Fair warning, this post is going to contain with SPOILERS, so tread as you wish. That said…

…the first one is to be prepared for a loooooong ending to Avowed. What happened was far from whatever I might have been expecting, and that was okay. I won’t lie and say that my eyes didn’t glaze over a little at All. The. Talking. It took to get to the credits, but things worked out in the end, I suppose. I mean, I received an ending that was in line with the choices that I had made through my envoy’s ever-blank stare, and they felt pretty good. She even began a relationship with companion Kai, which was very sweet. Yes, yes, she saved the Living Lands, too – she pronounced its freedom from…um…Aedyr? Eora? The gods?? Well, whatever the case, the choice seemed like the right one to make at the time. So what of the all the choices made before it? Given with the understanding that I’m not anything close to an expert, here’s my Avowed recap.

Avowed began with a bit of backstory about the overworld Eora and its continents, and the part-human, part-divine race known as the Godlike, before heading into players creating their own Godlike characters. The “envoys” have been sent by the Aedyran emperor to investigate a strange phenomenon called the “Dreamscorge.” In initial voyage goes south quickly, as my envoy, a court auger named Millicent, ended up shipwrecked well off the coast of Dawnshore, her destination. A quick tutorial later, she’s made it to Dawnshore’s port town of Claviger’s Landing and off adventuring with a new companion, a Rauatain named Kai. Together, and with the help of three additional companions, they made their way across five of the Living Lands’ regions, battling with bears, skeletons, monsters, people infected by the Dreamscorge called “Dreamthralls,” a mad wizard, and the fearsome leader of the Steel Garrote, an extremist order of Aedyran paladins.

All the while, a strange presence takes up residence inside Millicent’s head. It’s revealed that the voice is that of the Living Lands’ own god, Sapadal, who was imprisoned by Woedica, the strongest of Eora’s pantheon. As the lore goes, every Godlike has a corresponding god, but Millicent grew up not knowing hers. Well, it was Sapadal all along. Knowing this, and learning about why Sapadal was shunted away in the first place – the Dreamscourge was actually an accident at their hands – Millicent was faced with a choice: to free or not free Sapadal. As Millicent chose to free the Living Lands, so too did she opt to free Sapadal. Surely nothing bad could come from that, right?

Honestly, I don’t know, and I don’t know that it really mattered. Besides mentioning the envoy-Kai relationship, and revisiting each of the Living Lands’ regions in the aftermath, the ending slideshow I received showed Sapadal “stretching their wings” as a free god. During the game, I hit upon a quest that gave a choice to activate a golem-like creation. Since I turned down that option, Sapadal used the golem to physical explore the Living Lands…much to the dismay of its forests and anyone who happened to get underfoot. Ah, well.

As I discussed in my last post, while I really liked Avowed at the start, I struggled with the mid-game, because I kept wanting to force roleplaying without understanding my envoy’s role. After letting that go, the game flowed much better, though I still don’t have a very good grasp on the “why” of it all. In any event, while my individual choices throughout the game varied wildly, which included going both for and against what it meant to be “Aedyran,” I stuck with two notions till the end, that the Steel Garrote and its leader, Inquisitor Lödwyn, were bad and needed to be stopped, and that Sapadal was good and should be free. The former meant that my final, final, final showdown (seriously, the endgame is loooooong) was with Lödwyn. Earlier in the game, Millicent was faced with supporting her or a powerful wizard named Ryngrym. I have reasons to revisit the game again, and going the other way – supporting Lödwyn over Ryngrym, is definitely one of them. And that’s not going to be easy considering how awful the Steel Garrote were the first time around.

Another thing I struggled with between the beginning and the end was the seemingly constant need to craft upgrades for gear, as the game both did and did not offer better gear with leveling. I ended up turning to the Internet to locate the “best” wizard gear available; and I do mean “locate,” as little unique gear was doled out as quest rewards. Once Millicent had gear that made me happy, I then was able to focus only on upgrading those few items rather than worrying about all else. Also, speaking of camp, that system might have been the most unpleasant of them all. Setting up camp to replenish health was nice, but everything about them broke any immersion I might have had going. For one, at camp it was always night, even if entered during the day. Camp was the only place to interact with companions, and if I didn’t talk to them regularly, quest-specific dialogue simply built up, which often led to bizarre interactions. And crafting only at camp stunk. Like, why couldn’t they have put workbenches at settlements or something? Of everything in Avowed, camps just felt…old fashioned.

Gripes aside and combat being so-so (I really can’t think of much more to say about it), I did come to enjoy Avowed, and I didn’t rush through the loooooong endgame. It did help tie together a few loose ends that had kept me wondering, and it also brought my little team of Living Lands’ misfits closer together (the completion of companion quests helped, and they added some extra flavor to the end). I do intend to pick up another envoy’s mantle at some point, explore the game’s other classes (I stuck to being a wizard through and through), see its world through different character backstories (I liked the court auger’s mystical side) and simply explore more (I completed some but far from all sidequests). If nothing else, Avowed is a gorgeous and colorful game; a welcome departure from gritty, grimy fantasy worlds that never see the sunshine. It’s a good game that scratched the right adventuring itch in the moment. Time will tell if can do the same again.

All images, including lede, were captured by author during Xbox Series S gameplay of Avowed (© Obsidian Entertainment).