I Changed The Course Of Avowed's Story, And I Didn't Need A Quest Marker

Today's gamers are beholden to their objective markers. We're all familiar with the type of RPG player that disregards dialogue in favour of thoughtlessly chasing down icons on a map. It's not necessarily their fault - we've all now been conditionᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚed to follow quest markers, ticking off each step methodically to please the completionist impulse in our brains.

Simply put, RPGs ha🥃ve become very convenient. In the days of Wizardry and Ultima, you had to map out dungeons on graph paper to prevent yourself from getting hopelessly lost. I'm not saying we should retur꧋n to those difficult days, but less hand-holding at appropriate points would be nice.

Dialogue Cues

inquisiotr lodwyn in avowed. — via Obsidian

Take Avowed, for example. Obsidian's latest romp through Eora has divided opinion. The game resembles sไomething that 𝓡would have been released in the mid-2000s, a 'throwback' style RPG that isn't rich in features or technically impressive but makes up for it with an engrossing open world. Not everyone feels the Living Lands is an engaging place to explore, but I recently had a cool moment while wandering the game's second area, the Emerald Stair.

The crux of the narrative in Emerald Stair is that animancy (soul magic) is used to power the agriculture in the area, but recently this approach has stopped bearing fruit, and nature is now violently reclaiming the region. Animancy is completely illegal in Aedyr, the protagonist's home empire that has colonial ambitions for the Living Lands. The Steel Garrote, an extremist cult that worships🌺 a vengeful god, has taken it upon themselves to enforce Aedyran justice in this untameable frontier.

At this point, I've already committed to opposing the Steel Garrote. Even though your character is Aedyran, Avowed doesn't give you much reason to be pro-Aedyr. So, damn the homeland, I'd rather take my chances with the laudable folk of the Livi𝓀ng Lands. As🔯 I went to cross a bridge towards the wilder parts of the Emerald Stair, a fellow Aedyran tipped me off that the Steel Garrote was holed up behind a waterfall somewhere in the region.

I was curious. I knew the𒀰re was a chance that this mysterious waterfall hideout wasn't accessible until a certai🔴n point in the story had been hit, but why would the writers tell me that it existed if I couldn't find it? I was curious if the game would let me find the Steel Garrote without a quest marker. So, I set off into the Emerald Stair's wilderness with one thing on my mind: waterfalls.

I have enough rudimentary knowledge of the real world to know that waterfalls occur along streams and rivers. So naturally, I trekked down a hill and began following the nearest river. It was a peaceful time, barring a couple of run-ins with roaming packs of xaurips. Up until this point, I had been rushing from quest marker to quest marker and had never really absorbed how beautiful the environments of Avowed are, but this particular walk changed my perspectiv♈e.

Rewarding Exploration

It didn't take long for me to find a massive waterfall, and after repeatedly running into the wall behind said waterfall, I realised there was an elevated path just to tౠhe right of the waterfall. Sure enough, the path led right to a cave th🀅at I suspected was either full of Steel Garrote or empty because I've sequence-broken the game.

To my pleasant surprise, the cave was full of Woedican zea✨lots none too pleased to see me. As opposing Lodwyn had become a regular thing for my character at this point, I decided to slaughter everyone in the cave even though I wasn't entirely sure what their motivations were. While I initially thought that would be the end of it, this side story actually had major consequences for the main quest.

After progressing through the main quest, I emerged from a ruin to see smoke rising from the nearby town of Fior. When I arrived at the scene, I learned the Steel Garrote besieged the town but were repelled by the animancers because of my acꦏtions in the cave. I was thrilled that my actions outside of the main quest affected the game's core narrative, especially since I acted on my intuition rather than allowing myself to be guided to the answer.

Another neat feature of Avowed is that it employs area-wide quest markers, rather than simply putting an icon directly above the item or person you're looking for like Bethesda does in The Elder Scrolls. At the very least, you'll need to know what you're looking for if you're only given a ge꧟neral area of where to find it. It's a small difference, but a welcome one.

I know there's a perpetual debate surrounding yellow paint in video games and the awareness of the average player, but I truly believe that games could benefit from this sort of intuitive game🥂play. Perhaps even an option to toggle quest markers on and off to account for accessibility. There's just something mind-numbing about moving from one marker to the next - as if we've taken the world's most interactive medium and boiled it down to ticking tasks off a list without any critical thought.

Avowed may not be a perfect game but, during that series of events, I felt truly immersed in the experience. This isn't something I experience often in modern RPGs, given the hand�♒�-holding and excessive quality-of-life features present in these releases.