Avowed didn’t rewrite the RPG rulebook in 2025, but it still gave me some of my biggest gaming ‘wow’ moments of the year

Does the wheel always need reinventing? Of course not. If it did, we’d have some really weird cars. Welcome, everyone, to my dissertation on why Avowed the rather good video game, is, in fact, rather good—despite its tendency to cling to RPG clichés that feel thoroughly played out in 2025.

I am an unashamed enjoyer of big, open-world RPGs. If there are gamer archetypes, I would class myself as an explorer. Someone who gets a kick out of climbing a big digital mountain just because it’s there, that sort of thing. Avowed feels, in many ways, like a game designed to scratch that itch.

Right from the off, you’re thrown into a fantasy landscape that looks to be ripped straight from the cover of a dollar-store novel—except rendered in all the gorgeous Unreal Engine 5 loveliness you could hope for—and are immediately tasked with stomping all over it.

Well, map by map, I mean. While The Living Lands are vast, they’ve been broken up into sizable chunks, each with a huge amount of variation. There are cave networks, sprawling fields, dwarven mountain complexes, and hidden temples. Places you want to get lost in, divided into sections that feel charmingly old-school in their implementation. Avowed is an odd creature—somehow managing to feel both cutting-edge, yet stuck in the past.

The gameplay loop looks like this: You make your way to a hub town, pick up quests from Artus the Helmet-shiner, Barry the Fishman, and Sally the Goblet-collector, run off into the wilderness, and come back with quest items, loot, and some hints as to what’s going on with this fungus-plague that everyone’s so worried about. Occasionally, Artus, Barry, and Sally have dialogue options to consider, most of which lead to what feels like the same eventual result.

(Image credit: Obsidian Entertainment)

As you can probably tell, I can’t remember the name of a single character. Also, this is the same loop you were probably enjoying in open world RPGs circa 2005. It’s so far away from being revolutionary or genre-pushing that, at points, it feels like a game that’s been trapped in amber and polished in 2025 for others to enjoy.

There’s a hidden god plot to uncover, an existential threat to stop, a you-are-the-chosen-one (I mean, envoy) who’s linked to the whole shebang through birthright narrative. It’s a tale that feels like you’ve heard it before for the most part, none of which is helped by most of the dialogue being delivered by stoically still NPCs that feel like cardboard cutouts compared to the roving, interactive ones you’ll find in something like, say, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2.

But, while the plot lurches along in fits and starts, the quest design and dialogue trees feel archaic, and the combat feels underbaked, the Living Lands are still allowed to come alive in their presentation.

Whistling deserts, grimy, bubbling swamps, frozen mountains, boiling lakes of lava. Again, none of it crushingly original—but all of it so beautiful, so well-defined in its art style and presentation, that I couldn’t help but spend entire Sundays exploring every nook and cranny. It’s got scenic vistas for days, and I enjoyed picking my way through nearly every one of them.

I also can’t remember the last time I stopped so often in a game simply to soak in the atmosphere, nor the last time I actually muttered the word “wow” under my breath at a new discovery, or pitch-perfect moment.

(Image credit: Obsidian Entertainment)

At one point, in one of the better-written quests, one of my companions asked me to place an item atop a set of stones on a desert cliff face overlooking the sea, in memory of a lost love. I saved the game at this point, then jumped in a few days later to go exploring once more.

I loaded up my save, and stopped. I listened to the whistling wind. I watched the sand drift past the dunes behind me and filter through the cracks between the memorial stones. I heard the lap of the waves, and almost, for a moment, felt the salt on my skin. I thought about my companions’ loss. I thought about life.

Games are unlike any other medium. In terms of telling their stories, presenting their worlds, I think we can all agree they have a long way to go.

Certainly, Avowed could have been a whole lot better at grabbing its players by the short and curlies and pulling them through its narrative with more gusto, more interactivity, and more gameplay innovation. It doesn’t reinvent the RPG wheel, so much as dig an old one out of a dusty cupboard and coat it in UE5 varnish.

(Image credit: Obsidian Entertainment)

But its world design is so compelling in its own right, it almost doesn’t need to. It’s there to be explored, to be gawped at, to be immersed in and enjoyed. It’s a lovingly rendered, sprawling, slightly messy visual feast, with enough panache to keep you playing not because you want to advance the plot, but because you want to see what’s around the next corner. It creates moments, not through revolutionary writing or gameplay, but through sheer aesthetic design.

It’s far from perfect, and likely won’t be mentioned in the same breath as many of the other great games of this year. But in terms of those that have wowed me in 2025, I have to give it to Avowed. It’s got a world worth exploring, and that, my friends, does it for me.