly cheerful necromancers, and it was even bigger than Dawnshore. When I arrived at a third new location after around 30 hours I realised that I very much did not have the measure of this world at all.
Unfortunately Avowed would be better if it were 20 hours long. I always had fun striking out from town and getting lost, coming across interesting things to do exactly as you would in Skyrim or Fallout. But there are two sticky problems that suck the fun out of it over time. The first is common to a lot of open-world games: when you arrive in a new place, all the quests and fights are a little too hard. After a few hours' questing, exploring and upgrading your weapons and armour, it hits a brief sweet spot where everything feels challenging but conquerable. Then you empower yourself to such an extent everything gets too easy, and it starts to feel like a box-ticking exercise. This pattern repeated itself over my time with the game, eroding my patience.
The second issue is that Avowed's combat just isn't as fun as it thinks it is, and there's so much of it. There are an impressive number of weapons and techniques available to you – grimoires and wands for spells, giant two-handed axes, bows and pistols, maces and shields. No matter what you choose, though, it feels imprecise and tedious, and your chances of success are determined by invisible numbers rather than skill. Try to take on enemies above your level and it will barely matter how well you dodge out of the path of a greatsword or how cleverly you combine your magic effects to freeze and shatter undead skeletons. What matters is the quality of your gear, which must be continually and laboriously upgraded with a warehouse's worth of random materials that you find in every chest and lockbox. I got very sick of smashing R2 to fire magic projectiles or hack away at tree-monsters with my sword, chipping away determinedly at their hit points. My companions never felt especially helpful in battles, either.
All the variety and texture that can be found in the fiction here is lacking in the combat and the loot. There are unique swords and trinkets at the ends of the most interesting quests, but the fun of exploring is tempered by the realisation that outside of the views and the characters, you'll rarely find anything that interesting. If you come across a powerful enemy, you may well be underpowered for the fight. If you find a tantalising glowing chest in a cavern, there's a strong chance it'll be full of pennies, chunks of iron and a few pelts.
Avowed started out as Obsidian's answer to Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series, and it did remind me a lot of Oblivion and Skyrim in the exciting moments where I stumbled across something unexpected in the wilds. But it also shares those games' tendency towards repetition, and the weightless feel of their fighting. My first 15 or so hours in The Lands Between felt rich with potential, but I got fed up with it long before the end.
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Avowed is released on 18 February; £59.99
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