I’m Starting To Believe Avowed Was Just Playing The Long Con All Along

Published Mar 6, 2025

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played Pillars of Eternity, which takes place in the same world, but I its characters feeling like appropriate parts of a rich fantasy setting, not people I could encounter at Starbucks. As I approach Avowed's conclusion, however, I'm happy to it that the writing has won me over, and I'm slowly convincing myself that it was an intentional gambit all along.

Fantasy Writing Needs To Set Itself Apart

Avowed Doesn't Immediately Feel Like A Convincing World

To some degree, trying to write a fantasy world that doesn't sound like our modern reality is a fool's errand. No one can completely divorce themselves from their linguistic and cultural context, and it wouldn't be a particularly noble goal even if they could. Even if it comes with a helping of escapism, fantasy is a great place for social commentary, and there's no reason that medieval and Renaissance inspiration should prevent a healthy dose of modern sensibilities. Baldur's Gate 3 is a good example of splitting the difference to mostly consistent success.

A hooded character looking over the Dawnshore region and the city of Paradis in Avowed.

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There are layers to this, though, and there's a reason why The Lord of the Rings doesn't fixate on the same comic sensibilities as 1950s television. Some things date themselves way too fast, and some of the quips and obvious moral scenarios that define the early hours of Avowed already feel é at launch. Other Obsidian games are also works of their time, to be sure, but there's a reason why Fallout: New Vegas's writing has aged better than Borderlands 1 and 2. Great storytelling needs to identify and avoid the laziest conventions of its moment.

Although Fallout: New Vegas is the only Fallout game officially made by Obsidian, the studio's legacy is deeply intertwined with the franchise's history, as key of Obsidian's founding staff came from the teams responsible for the original Fallout games.

Avowed doesn't put its best foot forward in this regard. While I do think Kai's sillier lines mostly land on the side of being fun, there's a one-note element to Marius that makes even relatively serious lines sound like they're played for a sitcom audience. Random NPCs in Paradis mostly feel like gag characters I would come up with on the spot in a D&D session, not fully realized Kith or genuinely clever goofs. While early moral choices definitely have their gray areas, they also feel a bit didactic, and I wasn't particularly struggling with the weight of any decisions.

Avowed Makes A Hard Pivot That Changes Everything

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Thankfully, Avowed evolves as it goes along, and the layers that it develops make it a lot more compelling than I found it at first glance. More interestingly, it also starts to poke at itself. Take Marynna, for example. As a merchant who unfailingly pops up in the dangerous wilds of every region, she's a cute little element of the Saturday morning cartoon take on a fantasy world. Until you find her corpse in Galawain's Tusks, that is — a reminder that the deadliness of the Living Lands isn't reserved for cartographers that you never personally meet.

Avowed's key art, showing a Skelton holding a sword, covered in various fungi.

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The overall darkening of Avowed's tone as it progresses is to be expected, and there's a reason that so much fantasy starts in a charming hamlet and ends in a world-shaking conflict. I can't shake the feeling, however, that Avowed is pulling a bit more of an intentional bait-and-switch than the standard approach.

While Dawnshore has plenty of bloodshed, it's mostly the kind of bloodshed that fits in with Flintstones-style xaurip camps and a surplus of scaredy-cat henchmen. When my inaction against the Steel Garrote led to the burning of Fior mes Ivèrno, I wasn't shocked because it was an unbelievable consequence, but because Avowed hadn't yet convinced me that it would raise the torch so willingly. It's still relatively merciful to key characters, but it redefined the immediacy of the game world for me, and much of what comes after feels like it belongs to a different experience than what came before.

I Still Don't Love Avowed's Beginning, But I'm Glad It Evolves

Avowed Embraces Its Best Impulses Over Time

Inquisitor Lodwyn with Fior burning in Avowed — Custom image by Katarina Cimbaljevic

Avowed never really gets rid of the cartoon element, and it gleefully embraces it at turns throughout, like the moment when Inquisitor Lödwyn takes off her mask to reveal a secret identity as Skeletor's second cousin. The game has a sincere interest in expressing a sense of fun, so I certainly don't think that it uses its silliness with the sole intent of trickery. Early stories like dealing with smuggled shipments have absolutely nothing on the no-win scenarios that speckle the latter half of the game, though, and most games that feature brutal decisions start on them a bit earlier.

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It's an interesting progression, and it might have the upside of making me more inclined to appreciate everything past Dawnshore by way of comparison. The intensification also fits with the most natural arc for the envoy, who will likely go from a roughly loyal representative of Aedyr to something of a rebel in most playthroughs.

All the same, I still struggle to understand why Dawnshore is so thoroughly populated with quippy characters who aren't especially funny. Maybe it's all an overture at drawing in an audience that would never have played Pillars of Eternity, but I think that could have been done without crafting a world that doesn't quite feel believable until the plot gets going. I imagine Dragon Age: The Veilguard attempts something similar, even if the parts of it I've been exposed to feel further off the mark for me than anything in Avowed.

Baldur's Gate 3 proves that you can jump into the deep end without alienating a wide audience, but if Avowed's tonal shift is indeed that calculated, I do have to respect how deceptive it is before playing its hand. While the breadcrumbs of darker inclinations lead up to its ultimate balance of levity and weight, even the more frivolous moments in Shatterscarp frequently feel a world apart from anything in Dawnshore (perennially dull Marius aside). Avowed asks to be accepted as a fantasy SNL sketch, and only afterward does it let you in on a game that's more than that.

This article has been corrected to fix an incorrect reference to Shatterscarp in place of Galawain's Tusks.