It was tricky to write about video games this week

Avowed was on a timer, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 had understandable bugs, Flight Simulator was lost in the clouds and Star Wars Outlaws was playing a tough hand

Avowed. Screenshot: Obsidian Entertainment, Xbox Game Studios

I was on an unexpected deadline earlier this week, as I was enjoying an early taste of February 2025.

I was playing the opening hours of Avowed, an upcoming role-playing game from Microsoft-owned Obsidian Entertainment. The whole game was supposed to be playable for everyone this fall, its original release window before a delay pushed it a tad past Valentine’s Day.

Microsoft’s head of gaming, Phil Spencer, recently told me that Avowed could have hit its original fall date but was delayed to space things out for gamers and for Game Pass. It’d get extra polish in the meantime.

For now, Microsoft allowed me to download an opening sliver of the game. I played it. It seemed very good. 

Avowed is a fantasy adventure that defaults to showing its lush world in a first-person perspective. You are the possibly divinely-powered emperor’s envoy, and through his or her eyes, you explore a lush world of castles and caverns. Your task in these strangely overgrown and suddenly non-harmonious “Living Lands,” at least at first, is to investigate a plague that’s driving some of its inhabitants to violence. 

I enjoyed using Avowed’s first-person fighting system against spiders, lizard-people and a bevy of mean bears. I swung the mace in my character’s right hand, and I flipped the pages of a spell book in her left, ejecting shots of fire. (A later combo of shield and pistol was less successful.)

I was delighted by the game’s script, which is written with the verve of an experienced studio that wants its players to have fun with the role-play inherent in the provided dialogue choices.

For example, as I entered a port at the edge of a place called Dawnshore, a militia captain began chatting me up about someone called the inquisitor. They asked how I knew this inquisitor.

My possible replies were: 

1. “We fought side by side, but that was a long time ago.”  

2. “She was my mentor. Taught me everything I know.”

3. “We were lovers… before her incident in the Deadfire.”

4. “We were lovers…after her incident in the Deadfire.”

5. “Let’s just say we have history and leave it at that.”

I picked the most interesting option, which, of course, was the fourth.

The captain said: “A-after? Gods help us… I heard she’s a monster, the personal handmaiden of the Burned Queen. But that’s not all. They say she fell in battle in the Deadfire…and death spat her back out.”

To which I chose  the following reply: “Ominous! I’ll have to ask her how she did that.”

That’s good stuff, right?

But, reader, I must level with you. I cannot tell if the unexpected deadline I was under to race through Avowed elevated the esteem in which I held the game.

See, I was playing the preview build of Avowed at 5pm ET on Wednesday. It was programmed to stop working at 8pm. I was up against the clock.