Been playing Avowed and I’m having a hard time understanding why so much of the conversation around its release was so negative. At least that’s how I remember much of the discourse. In reality this is pretty much everything I want from this kind of western RPG
(Disclaimer I know taste and opinion do not correlate with objective quality in any way)
The setting is a huge part of why I’m enjoying it so much. I remember seeing so many comments about how ugly this game was, and playing it now I have to wonder what people were looking at. I love the colors, the bizarre plant life, the fungal growths, the way settlements sit among all this strange shit. There are places where I’ll stop just to look around because I’m enjoying how unfamiliar everything feels.
There’s clearly some Morrowind inspiration in spirit. You get that feeling of being somewhere with its own history and ecology, an original world that’s not just “Medieval
Europe but add some fantasy creatures.” I want to ask people questions and read things because I’m curious about the place. It doesn’t really feel like the setting of any other game, which is probably what I appreciate most about it. Even the stuff that’s grotesque or unpleasant to look at adds to the appeal for me. I like a fantasy world that gets a little fucking weird.
The exploration makes good use of that setting, too. I keep heading toward a quest and getting sidetracked by some cave or ruin, then finding another thing on the way to that. The smaller maps work really well because there’s usually something worth investigating nearby, and I’m curious about what I’ll find.
And the combat is such a massive improvement over what I’m used to in these games. I love Elder Scrolls and Fallout, but the fighting has rarely been the reason I keep playing them. Here I’m actively enjoying it. Mixing guns, melee, and magic feels great, and new equipment regularly has me trying different setups.
I get that the formula is familiar. Nobody’s going to play this and think Obsidian invented a new genre. But I’ve loved this kind of RPG for years, and Avowed feels like it gets almost everything I enjoy about it right. The exploration, the conversations, getting distracted for an entire evening when I meant to finish one quest. I don’t need some massive innovation when the execution is this good.
Was the reception actually that bad, or did I just happen to see the most negative reactions? I know the reviews were generally positive, but I remember getting the impression it was a huge disappointment. Curious what people felt was missing, because this is hitting for me in a way very few RPGs have lately