Roundup: Avowed's Latest Previews Are In, And It's Already Being Touted As 'One Of 2025's Best Games'

Xbox's next big Game Pass release sounds very promising

by Liam Doolan 12:56am

Ahead of Avowed's Xbox Game Pass launch early next year in February, the latest round of previews for this upcoming action-RPG have now gone live.

Based on this latest build, the consensus seems to be it's looking quite promising right now - with most outlets and critics talking up the game, and mentioning how they can't wait to get their hands on the full thing. So, here's a sample of what's being said so far...

Starting with our friends at VGC, who mentioned how they "can't wait to play more":

"When our brief time with Avowed came to an end, we were disappointed. Not with that we’d played, but rather because we’d felt the game getting its hooks into us. Avowed feels like a game that would have been perfect for the period between Christmas and New Year. It doesn’t feel like it’s doing anything sparklingly new, but everything it is doing makes us want to play more."

Windows Central was even more excited after this second round preview - mentioning how it could end up being a "favourite" of 2025:

"Obsidian Entertainment and Xbox Game Studios may not be aiming for the top with a massive and ambitious magnum opus (let's wait for The Outer Worlds 2 for that), but Avowed has soul — a crucial ingredient missing from a lot of modern games made from corporations chasing mainstream demographics and trends. I do wonder how many will feel the same, but it won't matter if I'm completely alone — I'm still fairly certain after two previews and two interviews that Avowed's going to be one of my favorite games of 2025."

Kotaku thinks it could already be "one of 2025's best games":

"Avowed feels rock solid, deep, and hugely cared for. This has “labor of love” oozing out all over, and if it can deliver a story as strong as those in the Pillars of Eternity games, we could have an all-time classic on our hands."

In IGN's preview, it called Avowed "a lot of fun" and said it was a nice contrast to Dragon Age: The Veilguard - allowing you to be as "evil" as you want:

"Coming fresh off of trying out Dragon Age: The Veilguard, I was so happy when I discovered just how evil I could be to people I met along the way right from the start of Avowed – something Veilguard just didn’t fulfill. From the start I had one NPC dropping f-bombs because I was going to leave her in prison. A short while later a duo would try to intimidate me on a bridge – only to meet a swift demise. I wasn’t in the mood for their nonsense. I just wanted to be evil. And while I could have handled it the nice way, sometimes being evil is just more fun."

And Engadget summed it up as "classic Obsidian fantasy" on a 'AAA' budget:

"For me, everything felt right once I found the wand. I closed out the preview with the bow in one loadout, and the grimoire and wand in the other, and I was starting to feel like a real badass."

And that's a wrap! Honestly, just reading through the latest round of previews has already got us quite excited for Avowed. How about you though? What are your thoughts after reading these latest impressions? Let us know.

Liam is a news writer and reviewer for Nintendo Life and Pure Xbox. He's been writing about games for more than 15 years and is a lifelong fan of Mario and Master Chief.

1
awp69
1:18am

Can’t wait for this one! MS might finally have a GoTY contender with it.

2
MeanBeanEgg
1:44am

@awp69 Sucks that they put it in the same year as GTA VI so if that doesn't get delayed it's almost a guarentee what is 2025's GOTY.

3
Balaam_
1:49am

I like the article subtitle stating it “sounds very promising”, because it sure doesn’t look good. The visual aesthetic they settled on is atrocious, a terrible mismatch of garish Ubisoft waypoint quest markers overlaid atop some otherwise good looking environments. Perhaps the game director or whoever has the final say on the project is colorblind? That would explain such an unattractive color palette.

4
LuXifer
2:10am

It does sounds promising for sure. But haven't we been through this dance of overly positive previews from people who'll do anything to stay in the good graces of the industry enough times to not take it at face value by now?

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it'll turn out great as I love the PoE world.🤞 But I trust these previews as much as I trust emails from nigerian princes. 😋

@MeanBeanEgg Death Stranding 2 is GotY 2025. I don’t even need to play it or any other games to know that for myself. Unless of course OD also comes out! I’m just a Kojima fanboy what can I say? But seriously, for me, I do see a few games on the horizon that could steal GTA’s thunder in the GotY spectrum.

But seriously with GTA6 too, just remember that Rockstar isn’t the same company they were when RDR2 came out. One of their founders and main story architects is gone. Rockstar put out an awful remaster of the GTA3 trilogy not that long ago as well. They’ve been milking GTA5 and Online for ages, and even going back to GTA Online, it launched broken. We just don’t know enough about GTA6 yet, and I hazard to guess we won’t know enough til it releases. It’ll be the fastest selling game of all time when it launches, for sure, but, with all the hype, who knows if it’ll land to expectations? Theres rumors that games might increase in price with GTA6 as well. There’s a part of me that thinks GTA6 could full stop crash the industry single handedly if Rockstar prioritizes greed over quality.

Back to the subject at hand, I hate the color palette for Avowed, but I’m looking forward to trying it. Next year looks barren at the moment outside Game Pass and the twin Sony first party titles for me, so bring it on! I love hearing that a game feels like it has a soul. It’s increasingly rare to hear that in this industry. It makes me hopeful.