An Old School RPG Wrapped in Unreal Engine 5
Avowed is not trying to reinvent role playing games. It feels more like a love letter to the mid 2000s era of open world RPGs, polished up with modern graphics and a gorgeous art style. If you enjoy wandering through big fantasy landscapes, ticking off quests, and soaking in atmosphere, this is a game that quietly does the job.
You play an envoy caught up in a familiar setup. There is a hidden god storyline, an existential threat looming over the world, and a main character whose birthright ties them to the fate of everything. You have seen this structure before. Avowed does not pretend otherwise, and that is both its weakness and its charm.
The world itself is called The Living Lands, a fantasy setting that could have come from the cover of a bargain bin paperback. Yet instead of feeling cheap, it is brought to life with Unreal Engine 5 visuals that make it a place you genuinely want to explore. That is where Avowed really shines.
The Loop: Classic Quests in Chunky Zones
Avowed does not deliver a single seamless open world. Instead, its map is broken into large interconnected zones. Think of sizable areas stitched together rather than one continuous continent. Each zone has its own flavor and is packed with places to poke around in.
You move from hub towns into the wilds, picking up side quests from a rotating cast of NPCs and then heading out to recover items, clear out threats, or follow up on plot threads. The characters are not especially memorable. Quest givers can feel like generic archetypes, the kind you could easily forget by name. The quest structure will be very familiar if you have played RPGs from around 2005.
The routine goes something like this:
- Arrive at a hub area and talk to NPCs for quests
- Head into nearby caverns, fields, ruins or temples
- Fight enemies, gather loot and story clues
- Return to town to hand in rewards and pick up new leads
Dialogue choices exist, but many paths seem to bend toward the same outcomes. There are dialogue trees and moral beats, but if you are looking for deeply reactive storytelling in the style of the most modern immersive sims, you may find Avowed a bit stiff. NPCs often stand still as they deliver their lines, which can make scenes feel flat compared to newer RPGs where characters dynamically move and react.
Combat is described as underbaked. It works well enough to carry you through the world but does not push the genre forward. If you are here for cutting edge systems and mechanics, Avowed might feel conservative.
The Real Star: A World Worth Exploring
Where Avowed earns its praise is in how its world looks and feels. The Living Lands are full of classic fantasy biomes, yet they are painted with such care that they feel fresh again. You will wander through:
- Whistling deserts with dunes, cliffs and windswept stone memorials
- Grimy, bubbling swamps that feel thick and unhealthy
- Frozen mountains with icy caves and sharp horizons
- Boiling lakes of lava and volcanic valleys that glow and crackle
- Underground networks, dwarven style mountain complexes and hidden temples
None of those locations are truly new ideas, but Avowed’s art direction and use of Unreal Engine 5 give them a striking presence. The writer describes repeatedly stopping just to stare at the scenery, something they had not done in a long time in any game. There are screenshots full of smouldering volcanoes, lava rivers, foliage crowded caves, and snowy caverns that make you want to pause and pan the camera.
One particularly strong moment captures what Avowed does best. During a nicely written quest, a companion asks you to place a personal item on a set of stones overlooking the sea in memory of a lost love. Coming back to that save, the writer describes simply stopping there. They listen to the wind, watch sand drift across the rocks, hear the waves and almost feel the salt in the air. It is a small, quiet scene, but the world design sells the emotion.
This is where Avowed proves that games do not always need groundbreaking mechanics to create impact. The narrative might not drag you along with relentless momentum. The dialogue might not be the most sophisticated. Still, the combination of environmental design, lighting, sound and atmosphere can generate moments that stick with you.
Why Avowed Stands Out in 2025
In a year packed with ambitious PC releases, Avowed is not the headline grabbing revolution. It is unlikely to be talked about alongside the absolute giants of 2025. Yet for players who are explorers at heart, people who enjoy climbing digital mountains just because they are there and checking every offshoot cave, Avowed quietly excels.
It feels like an old RPG wheel that has been pulled out of storage and given a fresh coat of Unreal Engine 5 varnish. That might sound like faint praise, but here it works. The familiarity of the structure lets you relax into the game, while the visual quality of the environments keeps you curious about what is around the next corner.
The result is a game you play less for its main plot and more for its spaces. It trades on mood and spectacle rather than innovation. You push forward because you want one more vista, one more strange ruin, one more cleverly framed cliff edge or cavern mouth glowing in the distance.
Avowed is far from perfect and it will not satisfy everyone. But for this writer, it delivered something that many technically impressive games still miss. It gave them a world they wanted to exist in. A world worth exploring for its own sake. In a crowded 2025 release schedule, that was enough to make it their personal Game of the Year.
Original article and image: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/avowed-didnt-rewrite-the-rpg-rulebook-in-2025-but-it-still-gave-me-some-of-my-biggest-gaming-wow-moments-of-the-year/
