Xbox Series X, Series S and PC compared.
This works in Avowed’s favour as The Living Lands offer some beautiful, interesting places to explore.
I would almost describe the game’s aesthetic as an unusual cross between Elder Scrolls and Chrono Cross (!
), with bold colours, unusual shapes and towering structures.
Obsidian’s first-person RPGs typically arrive with a hearty helping of bugs and a general lack of polish.
Animation, camera movement, NPC behaviour and battles all feel remarkably polished.
Take Nanite, for instance.
Avowed, however, manages to leverage Nanite for virtually everything.
That’s Nanite in action.
Avowed also uses an interesting combination of virtual shadow maps (VSMs) and screen-space shadows for fine detail.
Then we have Lumen.
Avowed uses both Lumen GI and reflections, though its quality varies according to parameters.
At its best, Lumen provides an excellent solution for real-time global illumination (RTGI).
When you combine all of these techniques together with stellar art direction, you get something that really impresses.
Quality mode has slightly more vegetation than balanced mode, but it’s comparable.
Performance mode cuts back on features, with noisier Lumen GI and no Lumen reflections - just SSR.
A tonne of scenery detail is also sacrificed and shadow quality is also reduced.
Meanwhile, Series S’s quality mode is ~1080p, while balanced mode is ~720p.
The same beneifts apply to RTGI, with less light leak artefacts and more granular lighting overall.
VRAM usage thankfully isn’t an issue, even on graphics cards with 8GB of VRAM.
It’s enough to enjoy the game’s excellent writing and storytelling, but can appear somewhat stilted.
It seems to derive configs from the system level, but additional customisation is always appreciated.
This is in addition to the shader compilation crashes that Alex faced.
Ultimately, though, Avowed mostly impressed me.
I really didn’t expect much going into it but walked away having had a great time.
Obsidian did a fantastic job with this one.
Of course, as noted, it’s not perfect.
Give it a shot - I think it may just surprise you!
