Avowed is officially out for everyone today, February 18. Obsidian’s latest RPG in the Pillars of Eternity universe is pretty damn good, and fans who paid up for the game’s Premium Edition have been playing it a few days early. The aspect I’m most looking forward to in Avowed, beyond the character creator, is a companion who shares a voice with one of the most beloved characters in Mass Effect.
Kai is a coastal aumaua and the first main party member you meet in Avowed. He’s a sexy fish man who’s a bit rogueish, with a suave voice that brings it all together. Any Mass Effect fan will recognize this voice as Brandon Keener, the actor behind turian vigilante Garrus Vakarian from the original trilogy. Some of my favorite reactions from Avowed’s early access players have been seeing them realize that Kai shares Garrus’ voice. Despite Garrus’ popularity among Mass Effect fans, Keener hasn’t done a ton of video game voice work in the years since. He’s done a lot of “additional voices,” but Kai is probably his most prominent role since Garrus. So for many fans, this is like hearing an old friend for the first time in over a decade.
The connection between Kai and Garrus doesn’t end in their voice actor, however. Obsidian’s writers are clearly Mass Effect fans, because they include a cheeky reference to Garrus in some of Kai’s dialogue. There’s a scene in Avowed in which a woman is challenging the player and Kai to a fight, to which the aumaua says he’s got plenty of “reach.” This seems like a reference to Garrus’ romance in Mass Effect 2, in which the character makes a joke about having “reach,” and another Turian he hooked up with having “flexibility.”
It’s a fun bit of connective tissue, but Kai is a great character separate from sharing a voice with Garrus, with a depth of personality, a backstory that plays out during the game, and performs the vital role of the faithful friend you know always has your back.