Avowed review: Wait, are we the baddies?

You're one of the good ones

At its heart, Avowed is a game about colonization. Your protagonist in this action-RPG from the Pillars of Eternity universe is the envoy for the Aedyran Empire, which has for years sent its occupying force to tame and control the wild and unruly islands of the Living Lands. What the Aedyrans try to spin as a civilizing effort in a naturally lawless place, the native residents of the Living Lands, by and large, see as a pillaging army stealing resources at the behest of their far-off masters.

As the Aedyran envoy, you've been sent to investigate and quell the Dreamscourge, a spreading plague that is poisoning the minds of people and beasts throughout the Living Lands. But the citizens you encounter there don't see you as the stock-standard brave hero chosen by providence to save them from an ongoing disaster. Instead, you're viewed first and foremost as a representative of the same occupying force that has had its metaphorical boot on their necks for years.

That fact alone adds a low-level hum of hatred and mistrust to practically every interaction you have in Avowed. Some characters will confront you with that hate right to your face, often with violence. Some will merely mutter it under their breath as they grudgingly tolerate your presence. Some show fear and/or disgust on their face even as they endeavor to play nice or desperately beg for favors.

Through it all, the same message rings clear as a bell: You are an outsider. You are not welcome here.

Nobody likes me, everybody hates me...

That underlying tone adds an uncomfortable and unfamiliar texture throughout your travels in Avowed. You're definitely not the trope-y paragon of virtue out to save the world from evil. But you're also not simply a renegade who can revel in choosing the "evil" option for every conversation tree. You're just a government functionary trying your best to navigate through an overwhelming and often unjust system that you don't control and didn't really ask to represent.

You'll end up navigating the populace's inherent mistrust of you and your kind repeatedly as you talk through countless conversations (which you experience by staring straight ahead at well-voiced but stiff animatronics). That means deciding when to lean into your authoritarian reputation to impose your will and when to back off and insist you're "one of the good ones," so to speak. It also means deciding when to try to talk your way out of a situation, if possible, and when to just skip the chatter and attack.

The delicate balancing act is made all the more difficult by your additional role as a "godlike," touched by a mysterious divine presence at birth in ways that lead to physical deformity and a good deal of awkward gawking from much of the curious populace. Your godlike blessing (or is it a curse?) forms the root of an intertwining narrative that sees you conversing regularly with a spirit of the land.

Trying to decode that spirit's mystical mumbo jumbo into actionable intelligence is a key part of your effort against the Dreamscourge. Personally, though, I found these visions mostly tiresome and was always eager to get back to the realpolitik of Aedyran colonial relations.

There are precious few at ease with moral ambiguities

Your role as an Aedyran envoy is also complicated by Inquisitor Lödwyn, a heartless authoritarian enforcer that you learn of by reputation long before you make her acquaintance. Lödwyn and the Steel Garrote military force she works with don't share your direct chain of command, but that hardly matters to a populace that sees you both as different sides of the same oppressive coin. As the narrative advances, you have to decide just how much you're willing to confront and distance yourself from Lödwyn's brand of iron-willed order.

Rather than offering idealized "good" or "evil" paths, most quest and conversation lines in Avowed end in a more morally ambiguous place. Do you help a fellow godlike revive and potentially redeem his potentially murderous god, or do you take him to task for murdering an expedition force in the process? When you get back, do you tell the survivors of that force what happened to their compatriots or lie to spare their feelings?

Do you kill the smugglers that have stranded a pair of hard-on-their-luck Aedyrans in a shantytown, or do you pay them off at your own significant expense? Do you confront the Aedyran soldier who stole from a citizen or decide that you don't want to make an enemy of your ostensible allies?

While there's no apparent numerical morality system keeping track of your choices here, the uncertainty of whether you made the "right" choice stays with you as a player. And while the overarching story seems to play out more or less the same way regardless of your choice in most situations, there can be real and lasting impacts.

Putting the action in action-RPG

If you've played Skyrim or any of the many similar first-person epic RPGs it has inspired, you'll be more than familiar with the general gameplay pattern in Avowed. The game is divided into a few distinct major places, each with one large and vibrant city surrounded by vast, mostly empty areas where you can stumble on random wandering enemies and/or hidden tranches of items.

Players who are used to the dull reds and grim grays of many modern RPGs will have to get used to the bright blue skies and just-short-of-psychedelic pastel palettes that make the Living Lands much easier on the eyes.

Avowed's quests almost all boil down to venturing from a city to some far-off spot on the map to talk to a key person or retrieve some McGuffin-style relic. Usually, that trip involves confronting and/or avoiding one or more groups of hostile forces along the way, though sometimes it just means jumping across rooftops or ledges in some surprisingly smooth and forgiving platforming (especially for this kind of RPG).

The moment-to-moment battle action here is fast-paced and thrilling, with tight, responsive controls that feel like the polar opposite of the more deliberate attacks in a game like Elden Ring. While you can briefly pause the action to choose items or spells from an on-screen menu, these battles are primarily reflex-based positional dances of attack and counter-attack, which you can undertake just as well in either third-person or first-person.

Avowed offers the standard selection of melee, ranged, and magical weapon options, as well as a handy button to instantly switch between two weapon sets mid-battle as the need arises. And the game's leveling system lets you focus on a particular combat style—I ended up with a glass cannon wizard—that you can pay to re-spec later for a change of pace.

You're also aided in combat by selecting up to two allies, who act as damage-sponging distractions that are particularly helpful in allowing you to flank large groups of enemies. As the game goes on, these companions also offer genuinely helpful protective or offensive combat abilities.

And outside of fighting, your companions are always ready to offer some welcome contextual wisecracks or pithy advice in all manner of situations. Don't get your hopes up about romancing your allies, though; it's not that kind of game.

Hitting the three-skull wall

While Avowed falls well short of the punishing difficulty of Elden Ring and its ilk, the game definitely isn't afraid to let you stumble into an overwhelming force. If you stick exclusively to the relatively linear main storyline quests, you'll quickly be outclassed by large groups of powerful opponents that laugh off your relatively piddling attacks. These battles are indicated in your quest journal and an on-screen HUD with three skulls, subtly warning you that you're probably not ready for what's coming.

Even three-skull battles can be overcome with some combination of excellent reflexes, overuse of health- and magic-restoring items, or cheesy "kiting" strategies (e.g., luring powerful enemies through narrow passageways one by one). Still, butting your head against a particularly overwhelming three-skull battle over and over again is not for the faint of heart.

It's often simpler (if more time-consuming) to seek out some easier side quests and/or random battles, grinding your way to the character level and gear necessary to turn a three-skull battle into a more manageable one- or two-skull affair. If you want to skip that grind (or don't want to test your reflexes as much), we recommend turning down the difficulty level before you start your adventure, as you can't do so afterward.

It would be easy to glance at Avowed and see just another all-too-familiar take on a well-trodden fantasy RPG space. But that would be a mistake. The game's zippy controls, tough but not overwhelming combat, and morally ambiguous perspective make for a memorable journey that sets itself apart from the crowd.

Steel yourself, though, for just how much every other character in the game is going to hate you.