Obsidian’s modest ambition with Avowed is just what Game Pass, Xbox, and the wider industry needs – but will Microsoft let them stick to it? | Gaming

I’m having a lovely time in Avowed, a game about bonking little lizard men on the head, skipping through classic, florid fantasy countryside, and walking up to NPCs to receive vast dumps of expository dialogue. It’s a game that’s less interested in doing something radical with the structure – this is a pretty straight-ahead, sword-n-spells, skill-and-dialogue-tree action adventure – than it is the sheer vividity of its delivery.

Avowed is vibrant and alive, a game made with a kind of committed, full-hearted dedication to a simple, clear idea, and to then just doing it right. As evidenced by all the small, playful or just downright sensible twists on the basics – from a function that lets you pause mid-conversation to look up who or what exactly the latest proper noun is, to just a well worded explanation of shader compilation before the game itself starts. In…more

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