Even in the best RPGs, I can never escape the knowledge that everything is there in service of me as the player. There’s always a level of dissonance I need to accept in these games for things like how a person on the street is willing to tell a complete stranger their life story and ask them to help with some personal or dangerous task. I appreciate there being no clean way to naturally introduce compelling side quests that feel natural in a game, but the way I am constantly invited into the most private moments of some character’s lives on a whim has never sat well with me.
The early side quests in Avowed didn’t appear to break this mold at first. I was still approaching strangers on the street and bulldozing my way into their lives to play the hero, but one standout early quest breaks that idea to handle a sensitive topic with the discretion it deserves.
Trouble in Paradis
Before entering the first main city in Avowed I sampled a handful of side quests out in the open-world. Each one had a fun or interesting narrative tied to it, and maybe an opportunity at the end for my character to influence the lives of the people involved moving forward. This is standard stuff for modern RPGs, but I was feeling that familiar sense of the game world revolving around me rather than it being a world that would exist with or without me.
When I got into Paradis and was getting the lay of the land, I came across a woman being harassed by some thugs. After talking down the confrentation, I did as I always do and asked what the situation was and how I could help. She was a bathhouse employee and sent me to the owner to learn more. From there I was filled in on details of how this gang had stolen a valuable shipment they needed. When I asked what this shipment was, I was stonewalled. Even when I got a second chance to ask later in the dialogue tree with a cheeky “This job would be easier if I knew what I was looking for” I was hit with a “Too bad.”
This hint of mystery got me more invested in what sounded like a standard fetch quest and I headed over to the docks to see about getting this mysterious shipment back. I chose to approach and talk to the bandits rather than fight or sneak past them and found it oddly easy to convince them to hand over the goods without any trouble. As soon as I started bluffing about turning them into the guards, the leader got very uneasy about being caught with the contents of that package. So long as I took it and didn’t turn them in, I was free to retrieve it.
The crate the shipment came in had been damaged, so I automatically was told what the contents were when picking it up: herbs. It seemed like a mundane item to keep so secret, but they weren’t just any plants. These were special herbs that could be used to prevent childbirth or, if the dose was high enough, terminate a birth. Even in the Living Lands, something like this is highly illegal.
Obsidian is drawing a clear parallel here to our current real world crisis surrounding women’s health and reproductive rights. So many people are being denied proper care and forced to seek alternative — sometimes dangerous — treatments due to the laws that have been set in place. Avowed’s largest plot threads aren’t afraid to be highly reflective of our modern climate, from how plagues can lead to political unrest and how zealots can overrule political powers. When I was finally able to hand it over and my dialogue options came up, the only one that felt appropriate for me to pick was the one where I politely handed over the shipment, accepted my reward, and went on my way.
Some subjects just feel wrong to pry into, even if it is just some NPCs in a video game. I understand why they need these herbs and, regardless of my own opinion on the entire subject, it is not my place to inject myself into their personal business or even suggest that I had any right to know the details. I assumed this would mean I missed out on some additional dialogue but couldn’t bring myself to breach that subject as an outsider.
Back at camp my companion, Kai, wanted to debrief after the quest. To my surprise, he praised me not just for doing the quest, but also respecting their privacy. He asked my opinion on the herbs in general, letting me justify why and to what degree I supported them disobeying such a law, which felt much more appropriate a time and place to do so. I was still limited to four or five pre-written options that couldn’t quite match my exact feelings on such an intricate subject, but that is the nature of games.
I encountered more situations somewhat similar to this in my adventures in Avowed. None of them, at least so far, have had the same weight as the quest with the herbs but that strong example made me start to treat the characters as their own people more than I typically did. I’m not entitled to know everything about everyone the second I meet them. Just because I can ask about a new companion’s past doesn’t mean I have earned the right to. Avowed is the rare game where I’ve chosen the option not to ask questions — or even speak at all — and felt like I made the right decision.
Avowed is available now on Xbox Series X/S and PC.
