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[sebas]

I disagree with Eora being bland. Initially it's set out as a grim fantasy with aboriginal influences, grounded interventionist religion mixed with reincarnation. Plus it has guns , the cipher class and npcs like Durance and Grieving mother are quite memorable. It's other things which make it bland, more "wordly" stuff like itemisation and quests.

 

[Sentinel]

What's rather funny is that Infinitron didn't even quote Obsidian's marketing in the OP, but the blurb is all his original content.

fake news

 

[Poseidon00]

It's absolutely similar to Veilguard, on many fronts.
Much like Veilguard, Avowed is also tied to a franchise that started out as a fairly dark and gritty setting with creepy looking monsters and complex, nuanced characters. Each subsequent entry in both franchises eroded away the darker aspects of their respective settings and began injecting more and more modern day real world viewpoints and ideologies.

Deadfire had sillier character writing, but it wasn't any less dark. Every faction is monstrous and you're railroaded into a grim ending.

Not to mention you get the worst ending possible if you try to resist Eothas. Like, excuse me for wanting a cool final boss fight.

 

[Kev Inkline]

What zany characters and what posing?

This is the cast for the new Marvel TV show.
View attachment 57841

That seems like regular PoE spell effects to me.

Possible, but the Xbox people watching that trailer have seen Veilguard's marketing, and haven't played PoE. Or at least have seen Veilguard more recently, and have more recent memory of it.

Just spent a good part of an hour clicking that picture and wondering why it's not playing....

 

[Oberon]

This is the cast for the new Marvel TV show.

I'm not seeing the big difference here.

Avowed is missing the tentacles

 

[Oberon]

I disagree with Eora being bland. Initially it's set out as a grim fantasy with aboriginal influences, grounded interventionist religion mixed with reincarnation. Plus it has guns , the cipher class and npcs like Durance and Grieving mother are quite memorable. It's other things which make it bland, more "wordly" stuff like itemisation and quests.

Eora is a highbrow setting. When it was originally written it was not tainted by wokeness at all and respected it's audience. Early modern tech was a very cool choice.

 

[agris]

"This feels like […]" isn't about one's own preferences.

 

[Kem0sabe]

After that veilguard review, I wouldn't trust anything Mortisimal has to say.

 

[Tyranicon]

Eora is a highbrow setting.

Are you saying the setting is legitimately well-written and would stand up to scrutiny, even against literary standards, or are you just saying you like it?

There are very few vidya games I would unironically classify as highbrow, much less their settings.

 

[Roguey]

Are you saying the setting is legitimately well-written and would stand up to scrutiny, even against literary standards, or are you just saying you like it?

There are very few vidya games I would unironically classify as highbrow, much less their settings.

It was conceived by history major Josh Sawyer, Harvard alumnus Eric Fenstermaker, and MA in psychology George Ziets. Based on credentials, it's as highbrow as a fantasy game setting can possibly get.

 

[Morality Games]

I disagree with Eora being bland. Initially it's set out as a grim fantasy with aboriginal influences, grounded interventionist religion mixed with reincarnation. Plus it has guns , the cipher class and npcs like Durance and Grieving mother are quite memorable. It's other things which make it bland, more "wordly" stuff like itemisation and quests.

I think there are two points of conflation going on here.

Pillars of Eternity 1 being bland =/= Eora is bland.

The overall narrative incorporating Eora as a setting is very dry =/= Eora is bland.

The narrative of the first Pillars of Eternity game is overall pretty unexciting but has a lot of low key interesting points. Things don't start heating up until the very end. I think Obsidian felt comfortable doing this because the original Baldur's Gate worked exactly the same way, things don't really escalate until sudden revelations in the final confrontation set up a more epic sequel.

The second point is that Eora is pretty dry (not identical to being bland) because Sawyer and team wrote it as "D&D with Forgotten Realms pantheon but if it was actual history during the Age of Discovery" and history (especially the way Sawyer understands) is pretty dry reading for the most part.

Dryness in storytelling pretty much equivocates to a slow burn. It's not immediately gratifying but it can add up to sometihng interesting if allowed to achieve fruition. Hence why dryness is often favored in novel writing.

 

[luj1]

It was conceived by history major Josh Sawyer, Harvard alumnus Eric Fenstermaker, and MA in psychology George Ziets. Based on credentials, it's as highbrow as a fantasy game setting can possibly get.

Eh

Vampires = fampyrs
ghouls = guls
godlikes = identical to Planetouched from DnD
vithracks = basically illithid
etc.

Based on credentials, their worldbuilding is quite poor and unoriginal. I think Eora is the most soul numbingly boring world I have ever seen/played in over 25 years of gaming.

 

[Roguey]

Vampires = fampyrs
ghouls = guls

Yeah, and? What an empty criticism. A dimwitted take if you will, which isn't surprising, a lot of highbrow works deeply offend the sensibilities of dims and some mids.

 

[luj1]

Need to put Roguey in there too broski. Last couple of years xhe is trying harder than Infinitron lol

 

[luj1]

a lot of highbrow works deeply offend the sensibilities of dims and some mids.

lol Pillars is not high brow at all. It is very mediocre across all design aspects, at best. This has been discussed and proven a million times on these boards (if you have gaming standards). Where does Pillars rank on Codex top lists? Something like 60? Lol

 

[Roguey]

lol Pillars is not high brow at all. It is very mediocre across all design aspects, at best. This has been discussed and proven a million times on these boards (if you have gaming standards). Where does Pillars rank on Codex top lists? Something like 60? Lol

"Highbrow" doesn't necessarily mean good. It means scholarly, intellectual. As far as I know/remember, Planescape, Morrowind (just this one, no other TES game), and Eora are the only API-era western fantasy settings that could be described as highbrow. The rest are made by midwits/dimwits copying whatever popular book series or movie they're into. There was a time when Troika managed to fool people into believing they were highbrow, but Tim and Leonard have given enough interviews and released The Outer Worlds to show they're firmly mid, just mids with good sensibilities (until The Outer Worlds anyway ). And sure, there are a lot of perfectly fine middlebrow games, some more successful in their goals than the highbrow ones, but that doesn't make them highbrow.

 

[Fedora Master]

I hope none of you are actually stupid enough to preorder.

 

[Fedora Master]

Also the video is currently delisted. Are they trying to hide this or was it always delisted?

It was always unlisted. I found it here: https://www.obsidian.net/news

You were the kind of kid who would poke dead animals with a stick all day, weren't you.

 

[Thalstarion]

The game has pronoun selection, so it really is like Veilguard on that front as well. Just slightly better hidden.

Source: https://x.com/Pirat_Nation/status/1859986344006815787

 

[Grauken]

The game has pronoun selection, so it really is like Veilguard on that front as well. Just slightly better hidden.

Source: https://x.com/Pirat_Nation/status/1859986344006815787

Oh no, not the pronouns

 

[jaekl]

Pronouns are actually a good hint that a game is gonna be unbearable trash, because game developers are sneaky and dishonest so you need to scrutinise everything carefully. That said, you don't need any hints for this one.

 

[Roguey]

Pronouns are actually a good hint that a game is gonna be unbearable trash, because game developers are sneaky and dishonest so you need to scrutinise everything carefully. That said, you don't need any hints for this one.

Game devs are loud and proud about their liberalism, nothing sneaky about it.

 

[jaekl]

I swear to god I can't wait until they can detect autism in the womb and mass abortions make them go extinct.

 

[Morality Games]

Unless you abort everyone who is rational or honest, I don't think you'll notice much of a difference.

Game developers are 'sneaky' because a large part of their job is being "used cars salesmen" trying to move their products (honesty is often a firable offense, especially in marketing), but Roguey is right they aren't sneaky about their politics and when it comes to pronoun or gender identity stuff it's less about being sneaky and more about them proceeding as if they've already won the argument.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I swear to god I can't wait until they can detect autism in the womb and mass abortions make them go extinct.

Jesus man, you'd wipe out 80% of the Codex just like that!?