Remember that spine-tingling moment in Fallout: New Vegas? 🔥 You stumble upon a smoldering town with crucifixes piercing the ashen sky, only to meet a gleeful Powder Ganger celebrating his 'lottery win' – survival from Legion crucifixion. That emergent, unscripted chaos defined the RPG experience. Fast forward to 2025, and Avowed's lush Eora setting feels like wandering through a museum: breathtaking dioramas under glass, but you can't touch anything meaningful. Isn't it jarring when a game world looks alive but behaves like a puppet show? 😩

The Illusion of Choice in a Cardboard Kingdom

Where New Vegas let you paint the Mojave with your moral compass (even if it meant gunning down an escaped convict on sight), Avowed funnels every interaction into sanitized dialogue trees. That blue-shirted thief you catch red-handed? He'll just scold you like a disappointed librarian if you crack open his glowing treasure chest. No consequences, no chaos, no life. It's like Obsidian built a gorgeous stage but forgot to hire actors who react when the audience throws tomatoes 🍅. Why even include lockpicking if NPCs treat theft like a minor faux pas? The world becomes a checklist of pretty backdrops where every 'choice' is just selecting which flavor of exposition you'll receive.

Class Systems Without Soul or Stakes

Let's break down Avowed's class dilemma with cold, hard facts:

Traditional RPG	Avowed's Approach	Result
Archer = stealth, thievery	Archer = combat only	No rogue fantasy
Lockpicking requires skill	Lockpicking needs picks, not stats	Zero class identity
Background shapes world reactivity	Background adds trivial dialogue	Meaningless selection

Need cash for that shiny new staff? In a proper RPG, your class would dictate the solution: bounty hunting for warriors, treasure maps for explorers, midnight burglary for thieves. Avowed? You're a Swiss Army knife with no blades 🔪. Whether you're a burly tank or a frail mage, you'll solve every problem with the same two tools: polite conversation or combat. Where's the tension? The roleplay? It reduces character building to a combat minigame while the actual world stays static. And don't even get me started on those 'Envoy backgrounds' – picking one feels less like defining your past and more like selecting a decorative hat. 🎩

The Ghost of RPGs Past Haunting Avowed

Obsidian never promised a murder simulator, true. But here's the gut punch: Avowed's DNA traces directly through:

• The Outer Worlds (2019)

• Fallout: New Vegas (2010)

• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006) 👑

All these games understood something fundamental: reactivity breeds immersion. Oblivion let you pilfer forks from nobles' tables and get chased by guards. New Vegas made factions remember your war crimes. Even The Outer Worlds had corporations that adapted to your sabotage. Avowed? It's a theme park ride where every NPC is bolted to the track. You can almost hear the ghosts of RPG past whispering, "Remember when your choices echoed?" 😔

Final Thoughts: A Beautiful Shell

So here we are in 2025. Avowed dazzles with spell effects that paint the sky in neon hues 💥, and its dialogue has that signature Obsidian wit. But strip away the glitter, and you’re left with a hollow core. When every quest resolves with either:

1. ✅ Picking benign dialogue options

2. ⚔️ Entering combat mode

...doesn't it start feeling like interactive wallpaper? The tragedy isn't that Avowed is bad – it's that you see glimmers of greatness drowned in safe design. Maybe Obsidian feared another Fallout 76-style backlash if systems clashed. Maybe corporate mandates sanded off the edges. Whatever the reason, walking through Avowed’s stunning biomes eventually feels like admiring a taxidermied beast: beautiful, but frozen in death. What’s the point of an RPG where the world refuses to remember you? 🤔