Warning: This article contains spoilers for Avowed’s second region, Emerald Stair.

The second act of Avowed ends tragically. Fior mes Ivèrno, the town at the centre of the Emerald Stair region, burns to the ground. Its people, already pushed to the edge of starvation thanks to failed harvests, are driven from their homeland by the tyrannical Steel Garotte, an army of fanatical paladins from the invading Aedyr Empire. When the flames finally fade, the city is removed from your map, its ruins occupied by the paladins who razed it.

But this is an Obsidian game. And so, as the developer’s tradition of branching storylines and player choice dictates, there is a way to prevent the town from burning. But unlike most choice-supporting RPGs, this isn’t achieved via completing an opposing mission branch. There simply isn’t a quest to stop this event from happening. Instead, the Steel Garotte is hidden in the region, plotting the town’s downfall, and it’s up to you to find them without instruction or waypoint. It’s an incredibly organic approach to altering the course of Avowed’s story, rewarding curiosity and authentic choices as opposed to the simple obedience of following an objective list in a journal.

The journey towards saving Fior mes Ivèrno begins with rumblings and rumours. NPCs mention sightings of mysterious figures in the wilderness. Notes and documents theorise that the Steel Garotte has established a foothold in Emerald Stair. It’s the sort of stuff that you could mistake for mere background world building, but this is actually the first breadcrumbs on a vital trail.

Those breadcrumbs can be investigated in a number of ways. A hands-off approach is available through the use of intelligence-gathering spies. If you’re a dab hand at manipulating conversations you may have encouraged Elowe, a member of the Paradis resistance found in Avowed’s first region, to work as your spy. She’s not your only option; while wandering Emerald Stair’s forest you can bump into Kylecg, a spy in the employ of the Aedyran Ambassador who can also be sent to investigate those Steel Garotte rumours. Recruit either of these spies and they’ll send you a letter exposing the paladins’ plans before it’s too late. It’s a neat reward for engaging with Avowed’s characters and pushing beyond the surface of their dialogue trees.

There’s no “Investigate the Steel Garotte” task added to your journal. For all this to work, you need to pay attention.

You’d be forgiven for never recruiting Kylecg or Elowe at all, though. While they are both easily encountered on your journey, Avowed’s story does not demand that they become spies. Thankfully, their help is not mandatory in uncovering the Steel Garotte’s hidden base. In fact, you can do it with no aid at all by simply exploring every inch of Emerald Stair; a completionist’s approach will eventually lead you to the inconspicuously named “Waterfall Cave” and the gang of plotting paladins inside. That’s enough to stop them… provided you find the cave and kill everyone before they stoke the fires as part of the region’s final main quest, that is.

It’s the middleground between being directly told via a letter and stumbling across the paladins by random chance that proves the most satisfying, though. An optional side quest, Steel Resolve, will usher you in the right direction, as well as provide a satisfying story that neatly links to the grander plot. What starts as a run-of-the-mill bounty contract to kill some local bandits – a task you would typically consider open world “filler” – morphs into a quest to root out a traitor hiding amongst the ranks of Emerald Stair’s cohort of rangers. It’s classic RPG detective work that sees you unearth secret notes, trip over false leads, and bounce from one suspect to the next as you hunt for the dialogue tree that will force someone to crack. And crack they do – you eventually discover the headstrong Dorso is responsible for the murder of one of her colleagues and the imprisonment of another. Her admission of guilt opens up the option of executing her on the spot, but keep pushing and her story takes a much more interesting turn.

As previously mentioned, Emerald Stair is suffering from famine. The people are starving. Somewhat understandably, Dorso is furious with the region’s impotent leadership, so much so that she’s decided Emerald Stair would fare better under the invading Aedyr Empire’s colonial rule. She’s been undermining the rangers in an attempt to soften them up so that the Steel Garotte may take control with minimal resistance. Ask the right questions and Dorso will eventually reveal that the paladins are plotting their takeover from a secret cave hidden behind a waterfall.

This is all good stuff but the thing I really love about Obsidian’s approach here is that the reveal of the secret headquarters – be that via Dorso or your spy’s correspondence – does not trigger a quest to save Fior mes Ivèrno. There’s no “Investigate the Steel Garotte” task added to your journal. For all this to work, you need to pay attention and follow up on the information you’ve provided. Avowed is most certainly a video game RPG, but in this moment it does its best to emulate a tabletop RPG in which a dungeon master subtly drops a lead that can only unfold if a player notices it. And, like in those tabletop campaigns, Avowed blooms into something truly special if you chase the bait.

This secret quest is about exploring beyond the limits of unwritten video game rules.

The locked gate inside the secret cave is guarded by two paladins who pose a pretty simple ultimatum; either look the other way or die by their hand. They’re even willing to offer a bribe. Your choice here will no doubt be influenced by your existing relationship with the Steel Garotte and its Darth Vader-ish leader, Inquisitor Lödwyn. While very clearly an “evil” faction, Avowed allows you to express support for the Steel Garotte’s fanatical approach, and anyone on a villainous playthrough will want to leave them undisturbed. Everyone else has a few other options; you can butcher the guard and loot the key from their corpse, use an invisibility spell and lockpick to enter unseen, or make good use of Avowed’s exceptional level design and duck into a secret tunnel to bypass the guards entirely.

Beyond the locked gate, as you’d expect, lies a whole detachment of paladins ready to cause mayhem. Instructional notes from Lödwyn found around the cave reveal their mission: the Steel Garotte plans to burn Fior mes Ivèrno to the ground. These notes are your only insight into what lies ahead; push on with the main quest without investigating the cave and the pyrotechnic display comes without warning. But now you have warning, it’s obvious what needs to be done to save the city: kill everyone in the cave.

Your bloody efforts are successful… ish. The Steel Garotte still attacks Fior mes Ivèrno, but with far fewer troops than it otherwise would have. And so rather than overwhelm the city’s defenders with fire and swords, the paladins are repelled. Their failure means that Fior mes Ivèrno remains open for business for the rest of the game. You can revisit its streets, continue to trade with its merchants, and complete any unfinished business you have there.

There are a couple of threads on Reddit complaining that Avowed makes “no effort” to inform you about how you can save Fior mes Ivèrno. It’s in these complaints that the real magic of this story is revealed. This whole secret section of Avowed is about more than just ensuring a city remains accessible on your map. It’s about encouraging genuine curiosity. It’s about exploring beyond the limits of unwritten video game rules. It’s about recognising your ability to properly comprehend and respond to information. It is a reward for acting on something because you care about the results of a conflict, not because it ticks off a box in a quest log.

Through this quest that is not actually a quest, we see an example of Avowed’s hidden depths. Beneath the thick surface layer of action-heavy combat lies an admirably knotty RPG full of intersecting choices. Side quests overlap with main missions to adjust the flow of the story. Minor decisions, such as convincing a woman in a church to be your informant, can result in major payoffs many hours later.

This is the magic that RPGs are built upon – the stuff that Baldur’s Gate 3 is adored for – and I wish more games were willing to put trust in their players to find optional quests that are more impactful than simple collectable trinkets. Imagine if, in Playground’s upcoming Fable, pushing for an evil playthrough organically leads you to a thieves den where, if you just sit and listen for a while, you can eavesdrop on a conversation which reveals a planned heist that overlaps with an upcoming main quest. Or a discovery in a future Assassin’s Creed game that puts you on the trail of a secret target whose death allows you to step into an open power vacuum. These kinds of activities, when presented without any on-screen prompt or quest log addition, become genuine discoveries rather than video game “content.” They are an excellent example of the RPG golden standard: a world that responds to your choices. And in its secret quest to save Fior mes Ivèrno, Avowed really captures the true spirit of role-playing games.

Matt Purslow is IGN’s Senior Features Editor.