Greetings Gamers! It is time again for your squad leader to save you some time and money with his wonderful words of wisdom, for the breath taking and beautiful world of Avowed. Now you know me and my love for the silly turns of phrase, but Gamers this one just leaves me stone cold and having to use my Educator voice for this one.
Firstly I’m going to be honest and tell you about the few things of the game that I enjoyed and then for the most part is all like Avowed itself, it goes downhill from there. Now don’t get me wrong I’m always trying to give Obsidian the benefit of the doubt, The Outer Worlds is a great game, but its clear this game is not a finished product. So here it is Gamers the only thing I remotely enjoy was making my Godlike appear as if they were a Human/Greenman hybrid, yeah that’s what I thought too.
So here is where the rest of the game completely falls short of anything remotely promised by the original Dev team(they did not finish the game.) and the concept that Avowed is supposed to break Skyrim or Oblivion because it comes from another fantasy series called Pillars of Eternity that was designed for play on PC and has seen little love from Xbox since its add to Xbox Game Pass well over 4 years ago. Obsidian wanted to bring this fantasy world on par with the world of the Elder Scrolls, but fails in completely because of the “hamfisted” attempt of explain the world as a toddler trying to explain the overarching plot inception. Its a lot of point and shouting in a very general way, while constantly feeling as if this information is going to be put on a geography test written on paper laced in LSD. I had fundamentally no understanding of the world Avowed was set in and the developers knew this would be the case with a bulk of Gamers approaching this game, but yet they do nothing to educate the player other than chunks of conversation you are forced to have, that overwhelm you with information. Now I know you are asking me why that would even bother me at all, the answer is because the storyline is equally confusing because when you aren’t babysitting “Treebeard’s methhead” infant God. You are constantly being lectured or complained at by every NPC you meet, to the point that I actively would have wholesale slaughtered an entire town because of the never unending ungrateful nature of everyone you are surrounded by. This is something you cannot do, because the game lacks any of the game functions that would allow the Gamer to play anything but a “Disney Milk Toast Hero.”
Missions in the game are an easy bake method of doing things. You speak to someone, run across the map, more talking, and go back to the person you originally spoke too. Then you get maybe a touch of fighting here and there depending on if you explored the area before taking any missions as all monsters, bandits, and wildlife do not re-spawn after you kill them. There are very little fast travel points on any of the maps and I hope you enjoy aimless walking as the game currently does not offer any kind of mounts for players. Which makes exploring for loot extremely lack luster as all the loot in the game is crap that would only excite you if you don’t understand how percentages work, because most gear stats are worthless like the experience of playing anything other than a magic user (which isn’t very fun either.) as its skill tree is the largest of the Three player classes you can take.
Finally the biggest glaring issue with this game is the lack of understanding this developer team had for the audience they wanted to reach, is it clear that the writers of Obsidian had a politically motivated agenda with the major storytelling points of this game, which is not uncommon as most works of entertainment either known outright or not, are motivated by the historical and political agendas the writers live in during their day to day. Now the issue I take with the game is the way the agenda is presented that not only robs the player of agency in the storyline of the game, but also force feeds you the never ending lectures of what about this point of view or that point of view. Regardless of your motivations, you cannot belittle and insult someone all the time, then expecting them to see your point of view. This is what this developer team is trying to mask poorly behind a possibly good fantasy story, aggressive writing such as this belongs in film festivals and art stages pieces. Gamers are escapist and the last thing we want is a soapbox narrative of accept me or else paired with companions dialogue that honestly feels like a huge cry for help and mental health medication because of this flip flop story writing. To make my point, Obsidian you just drop kicked that barista for misspelling your name, thats not going to make the coffee taste any less like shit. There may be some fun moments in the game and the combat can be funs sometimes, but there’s just not enough to make this game good.
So all in all gamers, just don’t play or buy Avowed, as this game is about two deluxe package purchases away from being a full on lawsuit with how empty and lifeless this game feels. If you are looking for the next Elder Scrolls game or The Witcher, or even a Dragon Age game, this is not it. Elder Scrolls 6 can’t get here soon enough!!! Now to be fair Avowed was originally supposed to be a MMORPG before the original developer was replaced and they changed direction with the game. If feels like the single player RPG was rushed after the direction was changed and there’s a lot of story that’s missing from the original concept just so they could get the game out without any more delays. However, I wish all my complaints were made up, and that I was just drunk, with all of this being malty induced electric mushroom nightmare of gods awful writing and presentation by a seasoned and experienced studio such as Obsidian, this game ranks 5 out of 10. But it could be easily 4 because the writers kill Marynna, they know what they did and they know it was shitty, so they must pay the price Gamers! Hopefully, the The Outer Worlds 2 will redeem the gaming studio!
