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

[REhorror]

Avowed won't reach 3 million sales, let alone 20. Their market research might be good, but people in charge of creative side of things are clearly idiots. Everywhere you look on the internet, no one is optimistic about Avowed, except for die-hard Xbox fanboys and deluded Obsidian fanboys. Even those guys at Digital Foundry, who always say positive things about everything aren't that interested in it. It's simply not captivating, which is a direct consequence of what I mentioned before: forcing people who got really good at doing one thing to change direction, 180 degrees.

The delusion of market research, my man.

When 100 people work on a thing, it doesn't mean it will be good or accurate because it comes down to statistics instead of having a vision.

 

[Rhobar121]

It's simply not captivating, which is a direct consequence of what I mentioned before: forcing people who got really good at doing one thing to change direction, 180 degrees.

Now you've gone too far. Calling Obsidian good at anything is too much of an exaggeration.
The game is so miserable that I'm practically sure Obsidian came up with this idea first.
Apparently, some developers are losing their minds due to the excess funds from m$.

 

[Lord_Potato]

There's on thing puzzling me. Microsoft clearly hasn't given up on PC games. That Ara game is a PC centric title, through and through. MS Flight Simulator as well, Age of Empires is alive and well. When they acquired Obsidian and inXile, I thought they wanted to have studios that would continue their legacy of strong, PC-centric releases. So then, why the fuck are they working on these shitty, console, diet "RPGs" instead of full-fledged, isometric cRPGs?!

You have teams that spent a decade working and perfecting their skills in one type of game, each release was better than the last in technical terms, and then they do a 180 and switch to a completely different style of game, which is evident from the quality of footage in those trailers. It's stupid, both from a business and creative perspective.

Even before Microsoft acquisition Obsidian was making Outer Worlds, so its not like they were only doing isometric RPGs. Besides, Deadfire underperformed, so they figured out these kind of games aren't selling anymore.

When BG3, Avowed was already deep in production. Perhaps Obsidian's next game will be PoE3 to chase this trend instead.

 

[scytheavatar]

There's on thing puzzling me. Microsoft clearly hasn't given up on PC games. That Ara game is a PC centric title, through and through. MS Flight Simulator as well, Age of Empires is alive and well. When they acquired Obsidian and inXile, I thought they wanted to have studios that would continue their legacy of strong, PC-centric releases. So then, why the fuck are they working on these shitty, console, diet "RPGs" instead of full-fledged, isometric cRPGs?!

You have teams that spent a decade working and perfecting their skills in one type of game, each release was better than the last in technical terms, and then they do a 180 and switch to a completely different style of game, which is evident from the quality of footage in those trailers. It's stupid, both from a business and creative perspective.

Microsoft's gaming strategy is summed up by two words: Game Pass. Every decision they make is done with the goal of creating the gaming equivalent of Netflix. Phil Spencer made it clear in leaks that Microsoft may exit the gaming business if Game Pass subscribers doesn’t increase enough by 2027. A bunch of Pathfinder WOTR/DOS2 tier games isn't going to do much move the needle, you need games with the potential to be the next Skyrim.

which is a direct consequence of what I mentioned before: forcing people who got really good at doing one thing to change direction, 180 degrees.

Good at what? Cause most people will agree that Obsidian's best game ever is Fallout New Vegas. It is debatable if Obsidian was ever good at making "full-fledged, isometric cRPGs".

 

[Readher]

There's on thing puzzling me. Microsoft clearly hasn't given up on PC games. That Ara game is a PC centric title, through and through. MS Flight Simulator as well, Age of Empires is alive and well. When they acquired Obsidian and inXile, I thought they wanted to have studios that would continue their legacy of strong, PC-centric releases. So then, why the fuck are they working on these shitty, console, diet "RPGs" instead of full-fledged, isometric cRPGs?!

You have teams that spent a decade working and perfecting their skills in one type of game, each release was better than the last in technical terms, and then they do a 180 and switch to a completely different style of game, which is evident from the quality of footage in those trailers. It's stupid, both from a business and creative perspective.

No one is going to finance salaries of Californian studio so that they can make niche cRPGs that sell a few million copies at most, especially when you're dealing with a studio that's as bad with money as Obsidian. PoE2 took years to become profitable, Tyranny flopped hard, and they ran out of money during development. Why would anyone finance that kind of output? Even Owlcat does better, and their operating costs are infinitely lower.

Naturally, Obsidian could be making something like BG3 - a mix of cRPG and "cinematic" RPG. Why they don't do that? I can only guess, but I'd say it's the lack of talent that would allow writing systems akin to BG3 while maintaining AAA production values. Much easier to make an FPP game, which UE is tailored for, with some half-assed combat that's "good enough" and excusing it with "first-person melee combat is shit in every game anyway", especially when they have TOW to build from. Plus, Avowed has been in development for some time already, and no one expected BG3 to blow up as it did, so publishers wouldn't be willing to allocate enough money for a project like that back then.

 

[ferratilis]

Good at what?

Good at making isometric RPGs. Some mechanics and Sawyer's insistence on balance might be questionable, but you have to admit that both PoE 1 and 2 are good RPGs made by a studio that has a good grasp of the engine. Fallout New Vegas and their previous games are a bit of an anomaly, because they worked with engines that were previously used for a similar title, and could instead focus on what they're good at. PoE was when Obsidian truly started doing its own thing, and it was the least buggy title they released up to that point. With PoE2, they just expanded on their expertise, and it stopped there.

 

[Quillon]

Avowed's companions won't ditch you for making the 'wrong' choices: 'It's not about maintaining their approval, it's about getting to know them'​

Choices & No Consequences.

It's like Obsidian doesn't even wanna make CRPGs anymore.

the 2 that we saw look as interesting as the last shit I had. sooo looking forward to getting to know them and do fetch quests for them for their perfect dates, long as they are happy and fulfilled

one of them looks like they copied solas from DAI and painted him blue, black chick screams blandness; gimme pallegina instead lol (before sawya made her 1D in deadfire)

yes its time we look back at pillows with longing and treat it as a codex classic

 

[user]

There is basically no hype for this game, not even reddit cares. Getting huge VtMB2 vibes from the project,...

This is the new norm - companies declined so much they are unable to please even 50% of normies.

Don't want to jinx it, but some things in gaming could be about to change.

The industry is such a shitshow at the moment, it doesn't even need AI to continue imploding. Fear not though, the talentless circle jerk of decision makers at the top will keep clinging to their seats - it's what they excell at - so I doubt anything will change in the coming years.

 

[ferratilis]

treat it as a codex classic

Let's be honest, it always was. It's just that Codexers have been in denial for a decade.

And for those still in denial, Codex's relationship with PoE is cemented in the game, through those weapons sold by Vincent Dwellier. It's like a cattle brand on Codex's buttocks.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Ah well, i was somewhat neutral on this game but the more info they release the worse it sounds

 

[cyborgboy95]

Playing it safe, huh? Just admit that Avowed is The Outer World in a fantasy universe already lol.

Avowed's companions won't ditch you for making the 'wrong' choices: 'It's not about maintaining their approval, it's about getting to know them'​

You'll be able to adventure with two companions at a time in Obsidian's upcoming RPG.
Avowed, the upcoming first-person RPG from Obsidian, mixes and matches a few RPG standards in its approach to companion characters and their stories. Before we get into details, some basics—in an interview with game director Carrie Patel and gameplay director Gabe Paramo this week, we learned the following about Avowed's companions and party management:

• We'll meet multiple companion characters throughout Avowed (Obsidian isn't revealing how many there are yet), and they'll hang out at a "party camp"
• Two companions can come with you on adventures at a time
• There are "a few cases" where you must include a particular companion in your party because their knowledge or expertise is relevant to the situation, otherwise it's up to you
• It sounds like you can issue some basic orders to companions, but you won't "micromanage" your party in combat
• There's no "approval system," but conversations may influence our companions' decisions and stories

Avowed takes place in the same world as the Pillars of Eternity CRPGs, but its approach to companions and party management is much more like that of a Mass Effect game, or Obsidian's own Fallout: New Vegas. We might rely on their help in combat, but we won't be giving them granular instructions or controlling them directly.

"They have moment-to-moment gameplay combat abilities," Paramo told us. "They also have, outside of combat, more environmental interaction abilities. And so you can kind of order them to do those abilities both in combat and out of combat."

"We don't want players feeling like they have to micromanage a party," said Patel. "So, you know, certainly their abilities are there and they're very useful. But you're not going to be pulling up pause and feeling like you have to move them around every 30 seconds."

Storywise, companions will each have a "personal arc," said Patel, and they'll all be involved in each playthrough—it's not like Baldur's Gate 3 where you can walk by a hand sticking out of a portal, shrug it off, and leave Gale to his fate.

"You could recruit some of them a little bit earlier or a little bit later, but they all will join your party by certain known points in the game," said Patel, "which allows us to weave them a bit more intricately into events, conversations and all of the action that's happening."

We didn't want players feeling like they had to choose the 'right' options in order to maintain their companions.
Carrie Patel, Avowed game director
As has been so popular in Baldur's Gate 3 recently, the party camp will be a place for "heart to heart" conversations. Don't expect romance, though—it didn't come up in our interview, but it's not really Obsidian's thing—and there won't be an "approval system" that makes companions like the player-character more or less.

"You definitely have quest-based interactions with [companions], and they each have their own personal arc," said Patel. "As with all of our games, talking to them through [that arc] and influencing them down a particular course or another can shape what their story is, and maybe how they see some of their personal challenges. We didn't go with a strict approval system. We didn't want players feeling like they had to choose the 'right' options in order to maintain their companions. So it's not about maintaining their approval, it's about getting to know them, building relationships with them, and you know, finding points of commonality and strength where they're learning things from you as the player character, and you're getting a little bit of their perspective on the world."

From our interview, we also learned more about Avowed's combat, which may take after Vermintide, and its "classless" leveling system. Xbox has also posted a breakdown of the recent Avowed gameplay trailer with commentary from Patel and Paramo.

We don't have a firm Avowed release date yet, but it's scheduled to release this fall.

 

[scytheavatar]

Good at what?

Good at making isometric RPGs. Some mechanics and Sawyer's insistence on balance might be questionable, but you have to admit that both PoE 1 and 2 are good RPGs made by a studio that has a good grasp of the engine. Fallout New Vegas and their previous games are a bit of an anomaly, because they worked with engines that were previously used for a similar title, and could instead focus on what they're good at. PoE was when Obsidian truly started doing its own thing, and it was the least buggy title they released up to that point. With PoE2, they just expanded on their expertise, and it stopped there.

Yet Fallout New Vegas is Obsidian's best selling game ever while POE 2 was a flop.............

 

[Cyberarmy]

So what happened to choices and consequences? Bloody hell...

 

[NaturallyCarnivorousSheep]

Good at what?

Good at making isometric RPGs. Some mechanics and Sawyer's insistence on balance might be questionable, but you have to admit that both PoE 1 and 2 are good RPGs made by a studio that has a good grasp of the engine. Fallout New Vegas and their previous games are a bit of an anomaly, because they worked with engines that were previously used for a similar title, and could instead focus on what they're good at. PoE was when Obsidian truly started doing its own thing, and it was the least buggy title they released up to that point. With PoE2, they just expanded on their expertise, and it stopped there.

Yet Fallout New Vegas is Obsidian's best selling game ever while POE 2 was a flop.............

Unjustly too, PoE2 is surprisingly good.

 

[Readher]

Good at what?

Good at making isometric RPGs. Some mechanics and Sawyer's insistence on balance might be questionable, but you have to admit that both PoE 1 and 2 are good RPGs made by a studio that has a good grasp of the engine. Fallout New Vegas and their previous games are a bit of an anomaly, because they worked with engines that were previously used for a similar title, and could instead focus on what they're good at. PoE was when Obsidian truly started doing its own thing, and it was the least buggy title they released up to that point. With PoE2, they just expanded on their expertise, and it stopped there.

Yet Fallout New Vegas is Obsidian's best selling game ever while POE 2 was a flop.............

Unjustly too, PoE2 is surprisingly good.

They shouldn't have made the first game a snoozefest. I'm not playing a direct sequel to a game I didn't finish, and after trying three times, I'm fairly certain I'll never finish PoE. Judging by the sales difference between PoE and PoE2, I'm not the only one, either. The fact DLCs to the first game sold like shit should already be an indicator for them that whatever game they make in the same world should be its own thing, but they were probably busy smelling their own farts to make that conclusion.

 

[Roguey]

I can't help but come to the realization that if Larian was publishing this game, Swen would be axed Avowed years ago. He would have seen the game for what is it, bad idea from day 1. Not only because it's unoriginal and there's no reason to believe Obsidian can deliver high enough quality enough without expanding their staff, but also because it's hard to actually find a selling point in the game. "Set in the world of POE" is the opposite of a good selling point when Deadfire was a flop.

Swen released Beyond Divinity, a terrible game they needed to do to keep the lights on, and rushed Dragon Commander out the door to devote more resources to D:OS. The only game they cancelled was the one Logic Artists was doing which was easy enough to do since no one at Larian was working on it. Fearg cancelling Avowed would mean letting go of nearly half the company (MS is not going to reward them for wasting all that money by letting them immediately start another game of comparable scope). Most CEOs don't want to do that if possible.

Playing it safe, huh? Just admit that Avowed is The Outer World in a fantasy universe already lol.

Hey this is terribly unfair to The Outer Worlds. Companions in that game will leave you if you do something they find abhorrent (killing Parvati's girlfriend in front of her, being a Corporate shill for Felix).

This sounds like they're making a nuBioware game where you can only be heroic or antiheroic at best. Colonialism Bad.

 

[ferratilis]

Yet Fallout New Vegas is Obsidian's best selling game ever while POE 2 was a flop

Unfair comparison. One is a sequel in an established franchise, coming out just at the right time when people who played Fallout 3 were hungry for more, and those disappointed with Fallout 3 were hoping that Obsidian could improve on aspects where Bethesda betrayed oldschool fans. Of course it sold millions. PoE2 could never have that kind of appeal, no matter the quality.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Just admit that Avowed is The Outer World in a fantasy universe already lol.

They are just not capable of anything more.

 

[Sibelius]

The colour palette and general art direction in this are just terrible for me. When I played The Outer Worlds no amount of Reshade desaturation improved it due to the clashing colour palette, so I played the whole game with a nice high contrast monochrome Reshade that actually fit the future retro styled UI/fonts/world pretty well. I can't believe they have taken the same route for Avowed, I only played POE1, and don't remember the world being so colourful.

More importantly, the gameplay looks like total shit as well

 

[scytheavatar]

Yet Fallout New Vegas is Obsidian's best selling game ever while POE 2 was a flop

Unfair comparison. One is a sequel in an established franchise, coming out just at the right time when people who played Fallout 3 were hungry for more, and those disappointed with Fallout 3 were hoping that Obsidian could improve on aspects where Bethesda betrayed oldschool fans. Of course it sold millions. PoE2 could never have that kind of appeal, no matter the quality.

The fundamental problem is that POE2 flopped while games like DOS2 and Pathfinder Kingmaker sold well. It's extremely hard to argue that Obsidian is a master of the isometric genre on the level of Larian or Owlcat.

 

[Latelistener]

Obsidian's next big RPG Avowed is looking to Vermintide's 'masterclass in having a sense of hitting and impact' to make its first-person sword-swinging feel weighty​

Looks like we'll a lot of laughs from this one. Did they even see how the combat looks like? Just mentioning it in this context is an insult to Vermintide.

this insta gib melee combat just reminds me of pew pewing hordes in L4D...not very exciting. I don't think I've played a fps where the melee combat felt good. Condemned comes to mind as one of the most positive experiences. I think I would need a stamina mechanic to make it feel good. Not just this anime pew pew pew pew, furious fisting shit.

It may look like instagib, because those players are actually very good, hitting vermin in the head most of the time (especially the second madman, playing without bots) and because those are mostly Skaven slaves that appear during horde attacks (same mechanic as L4D).

Vermintide has one of the best melee combat systems, but has a very high skill ceiling on higher difficulties. A lot of different weapons with different weight, feel and reach. Plus, a lot of ranged weapons with different mechanics.

If Vermintide is an S tier combat, then L4D gunplay is C tier at best.

 

[Ibn Sina]

Every news that comes out of this game convinces me it is a classic pump-and-dumb mobile game, with no vision or passion except to meet minimum requirement of least viable product.

 

[Justinian]

will buy this

https://www.pcgamer.com/obsidians-n...its-first-person-sword-swinging-feel-weighty/

Obsidian's next big RPG Avowed is looking to Vermintide's 'masterclass in having a sense of hitting and impact' to make its first-person sword-swinging feel weighty​

Looks like we'll a lot of laughs from this one. Did they even see how the combat looks like? Just mentioning it in this context is an insult to Vermintide.

this insta gib melee combat just reminds me of pew pewing hordes in L4D...not very exciting. I don't think I've played a fps where the melee combat felt good. Condemned comes to mind as one of the most positive experiences. I think I would need a stamina mechanic to make it feel good. Not just this anime pew pew pew pew, furious fisting shit.

New gen Shadow Warrior (the first one) has very good melee combat.

 

[Orud]

lol, weak hit reactions and piss poor connection feel

why do an interview touting the meaty, kinesthetic feel of your combat when that is seemingly the thing it is singularly worst at

They told PC Gamer that "Avowed is looking to Vermintide's 'masterclass in having a sense of hitting and impact' to make its first-person sword-swinging feel weighty", I almost choked on my coffee while reading that this morning.

This looks more and more like designed by committee slop, lacking designers with a spine. Even the damned followers are hollowed out window dressing.

 

[Gargaune]

I'm not worried about enemy animations at this point, that can get fixed down the line, but player movement seemed kinda awkward and sluggish. Not in a deliberate, tactical sense, like in KCD, but more clumsy like Fallout 3's melee.