Avowed is solely brimming with lore. A bundle of fantasy nations, a pantheon of gods, crystals of magic soul vitality — it’s loads to study if you happen to haven’t already performed Obsidian’s two Pillars of Eternity video games and their related expansions. Fortunately, Avowed is designed to make studying that lore as accessible and elective as potential.
Whereas there are many books to learn, for many gamers, it’s the elegant dialog system that can jump-start their lore training. At any time, the participant can pause a dialog to click on particular, highlighted key phrases of lore to study extra. This has the additional advantage of preserving a lot of the dialogue freed from clunky data dumps.
However all that lore wouldn’t matter if it wasn’t related to your quest, and whereas the principle story is extra concerning the Dwelling Lands, it’s the facet quests that educate you about higher Eora and your home in it. These elective missions vary from critical explorations of tangible, actual world points to… much less critical topics, however essentially the most illustrative of Obsidian’s method was “Dawntreader.”
[Warning: The rest of this article contains full spoilers for the quest “Dawntreader” and descriptions of some mid-game discoveries from the second chapter of the game. Here’s a comprehensive guide to completing this quest.]
“Dawntreader” is centered round an Oracle of the god Eothas named Sargamis. Pillars of Eternity gamers would instantly be conversant in Eothas, and in Avowed you possibly can learn a ebook or click on on the phrase mid-conversation to study he’s not a very fashionable god in the meanwhile. However simply out of your dialog with Sargamis, impeccably voiced by Matthew Mercer, you shortly study quite a lot of lore that’s instantly related to your participant character.
As Godlikes, your character and Sargamis have one thing in frequent. You’ll be able to see for your self simply how completely different every god’s Godlike seems to be, learn the way the Godlikes are dying out, and think about how unusual it’s that you just don’t know who your patron god is. All of this primes you to marvel much more concerning the voice in your head.
Regardless of how acquainted you’re with the lore of Eothas, this quest finally flips your expectations. Sure, Sargamis is a non secular fanatic who’s murdered innocents, however no, he’s not doing that to resurrect an evil god — it’s a part of his plan to punish Eothas for his sins. You see firsthand how a Godlike wrestles with the crimes of his patron. You assume extra about that voice in your head…
Whereas later you possibly can eradicate Sargamis for the crimes he readily admits to, providing to help him results in some wild selections. The sport will allow you to actually obliterate your self as a way to assist Sargamis create a god jail, and your reward is a recreation over and a hilariously named achievement. Alternatively, you possibly can persuade Sargamis to sacrifice himself… which additionally doesn’t work.
However in a last twist, the voice in your head — whom you later study is the god of the dwelling lands — requests the statue for their very own gadgets. When you comply with via on this request, this time the machine… works! Sarcastically, Sargamis’ concept was right, he simply had the fallacious god. Even earlier than you realize the reality concerning the voice in your head, this hints at how completely different the adra is within the Dwelling Lands, and the way indifferent it’s from the remainder of Eora’s pantheon.
Whether or not you go into this quest figuring out all the things there’s to learn about Eothas otherwise you’ve refused to ever learn a ebook in-game, “Dawntreader” itself will educate you numerous. Relying in your selections, you could even see a callback to this quest on the very finish of the sport. The perfect half is that the quantity of lore it’s worthwhile to take pleasure in it’s totally as much as you.
