Avowed

Many of Avowed's problems stem from its lineage: the Pillars of Eternity games are best-in-class among modern CRPGs with excellent build systems and exquisite writing. So, when Obsidian announced a FPS RPG set in the same word, there was much to be expected. And, largely, it falls short of those expectations. The writing is atrocious. For a game that deals with politics and is steeped in the importance of perspective and nuance (colonialism is a prime subject here and a subject worth exploring), the writers deal only in obvious exposition. It reads like a bad YA novel and assumes you, the reader, are a complete dunce incapable of critical thought. Characters lore dump for you as impartial experts in the subject and everyone tells you, ad nauseam, what you need to know with no reading between the lines required. The only villains are mustache-twirling stereotypes. Delivery is often sardonic, with one of your companions serving as a living embodiment of millennial culture in every insufferable way possible. There are a least several opportunities to respond: "Yikes." Combat is similarly trivialized. No real classes, just three skill trees (you guessed it: fighter, rogue, wizard) and comparable weapons for those. Whereas previous games, and many others in the category, differentiate between types of damage (crush, slash, pierce, etc.), this does none of that. A weapon is a weapon with the only variable being stamina cost. As usual, mages edge out the competition in terms of interesting abilities, but even those don't get too exciting beyond "big AoE". It's a real shame seeing that the foundational world for Avowed, Eora, is so well hashed out in previous titles and that deep, deep lore is squandered here.