From Skyrim to Baldur's Gate 3, spiders are universally horrible – but Avowed finds a way to make them worse than ever

It wasn't long before I encountered a spider in Obsidian Entertainment's sleek new action RPG, Avowed. Where this encounter happens depends on your path: I was wandering around Dawnshore and admiring the scenery when I stumbled upon a deserted seaside cavern. Sitting innocently in the center was a glowing treasure chest, and I couldn't help but recall the classic opening scene from Raiders Of The Lost Ark. "Let us hurry. There is nothing to fear here," I thought to myself.

That's what scares me. Spider webs adorn the walls. There are suspiciously crimson stains around the chest. Bodies strung up in webs. It couldn't hint more of a trap if it had "this is a trap" daubed over the walls. In blood.

I approach the chest, and battle inevitably commences, with Ivory Spinner Spiderlings emerging from the ground, much like our own Trap-door Spiders. While numerous and inordinately large by real-life standards, these critters are easily dispatched in a spray of green blood. Watch out, though: here come Mom and Dad.

Eight-legged nightmares

Spiders have long been the go-to bad guys in fantasy media, from the Lord Of The Rings' monstrous Shelob to the numerous varieties encountered in the worlds of Dungeons & Dragons. I can confirm that leafing through the Fighting Fantasy book The Warlock Of Firetop Mountain as a callow nine-year-old, and being greeted with a picture of a maliciously fanged Giant Spider is not something you forget in a hurry, either.

Today, CRPGs have continued to tap into our fear of spiders. Skyrim's wilderness and underground caverns are infested with Frostbite Spiders, while Baldur's Gate 3 boasts horrific creatures such as the Phase Spider (phases in and out of the material plane, appearing right behind you) and Driders, an arcane mix of Dark Elf and Giant Spider. It's enough to send your arachnophobia into overdrive.

However, there's no eight-legged monstrosity quite like those in the Living Lands. Like most of the game, Avowed's spiders sport diverse colors. Gone are the plain and boring grey and brown spiders of yore: Dawnshore and beyond is rife with an explosion of multicolored arachnid terror, each one matching its environment with vibrant hues. There's the verdant Wood Crawler, its body echoing its forest environment, leafy sprigs sprouting from its legs and vein-like autumnal flashes of red adorning its green carapace.

You'll also meet sharp-edged Crystal Eaters and Ivory Spinner Spiders, their legs and bodies pitted with cobalt spikes, the latter pervading Paradis in particular. These have their own quest, with the player character, the Envoy, venturing below the city to eliminate the source of the invasion, a spider queen called Nacib.

Nacib is one of the biggest and meanest spiders in Avowed. Despite her size, she's also the most agile. Having spotted the Envoy, she leaps towards them, fangs bared, flinging sticky balls of web at her enemies to slow them down. Nacib's long armoured legs are light and dark green; her body a wrinkled, swollen mass of muscular magenta from which not one but two sets of pincers protrude. And there, on top of her horned head, sit eight bulbous blue eyes, blank and emotionless like all the best of nature's killers. Long after you've plunged your sword into her for the last time, this gargantuan arachnid will stay in your mind – and nightmares.

The colors, eye-catching and attractive, betray a hostile nature that makes Avowed’s spiders just as dangerous as their kin from Skyrim, Baldur's Gate 3, et al. Worse, like all the creatures of the Living Lands, you'll eventually encounter spiders infected with the Dreamscourge, the insidious disease that threatens to plunge the world of Eora into turmoil and the reason the Envoy is in the Living Lands in the first place.

Known as Dreamthralls, these creatures no longer merely inhabit the land – they are the land, a repulsive and spine-tingling bastardisation of their former selves. The likely first time you'll meet them is in the sulfur mines of Shatterscarp. A group of Dreamthrall Spiders have emerged, the eviscerated bodies of the miners betraying the demented ferociousness of this new eight-legged enemy.

But why is it always spiders? The accepted wisdom with arachnophobia is that humans have had an in-built anxiety about spiders from the earliest times of our existence. However, this study from 2021 suggests that we may have actually adopted a generalized dread of chelicerates, associating spiders with a much deadlier member of that family: the scorpion.

There are already fan-made mods for Avowed that remove all the spiders from the game so arachnophobes can rest easy, although it appears our eight-legged friends are here to stay, at least in videogame form. Yet beware, brave adventurer: next time you venture into some dark and damp cavern, there just might be a sting in the tail.

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