It's 2026, and I've spent the last year watching a plucky upstart teach an old master some new tricks. As a lifelong fan of The Elder Scrolls, I've always accepted the series' combat as the price of admission—a clunky, necessary evil you endure to get to the good stuff. Then Obsidian's Avowed launched, and honestly? It felt like someone finally turned the lights on. The first-person RPG combat I'd been dreaming of for decades was right there, and it wasn't in Tamriel.

Let's be real: The Elder Scrolls has never been about the thrill of the fight. From Morrowind's dice-roll slaps to Skyrim's weighty but repetitive slashes, combat has always been the franchise's weakest link. Bethesda built its worlds on immersion, storytelling, and the freedom to be anyone—and I love them for it. But pick up a sword and things get... well, messy. The simulated approach makes every swing feel like a suggestion rather than a committed action. Enemies become damage sponges, and the "strategy" boils down to backpedaling while spamming attacks. Compared to the precision of Dark Souls or the fluid brutality of The Witcher 3, it's night and day. Even newer first-person peers like Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 exposed just how shallow the Elder Scrolls' mechanics really are—technical depth, tactical positioning, meaningful parries? Nowhere to be found. Avowed looked at all this and said, "Hold my ale."

What Obsidian delivered isn't just an improvement; it's a full-blown reinvention of first-person combat.

From the first fight, you feel the difference. Enemies in Avowed are aggressive—like, really aggressive. They don't wait politely for you to finish your combo. They dodge, flank, and punish greed. You can't just stand there and tank hits because your armor rating is high. You need to move—constantly. Dodge, sprint, slide into a power attack, then swap from a grimoire of spells to a two-handed axe mid-swing because that fire-wielding skeleton just got backup. That fluidity? It's intoxicating. The Elder Scrolls can feel like you're piloting a refrigerator with arms; Avowed makes you a whirlwind of steel, magic, and gunpowder. It's fast, dynamic, and demands a lightness on your feet that Bethesda has never asked of us.

And the class system? Chef's kiss. Instead of locking you into a single path, Avowed says, "Go on, mix it up." Want to be a sneaky archer who summons lightning storms? Done. A shield-bearing knight who dual-wields pistols? Why not. The skill trees overlap beautifully, letting you build a character that adapts on the fly. One encounter might call for freezing a charging brute with a wand, then shattering them with a greatsword. The next might have you pulling enemies into the air with a gravity spell while your summoned bear mauls their friends. This isn't just variety for variety's sake—it keeps combat unpredictable. Every new room, every cave, every crumbling ruin holds the possibility of a fight that forces you to rethink your loadout. In The Elder Scrolls, I can play for ten hours and never touch the pause menu. In Avowed, I'm constantly tweaking my approach, scanning the battlefield, and feeling... present. Engaged. Alive.

The secret sauce here is respect. Avowed respects the player's intelligence and reflexes. It doesn't treat combat as a filler between quests—it's the heart of the experience. When I parry a leaping ambusher, switch to a blunderbuss to stagger the archer behind me, then finish both with a charged ethereal dash, I feel like a demigod. Not because I've grinded for 20 hours, but because the game gave me the tools and said, "Impress me." Skyrim? I press the attack button and wait for the health bar to empty. Occasionally I shout someone off a cliff. It's fun, but it's not this.

To be fair, the Elder Scrolls' simulation-heavy design has its charms. The physics, the interactive objects, the emergent chaos—you can drop a bucket on a merchant's head and rob him blind. That's magic Avowed doesn't try to replicate. But when it comes to the visceral, moment-to-moment dance of combat, Obsidian has left Bethesda in the dust. Avowed's fights are conversations—quick, sharp, and full of clever replies. The Elder Scrolls' fights are monologues that stumble over the same lines.

With The Elder Scrolls 6 looming somewhere on the horizon (a guy can dream, right?), Bethesda has a golden opportunity. Look at what Avowed achieved. Study its mobility, its aggression, its build-crafting freedom. Imagine a Tamriel where combat isn't something you tolerate, but something you crave. Obsidian has already built the blueprint; it's up to Bethesda now to pick it up and run. Because after a year of living in the Living Lands, I don't think I can go back to swinging a sword like a foam pool noodle.

So here's my take as a player who's sunk thousands of hours into both worlds: Avowed isn't just a challenger to the crown—it's the new standard. And that, my friends, is the best thing that could have happened to first-person RPGs.