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

[Latelistener]

Why does it look like a game for pre-teens?

Carrie Patel
Game Director

DOA

 

[Roguey]

Why does it look like a game for pre-teens?

Carrie Patel
Game Director

DOA

No, the person you want to blame for this is this one:

Additionally https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...-setting-coming-fall-2024.134122/post-8520971

 

[Late Bloomer]

He isn't white and he knows it.

 

[Wasteland]

Obsidian is so predictable, this was supposed to be their AAA open world action RPG to rival the elder scrolls, only to be progressively toned down into fantasy outer worlds.

See that mountain? It would be ableist to let you try to climb it.

 

[Tyranicon]

Honestly, it's a good rule of thumb just to disregard anyone who uses Twitter seriously when they don't have to.

 

[scytheavatar]

This post on reddit sums up the game very well:

The more I watch previews on Avowed, the more it feels like Obsidian is following the old tradition of successful RPG developers dumping RPG mechanics in favor of making middling action games.
When their answer to "what makes this an Obsidian RPG" was combat loadouts, skill trees and dialogue choices, I felt my love for this studio die a little bit. That's not an Obsidian RPG, that's half of all action games released in the past decade.
I could forgive that if what they presented actually looked good, but I can't say that it does. The combat looks dull and repetitive in the marketing material, which doesn't augur well for the actual game. And none of the features they advertise seem impressive for a 2024 game release. Their pitch still screams "we're doing what Elder Scrolls was doing 20 years ago, but now it's prettier". Which I'm sure is not the impression they wanted to make, but it's what I'm taking away from their presentation.

 

[abija]

Their pitch still screams "we're doing what Elder Scrolls was doing 20 years ago, but now it's prettier". Which I'm sure is not the impression they wanted to make, but it's what I'm taking away from their presentation.

Sucks they missed launching after Starfield, would have made bank with just that.

 

[whydoibother]

Existence of this game makes me sad

The design was already decided on and work was underway before BG3 changed the market, now they are releasing yesterday's game in today's world. Sad!
Bit like the games trying to capture the MOBA or looter shooter fads, the big budget projects that just were in development too long and missed it.

 

[Terenty]

Obsidian is a faceless company with nobodies in senior positions. That's why even the casual crowd can see failure written all over it

 

[AwesomeButton]

Deadfire had plenty of colonial guilt, but ironically that’s exactly what allows you to play as the biggest scumbag colonizer bringing civilization to the dirty savages,

This kind of objective portrayal of the cultural clash, mostly free of the author picking sides, bears Josh' handwriting. I'm much more skeptical of Patel.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Oh, so this is the "crusty white dudes" guy?! I remember the post but not the poster. Well, I hope he and the game are erased from the world and from history. They deserve nothing more.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Is this worth watching? Is there a TL;DR?

I hate these 25-minute long videos with talking heads that take forever to get to the point.

The xaurip area they show in the video was made because someone was ahead of schedule.

wait what the fuck? how many months do they have left to launch again? is this getting delayed to 2025?

Oh boy.

Keep up guys, I told you the same as soon as the video was out:

I'm watching it more closely now. I believe the environments are very much WiP, because of how uneven the detailization is. You can see shots without gameplay, just moving camera, where the viewing angle is wide and there is rich detail on walls, ground, patches of vegetation. This was clearly staged for trailer footage. Then there are the cuts of gameplay footage, with the xaurip camp most notably where you can see bare ground in one end of the camera view and props cluttered in the other end. Also the FOV in those combat bits seems like 80. Thanks Xbox.

Besides mixing footage from trailer and gameplay, they've even been repeating bits of the same gameplay footage within the course of the "deep dive". For me this indicates they have only a couple of environments functioning where they are currently testing combat mechanics and animations. Work on the so-called "vertical slice" is likely not even complete yet. How they will go from this to release within the course of 2024, I find it hard to imagine. If it gets released this year, you can forget about QA on various combat styles and balance. If we get a decent editing pass on the text it will be a nice surprise.

 

[Nikanuur]

So, any chance that what we saw in the videos were unrefined graphics? Like... half of the shaders still not in place, hues to be re-calibrated, fog, lightning, and shadows to be trimmed or added, stuff like that?
And the magic wands hitting through shields without sort of providing a visual explanation, that is to be corrected, right?
And...
Oh man, I can't do this in good spirit.

 

[Grunker]

So, any chance that what we saw in the videos were unrefined graphics? Like... half of the shaders still not in place, hues to be re-calibrated, fog, lightning, and shadows to be trimmed or added, stuff like that?

I don't really give a shit about any of that, but the glaring lack of hit reactions and kinesthetic feedback in combat honestly made it seem like a half-baked mess. Not that I expected more from Obsidian. Guess the existance of good quest design and faction mechanics is what's going to carry this one if it's going to have any chance.

 

[whydoibother]

So, any chance that what we saw in the videos were unrefined graphics? Like... half of the shaders still not in place, hues to be re-calibrated, fog, lightning, and shadows to be trimmed or added, stuff like that?

I don't really give a shit about any of that, but the glaring lack of hit reactions and kinesthetic feedback in combat honestly make it seem like a half-baked mess. Not that I expected more from Obsidian. Guess the existance of good quest design and faction mechanics is what's going to carry this one if it's going to have any chance.

Skyrim got plenty of textures, reshaders and post-processing graphics improvements via mods, but the core lack of kinesthetic feedback and response remained, and melee combat continues to feel like shit, unless its over in 3 swings.

 

[Yoomazir]

Why does it look like a game for pre-teens?

Carrie Patel
Game Director

DOA

She didn't look particularly happy in the extended gameplay video, almost as if she knows it's going to suck and she'll be the one to take all the blame.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Some speculations from me, and some indications given by the "extended gameplay breakdown" video. They've taken the technology from TOW and are building on it, adapting it to PoE's ruleset, hopefully adding lockpicking and other stuff that was missing in TOW. Their "gameplay director" is as clueless about RPGs as anyone you can meet on the street who has played Skyrim. He lacks the vocabulary and theoretical framework when describing a game of that genre. His presence in the project might be related to Tim Cain's "semi-retirement" status, and Tim's clashes with Carrie Patel, of which we've seen hints. In other words, Patel must be very happy to be working with him. She is just as clueless about RPGs in their "game" component. Writing CYOA is more her domain.

In terms of structure, I wager Avowed is planned to repeat Deadfire note for note, but attempting to stick closer to the scope limitations. The player's character is a new arrival in the land, but unlike the Watcher, the player is a representative of one of the factions interested in that region. The factions are easy to glean - Aedyr, Rauatai, some "pseudo-Huana" faction represented by the Kai companion NPC (who is an obligatory companion, as was revealed earlier), likely also the Vailian Republics, because we saw a companion NPC from that region as well. She was named Giatta, btw, is this the Vailian for "gata", ? Carrie Patel also mentioned "a couple of more" companion NPCs, likely one from Rauatai and one from Aedyr. This is Josh' principle of companions being spokesmen for their factions, or at least it was described by him once, in relation to FNV. This approach has become pretty boring if you ask me, but by now this makes it all the more reason for Obsidian to be sticking to it.

Although the player character is sent to the Living Lands by one of the big powers, he will be free to act against their interest. In other words - the player gets to be put in the shoes of Pallegina from PoE1. Also in typical Obsidian fashion, the player is playing judge, where he arrives in a new land, explores it and its conflicts and chooses which faction to aid. This structure, combined with the early-modern colonial age setting, gives good opportunity to the writers for their shit takes on colonial history, so brace yourselves.

Just as in Deadfire, you have colonial powers' bickering on one hand and a "local region's mystery", in this instance a "mysterious soul plague" on the other hand. Since the word plague is getting thrown around so much, and since this is "the living lands" (that was supposed to be lush jungles btw), I'm willing to bet the "big reveal" in the story's midpoint will be some conflict involving Galawain.

So far, this all sounds like something Obsidian can pull off successfully. Whether you'll enjoy the game or not depends on how much you care about the PoE setting. I would have a fun time exploring the place in first person, with the downside that I'll have to listen to the companion NPCs' bullshit. Much like I felt about Deadfire.

I'm much more pessimistic about the state of Avowed as an RPG though. With someone who makes a presentation of elemental interactions, dual wielding wands, and "mixing and matching weapons and abilities" it seems nearly certain that all the "mixing and matching" will mean nothing because the game will be piss easy anyway. It will be curious to see how they've ported the isometric games' abilities and spells to first-person action gameplay, but it's clear at this stage that no one gives a rat's ass about the systems, and that combat will be completely superficial and neglected as a mechanic. I don't expect them to come up with something at the level of say FNV's balance by fall this year. Not that FNV is a shining example, but it's better than average for a first person RPG, I think.

So, "good for what it is/10". Another Obsidian mediocrity.

 

[whydoibother]

So, "good for what it is/10". Another Obsidian mediocrity.

The story of that crew, man. Make good games, company goes bankrupt. Start new company, make good games, company goes bankrupt. Start new company, make mediocrity, stay in business.

 

[AwesomeButton]

So, "good for what it is/10". Another Obsidian mediocrity.

The story of that crew, man. Make good games, company goes bankrupt. Start new company, make good games, company goes bankrupt. Start new company, make mediocrity, stay in business.

It's notable that after the habit of swapping publishers for every new release, driven by Feargus' business acumen*, the company is now swapping project leads for every new project. It's like the rot is slowly getting to the core.

* But at least Feargus and Parker must be happy after selling the company, right.

 

[whydoibother]

* But at least Feargus and Parker must be happy after selling the company, right.

Certainly better than closing the company, which is what they are used to.

 

[AwesomeButton]

* But at least Feargus and Parker must be happy after selling the company, right.

Certainly better than closing the company, which is what they are used to.

Going through the history, I wonder which will be the truly last RPG? I mean Patel's generation doesn't come from PnP background, has no idea of the RPG genre as "approximating the PnP experience on a computer", which was the assumed goal of the first "mainstream" RPGs in the 90s. So when the last people who witnessed and took part in the original Fallout and IE games leave the scene, the horizon of expectation for an RPG within the RPG designers' circle will unanimously reset to "something like Skyrim". In other words, RPG will mean a lame action game, with some dialogue. Like Avowed. Eventually, there will be no one to design RPGs in the way we understood them, even in the twisted half-assed compromise form that are PoE and Owlcat's Pathfinders. It's going to be a funny world. Makes you feel like Arthur walking through the streets of Saint Denis.

 

[whydoibother]

Going through the history, I wonder which will be the truly last RPG?

We just had a D&D system game win all of the Game Awards. And yeah, it wasn't the tabletop stuff that sold it, but its very obviously wearing that cloak. Fucking huge dice being rolled in the middle of your screen, golden dice if you beat it on hard mode, etc. Its both a tabletop system, and screaming the pop-culture tabletop aesthetic.
I think this is returning, not going away. If Obsidian weren't so deep into Avowed, they'd be announcing something new to ride the wave. Sawyer might do that soon, he is currently not working on anything else irrc. And he is saying in interviews he'd do it if he got "BG3 type money".

 

[Nikanuur]

So, any chance that what we saw in the videos were unrefined graphics? Like... half of the shaders still not in place, hues to be re-calibrated, fog, lightning, and shadows to be trimmed or added, stuff like that?

I don't really give a shit about any of that, but the glaring lack of hit reactions and kinesthetic feedback in combat honestly made it seem like a half-baked mess. Not that I expected more from Obsidian. Guess the existance of good quest design and faction mechanics is what's going to carry this one if it's going to have any chance.

What I was somewhat vaguely referring to was the bland, plastic feel. I mean, it's okay if the graphics are simple, dated, or schematic and the heart of the game is good. However, it's insulting and generates disgust, if the graphics pose for 'great 3D' but portray stuff in the plastic-ish way we could've seen in the videos so far.
Other than that, I agree.

 

[Cancer]

Trash. "Gameplay trailer" with 80% cutscenes, and what they do show is nothing but Sony-doing-Bethesda hackenslash. People in the comments section are genuinely praising the pretty spell effects.

 

[Infinitron]

They've taken the technology from TOW and are building on it, adapting it to PoE's ruleset, hopefully adding lockpicking and other stuff that was missing in TOW.

I think they might be building on Grounded as well. Something about the pace of melee combat reminded me more of that than TOW. I could be wrong though.