In the lead-up to the February 2025 release of action RPG Avowed, developer Obsidian Entertainment warned players not to expect any romance in the game. “We are building thoughtful relationships with our companion characters,” game director Carrie Patel told IGN a full year before its release. “Ultimately, I personally am a fan of making [romance] an option, but I feel like if you’re going to do it, you really, really have to commit and make sure that you’re giving all to fulfilling that in a way that feels both true to the character, but also creates an engaging player experience. So not something we’re doing for Avowed, but I wouldn’t say never.”
This didn’t come as much of a surprise; though there have been sporadic dalliances with romance in Obsidian’s back catalogue, most notably in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, the company has largely eschewed the mechanic, even as it grew in popularity in both the genre and the industry as a whole. So it was a welcome surprise when it turned out that there was, in fact, romance in Avowed—but not in the way players would have expected.
Avowed handles romance very differently from most other Western RPGs, and if players went into the game expecting the genre-typical smorgasbord of horny, fuckable party companions, they would have been sorely disappointed. Instead, there’s just one romance in Avowed, and it’s composed of only a handful of lines of dialogue and a brief mention in the epilogue. The storyline is more about the romanceable character’s emotional growth and development than their physical attraction to the player character. Avowed takes a mechanic that can often feel tacked-on and makes it an integral part of the story. It does exactly what Patel said a good video game romance should—and it’s a breath of fresh air compared to genre norms.
How most Western RPGs handle romance
We have one-time Western RPG powerhouse BioWare to thank for pioneering romance mechanics in the genre. The studio first introduced romanceable companions in 2000’s Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn, and further refined their house style with the Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises. A “BioWare-style RPG” has become shorthand for a particular type of game that emphasizes player choice through customizable blank-slate player characters, dialogue options, and branching storylines, and features a large cast of attractive NPCs who you can recruit to join your party and eventually romance.
That “blank slate” approach to romance in RPGs eventually became the de-facto standard industrywide, with games like CD Projekt’s Cyberpunk 2077 and Larian Studios’ Baldur’s Gate 3 carrying on the tradition. The benefit of that approach is that it can be genuinely fun to blow off steam in between high-risk missions by exchanging witty, flirty banter with a hot companion. But there are drawbacks to that method, too. As Patel explained to Eurogamer, “The more you introduce romance as a mechanic, and the more that you build systems around it, and metrics, and ways for players to bolster and measure their affinity and affection level with other characters, the more it becomes something people engage with as a system rather than as a relationship.” Building an intimate relationship gets boiled down to completing a sidequest checklist, and it can make what should come across as a genuine connection between two characters feel hollow instead. So while BioWare-style RPGs have become known for their inclusion of romance mechanics, it’s pretty rare that the storylines that result from those mechanics actually feel romantic.
What makes Avowed different
In Avowed you build your own custom character, an envoy from the Aedyran Empire sent to the lawless Living Lands to investigate rumors of a plague known as the Dreamscourge. In the Living Lands, you recruit four NPCs for your adventuring party, of which you can bring two at a time to explore with you.
So far, so BioWare. But the companion chats at camp in Avowed never take a turn for the romantic. In most similar RPGs, a conversation between the player character and one of their companions about training together would probably be laced with innuendo—in fact, a story about how Turians train and prepare for battle is what leads into Garrus’ famous “reach and flexibility” line from Mass Effect 2. However, during an early conversation about training in Avowed between the protagonist and one of their companions, your responses are all focused on what you’d like to improve—learning how to take more damage, strike harder, or a little bit of everything. There’s no hamfisted flirting to be found.
As Patel told Windows Central, Avowed’s companions are “characters who are really tied to the central story [of the game].” The first of those companions you encounter is Kai (voiced by Brandon Keener, who also voiced Garrus in the Mass Effect series), an aumauan mercenary carrying a lot of baggage from a lifetime of running away. He was a deserter from the Rauatai Navy; he left his subsequent home, Thirdborn, six years ago and never returned, though he’s cagey on the details of his departure. He’s also got some unfinished business with Tama, the deceased leader of his former mercenary squad, that he’s hesitant to talk about. His backstory, which he slowly reveals to you over a series of contemplative fireside chats, is integral to the plot. It’s also a romance.
Over the course of the game, as Kai opens up about Tama, you can help guide him to the realization that Tama was in love with him—and he was also in love with Tama. Though it’s obvious to the player that, before his death, Tama tried to subtly express his feelings to Kai (there’s a full-on oil painting of Kai in Tama’s house, for fuck’s sake), Kai was too oblivious to pick up on his hints. When the game’s main story eventually takes the party to Thirdborn, it forces Kai to confront why he left and never returned: He walked away from Tama when he was on his deathbed, promising to return quickly, but he never did, because he couldn’t stand the thought of watching Tama die.
It’s only after you help Kai deal with that trauma that something approaching a romance mechanic kicks in. You can tell Kai that you have feelings for him, though, in typical Kai fashion, you need to fully spell it out for him before he understands what you mean—his obliviousness still runs strong, and you get a good sense of how infuriating it must have been for Tama over the years. Kai’s response to your confession ties back into his personal growth; he tells you that he never thought he’d be able to feel close to someone again after losing Tama, and eventually adds, “If you want to be with me after everything you’ve seen—and if you still feel that way once we’ve finished our journey…I want that, too.” And that’s it. There’s no sex scene, not even an embrace or a kiss. Just a quiet acknowledgement that, because Kai was able to deal with his trauma, he’s ready to move on.
If you choose to romance Kai, you get a short bit of exposition in the epilogue that reflects that as well. “But the most unexpected boon of Kai’s adventures is the romance that blossoms with the envoy. He’d thought his chance at love died with Tama, but after the envoy helped him accept that loss, he realized he’d found another chance with someone who saw him, knew him, and loved him as he was. He wouldn’t let this one pass him by,” it says.
Speaking to Eurogamer, Patel explained the hidden romance option. “There’s nothing that says ‘hey this is a thing that can happen’—there’s no system that’s going to track your status with them—but if you’re doing the kinds of things that you would do if you were interested in this character, you’ll probably come across the option by the end of the game. And it should feel natural, organic, and surprising,” she said. By removing the “mechanic” part of the romance mechanic, tying it to Kai’s emotional growth, and making it less about the NPC as a vehicle for pure fantasy indulgence, Avowed does something truly unexpected: It incorporates romance in a BioWare-style RPG in a way that’s actually romantic.