Avowed’s Approach to Friction Made Me Appreciate the Harshness of FromSoftware’s RPGs More

This shouldn’t be a problem. Plenty of single-player video games with numbers that go up do this just fine. Level gating is a thing for a reason. Oblivion’s whole approach to this matter was leveling up almost every enemy alongside you, and that sucked. Even The Outer Worlds, Obsidian’s immediate predecessor to Avowed, handled it fine. Why does it feel a bit wrong all of a sudden?

It could be a matter of simply crunching some key numbers, collecting player data, and putting out a solid enough patch, for all I know. But the thing is that I really struggled past the second area and well into the late-game sections. Everything and everyone that wanted to kill me and my pals was spongier, and my weapons, even when upgraded to the required rarity/level, felt like they just weren’t enough. Suddenly, the breezy (albeit adequately difficult) first stretch of the game had transitioned into more sluggish trips that forced me to clear almost every optional quest, task, or bounty I came across for very little payoff.

All I could think of was: “What the hell, Shadow of the Erdtree somehow felt far less rough to get through than this.” The solution is simple though: Collect or craft enough branches of that one type that doesn’t even spawn anymore, so head over to the area you left behind hours ago and disrupt any sense of narrative progression you’ve gained since then. It just doesn’t feel like great game design, does it? Conversely, FromSoftware at its meanest almost always defines a clear difficulty curve that makes quickly bouncing back from failure a matter of skill and self-teaching instead of a grind that doesn’t fit its games’ worlds (though you can slowly farm low-level enemies if you want to).

ARPGs like Diablo IV typically handle this by burying the player in loot and materials. You gotta put the work in, but you needn’t hunt for mats for too long. Other open-world games lean more toward survival-like mechanics that are directly supported by the right world design. Avowed has none of that. It’s no Skyrim because it doesn’t want to riff on that formula. As daunting as it can look at first, it’s a focused adventure that encourages moving quickly from one place to the next.

This is the sort of “intentional friction” that sinks so many video games while elevating others. In my opinion, Avowed partially fails to provide a good sense of progression and evolution. The combat is fantastic and enemy movesets are far richer than in many other titles, but it all often runs into the “numbers and color” wall that likes to put you on the back foot even after doing the required homework. At some point, however, it simply dissipates, which makes me think the balance is simply out of whack through a good chunk of the game. It makes you wonder about the likely incredible amount of testing every new FromSoftware banger goes through.

Again, it’s probably wrong to start pointing fingers at certain systems or mechanics (unless they clearly are broken), no matter your level of experience with this sort of game. RPGs are especially difficult to fine-tune. I guess it’s just odd to have Obsidian stumble on this element of an otherwise notable game after fully figuring these things out 15 years ago while racing against the clock.

Avowedis available now on PC and Xbox.