Those mad lads at Obsidian were bluffing us: Avowed does have a tiny bit of companion romance, as a treat

At least one of Avowed’s companions can be romanced by the player character, flying in the face of multiple pre-launch warnings by Obsidian that we shouldn’t expect that from them. We’re not talking a full-on Baldur’s Gate 3 or Mass Effect multipart courting with premium cable nudity at the end of the rainbow, but the romantic subplot we can confirm so far is an interesting outgrowth of an already standout companion quest. Mild Avowed spoilers, including that companion’s identity, below.

Obsidian is very much on the record as the anti-RPG romance developer. Studio design director Josh Sawyer has expressed a distaste for them that goes back decades, arguing they’re often objectifying, crass wish fulfillment. When there are romantic subplots or themes in Obsidian games, they typically run toward the tragic or subversive:

• Wooing one of four partially cult deprogrammed weirdos in Knights of the Old Republic 2.
• Playing wingman for Parvati in The Outer Worlds.
• Seducing a nun, leading her to terminate the resulting pregnancy in Pentiment.
• The achingly tragic love lives of Boone, Arcade, and Veronica in New Vegas.
• And more!

Obsidian explicitly denied that there’d be anything of the sort in Avowed multiple times in the run up to the game’s release. “We are building thoughtful relationships with our companion characters,” project lead Carrie Patel told IGN last January on the back of Avowed’s first gameplay reveal. “Ultimately, I personally am a fan of making that 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.”

We haven’t seen how it ends, but there’s an optional romantic element to your relationship with Kai, Avowed’s poster boy and a new hall of famer when it comes to chummy RPG warrior companions. After completing Kai’s multiple act companion quest, Battle Scars, there’s a debrief conversation back at camp. Afterward, I had the dialogue option “I feel like we’ve really gotten to know each other, haven’t we?” pop up in Kai’s general dialogue tree. That starts a conversation where you can affirm your friendship with Kai, or say you want something more.

And Kai’s game! He reciprocates, but basically says “let’s talk more about this after the final boss.” There may be another conversation down the line to fully commit, but my guess is that this is a choice that will primarily play out in Kai’s Fallout-style epilogue card when I roll credits. Again, not Baldur’s Full Monty territory, but an explicit part of Kai’s story, and largely in line with what we saw in Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire’s romances.

What we’re not sure about yet is if there’s some behind the scenes approval over your choices in the game that affect whether or not you get this option⁠—I’m the only one to see it so far on the PC Gamer team. What’s more, we don’t know if both male and female characters can pursue Kai, or if he’s only interested in men, and there are at least some indications that fellow companion Giatta may have her own romantic subplot. We’ll have to see as we make more progress in our own games and more people in general get their hands on Avowed, but I find something very resonant, very Obsidian, to the possibility that Avowed may have only one romance revolving around a gay shark-man. That’s videogames to me, baby.