Avowed (2026) review

Brave new world

Once marred by a reputation for releasing buggy RPGs that bit off more than they could chew, Obsidian has recently entered something of a renaissance period. Even as its parent company seems perched on the precipice of a new dark age, the studio has only gone from strength to strength in recent years – releasing crowdfunded CRPGs, pint-sized survival sandbox games, monastic murder mysteries and satirical space operas. 

Even so, Avowed represents an apex for this arc towards triumph. In a post Baldur’s Gate 3 world, I doubt it’ll ever get the props it fully deserves. However, having played through the PlayStation 5 version of the game, I have nothing but praise for Obsidian’s open-world fantasy RPG.

It’s not quite a revolution, but Avowed is still a right-sized RPG that delivers on all fronts.

A whole new Eora

Set in the fantasy world of Eora, Avowed is a first person roleplaying game that casts you as a figure known as the Envoy. After creating this avatar, you’re assigned by the sovereign of the distant Aedyran empire to investigate unrest – and cryptic reports of a strange plague – in a remote region known as The Living Lands. 

Upon arrival, you’ll complete quests, fight monsters, acquire various crafting materials and progressively-better loot. Over the course of your adventure, you’ll learn more about the powers that be and problems that occupy those residing in The Living Lands – many of which seem enigmatically-tied to your own mysterious origins. 

Entering a situation like the one presented above as an outsider has been a trope that stretches as far back as the likes of Fallout, but Avowed pushes on this aspect of the experience.

Rather than arrive as a blank slate, your reputation precedes you – and most of the time that's not a good thing. More often than not, the first impression you make with the denizens of The Living Lands is as a coloniser. You’re here on behalf of an empire that’s tried, failed and is gearing up to try again to conquer once more. As a representative of that agenda, you often end up being a punching bag for the various grievances that those living in the region have with Aedyr at large and the tension that situation evokes isn’t one with all that many easy answers. 

The Playstation 5 version of Avowed introduces a bunch of new options like new playable species, a dedicated photo mode, custom difficulty modifiers, additional weapon types and more. When you hit the credits, there’s now even a new game plus mode.

In addition to all the usual benefits of a year of post-launch patches, you’re just getting a lot more for your money here than those who picked up the game when it originally launched did – though many these upgrades are also available on those platforms as part of the recent Anniversary Update.

The critical path in Avowed will keep you on your feet for a solid fifteen or twenty hours as you zig and zag across the Living Lands in search of answers. If you stop to enjoy the smell of the Adra, you’ll probably be able to lose plenty more of your time to the game’s sprawling open-world environments. There are four in all, plus more than a dozen dungeons of various sizes. This segmented set up is the one area where the sales pitch doesn’t quite hold up, but in practice I found that I didn’t mind all that much. 

There’s no escaping the comparisons to Skyrim, but what’s here doesn’t feel like a compromise. The quartet of regions you explore in Avowed are more than large enough to lose yourself within and filled with plenty of nooks and crannies to dig into.

These environs are diverse, detailed and often feel like a natural extension of the world seen in the Pillars of Eternity. At times, it almost feels like you’re getting a fresh perspective on the action seen in Avowed's isometric predecessors.

A lot of what works here is built on the foundation that Obsidian laid out in The Outer Worlds but Avowed soars so much higher than its sci-fi counterpart or its sequel. I can’t help but suspect a big part of the reason why is that this particular RPG manages to hit the sweet spot of being complicated enough on pretty much every front.

The world isn't the only aspect of Avowed that's been scoped to respect your time. The lore isn’t overwhelming, but there’s plenty to chew on. The skill tree is deep and not overly-crunchy. The crafting system is rewarding but not required.

Best of all, despite my pre-launch concerns, the combat in Avowed is largely a highlight. In-game conflict is fast, furious and open-ended enough to avoid overstaying its welcome. At least, not too egregiously. Although I had begun to tire of it towards the end of my time with the game, I relished how rewarding it felt to brawl with the various baddies I encountered.

Regardless of whether I was scrapping with the  kobold-like Xaurips, spooky skeletons, big spiders or even just regular old bandits, there’s a weight and dynamism to the combat that kept me on my toes. It’s rarely just a matter of clicking on your foes until their HP hits zero. 

Avowed expects you to  manage your stamina, take advantage of elemental interactions, and put pressure on your enemies until their Sekiro-style poise bar breaks. Depending on your build, you’ll care more or less about some of these factors. Even so, that last one does a lot to make even bigger bosses in the game feel less like damage sponges and more like a fair fight.

In the end though, it’s the writing that really carries things over the finish line.

Where Outer Worlds and Outer Worlds 2 are held back by the extra baggage of having to orient you within an entirely new setting, Avowed cuts right to the good stuff and isn’t afraid to meet you where you are. 

While asking Obsidian to make their take on Skyrim was always going to be a tough ask, the benefits of leveraging the Pillars of Eternity lore to bootstrap the narrative involved quickly become clear.

You’ll definitely benefit from having played Obsidian’s CRPG and its sequel, but the character, setting and events of Avowed take place far enough away that the action is still relatively approachable.  Lore-hounds will find more than mere crumbs within the many documents and dialogue trees you’ll encounter, but that world-building never gets in the way of the core narrative threads pulling you through the experience at large. If you’re looking to keep things simple though, the bounty boards found in each major town offer up a more straightforward diversion from the main plot.

Past that, there are dozens of side quests in each region. These are all fully voice-acted and often introduce new perspectives on the central conflict driving the main plot. It’s been a long time since I played a game that offers genuinely juicy moral choices in the way that this one does. Obsidian’s writing chops are well-established at this point but this aspect of Avowed too stands on the shoulders of the studio’s past work as much as any other.

The Bottom Line

If you didn’t already consider Obsidian to be one of the industry’s premier developers of big budget roleplaying games, Avowed is poised to push you off that particular fence. It’s rare to play an RPG with this much of the good stuff in it, let alone that makes me consider a second play-through before I’d even reached the credits.

It might be heresy to admit it but Avowed is so good that I’d take a sequel to it over a third Pillars of Eternity.