Setting and characters As with
Wadjet Eye's previous
Blackwell series, the game is set in a fictionalized version of contemporary New York City where magic and demons are real and takes place in various New York settings, such as
Chinatown,
Brooklyn,
Staten Island and
Wall Street.
Unavowed begins with the protagonist being
exorcised by Eli, a
sorcerer belonging to Unavowed, a group of supernatural investigators.
Plot After the exorcism, the player's character joins Unavowed's New York branch and learns that supernatural threats have increased within the last year. The team visits the places where supernatural occurrences have been reported. When researching on
Staten Island, the team encounters Vicki Santina who was suspended after questioning supernatural occurrences within
the NYPD's 120th precinct. On a mission in
the Bronx, they meet Logan who, together with his spirit guide KayKay, tries to calm three
poltergeists. Once both problems are solved, Logan and Vicki join Unavowed. When reexamining the first site the team investigated with Logan and Vicki, the team encounters Galene, a
dryad Kalash banished 400 years earlier, with whom the protagonist had made a pact and learns the demon's name, Melkhiresa. Galene captures one of the team members and challenges Kalash to fight her in a battle to the death. The player's character is forced to kill Kalash to defeat Galene. With the demon's name, Eli is able to determine that they had returned to the place of the first possession: the Under The Bricks theater (actor background), Sammy's Bar (barkeeper background) or the Eternox Nightclub (cop background). There the team finds a closed portal and notes previously written by the protagonist indicating a total of six sites they had been interfering with. These include the three already investigated, as well as three additional sites; on
Wall Street, in
Manhattan Chinatown and near
Prospect Park in
Brooklyn. On Wall Street, the team discovers that the protagonist conspired with
fae folk to kidnap Eli's great-grandson and manage to rescue him. In Prospect Park, they encounter
Calliope, a muse who lost her talents to a local artist who used them to "inspire" an artist to set himself aflame and a baker to use his own blood in his products. In Chinatown, they find out that a
ba jiao gui (banana ghost from Chinese folklore) haunts the neighborhood, and deal with it. The player may tackle these three sites in any order. After finishing two of them, the player's character is possessed again but they manage to alert the team by reaching out to KayKay. The game flashes back to the opening scene, which now plays out differently: the protagonist had actually forced Melkhiresa to meld with them. The nature of this melding meant that the protagonist's memories entered Melkhiresa's mind (hence why Melkhiresa acted naturally in the protagonist's body), while Melkhiresa's boundless knowledge was available to the protagonist, allowing them to use it for their own agenda. Eli's exorcisms are not limited to demons; they can exorcise any "wicked spirit", and this includes the protagonist. After Eli exorcised the protagonist's soul in the beginning of the game, this led to the protagonist's soul being removed from the body while Melkhiresa, the demon, was left in control of their body. The team catches up with the player's character and exorcises the protagonist again, leaving Melkhiresa once again in control of the protagonist's body, but the protagonist's wicked spirit escapes and remains free. The team then proceeds to finish the third task. With all six sites investigated, they return to the place Melkhiresa first joined with the protagonist and use a portal to travel to a pocket dimension to hunt down the protagonist's soul. Various obstacles have to be scaled on the way and, depending on the choices in previous missions, Melkhiresa summons creatures previously encountered to help the team. The player's character confronts the soul of the protagonist on top of the
Empire State Building who pleads with them to willingly merge into one being again to create a new world based on their beliefs. The player can react in four different ways to this proposal: • Melkhiresa threatens to kill the protagonist's body they are in, forcing the protagonist's soul to release them. By releasing Melkhiresa, the pocket dimension collapses and the protagonist, now powerless, is arrested for their crimes. • Melkhiresa takes their own life by falling down the building, killing the protagonist in the process and the protagonist's body is later found in the real world at the bottom of the Empire State Building. • If Melkhiresa decides to merge with the protagonist willingly, the Unavowed will be left asleep in the pocket dimension while the protagonist does what they plan with Melkhiresa's help. • Trying to fight the protagonist will lead to them forcefully merging with Melkhiresa and then killing the Unavowed team before setting out in the real world to create more havoc. When choosing the first or second option, an ending sequence will play, with the other members of Unavowed narrating what happened next based on the player's choices in the game. Choosing the third or fourth option will only show the credits. Depending on whether the Unavowed or the protagonist emerge victorious after the final confrontation, the opening screen of the game changes, showing either the team or the protagonist. == Development ==