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

Lemming42

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Factions are literally what makes RPG's interesting. Different world-spaces have different kinds of people with competing values and beliefs. Literally every good CRPG has factions. Why would you want to play something that has no inter group conflict?
I think he means factions who form the main quest by offering the player a questline that leads them to the finale, like in NV. Obviously you could argue that Khans and Shady Sands are "factions" in Fo1, or that guilds are "factions" in TES games, or that EotB has "factions" in the sense that the Dwarves are fighting the Drow, but they don't work the same way as the big centrepiece faction quests in more recent games.
 

Roguey

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I think he means factions who form the main quest by offering the player a questline that leads them to the finale, like in NV. Obviously you could argue that Khans and Shady Sands are "factions" in Fo1, or that guilds are "factions" in TES games, or that EotB has "factions" in the sense that the Dwarves are fighting the Drow, but they don't work the same way as the big centrepiece faction quests in more recent games.
In the original Fallout, allying yourself with the Brotherhood of Steel faction means they will send some paladins to help you clean the Military Base and Cathedral out if you ask. Not the best of ideas if you intended to explore those areas non-violently, but it's something that affects the endgame.
 

Saint_Proverbius

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I think he means factions who form the main quest by offering the player a questline that leads them to the finale, like in NV. Obviously you could argue that Khans and Shady Sands are "factions" in Fo1, or that guilds are "factions" in TES games, or that EotB has "factions" in the sense that the Dwarves are fighting the Drow, but they don't work the same way as the big centrepiece faction quests in more recent games.
This kind of depends on the writing itself. It's always kind of silly when you present the player with a world ending threat as well as fairly powerful factions in the game that the player can join and side with, and then those factions all seem to fuck off near the end when the player faces the world ending threat. If you're going to toss those two things together in the same game, you're going to have to do some masterful writing to explain why those factions have no interest in saving themselves, because they're part of the same world that's going to get ended if the player fails.
In the original Fallout, allying yourself with the Brotherhood of Steel faction means they will send some paladins to help you clean the Military Base and Cathedral out if you ask. Not the best of ideas if you intended to explore those areas non-violently, but it's something that affects the endgame.
They stay outside, which is kind of weird, but we're dealing with late 1990s scripting. If they do go inside Mariposa, I've never seen it happen and eventually I stopped asking in play throughs.
 

CthuluIsSpy

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Ditto with the Followers. You can ask Nicole to send you some Followers to the Cathedral with you. I wouldn't recommend it; they're pretty bad. They just have spears and metal armour. They are only really good for drawing some aggro, but then you can infiltrate the cathedral and get some dialogue.
 

CthuluIsSpy

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They stay outside, which is kind of weird, but we're dealing with late 1990s scripting. If they do go inside Mariposa, I've never seen it happen and eventually I stopped asking in play throughs.
It's a design choice. Fallout Fixt allows them to follow you into Mariposa, and they will block you from leaving the elevator due to the narrow doorway. So the devs just didn't allow them to follow you down there instead of coding a "get out of the way feature", which they did add in Fallout 2.
 

Lemming42

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This kind of depends on the writing itself. It's always kind of silly when you present the player with a world ending threat as well as fairly powerful factions in the game that the player can join and side with, and then those factions all seem to fuck off near the end when the player faces the world ending threat. If you're going to toss those two things together in the same game, you're going to have to do some masterful writing to explain why those factions have no interest in saving themselves, because they're part of the same world that's going to get ended if the player fails.
Yeah, this is the issue. I think New Vegas handled it well but you still get the feeling that nobody except you is really proactively doing anything, and whoever you pick is guaranteed to win as they're blssed with having the most important person in the universe on their side. People in the world do at least mention how they're preparing to take over the Strip but when it comes down to it, nobody can do anything without the player. It's even more odd in a game with so many sidequests because the entire conflict will pause until the player does something to activate it, with both sides in stasis until the player's ready.

There's also the weirdness of how quickly you tend to rise up the ranks in these sort of games - you from from being a random civilian postal worker to being effectively the most prominent and most trusted agent of NCR/House/Legion in the space of about a week.

I guess games like M&B avoid all these by having the player fight against NPCs of equal agency and proactivity who can do all the same things as the player. I wonder if there's a way to implement a system like that into something like NV/Avowed.
 

Saint_Proverbius

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I guess games like M&B avoid all these by having the player fight against NPCs of equal agency and proactivity who can do all the same things as the player.
That's the thing that I don't quite get about modern CRPGs. Mount & Blade was released in 2008. A huge chunk of fantasy media involves fairly decent sized battles. Yet, there's never really been a successful marriage of the two. You can still have your player power fantasy story, but when you're doing faction quests, you're typically not only building your reputation but you're also building up that faction. New Vegas' fight at the Hoover Dam was pretty close to it, though, but it still feels somewhat scripted.
 

Lemming42

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Yet, there's never really been a successful marriage of the two.
Only once:
6UIibvd.png


:troll:
 

Daemongar

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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is.
I guess games like M&B avoid all these by having the player fight against NPCs of equal agency and proactivity who can do all the same things as the player.
That's the thing that I don't quite get about modern CRPGs. Mount & Blade was released in 2008. A huge chunk of fantasy media involves fairly decent sized battles. Yet, there's never really been a successful marriage of the two. You can still have your player power fantasy story, but when you're doing faction quests, you're typically not only building your reputation but you're also building up that faction. New Vegas' fight at the Hoover Dam was pretty close to it, though, but it still feels somewhat scripted.
Yes - that would make sense. Running a kingdom, go on quests in a map like BG1 - maybe a much fancier version of Birthright: Gorgon's Alliance but more focus on main char development, and not the Crusader Kingdoms level of ... wait a second... that could be something.

Either way, You choose a class - you pick from a list of classes a la Morrowind or create your own class. You go around and solve problems and get rewards, and raise an army. Once you level up enough, you attack a weak castle. You have your typical M&B 200 v 200 or whatever battle. Once you have a base of operations, you
  • Healers - go around healing and buffing the team, and fights with a war mace - depending on your character focus. Maybe raise the dead as undead to fight during battle.
  • Fighters - go toe to toe, or ride around in mounted combat but actually use the +2 Greatsword plus feats
  • Mages - use crossbow, spells (entangle, fireball, whatever) - eh, M&B with fireballs (on both sides) would be pretty awesome. Maybe with real world Myth: Soulblighter level destruction and teraforming when blasting the castle (which you'll have to pay to fix later on, if you take over the building)
  • Rogues - do idiotic flips and stabs in combat for the Assassins Creed crowd ... sigh. An unstoppable, unrealistic, killing maching. Doesn't raise an army, takes on 200 mounted knights while standing there like an idiot - picture Legolas or whatever
  • Bards - play music during combat, then get captured and suck off the enemy to escape
I guess I would like to see something like this - I liked M&B but the game outside of combat was a bit shallow.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth


Is it a Zoomer or a Soylennial thing to use these type of terms non-stop

oT3wsVH.png

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/t...ll-be-the-voice-of-avoweds-sexy-fish-man-kai/
Now it's really official: Obsidian confirmed with PC Gamer that Keener will in fact portray Kai in Avowed, and also shared the rest of the talent behind the game's main cast of companions. Here's who you'll be meeting on your travels through the Living Lands:
  • Brandon Keener, who we've already talked about, will give life to Kai, a coastal aumaua soldier
  • Mara Junot, best known as the voice of Ikora Rey in Destiny 2, will portray Giatta, one of the ocean folk from the Vailian settlement of Fior mes Ivèrno
  • Anjali Bhimani, who portrayed Medusa in Stray Gods and Commander Natara in Starfield, is Yatzli, a hearth orlan wizard
  • Scott Whyte, whose many roles include Rathma in Diablo 4, will give voice to the boreal dwarf Marius
 

TheDarkUrge

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Aug 21, 2023
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233
aaa
This kind of depends on the writing itself. It's always kind of silly when you present the player with a world ending threat as well as fairly powerful factions in the game that the player can join and side with, and then those factions all seem to fuck off near the end when the player faces the world ending threat. If you're going to toss those two things together in the same game, you're going to have to do some masterful writing to explain why those factions have no interest in saving themselves, because they're part of the same world that's going to get ended if the player fails.
Yeah, this is the issue. I think New Vegas handled it well but you still get the feeling that nobody except you is really proactively doing anything, and whoever you pick is guaranteed to win as they're blssed with having the most important person in the universe on their side. People in the world do at least mention how they're preparing to take over the Strip but when it comes down to it, nobody can do anything without the player. It's even more odd in a game with so many sidequests because the entire conflict will pause until the player does something to activate it, with both sides in stasis until the player's ready.
Pathfinder kingmaker had timed quests so the bad guys won if you took too long, but nearly everyone got super mad when they took 3000 days to do anything and something bad happened and immediately wrote a bad review or modded it out.
 

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