Is It Safe to Rely on Your Inner Thoughts? | Should You Believe the Voice Inside Your Mind? | Can You Trust Your Inner Dialogue?

One of the earliest quests you’ll receive in Avowed is “Message From Afar,” which sends you to the northwestern corner of Dawnshore to explore the Strangleroot. Here, you’ll face off against a fearsome bear, meet a new NPC, and ultimately have a fresh conversation with the Voice you’ve been hearing in your head.

During the end of your conversation, the Voice will attempt to make a deal with you. Whether you accept the Voice’s power in return for helping them or decline the offer is entirely up to you. However, if you want to know what you’re gaining or missing with your choice, here’s what you need to know:

Should you help the Voice in Message From Afar?

As you proceed through the conversation with the Voice during the end of the Message From Afar quest, you’ll eventually come to a crossroads. You’re presented with either saying “Yes” or “No” to the Voice’s offer, leaving you with an important choice to make.

Since there are many more interactions with this Voice as the game progresses, your choices at this point can have a big impact both on how the Voice thinks of you, and—perhaps more importantly—what you think of the Voice. There’s no wrong choice here, so the most important thing to do is go with your heart. You aren’t going to break the story whichever route you take.

• If you choose to help the Voice, you’ll receive the Dream Touch godlike ability. This active ability heals and revives all your allies while dealing damage over time to Delemgan, Dreamthralls, and Vessels in the area.
• If you choose not to help the Voice, your reward will be an ability point.

Pragmatically, it seems reasonable to choose to help the Voice in this situation, as the Dream Touch godlike ability is immensely useful—perhaps much more so than a single ability point. It’s one of those skills you’ll grow to love as you play the game. But the choice is yours and yours alone, and you’ll be able to invest more in your own personal abilities if you reject the Voice’s offer. Either way, it’s an interesting path.

Whichever decision you make is permanent, but you’ll have plenty of other choices to make as you progress through Avowed—you haven’t lost opportunities to gain (or reject) more useful rewards later on.

Avowed is available now on Xbox Series X and PC.