Avowed has a lot to say for itself (Xbox Game Studios)The makers of Fallout: New Vegas return with a Skyrim style action role-player set in the same fantasy world as Pillars Of Eternity.Best known for their track record of first class role-playing game sequels, Obsidian Entertainment has been responsible for Fallout: New Vegas, Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic 2, and Neverwinter Nights 2. Every one of those bodes well for Avowed, which while not a direct sequel, is firmly based in the same universe as the studios two-part Pillars Of Eternity series.The first Pillars game came out in 2015, following a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign, and as demanded by its backers, it was a solidly old school party-based dungeon crawler. Viewed from high above, in an isometric perspective, it was every bit a digital incarnation of a tabletop adventure game, its 2018 follow-up utilising much the same recipe.They are both set in the world of Eora and Avowed is too, but this time youll be experiencing it from a lot closer up. Viewed in first or third person, the events of Avowed take place in the Living Lands, a lawless island where people and nature run riot. Unfortunately, that riot has been getting steadily more unsettling as a sickness called the Dreamscourge overtakes the natural order. And if that sounds like a pretty generic set-up for a fantasy role-player, were afraid thats not the only thing in the game that lacks pizzaz.You play as an envoy sent by the Aedyran Empire to find out whats causing the Dreamscourge and put an end to it. Youre also a godlike, meaning your character has been directly claimed by one of the realms deities, which for some reason causes peculiar fungus-style cranial growths to appear. You can customise what they look like during character creation, but quite a few options make them look a lot like a Clicker from The Last Of Us.Arriving in Paradis, the Living Lands largest city and a comparative safe haven on the island, you quickly find out its still a hive of scum and villainy. You also discover quite how wordy Avowed is going to be. Every single conversation you have, whether its the preamble to shopping with a merchant, meeting a quest giver, or getting to know a more central character, regularly has six or more conversational choices at each stage.As with most role-playing games, these can be a set of questions you work your way through, but frequently theyre just differing responses, leading you down a broad variety of avenues in your chat. The voice acting is of the bog standard American accented variety, which is inoffensive if a little characterless, and the dialogue itself follows a similar pattern, delivering consistently middle-of-the-road prattle.The bigger issue is the gargantuan volume of it youll have to wade through. Books, notes left by military scouts, shopkeepers whose relatives know one of your party members, animancers whose lives have been upended by the Dreamscourge its a never-ending tsunami of median grade plot and lore exposition. Obsidian clearly finds it all completely fascinating, but we have to admit all those vowel-infused, made-up names and endless, minor callbacks to Pillars of Eternity left us wondering at the dreariness of it all.Luckily the action is a bit more invigorating. Gathering a total of four potential party members as you explore, you can take two of them with you on any given quest. Theres Kai, your blue scaly Ruataian bodyguard; Marius, a brash dwarf harbouring a painful secret; Yatzli, a feisty, furry mage; and Giatta, a passionate and opinionated animancer.You then build your three-person team to complement your characters build, using Marius ranged combat, Kais tankiness, Yatzlis spells, or Giattas healing. The two you choose will fight autonomously, although you can manually trigger their special moves.Its a pity there arent any combos or real interaction between their abilities though, and we found little incentive to change party members for different missions, unless one of them had a personal interest in a particular quest. Just like in Mass Effect, each has a side quest just for them, which gives you a deeper insight into their backstories, all of which are then resolved in the final act of the game. You can play the game from a first or third person perspective (Xbox Game Studios)Your character has two weapons loadouts that you can switch between on the fly, each of which lets you dual wield pretty much anything you like. That can be a sword or axe and shield, a wand and spell book, or a sword and pistol if you like. There are also two-handed swords, war hammers, rifles, and axes, which take longer to swing or fire, but do a great deal more damage.When your party makes camp for the night you can use the many crafting materials you collect to upgrade weapons and armour, while levelling up gives you ability points and lets you unlock and improve skills from a wide range of character classes. As ever, its worth specialising, although youre free to pick and choose abilities, and undo them all and start again whenever you like.As well as chopping up enemies or torching them with magic, there are plenty of encounters that can be resolved peacefully, your choice to spare lives having profound consequences throughout the rest of the game. In practice, when you see a group of enemies its hard to know whether theyre the sort that wont attack or not. After being caught out a few times we found ourselves simply slaughtering everything with a red health bar just to be on the safe side, but on the occasions we held back it was always rewarded, and remembered later on. The game is largely bug free, except when it comes to the monsters (Xbox Game Studios)Thats important, because the envoys destiny is attached to an unknown god, who you gradually get to know as you progress. Its to the games credit that its left entirely up to you how you interpret the gods actions and enigmatic pronouncements, or how you treat each of the Living Lands warring factions. Youre free to help, hinder or annihilate pretty much whichever groups you choose.That can be fun when someone starts getting a bit high-handed with your party. Just getting bored with their arrogance and attacking them feels like a wonderful release, and despite its grotesque verbosity, the dialogue has a scattering of those moments too. At one point, when the soul of a long lost fellow godlike is giving you particularly elliptical advice, one conversational option is, Just tell me what to do you cryptic b! Weve lost count of the number of times wed wanted to say exactly that, in this game and numerous others.Its a shame so many of Avoweds 50-odd hours or less if youre not a fan of side quests and bounty hunting is spent in conversation about obscure pieces of lore or, we kid you not, administrative districts and tax regimes. It sometimes feels like watching a fantasy remake of The Phantom Menace, especially as its dialogue gets so comically turgid.Although Avowed has many interesting elements, compared with other recent role-playing games it doesnt fair particularly well. Its combat system isnt as sophisticated or intuitive as Dragon Age: The Veilguard; it has nothing like Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2s sense of complex systems interacting; and its dialogue, while ripe with choices, has neither the charm nor character of Baldurs Gate 3. Its not that its innately terrible, theres just not much it excels at.More TrendingAvoweds strongest suit is traversal, its landscapes proving colourful and imaginative even if they can be tricky to navigate when youre trying to get somewhere specific. There are fast travel points all over the place, so its only infrequently an issue, but opening up new pieces of the map is satisfying, even if in the opening hours it sometimes means stumbling across camps of enemies way above your pay grade.Despite appearances, its also not an open world, instead offering five relatively compact freeform areas to explore. They all have distinct personalities but broadly offer the same sorts of mission and pay-offs, with a fairly narrow range of enemies on which to unleash your partys increasingly destructive abilities.Avowed does have a well-developed sense of consequence though. The endings told in stills with a voiceover feel rushed, but who you support, what direction the Living Lands take, and even who your final battle is against are all up to you, and its more than just a binary choice. The action is also fun, especially once youve unlocked a few decent powers. Its just a shame the journey is bogged down by chatter thats remorselessly tilted towards quantity rather than quality.Avowed review summaryIn Short: A modestly ambitious action role-player, thats very good at making you feel you have an impact on the world, but its let down by endless reams of mundane dialogue and predictable mechanics.Pros: Engaging exploration in a set of pleasingly gaudy environments. A wide range of powers to discover, all of which can be reset at will. Your decisions have a lasting effect on the world.Cons: Far too much unnecessary and uninteresting dialogue, in an often very generic fantasy world. Combat and levelling up is competent but unoriginal, as is the entire game concept.Score: 6/10Formats: Xbox Series X/S (reviewed) and PCPrice: 69.99Publisher: Xbox Game StudiosDeveloper: Obsidian EntertainmentRelease Date: 18th February 2025Age Rating: 16 Avowed is a bit too wordy and a bit too familiar (Xbox Game Studios)Emailgamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below,follow us on Twitter, andsign-up to our newsletter.To submit Inbox letters and Readers Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use ourSubmit Stuff page here.For more stories like this,check our Gaming page.GameCentralSign up for exclusive analysis, latest releases, and bonus community content.This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Your information will be used in line with our Privacy Policy