Avowed’s rickety combat feels like the undoing of its lush fungal world

I have significant reservations about Avowed, Obsidian’s first-person Pillars Of Eternity spin-off RPG, but those reservations are significantly offset by the fact that I can be an undersea mushroom woman called Mystic Meg. In Avowed, you are the god-touched envoy of a distant emperor, sent to an island realm known as the Living Lands to investigate a mysterious blight. “God-touched”, in this case, means “fungal and a bit mermaidy”. It means that you can make rainbow toadstools sprout from your eyesocket in the character creator. It means that you can accessorise your cheekbones with what look like bracket polypores, or deck your ears with staghorn coral.

I have no idea how novel this really is within the overarching Pillars world of Eora. Speaking as a newcomer to the setting, it was enough to keep me fussing around in the editor for half-an-hour. There’s a predictable price for embracing the game’s New Weird elements, however: other characters might find you repellent.

Early on, I met a lady in a jail cell who was openly revolted by my Morrowindy Davey Jones aesthetics (I let her out anyway). Later, a town guard captain confessed herself hypnotised by my sporing mug, and I had the option of slapping her down in dialogue for tactlessness. I hope the game develops these reactions into a sticky web of entangled mycophilia/mycophobia. It’s a shame Avowed doesn’t let you romance companions, because I want them to fret about developing a puffball infestation when we kiss.

Mind you, I don’t particularly rate Mystic Meg’s chances of kissing anybody, even if she were granted the opportunity by Auntie Obsidian. After all, she’s an absolute plonker. Avowed’s character creator gives you a selection of backgrounds that determine your starting weapon, shape your stats and unlock unique dialogue. The backgrounds are broadly familiar. You can be a war hero, renowned for their grit and charisma. You can be a noble scion, which might give you an edge when bandying words with courtiers. Play a vanguard scout, and you’ll arrive with knowledge of wilderness survival. As an arcane scholar, meanwhile, you’ll have insight upon occult texts, legal documents and so on.

Last but not least, you can play a court augur. This supposedly means you’re an adept deceiver and manipulator, but in my experience, it just makes you sound like a chūnibyō. My preview character is fond of opening conversations with phrases like “fate has guided me to this place”. I’m not sure if she has actual prophetic abilities, or is just theatrically self-deluded. I think it might be fun finding out.

While rather quippy in that way beloved of any western fantasy RPG that prides itself on banter, Avowed’s writing is quite rich and playful with some sparky voice-acting, and the early dialogue options hint at labyrinthine consequences. One of the earlier decisions you’re asked to make is defining your relationship with a character from Pillars Of Eternity 2: Deadfire. Were you lovers, and if so, was that before or after the, aha, infamous crisis which, as a non-returning player, I had zero idea about?

I don’t think Avowed punishes Pillars newbies for their lack of experience – the “go to this weird island” premise is a narrative reset – but it wastes no time thrusting you into the jargony detail, and is probably better for it. Side stories aren’t hard to unearth: the weapons and armour merchants I met by the dock of the first major city all had a few dialogue options hitched to quests, though I wasn’t able to investigate them during my hour or two with the preview build. The game also swiftly invites discussion of your role as Chosen One Imperialist, albeit a Chosen One Imperialist with possible indigenous connections in the shape of huge, ominous crystals that talk to you inside your head.

Even if you’re familiar with Eora, Avowed’s choice of a first or third-person view obviously lends a new sensibility to art and location design hitherto experienced from a top-down view. It means you can scry the glow of a treasure chest through the cracked walls of a burning fort, and stick your head through a waterfall in search of the hidden weapons cache that – as stipulated by the 10 Commandments of Game Design – lie behind at least 25% of RPG waterfalls.

The area design so far consists of meandering corridors that split and double back on themselves occasionally at the behest of puzzles. There’s a bit of platforming and the opportunity for stealth, with enemy alertness icons and tall grass to lurk in. At fleeting intervals, the dungeon design reminded me of Dishonored, though this absolutely isn’t an immersive sim.

The Living Lands make for some gorgeous scenery – with allowances for capped resolution on the preview build, anyway, which made the game look horrible blown up on my 4K display. It’s the Caribbean but high fantasy, sort of. It does box you in, however, with sloped and tumbledown surfaces that staunchly refuse to be jumped on, and some overt invisible walls. There’s a lingering sense that you’re roaming a landscape that really wants to be explored in isometric or top-down view, with simplified binary distinctions between navigable areas and scenery.

The awkwardness also applies to combat, which is real-time with dodging, blocking and cooldowns on abilities and magic. You can equip two sets of weapons and gear at once, switching between them on the go. Melee options include double-handed, guard-shattering hammers, daggers for quick strikes, and shields for the abject cowards. Spellcasters get wands and grimoires that contain multiple spells, including palmtop flamethrowers and lightning bolts that, yes, conduct through bodies of water.

There’s also a radial freeze-frame menu to help you aim fussier abilities, give your companions orders, and plan out elemental or status effect combos. Enemies, meanwhile, range from hyperactive lizard folk to magisterial, sorcery-lobbing skeletons, with the expected mix of melee, projectile and support archetypes.

There’s a lot to consider, albeit nothing very exotic by RPG standards. But there’s also a broken-up sluggishness to it all. Animations don’t flow together very charismatically, which lends a curious, stuttery cadence to the ducking and diving. Dragon Age: The Veilguard – to name the obvious recent competitor – is a lot slicker from the off.

I hope this is just a question of getting used to the game’s rhythms, and venturing beyond the opening pedagogy – prologue fights tend to be stagey. It could also be that the build I have is just quite old – Obsidian haven’t dated it, but there are obvious placeholder elements such as hand-drawn cinematics with WIP labels. As things stand, I came away from my Avowed preview newly enthused to check out the Pillars games, but for the wrong reasons: I want to experience this setting without the above annoyances. Fingers crossed that the final release in February 2025 will persuade me otherwise, because Mystic Meg deserves her day in the sun.