Avowed review: it makes the wait for the next Elder Scrolls much easier

We’re likely still a long way out from Bethesda’s next Elder Scrolls game. But that wait isn’t such a big deal when the Xbox has other excellent roleplaying games like Avowed. The latest from Fallout: New Vegas and The Outer Worlds developer Obsidian, Avowed doesn’t shake up the genre. It’s just a really solid fantasy RPG, one that keeps you pushing through with a combination of epic story, delightful companions, difficult decisions, and a true sense of adventure in a massive world.

The game puts you in the role of a godlike, a race of rare human-like creatures believed to have been blessed by — and thus are close to — the many gods that exist in this world. You’re immediately put to work investigating a deadly plague that is impacting a region known as The Living Lands. It’s an ecological disaster, slowly killing people (after it causes them to go mad) while also being responsible for everything from gigantic sinkholes to very angry bears. Avowed is actually a spinoff of Obsidian’s Pillars of Eternity series, but it serves as a great entry point; I rarely found myself lost or confused, and there’s a handy glossary to help you with key names and places during conversations.

The larger quest is actually compelling, as far as these things go, and touches on larger themes like imperialism as well as more personal ones, like your character’s connections to the gods. Usually, I ignore the main quest until I can’t, but here, I actually wanted to know what happened, particularly a dozen or so hours in, when the scope of the world becomes clearer. But like in most RPGs, the main storyline is also largely an excuse to push you through the world. Avowed thrives on distraction. You’re off to do one thing, and then you spot something else interesting — a lost character calling for help, a strange glow on the horizon, an ancient ruin buried underground — and you find yourself pulled into something new and completely unexpected.

I could be describing a lot of fantasy RPGs there. But part of what makes Avowed work is that even those smaller stories and moments are full of intrigue and personality, often bringing you into something larger and deeper than it first seems. So even if a bunch of them are typical fetch quests, the how and why of what you’re doing is enough to make them interesting. Many are funny, others are tragic, and a few are tragically funny. One of my favorites involved dealing with a farmer who was working hard to create a more cost-effective workforce out of reanimated corpses.

Avowed also does a good job of making it feel like you’re part of this world and having an impact. Maybe it’s all an elaborate trick of narrative design, but it felt like my choices mattered. Early on, I let a would-be assassin go free, which caused some initial pain — mostly, my fellow party members got pretty mad at me — but also opened up new story avenues with his faction of rebels.

Those party members, who you can have long conversations with while camping and complete specific sidequests with to further your relationships, respond to your actions and decisions in ways that feel believable and personal. Sometimes it’s just a little quip in the heat of battle; other times, it’s a long lecture about a choice you made. And those choices can be really difficult: at multiple points, you have to decide in the moment if someone lives or dies, and I often felt unsure of what to do. You can’t make everyone happy — and you definitely can’t keep everyone alive.

I also really enjoyed feeling like I could roleplay as the godlike adventurer I wanted to be. There are some very fun dialogue options, and I turned my wizard into the intimidating silent type, often responding not with words but with a “raised eyebrow” or “dangerous smile.” The godlikes really stand out in this world thanks to visible physical features. My character had a face full of fungi and tree roots for hair, so I just went with the strong outcast vibe, and it was a blast.

It’s those smaller, more personal moments that really help set Avowed apart because, structurally and mechanically, it’s pretty standard — if well-tuned — stuff. That means multipart quests that have you running around The Living Lands collecting and returning items and combat that can occasionally become a slog, particularly when you’re fighting huge groups of enemies. There’s a whole lot of dialogue to sift through, though a lot of it is optional, and I found myself skipping very little of it. I also spent way too much time fiddling with an inventory full of identical magic wands and rotten cucumbers.

But the moment-to-moment storytelling and adventuring is so good that those issues didn’t really bother me. Sometimes you just want a huge, fantastical world to lose yourself in, and there aren’t a lot of them with the scale and quality of Avowed. There’s a reason these games only come around so often — and why the wait can be so hard.

_{Avowed launches on February 18th on Xbox and PC, with early access starting on February 13th.}