Highlights

  • Avowed's combat system emphasizes player control, allowing users to decide how they want to approach each encounter with customizable loadouts and dual-wielding options.
  • The combat in Avowed goes beyond hack-and-slash, featuring abilities, special attacks, blocking and parrying, and a wide range of challenging enemies.
  • Avowed's immersive and detailed world, along with its companion feature, are expected to be strengths that will offer players meaningful choices and engaging storylines.

Avowed unveiled its combat system along with plenty of gameplay during the Xbox Developer Direct. The game features intriguing combat that aims to give the user ultimate control in how they engage with enemies.

Obsidian Entertainment announced Avowed back in 2020. The first-person, fantasy-action RPG is set in the Living Lands, a remote region in the world of Eora from Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity series. The player's main goal is to investigate a mysterious spiritual plague that is damaging the region, as they use combat, diplomacy, and exploration to work their way through Avowed's world. Obsidian's resume, the game's intriguing premise, and the long wait since 2020 have led Avowed to become one of the most anticipated games of 2024. Although fans have already gotten a couple of looks at the game, its development team has refrained from giving fans a deep dive into Avowed's combat, until now.

Avowed
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Avowed features a flexible combat system that allows users to decide how they want to approach each encounter. The game features customizable loadouts that can be easily switched to during the heat of battle, allowing users to quickly alternate between spellcasting, sharpshooting, and melee styles. Avowed also features a dual-wielding system, which lets players combine weapons or tools taken from various categories to fit their specific needs or create unique playstyles. One snippet of gameplay showed a player using their left-handed wand to freeze an enemy, before using their right-handed sword's power attack to shatter the opponent. Also, players can use the dual-wielding system to double up on one kind of weapon, which creates its own benefits. The game's weapon types include swords, guns, wands, shields, and possibly more.

Avowed's Combat Features

  • Customizable loadouts that can be easily switched to during combat
  • Dual-wielding
  • Special attacks
  • Abilities
  • Blocking and parrying
  • Wide range of enemies

Its developers explained that Avowed's combat is focused on being much more than a hack-and-slash type of game. Avowed's combat includes abilities, powerful melee attacks, blocks, parries, and special attacks. It also features a wide variety of opponents, with some having special roles like healing other enemies. Avowed's anticipated release date is still unknown, but Obsidian confirmed a Fall 2024 release window.

Fans have speculated that Avowed's relatively small scale could be a strength rather than a weakness, and the Xbox Developer Direct reveal seemed to support this. Obsidian explained that it's focused on creating an immersive and detailed world for Avowed, with some of its quests featuring difficult decisions with profound consequences.

One aspect that went unmentioned is Avowed's companion feature, which could be one of the game's strong points based on previous Obsidian titles like The Outer Worlds. Fans hope that Avowed's companions will have their own mini-arcs, allowing for even more storylines to be explored.