Avowed hands-on: Scratching the Skyrim itch with style

I’ve been looking forward to Avowed. It feels like a long time since I had an Elder Scrolls-style, first-person RPG to dive into. I mean, The Elder Scrolls VI will launch one day, but it sure won’t be any time soon.

That’s OK, since Obsidian is releasing Avowed on February 18 for Xbox and PC. I got a chance to play a demo of the game during Gamescom in Cologne, Germany.

And, yeah, it’s definitely scratching that Skyrim itch. But Avowed also stands out with some visual flairs and interesting ideas.

Sightly spelunking

Avowed looks striking, at least on the PC on which I played my demo. My adventure took place entirely in a single cave. But this wasn’t the kind of dark, gray abyss that I’m used to from The Elder Scrolls. This cavern shined with brilliant purples, greens, and blues.

I had a lot of narrow, twisting paths to explore, but there were also plenty of open areas. This didn’t feel like a claustrophobic place. Even the smaller spaces were filled with details. Nothing looked drab or boring.

Pistol power

It was a gorgeous and fun place to explore. It also had spiders, lizards, and skeletons for me to fight. I’ve seen something of a rising sentiment that Skyrim’s combat is dated and simple these days. I can see how people think that with the rising popularity of games with complex battle mechanics like Elden Ring. Still, I always enjoyed the simple, somewhat spammy nature of fighting in The Elder Scrolls.

Combat in Avowed is certainly similar to Skyrim’s, but it has some important flourishes that should make it feel more interesting. At first, I played a stealthy rogue who used pistols and a bow. I could use the bow to take out targets at far ranges, while the pistols worked best for mid and close-range combat.

Now, pistols like these aren’t something I remember from any Elder Scrolls game. They’re powerful and slow to reload, but you can wield two a time. They also don’t require any ammo (same is true for the bow), so you don’t have to worry about looting bullets or arrows as you dungeon crawl.

You also have a companion character. Now, that’ll sound similar to Skyrim fans, but I found this partner more useful. I could access a couple of cooldown commands that would get him to perform some moves that could do big damage. He also just great at distracting and tanking enemies so I could get clean shots.

Magic maybe

I enjoyed combat with pistols quite a lot. I was a bit less in love with the magic user that I tried. Now, all the spells look great. I was shooting fire out of my wand like a flamethrower and spewing out homing magic missiles. But compared to my guns and stealth techniques, I felt a bit weak. Plus, getting hit at all (even from an arrow you’re unlikely to see coming) could stun me out of longer spells.

Mages also use a lot of mana, so you have to drink potions if you want to keep using spells (often in the middle of a busy fight). It just seemed like a bit of hassle without a good tradeoff.

Of course, this was a small demo, and I’m sure that Avowed will have magic builds that will probably deal more damage than any traditional weapon in the game. I just felt a lot more powerful and efficient relying on more traditional weapons at least in this small slice of the game.

That RPG feeling

My quest in the cave had me discovering an odd fellow who was building a giant statue of a god. Like any good RPG, I could deal with the situation in a few ways. You can do what this guy wants and help revive his god, or you can tell him that his idea sounds, you know, pretty dangerous and then kill him. I was also able to use lighting abilities to start up some generators and just blow the statue up.

It was a small taste of the role-playing potential for Avowed. These kinds of games thrive on these sorts of mechanics, so I was glad to see interesting dialogue trees that included unique options based on my character. For example, I could use my intellect or my background as a rogue to access special lines.

Lots of confusing nouns are also a staple of RPGs. Luckily, Avowed is joining a recent trend of making it easier to keep up with all of these new names by highlighting the text of important people and places. You can then press a button to read some relevant lore about them. It’s a great way to become more invested in Avowed’s world.

Wowed with Avowed so far

So far, Avowed is looking like the exact game I was hoping for. It’s a prettier Skyrim with enough new ideas to stand out, but it still sticks close enough to the Elder Scrolls formula to give off similar vibes.

I’m looking forward to getting my hands back on my pistols when Avowed launches next year.