Avowed is Obsidian Entertainment’s first-person take on their Pillars of Eternity universe, offering a more action-oriented perspective on a world previously explored through isometric RPGs. Set in the Living Lands, a frontier region of Eora, the game promised a blend of Obsidian’s narrative strengths with modern first-person combat. The result is a game that community discussion broadly describes as good but not great, competent but not compelling.
Players tend to enjoy their time with Avowed while acknowledging that it doesn’t excel in any single area strongly enough to leave a lasting impression. The writing carries much of the weight, as expected from Obsidian, but the combat, exploration, and overall scope don’t push the game beyond a comfortable middle ground.
The Living Lands and Living Characters
Obsidian’s writing remains their most reliable asset, and Avowed’s companions and quest design reflect that strength. The companion characters bring personality and meaningful perspectives to the story, and their personal quests offer the kind of character development that makes you care about the people traveling with you. The dialogue system provides options that feel meaningfully different, and the quest writing regularly presents situations where there isn’t a clearly correct answer.
The world-building inherits the depth of the Pillars of Eternity universe, with its complex metaphysics around souls, gods, and the nature of mortality. Players familiar with that lore will find connections and references that enrich the experience, while newcomers can engage with the setting on its own terms. The Living Lands as a frontier provides a good excuse for a diverse range of environments and factions.
Combat offers a dual-wielding system that allows mixing melee weapons, ranged weapons, and magic in each hand. This flexibility gives players freedom to experiment with different combinations, and the system works well enough to keep encounters engaging. The ability to switch between different loadouts adds tactical variety to fights.
The environmental art ranges from lush forests to volcanic landscapes, and the first-person perspective gives the world an immediacy that the isometric Pillars games couldn’t provide. Walking through detailed environments and engaging with characters face-to-face creates a different kind of connection to the world.
Caught Between Two Identities
The combat, while flexible, lacks the impact and responsiveness that the best first-person action games deliver. Melee weapons feel floaty, magic lacks punch, and enemy reactions to hits don’t always convey the damage being dealt. The system has variety but not depth, and encounters can start to feel samey once you’ve settled into a preferred loadout.
The scope of the game feels constrained in ways that are hard to ignore. The world is divided into discrete zones rather than an open world, and those zones, while detailed, feel smaller than what modern RPG players expect. The linear progression through areas limits the sense of freedom and discovery that defines the best games in this space.
The main storyline, centered on investigating a mysterious plague in the Living Lands, doesn’t build momentum as effectively as Obsidian’s best work. The pacing can be uneven, with stretches of engaging narrative followed by sections that feel like connective tissue. The central mystery takes too long to develop real stakes.
Performance on PC at launch was inconsistent, with players on a range of hardware reporting frame rate drops and visual glitches. The game’s visual fidelity is solid but not cutting-edge, making the performance issues feel like optimization oversights rather than hardware limitations.
For a game set in such a rich lore-heavy universe, Avowed sometimes feels like it’s only scratching the surface of what the Pillars setting could offer in a first-person format. The potential of exploring Eora through this perspective is enormous, and the game hints at that potential without fully realizing it.
A Foundation Looking for Its Ambition
Avowed feels like a first attempt at a formula that could become something special with iteration. The pieces are there: Obsidian’s writing, an interesting combat system, a deep fictional universe, and a first-person perspective that brings new life to that universe. What’s missing is the confidence to push any of these elements far enough to define the experience. The game plays it safe in every area, and the result is pleasant but forgettable.
Should You Play Avowed?
If you enjoy first-person RPGs with solid writing and don’t need best-in-class combat or a massive open world, Avowed offers a satisfying if unspectacular experience. Fans of the Pillars of Eternity universe will appreciate the chance to explore Eora from a new perspective. If you’re looking for an RPG that pushes the genre forward or delivers the kind of memorable experience that defines a generation, this isn’t it. It’s a good game in a genre that has many great ones.
The Verdict on Avowed
Avowed is Obsidian doing what they do well without doing anything exceptional. The writing carries the experience, the combat system has potential it doesn’t fully exploit, and the world begs for a bigger, bolder exploration than this game provides. It’s a competent RPG that will satisfy players looking for a specific kind of experience, but it won’t be the game that anyone points to when discussing Obsidian’s finest work. The foundation is solid. What’s built on it needed more ambition.