Eternity Avowed - Obsidian's first person action-RPG in the Pillars of Eternity setting - coming February 18th

[Gargaune]

I don't think engine would matter that much with loading times. With pillows game loads the whole 2D multilayered map at once where in most other 3D games it loads the immediate area only then the rest and/or 3D games have more duplicated assets which reqs loading 1 of each etc.

That's not it here, it's the engine, or at least it was at the time, I don't know how Unity's developed since. PFKM was running 3D on Unity and its load times were just as miserable as Pillows' 2D.

 

[Quillon]

I don't think engine would matter that much with loading times. With pillows game loads the whole 2D multilayered map at once where in most other 3D games it loads the immediate area only then the rest and/or 3D games have more duplicated assets which reqs loading 1 of each etc.

That's not it here, it's the engine, or at least it was at the time, I don't know how Unity's developed since. PFKM was running 3D on Unity and its load times were just as miserable as Pillows' 2D.

My experience with PFKM/WotR is it is fast af at first then gradually gets slow af cos of save bloat.

 

[Gargaune]

My experience with PFKM/WotR is it is fast af at first then gradually gets slow af cos of save bloat.

I seem to recall PFKM's prologue was okayish on load times, and then suddenly they ballooned once I got let loose on the main map. An instant and significant gap that wasn't down to gradual save bloat.

 

[Quillon]

My experience with PFKM/WotR is it is fast af at first then gradually gets slow af cos of save bloat.

I seem to recall PFKM's prologue was okayish on load times, and then suddenly they ballooned once I got let loose on the main map. An instant and significant gap that wasn't down to gradual save bloat.

Wasn't the prologue the whole ass act to get the barony in the same map?

According to both of us the fact is the engine could and did load the areas fast then it got slowed down(whether gradually or suddenly) so save bloat explanation is the most logical one

 

[Immortal]

Though the impression I get is that the Atom Team put in the effort to make sure loading times were fast.
That's just one.

This whole "Developers have to put in effort" is always true for every engine.
You've created some weird fanfic in your head that other engines don't require effort to make things perform well.

Unity's disadvantage is that it's too easy to compile a game that works. So developers *think* they don't need to do the same optimizations that other engines would likewise require. Preloading scenes in memory is industry practise, it's not Unity's fault when dev's don't do it. The only limitation on caching in memory should be shitty hardware.

Yeah all those Unity RPGs with fast loading times like uh....

You are making the wrong argument here.
Saying "Look! Other shitty game devs made crappy games too! checkmate" doesn't really counter my point.

If your argument is "Unity requires work other engines don't" you should of said: "Name a Unreal RPG that runs poorly".

 

[Gargaune]

My experience with PFKM/WotR is it is fast af at first then gradually gets slow af cos of save bloat.

I seem to recall PFKM's prologue was okayish on load times, and then suddenly they ballooned once I got let loose on the main map. An instant and significant gap that wasn't down to gradual save bloat.

Wasn't the prologue the whole ass act to get the barony in the same map?

According to both of us the fact is the engine could and did load the areas fast then it got slowed down(whether gradually or suddenly) so save bloat explanation is the most logical one

Whatever the game was loading, I remember the times going up sharply at a specific point in the first part of the game. That's not what "save bloat" means, it's the engine choking on a larger chuck of data. Save bloat refers to a gradual process - visit an area there, pick up a daisy here, dump some loot in another place - that slowly tanks load times over time. PFKM definitely has save bloat, a pretty horrendous case of it, but it's not what I'm describing here, your load times balloon suddenly in the first part of the game and then slowly get worse as you carry on.

Anyway, you've got two Unity isometric RPGs with different developers and very different approaches to graphics and they both load slow as shit, seems like a pretty good case for Occam's Razor.

 

[Morality Games]

So can Avowed be the Baldurs gate 3 killer or will we have to wait for Dragon Age 4

The only thing DA4 is gonna kill is itself.

Dragon Age: Origins has its charms, although there is little reason to revisit it in the post-Kickstarter Age of RPGs. Even a very heavily flawed game like Torment: Tides of Numenera is probably more worth playing.

I'll maintain that Dragon Age II is interesting as an oddity in that is a structural (not thematic) successor to Planescape: Torment due to:

(a) takes place mostly in one hub that extensively reuses environments for quests
(b) heavily jRPG/Visual novel-influenced approach to companions and narrative
(c) combat/encounters are similarly dumb and empathize style over substance. Planescape stripped down D&D systems and Dragon Age II stripped down Dragon Age: Origins systems
(d) made on a shoestring budget over a limited timeframe

I don't know if I like it as a game, but it's interesting as a product in the history of RPGs.

The key structural difference is that the presentation of the narrative in DAII is cinematic and the presentation of the narrative in Planescape is novelistic.

 

[Morality Games]

I thought it was obvious.

Orders from on high. We only have 1-2 years of development time and a limited budget to make a cRPG. But cRPGs are technically complex and consume large budgets and require lots of time. What will we do?

Avellone: We’re going to do a single hub in the city of Sigil. Because we’ll have a limited amount of time to design and program areas, quests will take players through the same area multiple times as the narrative advances. We’ll add some condensed areas outside of Sigil if we can. It won't be like Baldur's Gate where you can go wherever you want among areas on the World Map; new areas will be be unlocked through linear narrative progression so we don't sequence break our plot.

Gaider: I remember Chris was in a similar situation back in Black Isle. We’re going to do a single hub in the city of Kirkwall. Because we’ll have a limited amount of time to design and program areas, quests will take players through the same areas multiple times as the narrative advances. We’ll have a few condensed areas outside of Kirkwall and add some more in DLC if we can. It won't be like Baldur's Gate Dragon Age: Origins* where you can go wherever you want among the areas on the World Map; new areas will be unlocked through linear narrative progression so we don't sequence break our plot.

Sounds good. What about character backgrounds? Male and female options? Different races?

Avellone: The world and story are narrative driven, not adventure-driven, so we should probably have a pre-generated character with a lot of tie-ins with the world and the NPCs in it. We’ll call him the Nameless One. The history of his previous incarnations in Sigil will be an important part of the game/story. This will help us squeeze the most mileage out of our limited content.

Gaider: The the world and story are narrative driven, not adventure-driven, so we should probably have a pre-generated character with a lot of tie-ins with the world and the NPCs in it. We’ll call him Hawke. His family's history in Kirkwall will be an important part of the game/story. This will help us squeeze the most mileage out of our limited content. I remember Chris did something similar with the Nameless One, back in Torment. I'm going to get one over on Avellone though because Hawke can be male OR female, hahaha. Still human only though.

Sounds good. But what about the systems?

Avellone: We’re going to strip down the classes to Mage/Fighter/Thief. This will help us manage the scope of production.

Gaider: Luckily our only classes are Mage/Warrior/Rogue, so nobody can be mad we didn’t implement other classes like they were with Chris and Torment (they already got mad at us for that for Origins, they can't be mad twice!), but we’re going to strip away the sub-classes you could unlock by exploring the world back in Origins. Now they can just be Specializations that you have. Yeah, now you just have them. That will help us manage the scope of production.

What about alignments?

Avellone: We'll have the full D&D alignments from Law/Chaos and Good/Evil. It will help me focus the dialogue and define the Nameless One's identity in the world, how he interacts with NPCs and how NPCs react to him. Hopefully people will accept our pre-gen protagonist if they can at least decide the moral alignment.

Gaider: Well, we didn't have any alignments in Dragon: Origins, but they seemed important to the story in Torment. So we'll do Diplomatic/Humorous/Aggressive (Good/Lawful, Chaotic, Evil). This will help us focus the dialogue and define Hawke's identity in the world, how he interacts with NPCs and how NPCs react to him. Hopefully people will accept our pre-gen protagonist if we let them at least decide the personality.

Alright! This coming together nicely! But what about combat? cRPGs have thoughtful encounters and those take a lot of effort.

Avellone: We’ll just have mobs attack the Nameless One and his party, but they can have all sorts of fancy animated moves to destroy them. The RtwP will keep the pace fast and flashy. Hopefully the story makes up for it.

Gaider: We’ll just have mobs attack the Hawke and his party., but they can have all sorts of fancy animated moves to destroy them. The RtwP will keep the pace fast and flashy. Hopefully the story makes up for it, it worked for Chris.

Almost there! What about companions?

Avellone: We’re going to code in an invisible influence system the player can’t see scored from 0 to 20. High Influence scores trigger favorable results, lower Influence score will also trigger interesting results based in animosity the companions feel toward the Nameless One.

Gaider: We’re going to have a visible influence System along a spectrum called Rival and Friendship – might as well call it 0 and 20, they're both spectrums with negative-positive statistical values. High Friendship triggers favorable results; high Rivalry will also trigger interesting results based in the animosity the companions feel toward Hawke.

But what about the overall presentation?

Avellone: I'm going to make it like a novel, with lots of text. Like an interactive novel.

Gaider: I'm going to make it like a movie, with lots of cinematics, just like all of our post-Interplay games. Modern gamers like cinematics and not text, I'm not even going to have the textual cues in the response options clearly indicate what the Hawke voice actor actually says in the scene. Anyway, it will be like an interactive movie.

Do you really think this is going to work?

Avellone: I dunno. I hope so. I don't really have a choice given Interplay's constraints for this production.

Gaider: Didn't really work that well for Avellone in a commercial sense, but that's because players hate reading! This is going to be like a movie. Also, we don't really have a choice given EA's constraints for this production.

 

[Butter]

I'm not convinced Gaider is that articulate.

 

[frajaq]

Maybe this will be moderately successful since it will fill a void of people waiting for TES 6? And Starfield bombing?

 

[NaturallyCarnivorousSheep]

On a serious note it's hard to say. Maybe we should wait for 18th to see more(if there is more to it), but my prediction is that it may turn out kinda like TOW where as long as you don't interact with companions it's moderately fun. The only things that make me doubt it is the fact that it's an online/coop game turned single player and that it uses classless system, but I guess the latter is hard to avoid if you're making action game(a lot of the skills in PoE would simply be useless in it).

 

[luj1]

it may turn out kinda like TOW where as long as you don't interact with companions it's moderately fun.

Post inspired by the Albanian sport of drinking aftershave and rolling with pigs in mud.

 

[REhorror]

Nowadays I prefer my RPG to be 3rd person or isometric.

 

[NaturallyCarnivorousSheep]

it may turn out kinda like TOW where as long as you don't interact with companions it's moderately fun.

Post inspired by the Albanian sport of drinking aftershave and rolling with pigs in mud.

There's nothing offensive about TOW other than the shit writing, so yes the game is moderately fun when you try to interact with it as little as possible. You're like the people who played Deadfire without making full custom party and ignoring companions who complained that fishman tried to rape them.

 

[GentlemanCthulhu]

it may turn out kinda like TOW where as long as you don't interact with companions it's moderately fun.

Post inspired by the Albanian sport of drinking aftershave and rolling with pigs in mud.

There's nothing offensive about TOW other than the shit writing, so yes the game is moderately fun when you try to interact with it as little as possible. You're like the people who played Deadfire without making full custom party and ignoring companions who complained that fishman tried to rape them.

The braindead stealth system is fairly offensive imo. In general, the game's just shallow mechanically. I don't know, I guess i'm just offended by mediocrity.

 

[scytheavatar]

Maybe this will be moderately successful since it will fill a void of people waiting for TES 6? And Starfield bombing?

It's the opposite, Bethesda is a giant and it hitting the shit fan means that there's no way the Bethesda wannabes isn't going to be covered in shit. You can see it in comic book movies where the MCU films bombing means that the DC films are not doing much better. Avowed could be DOA simply because of that, Obsidian has been chasing trends which are already outdated.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Obsidian has been chasing trends which are already outdated.

Like I said before in this thread, nothing screams "my thinking has calcified sometime around 2003" like the belief that switching your games from isometric to FPP will improve their sales. And especially since BG3. Maybe in 10 years from now, if Obsidian hasn't closed they will be working on "our own BG3", or "a spiritual successor".

 

[InD_ImaginE]

People taking Starfield as "general Bethesda open world" is not entirely correct

Starfield also has a lot of issues older (like FO4 or Skyrim) don't have simply due to trying being more ambitious than the engine could support + there are lack of content in that big world of Starfield compared to Skyrim where the next content is always around the corner

 

[REhorror]

People taking Starfield as "general Bethesda open world" is not entirely correct

Starfield also has a lot of issues older (like FO4 or Skyrim) don't have simply due to trying being more ambitious than the engine could support + there are lack of content in that big world of Starfield compared to Skyrim where the next content is always around the corner

Starfield is also not open world.

Todd went so hard on open world he's back to loading screens in Starfield, what a sight.

 

[Cross]

Sounds good. What about character backgrounds? Male and female options? Different races?

Avellone: The world and story are narrative driven, not adventure-driven, so we should probably have a pre-generated character with a lot of tie-ins with the world and the NPCs in it. We’ll call him the Nameless One. This will help us squeeze the most mileage out of our content.

Gaider: The the world and story are narrative driven, not adventure-driven, so we should probably have a pre-generated character with a lot of tie-ins with the world and the NPCs in it. We’ll call him Hawke. This will help us squeeze the most mileage out of our content. I remember Chris did something similar with the Nameless One, back in Torment.

Hawke is fantasy commander Shepard. You seem to be confusing the standard practice of giving the protagonist a generic surname for the purpose of voice acting with the protagonist being unique. You name Hawke and choose their gender.

The entire point of the Nameless One, like many other aspects of Torment, was to subvert the player's expectations of RPG tropes. Instead of naming your character at the start of the game, you regain your identity at the very end. Instead of saving the world, you're immortal and your goal is to find a way to die. Instead of going from zero to hero, you're simply relearning skills from your previous lives.
Why did you make up these conversations and present them as if they were real interview excerpts?

The key structural difference is that the presentation of the narrative in DAII is cinematic and the presentation of the narrative in Planescape is novelistic.

That's the key structural difference you came up with? I can think of a few ones that are more significant.

Dragon Age 2 doesn't have any stat/skill checks.

The protagonist in DA2 frequently acts and talks without the player's input. In Torment the player is generally always in control of what the Nameless One says and does.

The narrative in Torment is designed around the possibility that companions die, are removed from the party or the player never meets them or recruits them. This is not possible in Dragon Age 2, where companions are mandatory, unkillable and very horny (and bisexual).

(a) takes place mostly in one hub that extensively reuses environments for quests

DA2, besides being a hideous looking game, is notorious for its copy-pasted environments. Torment doesn't do that, every area looks distinct.

Torment's structure is similar to another BioWare game, but it's not DA2, it's Baldur's Gate 2.

Both of them start out in a big city hub, followed by a linear trek through a variety of locales, then you return to the city and you go to a hostile planar location for the final showdown.

(d) made on a shoestring budget over a limited timeframe

DA2 did not have a shoestring budget. Had BioWare simply reused the mechanics and assets of DA:O, they could've made the most of the limited development time. Instead they decided to reinvent everything and ended up making it look and play worse than DA:O, which did not have stellar graphics and mechanics to begin with.

Torment was made by an inexperienced team using an unfinished version of the Infinity Engine, which is one of the reasons why it turned out the way it did. Putting Feargus in charge of the combat wasn't the brightest idea either.

 

[Jenkem]

The Grounded team should make a survival crafting game set in Eora, it's the only hope Obsidian has to get people to care about the setting.

 

[Quillon]

The Grounded team should make a survival crafting game set in Eora, it's the only hope Obsidian has to get people to care about the setting.

set in destroyed caed nua with the resources are spread throughout the 15 levels

 

[Abu Antar]

Is it possible to see this at the upcoming Microsoft event? I would imagine that this should be a 2024 release.

 

[ferratilis]

Is it possible to see this at the upcoming Microsoft event? I would imagine that this should be a 2024 release.

https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2024/01/09/xbox-developer-direct-2024/

Avowed: The team at Obsidian will share the first deep dive into the gameplay experience fans can expect in Avowed, their upcoming fantasy action RPG, set in the fantastical, vibrant Living Lands. Learn more about how Obsidian’s expertise in building worlds with deep themes, dynamic gameplay, and thoughtful reactivity come to life in Avowed where players will have agency to make choices to shape every step of their adventure.

 

[Abu Antar]

I see. Thanks. I haven't been following neither Obsidian, nor Avowed very much.