AVOWED preview: A new perspective on Eora

AVOWED is a brand new perspective on the world of Eora, a departure from the isometric adventures of the PILLARS OF ETERNITY games whose world it shares, and the first time Obsidian has returned this setting since becoming part of Xbox Game Studios.

Walking down the streets of Dawnshore, overhearing the conversations of residents in need of assistance, I thought to myself, this game could scratch that fantasy RPG itch for lovers of SKYRIM and BALDUR'S GATE.

Here is what to expect when you first step off the boat and into adventure.

You play as the Envoy, a herald of the Aedyrian empire who has expanded its reach to Paradis an island city state that was previously independent and frankly liked it that way.

A mysterious plague is impacting the people of the land and it's up to you to find out what is going wrong and stop it, classic hero stuff.

If you've played a first person RPG in the last decade or so, AVOWED will feel pretty familiar to you, you're levelling up skills and mastering traits, talking your way out of or into combat.

I was genuinely surprised how fast and dynamic the combat felt, with multiple loadouts to switch between at will you can keep up whatever combination of skills suit you.

I went for the combat mage, shield and mace dodging enemy attacks and landing blows at opportune moments, or just blasting away with magic. I'm not sure whether or not over the longer term if I'd stick with that, but hey it's a classic combo.

The dodging in particular felt great, it's hard to explain exactly why it was so satisfying, but when you're in the early stages of a roleplaying adventure as a squishy noob, being able to dart out of harms way felt pretty empowering.

There was a dance to this, taking down enemies with physical attacks gave you mana to cast spells, dodging out of the way to switch to your alternate loadout between each was enjoyable and kept the combat feeling pretty varied.

I tried the snipey archer, but couldn't quite get into a rhythm with battles in the same way as shielding, macing and magicking.

When accompanied by a companion you'll get access to a special ability of theirs as well, cast like the spells assigned to your numeric hotkeys, which makes it feel almost MMO like too as you watch the little cooldown timer tick down.

The world promised here seems rich, ancient ruins with overbuilt settlements, fungal growths weaving their way through the landscape and large crystals pierce the ground towards the heavens.

The benefit of two previous games of lore and story development, but it's pretty easy to just jump in and start exploring, there isn't really any assumed knowledge required here.

I'm keen to see how this game runs on some modern hardware, I was playing on a PC which was decidedly vintage these days, so I wasn't able to fully push the pixels to their maximum capacity, but the artistic direction looked great and the environments packed with detail.

It was only a very small taste this time round, it's a work in progress but I'm very keen to explore the world further and dodge my way to victory when the game arrives in February next year.

A preview build of AVOWED on PC was provided to SIFTER for this story. All images are supplied due a lost save file during the short digital preview period.