I played Avowed at Xbox’s Gamescom LA event and was underwhelmed by my session. The combat didn’t feel good, the abilities weren’t interesting, and the level design leaned into an arena-like structure that limited your fighting options. And my biggest gripe is that I couldn’t feel the weight behind my hits. Avowed’s combat felt like sitting on a sofa that has a plastic cover on it.

While I was given an hour with Avowed the section I got to play had about 30 minutes of content, allowing me to try out different classes. Since my session was so short, I have little to say about the narrative one way or the other. Maybe the story is Avowed’s secret sauce, maybe the gameplay hits with more time, maybe I just need to find the right weapon or ability, maybe this slice just isn’t Avowed’s best, but for now all I can go on is what I’ve played and I left with nothing to latch onto. 

What am I excited to see more of when Avowed comes out based on this session? I don’t have an answer without leaning on the strengths of the genre itself or referring to Obsidian’s pedigree. 

Getting in Character

Avowed has three classes you can choose from: Mage, Barbarian, and Ranger. As a magic lover, I started with Mage. Once I finished my mission I restarted it as a Barbarian, this melee class is much more straightforward: dual-wielding an ax and a sword is a button masher’s dream. And then restarted it again as a Ranger for good measure: the bow is solid, but the guns auto-reload regularly and slowly.

It took me a while to understand how to fight effectively as a Mage, compared to the other two classes. Little things tripped me up about this class, like the fact that you have two weapons but they’re just two different grimoires (spellbooks). It makes sense but switching between the two isn’t as visually obvious as it is for every other class, especially in the heat of combat.

Once I got a handle of it, I felt powerful but mindlessly so. In this preview section the Mage felt caught in the middle: either barely hurting enemies or unleashing colossal attacks. Worst of all, the spells lacked whimsy or intrigue. They felt more like abilities than spells. And since every character has abilities it made the Mage feel thoroughly unmagical. 

When you’re not casting spells or using your abilities, your basic attack (light or heavy) is firing projectiles from your wand. I was thrown off by Avowed’s approach to lock on. I was told there is sort of a lock on within the settings (I didn’t experience this in my session) but that, when it comes to the Mage specifically, there’s a homing feature for the projectiles. They get the job done but they don’t feel great.

Dodging enemy attacks is clunky. Your only option is to dash out of the way which left me constantly being attacked in a blind spot or desperately trying to get enough space from enemies to get some momentum. The lack of manuverability was dull and disempowering.

Fighting Form

Fighting in Avowed is throwing everything you have at bipedal lizard-like grunts, skeletons, spiders, etc., all with various levels of sponginess. Unload your standard attacks and toss in some abilities. Strategizing is often underminded by how tight the arenas were in some spots and how flooded with enemies the larger areas were. Getting headshots with my bow as the Ranger felt good but I only had a few times where the level design seemed to allow for it. I was a Ranger with no space to roam. 

You can always bring up your ability wheel to get a second to plan, in lieu of using quick select for slotted abilities, but doing so worsened the experience — making it feel like some bastardization of turn-based combat. Usually I love a pause from the action to plan but the combat doesn’t feel fast, snappy, or exciting enough to earn the respite. 

It’s worth noting that there are definitely ways you can get strategic about your fighting, such as freezing enemies before a heavy strike, but these kinds of flows are hard to surface. After all, using your abilities and/or spells costs Essence which is replenished with items, potions, or a long rest. There are also traits you can gain that give you more ways to replenish Essence, such as by defeating enemies. On top of this, you also have stamina to manage though that regenerates automatically. 

There’s nothing wrong with designing to force your players to rotate through what’s in their arsenal, in fact that’s often the right move, but in Avowed this approach turned combat into more of a stutter step than a ballet.

Pals and Plotlines

In this preview, I adventured alongside my companion Kai. As far as AI goes, he was a respectable fighter. And, if you prefer a more hands-on approach, you can direct Kai to use his abilities from the same ability wheel you use for your own moves. Once you progress far enough in the game, you will always have two companions with you. You will unlock more than two companions but you can only party up with two at a time. 

Obsidian’s brand of humor definitely shines through here but it’s too soon to say how dynamic that humor will be. For now it’s the low hanging fruit of uninspired sex jokes. “I’m not ready to die, I've never even touched a girl. It’s not fair!” yells the first NPC I encountered. I’m then given the option to say “Kai, we can’t let this kid die a virgin. Can you help him?”, give him a health potion, or make a snide comment about not wanting to waste supplies on him. 

I selected a few different combinations during my playtime and the only real difference is that he dies if you don’t heal him and you can loot his body. I do love to loot the dead, especially when they die at my hands, but that’s a pretty run of the mill outcome. 

You do get a sense of character traits and how they’ll affect your dialogue choices, such as needing certain levels of Intellect or Perception to select some options, and I love that in games. Specing conversations is a fun investment but it only returns dividends if the writing is good enough to support it. This session didn’t provide enough narrative for me to predict it one way or another.

In Short

The mundane cave dungeon structure, the middling first person jumps and short-lived slides, and the suite of unsatisfying skills, add up to Avowed feeling ordinary. In an ever-crowded market, that’s a tough spot to be. Hopefully there’s something that makes Avowed special that I just haven’t seen yet.