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

[axedice]

spells are "on their own button". "There's a single button to use an ability, in terms of the ones that you have on your talent tree."

So does that mean the total number of available spells in this game is limited by how many buttons are on a console controller? Maybe each skill tree has a single awesome ability then when you push a button, something awesome happens...

Boy this is being quite an elevator ride. Like when you get on at top of a skyscraper and starts going down fast. Only it did not stop at ground level, so it feels like we still have some place to descend underground.

 

[scytheavatar]

I don't understand at all what Obidian is trying to do.
I don't even know who this game is intended for.

It will neither be a game with strong RPG elements, nor will it be a game focusing on gameplay (Elden Ring).
The game will not provide a lot of freedom (like BG3, Fallout)
The game will not have an open world like the games it was based on (Skyrim).
They didn't even try to appeal to the Bioware crowd with romance.

What is the focus of this game?
The game literally doesn't have a single element to attract anyone to the game. It seems like they just took the worst elements from every popular game and combined them together.

Someone already mentioned in this thread, this game is laser focused on being Pillars of Eternity 2 wearing the clothes of The Outer Worlds. It is clear that people in Obsidian are angry that POE2 flopped and to them it flopped only because it's a shitty old school isometric game. That if the same game was made in a more popular format it would have been way more successful.

Of course, they originally wanted the game to be POE2 in Skyrim's clothes, but making that was asking for too much from these people. So they had to settle for the downgrade, but I think no one expected that even making a TOW level game was a challenge for Obsidian.

 

[Quillon]

That if the same game was made in a more popular format it would have been way more successful.

Doesn't seem like this is the case. If they made the equivalent of Neketaka in first person for instance they'd have started marketing the game with that, that's way too ambitious for them. We don't even know if there'll be a big city/city in the gaym, or anything about day/night cycle, npc schedules, faction rep system etc. Ship & crew, cNPC relationship system & romances are already out. They just decided to show combat that almost every game has that usually look better than this.

 

[AwesomeButton]

We don't even know if there'll be [...]

If it didn't exist in TOW, it most likely won't exist in Avowed. But the reverse is not guaranteed. If they think they can get away with cutting something more, they will cut it.

 

[NaturallyCarnivorousSheep]

Hopefully there are no cities. Fuck cities in rpgs

 

[Peachcurl]

Hopefully there are no cities. Fuck cities in rpgs

I like cities in RPGs, if done well. Fuck cities in real life.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Hopefully there are no cities. Fuck cities in rpgs

Cities are OK as long as you don't spend half of the game in it with dozens of shallow fetch quests. Just make us visit the market, the castle and maybe sone guild or shit and let us be done with it.

 

[Jenkem]

the living lands is ripe for lore expansion, they will be able to do so much more than what they had to work with in pillows of pee and pillows of poo on fire. this could end up being the most creative obsidian project yet, lore-wise. it doesn't even feature pillows in the title so you know something special is happening. it's not pillows. it's AVOWED!

 

[La vie sexuelle]

Obsidian is done with RPGs. Now it produces action games with rudimentary RPG elements. After the failure Avowed they will abandon Eora, and the Outher Words brand will either evolve into a shooter or be abandoned altogether.

Even Josh and his gender studies course didn't help.

 

[Gargaune]

it doesn't even feature pillows in the title so you know something special is happening.

Damn right - a developer realising that a brand they own might be worth negative bucks, Feargus knows that "Obsidian" has more marketing value absent the "Pillars of Eternity" bit at this point. I'm not even being mean here, the studio still has positive cred with the casual consumer, but the Pillars moniker carries a lot of "isometric" and especially "meh" in its reputation.

 

[Tyranicon]

it doesn't even feature pillows in the title so you know something special is happening.

Damn right - a developer realising that a brand they own might be worth negative bucks, Feargus knows that "Obsidian" has more marketing value absent the "Pillars of Eternity" bit at this point. I'm not even being mean here, the studio still has positive cred with the casual consumer, but the Pillars moniker carries a lot of "isometric" and especially "meh" in its reputation.

Is Eora somebody's baby? It seems like they're going through a lot just to keep this generic, boring setting afloat.

 

[NaturallyCarnivorousSheep]

Is Eora somebody's baby? It seems like they're going through a lot just to keep this generic, boring setting afloat.

It's mostly just the matter of not having to pay royalties and having a setting in general. If suddenly they've created a new setting you just wouldn't care that there's Aeodynian Republic that is being ruled by Doge Jamal and fights war over control of Huculian Plains with Kragamonic Kangdom led by Kang Mokebe the Fearless and in the middle of it are you - the SNITCHER - who's magic power is to betray every ally he makes by snitching on him yadda yadda. While you may not care about Eora either, there's gonna be 12 guys who do and having some background already there beats redoing it again.

 

[Grunker]

it doesn't even feature pillows in the title so you know something special is happening.

Damn right - a developer realising that a brand they own might be worth negative bucks, Feargus knows that "Obsidian" has more marketing value absent the "Pillars of Eternity" bit at this point. I'm not even being mean here, the studio still has positive cred with the casual consumer, but the Pillars moniker carries a lot of "isometric" and especially "meh" in its reputation.

Is Eora somebody's baby? It seems like they're going through a lot just to keep this generic, boring setting afloat.

It's a lot of work you don't have to do, you save a ton of resources and initial headaches having that stuff laid out already. Unfortunately kind of defeats the purpose when you get less sales because no one gives a shit about your setting, which is why the decision seems kind of a weird one. Corporate optimism knows no bounds I guess.

 

[jackofshadows]

To think they would come up with less bland and safe setting instead would be too optimistic anyway.

 

[mediocrepoet]

This is what happens when you let a super autist be in charge of creativity and world design instead of systems.

 

[NaturallyCarnivorousSheep]

To think they would come up with less bland and safe setting instead would be too optimistic anyway.

That's kind of it. Mind you that unusual settings don't necessarily mean good sales and that's something they're considering. If you look at larger "renaissance" cRPG's you can really see that DOS1/2 which were self aware generic fantasy(BG3 is obviously that as aswell), Pillars(especially 1) was generic fantasy, Owlcats 2 pathfinder games are generic fantasy, Wasteland is post-apo but post-apo is one of the settings that has track record of working in the genre etc.(in fact some of the other bigger names include ATOM and Underrail).
Meanwhile quasi-historical Expeditions, weird(but bad) Numanuma, zombie-themed Dead State etc simply did worse. The general quality has bearing on that but probably if we managed to get some kind of measure of sales vs. the setting adjusted for quality differences you'd see that fantasy and post apo RPG's just outperform everything else

 

[Hammer Of The Heretics]

To think they would come up with less bland and safe setting instead would be too optimistic anyway.

This.

They did their best with Eora. Now their choice is between sticking with the bland setting they already have or dumping resources into a new one that would likely be even worse.

 

[Butter]

Normies (and to Sawyer's horror, most grognards) want to go on an adventure. If your game offers a sense of adventure and excitement, it can have the most banal setting ever and still succeed. Conversely, the most interesting setting won't save you if the plot is less interesting than afternoon tea.

 

[La vie sexuelle]

Normies (and to Sawyer's horror, most grognards) want to go on an adventure. If your game offers a sense of adventure and excitement, it can have the most banal setting ever and still succeed. Conversely, the most interesting setting won't save you if the plot is less interesting than afternoon tea.

PoE setting was banal, but mechanic was broken and bland. PoE setting was try-hardesque, but mechanic was broken and bland. Avowed setting looks even more bland and mechanicaly broken. So what's a point? Perhaps they should stick to Grounded, at last its appealing to somebody.

 

[std::namespace]

unusual settings don't necessarily mean good sales

LOL what an understatement
unusual setting necessarily mean bad sales!

you people are shiteaters who larp gayass wizards in faggot fantasy escaping your pathetic powerless lives

 

[AwesomeButton]

Eora is an ok setting. It's Obsidian who can't put it to good use, because they are locked in design patterns dating back to FNV and NWN2.

Like D:OS' setting ever prevented the games from being successful.

 

[Quillon]

they are locked in design patterns dating back to FNV and NWN2.

Instead of looking at Vermintide's -no serious rpg should have- combat, they shoulda looked at the actually successful first person RPG in recent memory: KCD to learn to make quests using its setting's strengths with unique mechanics in them. This is against sawya's efficiency based design philosophy tho.

 

[Tyranicon]

I missed that they already started the "temper your expectations" talk.

• "Only 100 devs, we're super small indies really"
• "This isn't AAA, more like AA, fr"
• "It's a medium-sized project of only a few hundred mil, no biggie"

Extrapolating from these, we can probably expect more along these lines

• "Plz don't compare us to BG3, nobody can be as naturally talented as belgians"
• "Also BG3 is made by the devil"
• "Good combat is technologically impossible"
• "We spent the balancing budget on VO"
• "Toxic gamers want us to crunch"
• "The Living Lands is only a 4km square, lore is tying our hands"
• "It's more of a linear action adventure visual novel"
• "Yes you can have sexual relations with the bear, no romances tho"

It's over.

 

[Lord_Potato]

I missed that they already started the "temper your expectations" talk.

• "Only 100 devs, we're super small indies really"
• "This isn't AAA, more like AA, fr"
• "It's a medium-sized project of only a few hundred mil, no biggie"

Extrapolating from these, we can probably expect more along these lines

• "Plz don't compare us to BG3, nobody can be as naturally talented as belgians"
• "Also BG3 is made by the devil"
• "Good combat is technologically impossible"
• "We spent the balancing budget on VO"
• "Toxic gamers want us to crunch"
• "The Living Lands is only a 4km square, lore is tying our hands"
• "It's more of a linear action adventure visual novel"
• "Yes you can have sexual relations with the bear, no romances tho"

It's over.

Sounds like hilarious disaster in the making. Looking forward to it!

 

[Haba]

"Abored, from the makers of Pillows of Eternity an that pedo crafting game."