"Get Rid of Everything Inconsistent": What Game Designers Should Pay Attention to in Avowed

On March 26, a new episode of the deconstruction show “What's Up with the Game?” aired on the WN Academy platform, dedicated to Avowed. Here's a recap of the highlights from the latest episode, where experts analyzed the new project from Obsidian within the Pillars of Eternity universe from the perspective of game design and narrative.

The guest expert was Kirill Shabordin, founder and CTO of Kentron Games. He joined the hosts of “What's Up with the Game?” alongside App2Top.ru's editor-in-chief Alexander Semyonov and Owlcat Games producer Maxim Fomichev.

This time, the experts had differing opinions.

Shabordin was pleased with Avowed, praising the overall quality of the text and level design. He specifically highlighted the exploration of locations — very few places on the map are inaccessible. Exploring the game world is engaging, even if it often doesn’t offer a variety of rewards in return.

“Avowed is like a steady procedural — if you've been through the first location, you know what to expect next. It's very calming,” Shabordin concluded.

However, he didn't ignore the numerous shortcomings of the project. The main issue is that conceptually, Avowed feels like an old-school game that, at a certain point, had ‘simplifiers’ come in to make all systems as straightforward and accessible as possible for the modern generation of gamers.

As a result, Avowed has many inconsistent elements — there's a weight limit but also a chest in the camp by default, where excess items can be sent from anywhere on the map without restrictions.

Shabordin largely agreed with Fomichev's points, who called the rudimentary combat system one of Avowed's main issues. The system doesn’t incentivize players to try different skills and weapons, and the role-playing aspect in terms of character progression is weak. Even if Shabordin found the combat fun, he described it as “confusing.” In other Obsidian games, worse systems can be found: “New Vegas is a great game, but not because of the combat system.”

According to Fomichev, Avowed is “an attempt to make a first-person CRPG.” However, the studio's mistake was not altering the narrative approach when transitioning from isometric to first-person view — neither in terms of structure and volume of the text nor in terms of writing dialogues (characters speak in monologues here).

Fomichev noted that Owlcat faced a similar issue, which they need to resolve in the development of a new project: “We’re currently working on a non-isometric game. I'll say this — it’s very challenging to retrain someone to immediately start writing a film script instead of texts for a CRPG.”

Despite all its drawbacks, Avowed could serve as a good case study for game designers — especially those making RPGs. “Get rid of everything that’s inconsistent. If you cut 30% of the mechanics from Avowed, it would become better. Don’t keep what doesn’t align with the game,” Shabordin advised other developers, adding that game designers' desire to overly saturate a game with mechanics can often harm the final product.

“Overall, Avowed is a very retrograde game with an enormous amount of text and a rudimentary combat system. If it were turned into a walking simulator with role-playing elements — a sort of first-person Disco Elysium — it could work,” Fomichev concluded.

“What's Up with the Game?” is a monthly show that airs on the educational platform WN Academy. Anyone can watch it and ask questions live — all you need to do is register on the platform once. Afterwards, you’ll receive email reminders about each upcoming episode. After attending your first show, you’ll also gain access to an archive of recordings of all previous episodes.

The next episode will be held on April 30 at 6:00 PM Moscow time.