Multiple delays, high-profile departures and revamps later, the role playing game Avowed is finally on track to launch on February 18th for Xbox Series X/S and PC. This is nearly five years after its initial announcement in 2020, and given the genres popularity, expectations are high. At $69.99 for the Standard Edition ($89.99 for the Premium Edition granting five days of advanced access), here are 15 things you should know before pre-ordering.SettingSet in the world of Eora, similar to Pillars of Eternity, Avowed takes players to the Living Lands, where a mysterious plague called the Dream Scourge is wreaking havoc. As an Envoy, you seek to discover whats going on and ultimately stop it, but it turns out theres also a specific connection to the land. Despite the familiar setting, you dont need to play the Pillars of Eternity series to understand the plot.CompanionsYou wont be doing it alone, though, with four different companions to recruit throughout. These include the science-focused Giatta, the soldier Kai, the hunter Marius, and the scholar Yatzli. Up to two companions can travel and fight alongside you, and along with unique abilities and skills, they also have separate side quests.FactionsIt wouldnt be an RPG without factions, and thus far, there seem to be at least three notable options. The first is seemingly tied to your duties as an envoy to stop the Dream Scourge, while the second believes its a symptom of a threatening rot. Then theres Giattas side, seemingly suggesting to open yourself to its mysteries and become the protector of the Living Lands. Regardless of which you choose, your destiny will significantly change.Interconnected ZonesThus far, the world of Avowed is shaping up pretty nicely, with extensive attention to detail and varied environments to explore. Various previews have noted all the little things you can discover like secret areas with chests, puzzles, and side quests on top of varied enemy types (including the Xaulip from Pillars of Eternity). Its not quite an open world, but there are several open zones to explore which are interconnected.Starting QuestsQuests are a major part of the experience as well, and whats especially interesting is the various ways you can begin them. In Avowed, most quests have more than one way to initiate them. There is full flexibility on how you want to decide the order, terminate an NPC, give specific items to them and soon. You are in complete control at times. Its even possible to approach dungeons from different paths. The objective is for players to make through the world in an organic manner and continuously focus on exploration and finding every nook and cranny of the world.Choices and ConsequencesOf course, you also make plenty of choices where many consequences wont be immediately obvious. There are choices that youre going to make that are going to have immediate effects, choices that youll make that will have effects that youll see maybe hours later, and some that youll make that youll come to see at the very end of the game, kind of how those play out further on into the future, said the developer to Game Informer.But along with that, youve got choices that are very intimate and impactful for specific characters, and some that affect the state of entire settlements of the Living Lands and the Living Lands at large.Said choices will also affect your bonds with companions, which can come back to reward or haunt you, or likely a bit of both a few hours later when you meet those characters allies and adversaries. Depending on your decisions, it may even be more challenging to earn an allys trust.CombatAs showcased since its reveal, combat in Avowed is real-time, with players free to mix and match weapon types, skills, and more with relative freedom. So you can wield a weapon in one hand and cast magic with the other or dual-wield certain weapons, leading to ridiculous combos. Its even possible to switch between different options depending on the situation.Weapon TypesSaid combos include dual pistols, but you can also wield two wands at a time (which makes spell-casting faster). Otherwise, the usual swords, shields, axes, bows, and whatnot apply. Weapons can also be enchanted, adding elemental damage and upgrading over time.Weapon ImprovementsWhen Avoweds combat was first revealed, it didnt exactly set our expectations ablaze, mostly due to the weapon reactions. Fortunately, things on this front have been improved significantly, with much praise heaped on senior combat designer Max Matzenbacher.Speaking to PC Gamer, the developer said, Max has a superpower of looking at an animation and deciding how much hitstop there should be for it to feel good. He has tweaked every weapon with hitstop differently. Like the hammer: The Special attack kind of lodges the hammer into the enemy and then brings it down for an area-of-effect attack. All the tweaking, all the animation timing, all the times when I send him a particle effect and hes like Im going to play it right at this instant, hes done such a fantastic job. And hes done it with every weapon. The result is more weighty and visceral combat that feels more realistic, to the extent that weaker weapons may even bounce off instead of slicing through.PC RequirementsIn terms of PC requirements, Avowed will be slightly heavier than your average RPG. Minimum hardware includes an AMD Ryzen 5 2600 or Intel Core i5-8400, 16 GB RAM, and a Radeon RX 5700, GeForce GTX 1070 or Intel Arc A580. The recommended requirements include a Ryzen 5 5600X or Core i7-10700K, 16 GB RAM, and a Radeon RX 6800 XT or GeForce RTX 3080. The performance and settings in both cases are unknown. At least the required installation space is only 75 GB across the board.Ray Tracing and DLSS 3 SupportFortunately, Nvidia DLSS 3 is supported on PC at launch, which should help with performance. RTX is also available, resulting in ray-traced reflections and improved global illumination. You can also toggle Nvidia Reflex for lower latency responses.Accessibility FeaturesRegarding accessibility features, Avowed offers the usual, like toggling head bobbing, field of view customization, adjusting the text size of the UI and subtitles, turning off camera shake, and so on. However, the controls are also fully remappable, and localization is available for 12 languages (though voice acting is only in English). You can also switch toggle hit flash in different scenarios (like when staggering enemies) and even enable companions to manage their own skills.Hiding Dialogue ChecksHowever, perhaps the most intriguing option for the UI is the ability to hide failed dialogue checks. As PC Gamer noted in their preview, this means not being able to see the stats required for certain choices. Its an intriguing option and one that adds to the role-playing experience like few other titles.Xbox Series X/S Frame RateWhen it comes to the games performance on Xbox Series X/S, there have been some mixed messages. The developer first told the Iron Lords Podcast that you dont necessarily need that 60 frames and that it allowed the team to get a lot juicier with VFX and lighting and all this other stuff. Its a trade-off we opted to make relatively early, and were really happy with that. The games running pretty smoothly for how visually dense it is, and that was always our goal.However, the developer later told Parris Lilly that 30 frames per second, at least on Series X, is not our target. We will hit that at the very least. We are fully into performance optimization and want to deliver a beautiful world at the best frame rate we possibly can. Were working on that right now.Scope and PlaytimeThe Original plan was for Avowed to be Skyrim like and also implement co-op. Neither went as planned but the experience is still fairly sizable. The developer compared the scope to The Outer Worlds when speaking to Game Informer Last year. Players can expect a roughly similar experience, just like The Outer Worlds, depending on what kind of difficulty they play on, and how thoroughly they explore and invest inside content, versus just sticking to the main critical path missions, she said. If you decide to opt into all the extra content, then this could mean about 30 hours of gameplay, but for those keen ona story-focused experience, it may last 15 hours like The Outer Worlds. Its All up to how you want to play.