izigame.me

The trailers and marketing were already showing me red flags, but being a huge fan of Obsidian games and Pillars of Eternity in general, I decided to give the game a go. Having completed it, Avowed is not a good game in my opinion, it is at best a mediocre game made even worse by the fact that it has groundwork for a great game that is simply wasted, and even worse by the fact that it takes place in the world of the Pillars games and messes with its already amazing lore.
First problem, the story. The Pillars world has amazing lore and worldbuilding behind it, some of the best in RPGs in general in my opinion. Pillars 1 and 2 are filled with world changing events, especially the end of Pillars 2, however, all of that is ignored here except when it is convenient to do a little callback in a poor attempt at fan service. Worst example of this being the fact that the main villain is a completely irrelevant NPC from Deadfire where she dies in the single cutscene she appears in, but is now somehow back. The writers take a borderline fanfiction approach to explaining why things happen here and now in a poor attempt to completely ignore the greater lore of the Pillars world and everything that happened in those games. The same fanfiction approach can be seen in how everything about the Living Lands and this new godlike entity is special and never before seen and unique compared to everything we got before. This game could have taken place in literally any other setting and worked just as fine, the Pillars setting is only used here for brand recognition.
As for the story itself, you do get to make some choices but the majority of them does not really matter. End of act choices come back later in one or two places, and there are a few big choices in the last 45 minutes, but other than that the vast majority of choices simply alter your quest reward and are never mentioned again. Apart from the achievements for using certain choices X amount of times, the great disposition system from the Pillars game has been removed, butchering your ability to roleplay and build a reputation with the world.
Companions, a staple of the Pillars games, feel extremely underdeveloped. Except for Kai, who has an actual character arc and a proper companion quest, the remaining companions have some things happen to them, either as part of the main quest when you recruit them or as a very small mini quest, but their personality stays the same even when you'd expect them to change. They each come with four skills that you can optionally modify with one of the handful of skill points you get for them throughout the game.
As for the gameplay part of the game, everything feels underbaked and rushed out. Many have mentioned exploration, and while parkour and world design are quite good, it all falls apart because 95% of the times the chest you find contains crafting materials and 30 gold. The game has an extremely limited and borderline unacceptable loot pool, made even worse by the fact that all items outside uniques are completely useless. Every weapon or armor type you find has the exact same stats, rendering loot useless. Even uniques have the exact same stats as the base item type, but come with two magic effects, which renders all other non-unique loot pointless. And because you have to keep upgrading your gear to keep up with the enemy levels, you will likely find yourself constantly breaking down everything you find in an attempt to keep up. Depending on your chosen build, it is very likely that you will find a weapon or armor in act 1 and then just keep upgrading it all the way to the end of the game because there will simply be nothing better for you in the meantime. For a game that "encourages combat experimentation", this kind of upgrade system completely shuts down any notion of such experimentation as after the very start of the game, you simply do not have enough upgrade materials to keep more than two or three weapons in line with enemy levels. Especially because even in later acts of the game, you will keep finding the most basic act 1 gear which at that point of the game isn't even worth breaking down for components.
Character progression is extremely barebones. Unless you play a mage, almost all of your upgrades are pure stat boosts, which means that you will simply find yourself casting the same 1 or 2 abilities while endlessly attacking an enemy. Sure, you can try to mix and match mage plus something else, but an action RPG where you have "a wide array of combat options" but you have to be a mage to have fun just isn't designed well. Also, I have heard the excuse that we couldn't have paladin or priest abilities because of "lore reasons with the end of Pillars 2", well good thing nobody told that to the enemy factions cause they are quite packed with Priests who heal their fellow enemies, and we even have a Paladin as the main villain. We couldn't have druids because it is hard to animate wildshape, and yet you will fight probably a hundred fully animated bears that could have easily served as a wildshape ability. We couldn't have any other playable races except human and elf because of all the other extra animations, and yet other races are fully animated as enemies. The game has only one finisher animation regardless of who you are finishing so that surely couldn't have been an issue for letting other races be playable.
I have heard the excuse that this is a AA game and should be treated that way. Even as a AA game, this is a bad game. Bound by Flame, an actual AA game from ten years ago, had the feature that your body changes depending on whether or not you accept or refuse power from a godlike entity. That is not present here. Pillars 1 and 2, actual AA games, had more loot variety and more complex crafting and more intricate dialogue systems/character progression. Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 has just come out, was developed faster, for less money, and is much bigger and more mechanically and narratively complex. And finally, if this is a AA game, why does it cost 70$/90$? For a AAA price, you better deliver a AAA product.
We need to stop giving Obsidian excuses. This game has probably had a troubled development, things were cut, scrapped, rebooted, whatever. That isn't great, but also, Obsidian is no longer a small AA company. They are owned by Microsoft, one of the biggest companies in the world. They had all the time and budget to make a game right for once, with no cut corners or lack of funds for all the features. They had the amazing worldbuilding, class design and loot design of the Pillars games. If they actually fully developed a proper loot system, more robust skill trees, proper roleplaying elements, a good story actually taking full advantage of the existing lore... even with this map size, that game would have probably been one of the greatest RPGs of all time. And yet this one time they are free from financial limits, they make their arguably worst and laziest game to date, with the most basic barebones features and fanfiction level writing. This isn't even a case of wide as an ocean, shallow as a pool. This game is barely bigger than a pond, and yet is as shallow as puddle.
For making it until the end of this review, I award you 30 gold, 2 softwood branches and 1 iron chunk.