Summary
If you’re aMass Effectfan currently playingAvowed, you’ll have immediately identified Kai’s voice as belonging to Garrus Vakarian voice actor Brandon Keener. While voice actors appearing in multiple games is normal practice, an interesting aspect of Kai is that his personality also resembles everyone’s favourite Turian.
Right from your first interaction with Kai, the Coastal Aumaua emits some of the same personality traits as Garrus. Both Kai and Garrus are capable operators with a sardonic wit whose life experience has given them a slight melancholy. There’s no way of knowing if the character-building process was moulded by Keener’s performance, or if the writing team wrote around the voice actor’s strengths. Either way, these crossover fans are just happy being able to travel with a character that resembles one they adore.
Calibrations
This phenomenon was highlighted by Radicalbanapple in arecent Reddit thread. The above image features Avowed’s Envoy in a forest with Garrus and Dragon Age’s Varric Tethras. Although Varric’s voice actor Brian Bloom doesn’t appear in Avowed, the second recruitable companion is a Dwarf named Marius who is a ranged fighter, similar to Varric.
It’s certainly a sentiment I understand. The feeling you get while playing Avowed isn’t unlike the feeling evoked by BioWare’s classics, besides the fact that Avowed is more of an action role-playing game than a more traditional computer role-playing game.
The thread’s comments rightfully point out that Marius' personality is wholly unlike Varric’s. While the latter is a charismatic rogue with a silver tongue, the former is a sort of ball of gruff negativity. The comments also highlight several other voice actors who have appeared in other beloved RPGs, which isn’t too surprising given that experience begets opportunity.
Despite some of the negative sentiment surrounding Avowed’s “advanced access” period of five days, Obsidian’s latest offering appears to be off to astrong commercial start. Critically, the game has also proved a hit, holding an average critic score of 82 onOpenCritic. TheGamer’s editor-in-chief Stacey Henley said “Avowed is a valiant attempt at fantasy you can play your way, but while it delivers well enough with combat, the narrative just isn’t there,” in her3/5 review.
