© Image: Obsidian EntertainmentToo many people look at Avowed, the upcoming first-person action RPG from Obsidian, and think this is the veteran roleplaying designers’ take on Skyrim. Microsoft invited me to dive into a short preview build of the upcoming title, and after delving into its world for close to 10 hours, I can tell this game is aiming for something beyond the typical open-world hack-and-slasher. Avowed is about the base themes of man vs. nature, society vs. anarchy, and it’s packaged in a world that epitomizes those extremes. As always, the middle path is the hardest to walk.
Obsidian’s legacy is so locked with Bethesda’s efforts over the past 10 years. It’s more than just how the studio designed Fallout: New Vegas in just a year and a half, making a game more intricate, nuanced, and thought-provoking than Fallout 3 could ever hope to be, only to find its developers were denied bonuses over Metacritic scores. The company released Outer Worlds in 2019, a game that castigated the excesses of capitalism under the guise of a similar Fallout 4-like first-person RPG.
Now, with Avowed, a chunk of the player base is wondering if Obsidian—in its latest act of rebellion—crafted a Bethesda-style fantasy RPG but with a plot and characters worth remembering. The developer must know these comparisons will come up. But then, this game feels more in Obsidians’ wheelhouse than any possible comparison you could make. Its world and characters are bathed in a bright, ultraviolet (and occasionally ultra-violent) kind of nuance. Still, beyond that, Avowed is a game that simply plays better than many of its contemporaries.
When I first tried getting into Obsidian’s Pillars of Eternity, I found myself a little put out by the avalanche of fantasy names, concepts, gods, and curses (both of the esoteric and declarative variety). I had very little idea of the world of Avowed to start, but the game is very good at easing the player into its stranger concepts. Best of all, it takes the same glossary systems you may have seen from Tyranny or other modern RPGs and packages it so you can read it, even with a controller.
Eora, the setting for both Pillars and Avowed, is already odd. People’s souls are tangible things. The power you wield is based on the power of your soul and said souls could be split, harmed, or divined by magic. These souls are taken and recycled, which is why you may encounter a lot of characters talking about souls being taken to “the beyond.”
Your player is “Godlike,” a mortal being somehow born touched by a god. Which god? You don’t know. All you know is you have mushroom-like growths and antler-like tree limbs growing out of your head. It’s enough for most people to distrust you, but luckily, you have authority on your side. You’re the official royal Envoy of the Aedyr Empire, tasked by the emperor to go to the Living Lands to investigate strange tidings of a plague.
© Image: Obsidian Entertainment
These Lands are, indeed, very Living. The first part of your journey has you arriving on an island just off the coast of the continent after some unknown force attacks your ship and leaves you for dead. Heading inland, you’re joined by a lone shipmate and eventually encounter Ilora, a native woman under lock and key. You’re given the choice of either trusting her and freeing her or keeping her in her cell and stealing her boat.
You can immediately grasp the themes at hand. You’re a representative of an empire, a colonizing force bringing “civilization” to people who may not want it. The Living Lands is full of rough sorts—exiles, bandits, and the like—who came there specifically to escape the empire you herald. Not only are people wary of you because of your looks, but because of what you represent. You can empathize with the natives, proclaim your rights as an Aedyran official, or find some middle ground between these extremes.
I only got a taste of the story in my preview demo, even if what I saw left me intrigued enough to continue exploring. There’s a sense there’s something extra mystical happening with the ongoing plague, the mysterious voice in your head, and your connection to the Edra stones scattered about. But what has me truly excited is the characters, of which your initial companion, Kai, has me most excited to step back into the game.
Any veteran of Obsidian’s RPGS knows the best, most engrossing playthroughs happen with characters with the best social stats. However, there’s nothing like that in Avowed. Instead, your dialogue choices are dictated by your background and your six attributes. At one point in my demo, I ran across a group of graverobbers. This fine group of ruffians just happened to be at the gravesite I planned to rob. I asked if we couldn’t just let bygones be bygones, but their leader didn’t like that idea.
A high Might skill may have allowed me to intimidate the graverobbers, but instead, my higher Perception let me convince one of the larger, weasley bandits to stand down. It made the fight a little easier, which is how things usually go in this variety of action RPG. I don’t know how many fights you can avoid completely with nothing but dialogue, but there’s usually some talking to be done before the arrows and fireballs start flying.
That wasn’t the case all the time. You will find groups of Lizardmen-like Xarips who don’t ask questions before throwing knives in your direction. Another group of wild natives holed up in abandoned ruins, who all happened to be at a much higher level than me, beat me up and took my lunch money (AKA, I died) without warning. This isn’t the RPG where you can just start murdering civilians. I slashed and stabbed at dockworkers and merchants alike, and nothing happened.
© Image: Obsidian Entertainment
This RPG expects you to play nice, at least based on what I experienced in my short demo period. This isn’t a Fallout-type game where you can be the biggest bastard in the room and keep going. If you want that experience, try Obsidian’s other CRPG Tyranny. However, you can work within the bounds of being an official and autonomous person. That’s clear with your first companion, the affable, sardonic Kai.
Kai is an Aumaua, a race of beings with a large, mostly navy-based empire. In camp, I talked him up for close to 15 minutes, learning of his life and—as he described it—his many, many mistakes. He joined his country’s navy, only to become disillusioned and desert. Then he hooked up with a mercenary company and, after too many misadventures, eventually arrived penniless in the Living Lands. He’s not exactly ashamed of his past, but you can tell he has regrets. His sarcastic wit, both in and out of combat, endeared me to him faster than practically any companion in most RPGs I’ve played recently, practically as fast as Karlach in Baldur’s Gate III.
Kai may seem like the kind of character that would inspire much fanart and fanfics, but Obsidian has already made it clear you won’t date any of your companions. Is that disappointing? Not necessarily, especially if you’ve played any of Obsidian’s most recent RPGs, all of which were near-sexless affairs. Writing additional dialogue for romances does indeed take time, and it creates issues when you need to write a speech for each character that includes both intimate and non-intimate relationships.
The quality of the writing was solid throughout, though I’d need to play much more before I got a sense of the overall plot and the various side quests. One of my initial quests involved a woman who claimed a hoard of Xaurips invaded her home. As I cleared them out, I found a journal and drawings on the wall, which told me she had more of an infatuation with the creatures than seemed normal. When confronted about it, she admitted she had it on good authority that her soul was split in two between her and one of these scaly creatures. It was a short but subtly interesting twist on a very mundane quest. It’s perhaps not on the level of side quests for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, but it did bode well for the rest of the game’s content.
If you played Outer Worlds, you’ll have a sense of the combat in Avowed. In a game like Skyrim, your attacks merely swing your sword in front of you, like a child playing stick fighting. In Obsidian’s RPG, your attacks are practically homing missiles at the enemy before you. Each swipe with a blade hits with a meaty crunch.
Even the lowly wand has a wild flair that makes you feel less Harry Potter and more wild west gunslinger. Best of all, the criticals have their own special animation, depending on the weapon. The wand’s animation turns the little stick into a kind of mystical machine gun that zips up opponents with your spells. It’s quick and satisfying, though I wouldn’t exactly call it tactical. You may find a skill that can tie an enemy up for a short time, but I clicked the attack button so fast that I didn’t even have time to consider what spell may work better in a given situation.
© Image: Obsidian Entertainment
You start Avowed’s prologue with nary but a knife, but by the time you’re done, you’ll have learned to use a bow, sword, shield, and grimoire and have chosen a power based on your various attributes. You can duel wield anything that takes up a single hand. That includes dual wands, but also a wand and shield.
The grimoire is especially interesting. You draw power not by reading some word in the book but by literally dragging the spell from the pages and flinging it at enemies. This uses up the character “Essence,” which you refill with—you guessed it—a potion. However, rank up certain skills on the Mage track, and you won’t even need a grimoire to cast flame or ice magic.
You have true freedom to throw your skill points wherever you want. I thought I was going for a mage build, but when I learned you could duel-wield flintlock pistols, I immediately started dumping points into ranger skills. Soon enough, I could fling ice rockets and musket balls at enemies and still dance around attacks while dodging.
The combat in Avowed is crunchy, but on regular difficulty, it won’t set the neurons in your brain firing, looking for the best maneuver to take on enemies. It’s more about the spectacle, and the game has some of the best-looking RPG combat I’ve played in a long while. The setting is interesting enough to keep exploring, and the scenery is beautiful enough to keep me wondering what’s around the next corner. I only wonder how well it can sustain itself for a full runtime. I guess all I want is that Skyrim sense of “what’s over the next hill?” but with Obsidian’s dialogue and attention to detail. Based on what I played, Avowed is almost there.
Avowed is currently slated to release on PC and Xbox Series S/X on Feb. 18, 2025.
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America’s AI war with China is intensifying — or at least, the rhetoric around it is.
On Tuesday, a U.S. congressional commission proposed a “Manhattan Project-style” effort to fund the development of AI systems with human-level — or superhuman — intelligence.
In its annual report, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) recommended that policymakers authorize funding for “leading AI, cloud, and data center companies,” and direct the U.S. secretary of defense to ensure AI development receives “national priority.”
“We’ve seen throughout history that countries that are first to exploit periods of rapid technological change can often cause shifts in the global balance of power,” Reuters quoted USCC commissioner Jacob Helberg as saying. “China is racing towards [AI superintelligence]. … It’s critical that we take them extremely seriously.”
The USCC, established by Congress to provide recommendations on U.S.-China relations, tends to be hawkish in its proposals. But the commission isn’t alone in advocating for more aggressive actions to slow China’s tech ambitions.
Commerce secretary Gina Raimondo, for example, has suggested the U.S. share AI technology with foreign allies to combat China’s rise. Defense Department officials, meanwhile, have called for safeguards to prevent technology leakage to China through overseas data centers and chip suppliers.
The U.S. has already adopted a number of policies aimed at curbing China’s AI progress, including export bans on hardware infrastructure and investments in AI tech in the region. China has circumvented some of these. But the impacts have been palpable — and far-reaching. To give one example, China’s access to the most sophisticated chips required to train AI, including next-gen GPUs, has been completely cut off.
And in light of that, the USCC’s pronouncements seem a bit overkill.
It’s not clear what superintelligent AI would even look like. But assuming for a moment it involves so-called reasoning models, as some people suggest, Chinese labs appear to be lagging, not leading. According to one analysis, top Chinese companies’ models are about six to nine months behind their U.S. counterparts.
We must consider the possibility that the USCC’s recommendations are self-interested. Helberg is a senior adviser to the CEO of Palantir, a company with many AI defense contracts. And, naturally, government funding for AI would benefit U.S. AI companies.
That’s all to say, calls for a Manhattan Project-type program for superintelligent AI seem more alarmist than anything.
AI at Ignite: Microsoft announced a slew of AI products during Microsoft Ignite 2024 on Tuesday, including a voice cloner and an AI dev platform called Azure AI Foundry.
Advanced Voice Mode on the web: OpenAI has expanded ChatGPT’s Advanced Voice Mode feature to the web, letting users talk to the AI chatbot right from their desktop browser.
Indian news agency sues OpenAI: On the subject of OpenAI, one of India’s largest news agencies, Asian News International, has sued the startup in what could be a precedent-setting case over the use of copyrighted news content.
Gemini gets memory: Google’s Gemini chatbot can now remember things like info about your life, work, and personal preferences during conversations.
U.K. green-lights Anthropic investment: The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority has okayed Alphabet’s partnership and investment in AI rival Anthropic, concluding that it doesn’t qualify for investigation under current merger rules.
Perplexity launches shopping: AI-powered search engine Perplexity debuted a feature that offers e-commerce recommendations, as well as the ability to place an order without navigating to a retailer’s website. It seems like Stripe is doing the heavy lifting here, though.
Altman joins team SF: San Francisco’s mayor-elect, Daniel Lurie, has tapped OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to help run his transition team. Alongside nine other San Francisco leaders, Altman will provide guidance to Lurie’s team on ways the city can innovate.
New Mistral models: French AI startup Mistral released major new products and tools this week, including a “canvas” feature in its chatbot platform that lets users transform and edit content, like web mock-ups.
The U.K. AI Safety Institute, a U.K. government body that studies risks in AI systems, has released its first academic paper, which proposes a way AI developers can demonstrate that their models don’t pose “unacceptable cyber risks.”
In the paper, the AI Safety Institute co-authors note that “safety cases” — structured, substantiated arguments for why risks associated with a model are acceptable — are gaining traction. Yet there isn’t a “readily available” safety case methodology for frontier AI.
The co-authors propose a safety case template focusing on cyber capabilities, which they assert have well-established near-term risks. The template is designed to inform deployment decisions, they say, including whether to start or continue a model’s training run.
“This template serves as a proof of concept,” the co-authors wrote. “It does not guarantee safety; some of the claims in our template could fail to hold true in reality, invalidating the conclusion. Still, we expect that even these imperfect safety cases serve to increase the level of rigor in reasoning about development or deployment decisions.”
Suno, the controversial generative music startup, released its latest music-generating model today, Suno v4.
Suno claims that v4, which is only available to the platform’s paying users, delivers crisper audio, better lyrics, and “more dynamic” song structures than its predecessor, v3. Suno’s v4 now powers the company’s Covers feature, which “reimagines” uploaded audio, and Personas, which captures the vocals, style, and “vibe” of a track and carries it into other creations.
It’s remarkable, in many ways, that Suno’s charging ahead, given it’s been sued by three major record labels alleging copyright infringement. Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group filed a lawsuit against Suno and rival firm Udio this summer, alleging that the pair trained their models on music without permission.
In their responses to the lawsuits, Suno and Udio more or less admitted that their models might’ve ingested copyrighted music during training — but they argued that fair use doctrine under U.S. copyright law shields them.
HarperCollins has inked a three-year data licensing deal with Microsoft to let the tech giant train its AI on the publisher’s nonfiction works.
HarperCollins, whose parent company, News Corp., has a similar agreement in place with OpenAI, says that authors will have to opt in and that the deal only covers “select nonfiction backlist titles.”
Authors aren’t pleased — and it hasn’t helped that the payouts HarperCollins is offering are measly. One author, Daniel Kibblesmith, says he was offered a flat $2,500 per book.
“I’d probably do it for a billion dollars,” Kibblesmith wrote in a post on Tuesday. “I’d do it for an amount of money that wouldn’t require me to work anymore, since that’s the end goal of this technology.”
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