Look, I’m just a humble envoy of the Aedyran Empire, sent to sort out a soul-plague on a frontier island. Easy, right? Well, two hours into my preview of Avowed, a bear made of angry mushrooms tried to redefine my spinal column. This is not your cozy, top-down Pillars of Eternity anymore. Seeing Eora from the ground floor changes everything. Those beetles? The size of rhinos. The xaurips? They look me right in the eye. It’s terrifying. It’s gorgeous. And frankly, I haven't had this much fun being a pawn of imperial ambition since, well, ever.
Change is the Only Constant (and It Bites)
Let’s talk about the vibe. The central theme isn't just 'save the world.' It's change. Terrifying, chaotic, excellent change. Senior narrative designer Kate Dollarhyde put it perfectly: Eora is in flux. The divine storm blocking the world is gone, empires are crumbling, colonies are revolting, and animancy—the science of messing with souls—is creating both miracles and nightmares. You feel this friction in every conversation. Being the official arm of a crumbling empire in a land full of misfits and rebels is delightfully awkward. The Envoy isn't some random drifter who became a chosen one; you are the power structure, for better or worse. You’ve got a fancy title and a direct line to the Emperor, but the locals? They have deep, unimpressed stares and very sharp opinions.
The companions are spectacularly vocal about this. Kai, Marius, Giatta, and Yatzli don’t just carry your extra loot; they are from this chaotic island, and they have a vested interest in your questionable choices. At camp, they become a jury of your peers, grilling you on why you decided to side with the rebellious animancers instead of the imperial garrison. One moment you're sharing a laugh, the next, you're in a heated philosophical debate on colonial ethics. They ask for your logic, they share their trauma, and occasionally, they call you an idiot. It’s family.
The Dreamscourge: A Fungal Fever Dream
Now, about the plague. The Dreamscourge is no simple zombie bite. It’s a metaphysical malady of the soul inspired by everything from Princess Mononoke’s demon boars to the freaky zombie-ant fungus. Annihilation and Ovid’s Metamorphoses were also kitchen-table references. What does that mean for me, the guy holding the controller? It means infected bears, weird fungal-pocked landscapes, and Dreamthralls who speak in an alien language that literally alters their thinking. It’s a structural, narrative nightmare rooted in body horror. It’s gross, and I love it.
Gameplay-wise, this plague is unescapable. It’s the whole reason the Emperor sent you, and its ugly tendrils wind into every main quest and forgotten cave. The environment itself is 'infected.' You’ll be hiking through a beautiful canyon, admiring the skybox, when suddenly the ground pulsates and a stone monster born of fungal nightmares tries to give you a bad case of soul rot. There is no safe corner.
Playing Dirty in a Political Playground
Choice is the guiding value at Obsidian, and Avowed feels like a masterclass in murky morality. It’s not about 'light side' or 'dark side' switches. It’s the accumulation of intimate, slippery decisions that blow up in your face thirty hours later. Dollarhyde nailed the design philosophy: they don't count choices; they track the scale of reactivity. A small deception early on might close off a romance path, but it could also prevent a settlement from getting firebombed right before the finale.
And yes, you can be evil. A capital-J Jerk.
Not just a sarcastic hero. A devastating, empire-first menace. In my play session, I found options that were so coldly pragmatic they made my party gasp. Playing an evil route is time-consuming to design—especially since, statistically, most of us are too soft-hearted to pick it—but it gives the heroism weight. As Dollarhyde pointed out, saving a village feels hollow if you didn’t have the tangible, tempting option to burn it down for a quick profit. The writing doesn't punish you for being a monster; it simply documents the consequences of your monstrousness in a devastating slideshow at the end.
Godlikes, Godless, and Getting Your Hands Dirty
Being a Godlike in 2026 isn't the divine blessing it used to be. Since the Deadfire incident, we’re a rare breed. Walking into a frontier town with ethereal mushrooms sprouting from my head gets me a mix of awe, fear, and a shrug from the local vagabonds. The mystery of the Godless, the previous tenants of the Living Lands who didn’t worship the pantheon, adds a thick layer of eerie history. Their ruins litter the landscape, but their secrets are locked tighter than a vault dragon's hoard.
Bringing these concepts to life in first-person required some absurdly fun redesign work. Area designer John Cotto spoke about translating the isometric bestiary. In a top-down view, a fire blight is just a glowing palette swap with floating numbers. In first-person? It’s a frantic, floating orb of elemental malice swooping at your face. Telegraphing attacks became crucial; you need to see a spell coming to dodge it. It makes the combat a sweaty-palm dance of dodging, blocking, and frantically switching to your grimoire. Every region, from the tranquil coasts of Dawnshore to the jagged cliffs of Shatterscarp, has a unique physical layout that forces you to rethink your approach to traversal and combat.
The Verdict (Before the Credits Roll)
Avowed is shaping up to be a beautiful, messy playground where colonization clashes with liberation, and soul science spirals into body horror. It’s a game about asking whether we can endure change together, or if we’ll devolve into howling mushroom monsters. Filled with laugh-out-loud dialogue options that lead to shocking consequences and hard-boiled emotional beats that pull zero punches, it’s an Obsidian RPG through and through. I, for one, am ready to be a diplomatic disaster. Wish the Living Lands luck. They’re going to need it. 🍄⚔️