Left: a character walking in Skyrim with their back to the camera. Right: a character in Avowed firing a gun, with their back to the camera

Avowed launched on February 18, and has been met with a mostly positive reception from fans and critics alike. This is despite a fairly intense hate campaign before launch, which attacked Avowed – alongside many other titles – for perceived ‘wokeness’.

However, since launch, there has been another line of attack used against Avowed: Skyrim is better. Or at least, so say quite a lot of people online, who complain that Skyrim plays and looks better than Avowed. It’s become so rampant that fans have had enough of the comparisons, and argue that there’s no need for the two games to be pitted against each other.

Avowed Fans Respond To All The Skyrim Comparisons

Players make the point that Avowed doesn’t have to be the next Skyrim

Reddit user xdarkwombatx makes a list of all the features that Avowed doesn’t have, but other games like Skyrim do. However, they make the point that Avowed doesn’t necessarily need them to be a good game.

“Obsidian understood the homework assignment here. While some of those things are nice, you don’t need them to make a good game,” they write.

Avowed was initially going to be more like Skyrim, but development started over again, making it more like The Outer Worlds.

They are hardly alone in this. User cnio14 says in a separate post: “Here’s a crazy idea. You can like KCD2 [Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2], BG3 [Baldur’s Gate 3], Skyrim and Avowed at the same time. Let’s stop comparing Apples, Oranges and Bananas. Let’s enjoy all the good games for what they are.”

Many also point out that Avowed is just quite different from the games it is often compared to. “Avowed was never intended to be a immersive sim style game,” says jf8350143. “Yet people seem to hell bent on believing it should be one and there is no other kind of RPG out there.”

At any rate, it doesn’t seem that all of the negativity is hurting sales too much. Obsidian says it is “happy” with Avowed’s sales so far, although we’re still waiting on exact figures. Game Pass players will also be taken into account, as it was available through the service from day one.