Avowed comes out in a week. The setting is shared with the Pillars of Eternity games, and I played the heck out of the first one. I enjoyed every aspect of that game, warts and all. There were small issues to solve and a very large and complicated lore setting that was gradually revealed. And honestly, the twist at the end really put the rest of the game into perspective.

Not really spoiling here, but the concept of fantasy games having active gods isn’t new. What was interesting was that these gods were not actually gods, but members of a precursor race that elevated themselves to godhood due to the lack of gods. There’s a good primer on this that was launched a few days ago.

PoE2 takes next steps from there, allowing you to import your decisions from the first game. And there are a lot of them, with meaningful impacts to the game. The story has a simple driver, a god takes physical form (a giant statue), steals part of your soul, and you need to chase them to reclaim it. Where there’s difference is in the factional warfare that you’re living with, which adds a more political / ethical structure to the game, with a ton of grey area between.

Mechanically, real-time combat with pause was a big change, where speed had a massive impact on outcomes of combat – turn-based was added later, which made some skills useless as a result. Classes were tweaked, with optional subclasses that had pros/cons attached – a min/maxer’s dream. Your home base is a ship that travels between islands, with crew, morale, food/water, equipment, and pirate battles as interesting content. The story, companions, skill checks, quests and so on are extensions from what was in the first game, and those work well.

I never completed PoE2 when it launched, but it’s been in my list of things for a long time. So I’m giving it a go now, and in the mindset to absorb more of the lore rather than the mechanical pieces. I’m honestly enjoying it more than prior attempts, the characters are more interesting and closer in terms of integration that was seen in Baldur’s Gate 2. From a practical perspective, it means there’s often a reason to backtrack to a previous area as more is available to discover, instead of simply moving from town hub to town hub.

It is, by nearly all measures, a great game. I honestly feel bad I didn’t give it a stronger go in the past.

I doubt very much I’ll be done my playthrough in time for Avowed, at least not in the way that I tend to play these games. I do however plan to buy Avowed on release, as that financial decision will have long-term impacts for Obsidian, a company that has an amazing track record in scratching my interminable itch. If they can maintain brain trust and not have layoffs, I think everyone wins.