Avowed is a bigger and bolder RPG than I expected

This story is part of our Summer Gaming Marathon series.

While it’s not as big as an RPG like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Avowed is still a massive evolution for the Pillars of Eternity franchise. That series gave us slow-paced, isometric CRPGs, while Avowed is a more action-packed first-person RPG set in the same universe. Having gone hands-on with its Gamescom build at an Xbox event in Los Angeles, I was relieved to see that Avowed still retains the core DNA of developer Obsidian Entertainment.

The Avowed quest I played sported beautiful visuals, had excellent writing, and felt faithful to the wider Pillars of Eternity franchise. Clearly, a lot of effort went into reinterpreting what a Pillars of Eternity game could be like when played from a different perspective and set in a never-before-explored area of Eora called The Living Lands. In an interview, art director Matthew Hansen explained how the team approached that opportunity.

“If you’ve played both Pillars 1 and Pillars 2, you’ll see that Deadfire is a more vibrant setting than the Dyrwood is, and we wanted to push that further with The Living Lands,” Hansen tells Digital Trends. “There are a lot of pretty bombastic visuals, but it’s all still rooted in reality like the Pillars games are.”

My hands-on demo of Avowed involved playing through one of its sidequests. Entertaining sidequests are an ever-present quality in the best RPGs, and so far, Avowed is checking all of the right boxes. The quest began as I entered a dungeon while looking for a lost expedition. These caverns immediately felt intimate and bespoke, offering an up-close-and-personal level of detail that you won’t get from the first two Pillars of Eternity games. I came away impressed by its visuals, which looked rougher in videos shown off earlier in the year. This more close-up perspective was a major design challenge for Obsidian, but the team embraced it according to Region director Berto Ritger.

“In a first- or third-person setting, you have