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

[GentlemanCthulhu]

I don’t have an issue with how the game looks. Of the terrible triumvirate (shitguard, shitlines 2, and this), Avowed looks the best.

Is that supposed to be a positive aspect of the game? " This game is less shit than the shittiest games this year"

That's what we call...

 

[NJClaw]

Oh my god oh my god oh my god it's finally happening

A XAURIP GUYS A XAURIP!!!!!!!!!!!!

And not even a standard one, but a Xaurip Elder. Which implies there are going to be multiple kinds of xaurip!!! I've never been more excited for anything in my life

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Oh my god oh my god oh my god it's finally happening

A XAURIP GUYS A XAURIP!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ah yes, I see Obsidian is not above letting people beat up senior citizens of endangered species.

 

[NJClaw]

Ah yes, I see Obsidian is not above letting people beat up senior citizens of endangered species.

Wait, beat up?! I thought we were going to make sweet xaurip love to that xaurip...

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Ah yes, I see Obsidian is not above letting people beat up senior citizens of endangered species.

Wait, beat up?! I thought we were going to make sweet xaurip love to that xaurip...

Beat them up or beat yourself, truly the game is tyranny of choice.

 

[Butter]

Why are there xaurips in the Living Lands? Are they a seafaring race, or is this just Bethesdaland where everywhere you go it's super mutants and radscorpions and Brotherhood of Steel?

 

[Fedora Master]

Why are there xaurips in the Living Lands? Are they a seafaring race, or is this just Bethesdaland where everywhere you go it's super mutants and radscorpions and Brotherhood of Steel?

lol you think PoE is a coherent setting

 

[luj1]

Avowed developers confirm 30FPS was the target FPS from the start of development

Wtf? Is this real?

 

[ArchAngel]

Oh my god oh my god oh my god it's finally happening

A XAURIP GUYS A XAURIP!!!!!!!!!!!!

And not even a standard one, but a Xaurip Elder. Which implies there are going to be multiple kinds of xaurip!!! I've never been more excited for anything in my life

Uhh, I think you forget to log into your rodent account before posting this

 

[ArchAngel]

Why are there xaurips in the Living Lands? Are they a seafaring race, or is this just Bethesdaland where everywhere you go it's super mutants and radscorpions and Brotherhood of Steel?

They are like cats, they are so cute travelers bring them everywhere so they multiply.

 

[Baron Tahn]

Whats with all the red arrows and shit above the Xaurip? Can we turn all that nonsense off? Be a much cooler pic without a health bar, a roman numeral, a pip, text, an eye and three different kinds of arrow all floating around.

 

[Ryzer]

Xaurip god
Space Xaurip
Xaurip extreme omniscient god of the unknown
Xaurip warlord of destruction and death
Xaurip deathlord
Xaurip lord
Xaurip elder
Xaurip scoundrel
Xaurip stooge
Xaurip thrall
Baby Xaurip
...
20 different enemies to find.

 

[Infinitron]

Half an hour of Avowed:

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.gamepressure.com/editor...dian-didnt-forget-how-to-make-great-rpg/zd724

Avowed Hands-on - Obsidian Didn’t Forget How to Make Great RPG​

At gamescom, I was able to play an hour-long demo of Avowed and talk with Carrie Patel, the game's director. I bring news - this is a real RPG! Seems that Obsidian really knows what they're doing.

The main emotion that accompanied me while playing Avowed at gamescom was a sense of adventure. It wasn't immediately - the beginning was quite uneven, my character seemed too fast and somewhat weightless, add to that my general preference of TPP perspective in RPGs. But when I felt how smoothly my character climbs and jumps, when I discovered that even these first rooms give me options to solve things my way, something clicked.

I was checking the nooks and crannies of a ruined temple in search of a magical relic, and I picked it up from the altar - which of course woke up its guardian. I fought with hordes of skeletons, walked on roots over flooded corridors - and a strange feeling was sprouting in my head. I felt more like Indiana Jones than during the presentation of the game about Indiana Jones!

Pillars of Talking​

My relationship with Pillars of Eternity so far can be summed up as "it's complicated". This is a phenomenal, original, deeply strange universe, which suffers mainly because its creators simply have to tell us absolutely everything about it; their love for their work literally pours out of them, and the player gets overwhelmed by waves of information about factions, battles, gods, civilizations, and geological formations. If someone, like me, has a habit of reading everything in RPGs, including item descriptions, there's a good chance that Pillars will break them of this habit.

The intriguing plot from the first game was crushed by this onslaught of unstoppable world-building; I couldn't bring myself to care about the fate of the characters, each of whom seemed to be more of a representation of a specific faction than a fully realized person. However, even though I didn't even approach the sequel - pirate themes don't appeal to me - the interest in the world of Eora remained.

It works out perfectly that in Avowed, the creators will no longer be able to torment us with walls of text describing every nook and cranny of this world - now they have to show it to us. And it all looks great!


Obsidian Entertainment
The part of the game shared with us at gamescom was set in a complex of temples carved into rock, seamlessly transitioning into caves (some flooded with water, in which we had to dive), some demolished laboratories full of bizarre, quasi-magical machinery, abandoned libraries, and gigantic statues. Everything is overgrown with lush green vegetation and colonies of fungi of various colors and shapes (fungi will appear in this game often and in quite unexpected places). Avowed delights the eye with beautiful landscapes and vivid colors, tempting with a mix of common and unusual fantasy elements.

Lore? Check​

I bring news for the die-hard fans (yes, they exist, we even have one in our editorial office, greetings to Przemek) - the gods are not done with us yet. Mortals are also not done yet with the gods. While the initial goal of my mission in Avowed was to find the missing Aedyran expedition, following its trail I quickly came across Sargamis - a godlike with golden skin and the smooth voice of Matthew Mercer (which is nice, because the actor had already worked in the first PoE), who was very interested in the subject of godlikes and divinity in general. I learned that, e.g. one of the consequences of Eothas's activity in Deadfire was the disappearance of most godlikes from the world - when asked about this, Carrie Patel, the game's director, used the word "rapture", which suggests that their divine essence was somehow used, consumed. Since our hero himself (herself) is a godlike, this must have significance. Why are we alive? Why did Emperor of Aedyr choose us as the envoy? Does our god have his own plans for us - and who is he at all?


Obsidian Entertainment
I'm pleased that our hero gets a more personal motivation to follow the main plot quite quickly, because it seems that even though we will still be dealing with gods, plagues, and mystical secrets, the story itself could be more personal.

You don't need to be familiar with the lore of Pillars to play Avowed, although I imagine that a completely new player in this setting might feel lost. Fortunately, the option to gain additional information by selecting certain keywords in the dialogue, known from Tyranny, is returning here.
What about our Watcher?
If they were a godlike - like mine - it's quite possible that the events from Deadfire didn't end up the best for them. When asked about this, Carrie Patel laughed and replied that it's a matter of our personal headcanon - "if you think he sailed towards the setting sun, then that's how it is. Maybe Eothas protected him?

Quality, not quantity​

Reduction of the scope is also visible in the number of companions - although I had the opportunity to meet one, there will ultimately only be four of them. It may seem like a small number, after all, in the first Pillars we had eleven and generally RPGs got us used to that the standard is to have at least six. On the other hand, I can't recall the name of any of the companions from the first game, so if this time the developers focused on quality, not quantity, we all stand to gain. And if I were to draw conclusions based on Kai, the first of our companions, that's how it will be.

I didn't expect to like Kai so quickly. The blue-skinned, yellow-eyed aumaua with sharp, shark-like teeth quickly stopped being a "starting companion" and became my friend, who always had something to add. Of course, a lot of credit for this goes to another fantastic voice actor - Brandon Keener, whom we all know and love from his role as Garrus in the Mass Effect trilogy, although this "Vakarian vibe" was not entirely planned. When asked about the character of Kai, Carrie Patel said that it is rather a combination of many factors:

We were not strictly inspired by Garrus. When designing the party, we knew it was good to have a character with such a sober, commonsense perspective, someone you can rely on, someone you just want to grab a beer with. It was a very pleasant surprise when Brandon Keener showed up at the casting. We knew right away that this is it! He can maintain that vibe, that sarcastic sense of humor.
However, what's also fantastic about Kai is that when you spend more time with him, get to know him better, find out what he left behind, what he's running from - you'll be able to see that there's also a lot of regret and such deeply human sensitivity in him.

Obsidian Entertainment
Continuing the topic of companions, I also learned that situations known from PoE 2 will return, in which members of our party establish various relationships not only with the player's character, but also with each other. Carrie announced that a rich "party banter" system has been prepared, which we will hear while resting in the camp; our companions are also supposed to interject their remarks into our conversations and comment - sometimes in a very decisive manner - on our decisions. It seems that we will have to make choices that will have a significant impact on our companions and the groups from which they originate. All this gives hope that we will finally truly feel that we are surrounded by a group of personalities united by a common cause, rather than just cardboard cut-out templates.

The remaining members of our party are played by Anjali Bhimani (who players may recognize from Critical Role, as well as Symmetra from Overwatch), Scott Whyte (the voice of Rathma from Diablo IV), and Mara Junot (Ikora Rey from Destiny 2 and Alleria Windrunner from World of Warcraft).
Of course, our companions not only provide us with advice and commentary, but also help during combat and outside of it. By pressing LT, we open a radial menu, with the help of which we can, among other things, order a companion to attack a specified target or use a skill. This last one also comes in handy outside of combat, e.g. Kai's fiery volley set fire to the cobwebs blocking my path; if I had a different build, I could probably do it myself, but the skills of our companions will certainly expand our tactical options.

Combat is not Avowed's strongest point​

Speaking of builds, in the demo we could choose out of the three, and although the character development system in Avowed is classless, the developers have adapted them to roughly correspond to the classic archetypes of barbarian, mage, and rogue-archer. I, driven by the feeling that a fight in such a form would be the easiest to master, chose the barbarian - and I regret it a bit. While occasional stealth and ambush sequences can be fun, when it came to open combat, my reservations only grew, because although there has clearly been a huge progress since those unfortunate first materials, it still lacks the feeling that my swings with a two-handed weapon have any tangible impact on opponents other than shortening their life bar. I also don't understand why the fight with the mini-boss was designed in such a way that after defeating the accompanying smaller mobs, we immediately have to deal with another wave of them (the first-person perspective definitely does not make it easier to control the situation around us). There is still room for improvement here and I'm glad that the developers got a few extra months to polish such things.


Obsidian Entertainment
It's a shame that I didn't have time to test the remaining builds, but I preferred to spend the given hour to see as much of the plot as possible - and I was pleasantly surprised, because my "barbaric" traits also translated into the dialogue options given to me (as well as those that were blocked, because my character lacked intelligence). However, even such a character, not particularly blessed with intellect, was able to lead a dialogue in various directions, and even change the course of a quest solely by choosing a sensible response. For those who can't get rid of the bad taste after the first trailer that made it look like Skyrim, I reassure you - it really is an RPG! Obsidian still handles exploration and plot better than combat, but I have a feeling that fans might forgive them for that.

Are these mushrooms edible?​

I mentioned earlier that I played on a ready-made build - this means that unfortunately I didn't have a chance to try out the character creator, but a quick glance at the equipment screen revealed that... my character has mushrooms growing on their head. And I was delighted! I'm glad that the creators openly embrace the weirdness of their universe, in which we have more interesting options than just elves in five flavors. I don't know which god has blessed me with mushrooms growing on the face of my character - we will probably find out in the main storyline - but I asked Claire how far our options go in customizing the appearance of our character.

Of course, we have the option to customize all typical appearance features - many hairstyles, skin colors, decorations. But our character is a godlike and we wanted to emphasize that, because it is deeply rooted in our lore. So of course you will be able to choose these godlike features - some will be very ostentatious, dramatic, like those mushrooms you mentioned, but players will also be able to opt for more subtle variants. There is even an option for players who are attached to a certain specific character appearance - they can "hide" these godlike features, although this is purely visual. Others will still recognize that our character is a godlike.
Obsidian is planning a separate showcase dedicated to character creation soon, so we will learn more details shortly.

Faith restored​

Avowed surprised me. This is indeed an RPG that can captivate with well-written dialogues and a fascinating world in which we can finally be, not just read about it. Of course, an hour of gameplay is not enough to fully form an opinion, but it's enough to rekindle faith in the fact that Obsidian indeed knows what they are doing.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/avowed-hands-on-preview-interview/

Avowed is a bigger and bolder RPG than I expected​

While it’s not as big as an RPG like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Avowed is still a massive evolution for the Pillars of Eternity franchise. That series gave us slow-paced, isometric CRPGs, while Avowed is a more action-packed first-person RPG set in the same universe. Having gone hands-on with its Gamescom build at an Xbox event in Los Angeles, I was relieved to see that Avowed still retains the core DNA of developer Obsidian Entertainment.

The Avowed quest I played sported beautiful visuals, had excellent writing, and felt faithful to the wider Pillars of Eternity franchise. Clearly, a lot of effort went into reinterpreting what a Pillars of Eternity game could be like when played from a different perspective and set in a never-before-explored area of Eora called The Living Lands. In an interview, art director Matthew Hansen explained how the team approached that opportunity.

“If you’ve played both Pillars 1 and Pillars 2, you’ll see that Deadfire is a more vibrant setting than the Dyrwood is, and we wanted to push that further with The Living Lands,” Hansen tells Digital Trends. “There are a lot of pretty bombastic visuals, but it’s all still rooted in reality like the Pillars games are.”

Xbox Game Studios
My hands-on demo of Avowed involved playing through one of its sidequests. Entertaining sidequests are an ever-present quality in the best RPGs, and so far, Avowed is checking all of the right boxes. The quest began as I entered a dungeon while looking for a lost expedition. These caverns immediately felt intimate and bespoke, offering an up-close-and-personal level of detail that you won’t get from the first two Pillars of Eternity games. I came away impressed by its visuals, which looked rougher in videos shown off earlier in the year. This more close-up perspective was a major design challenge for Obsidian, but the team embraced it according to Region director Berto Ritger.

“In a first- or third-person setting, you have to be very careful about sight lines and make sure that you draw people’s attention to things. You’ve got to cover everything, make it look good, and guide them subtly in the direction we want them to get,” Ritger tells Digital Trends.

Combat feels a lot more aggressive and action-focused. I played as a mage, constantly using my wand for magical attacks and casting spells from my grimoire. There are guns and swords for players who want to get even more aggressive with enemies, and you can dual-wield all of the one-handed weapons. Avowed has the best-feeling combat of any Obsidian Entertainment game I’ve played — at least based on the small chunk I’ve tried out. Thankfully, that didn’t come at the cost of what the studio is best at, as its narrative chops are still on full display.

Xbox Game Studios
My quest to find this expedition ultimately took me to a godlike oracle named Sargamis, who tasked me with finding a relic so he could make contact with a god that he felt abandoned him. While I eventually retrieved the relic and returned it to him, his god still didn’t respond. While this could have resulted in a fight, I managed to talk him down. Some jokes were spread throughout this quest, but it had a very poignant thematic core in its story about how feeling abandoned and not getting love reciprocated impacts us emotionally.

I had my worries about Avowed’s narrative because of how action-focused its trailers have been so far. That is why I was relieved to see a deep dialogue system tied with RPG stats like intelligence that is full of unique options that can permutate the narrative in surprising ways. Plus, for those coming to Avowed from Obsidian’s other games, a Pentiment-like glossary of important terminology can be pulled up at any time during dialogue.

There’s a lot of Avowed I still haven’t seen. It’s not a full-blown open-world game, but it has several densely packed regions full of intriguing locales and quests left for me to discover.

Xbox Game Studios
I’m interested to see how the choices I make in the main story and in sidequests like this impact the adventure in the long term. And apparently, some parts of Avowed are going to get really weird.

“We set it within The Living Lands because, even within the lore of Eora, that’s the wildest place,” Hansen teases. “We’ve got one level we’re not ready to talk about yet because it’s one of the last levels of the game, but it’s real weird and very fun. I’m excited for people to explore it because it’s more in the family of what you’ll see in terms of pushing the envelope of weird, as you saw with the Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire expansions.”

Avowed launches on PC and Xbox Series X/S on February 18, 2025.

https://www.pcgamesn.com/avowed/expensive-feature

Avowed’s most vital feature is “very expensive” to make, Obsidian says​

From Outer Worlds, Pillars of Eternity, and Fallout New Vegas dev Obsidian, new RPG Avowed has one very pricey feature, its director says.

You look at Avowed, which has this incredibly vibrant art and production design, a big open world, myriad quests and branching narratives, and, of course, all the development pedigree of Obsidian, and naturally, you’d assume it’s an expensive game to build. From The Outer Worlds to Pillars of Eternity, Fallout New Vegas and beyond, Obsidian has always committed its efforts towards facilitating player agency and making worlds replete with possibility. But speaking to PCGamesN at this year’s Gamescom, the team reveals that, when it comes to Avowed, one of the toughest, priciest aspects of development comes from something that most players take for granted.

The Avowed release date is getting closer, and we’re increasingly curious to see what Obsidian, creator of the greatest Fallout game ever, has been building. A fantasy RPG set within Eora, the colorful yet calamitous world familiar to anyone who’s played Pillars of Eternity, it combines Obsidian’s trademark exploration, player expression, and organic, divergent storytelling with first-person sword-and-shield combat. There are clear influences from the studio’s earlier work – Obsidian previously explained to us that Avowed is meant to be more Fallout New Vegas than Skyrim. But director Carrie Patel offers a new, somewhat surprising insight into one of Avowed’s central mechanics.

“We’ve designed Avowed as a first-person experience first, but still with the third-person option,” Patel tells us, live at Gamescom 2024. “It means more people can enjoy the game. And if you spend time in character creation, deciding what they’re going to look like and how they’re going to present in the world, and you want to see that, third-person makes it easier.

“But it’s definitely a very expensive thing to design. It means additional sets of animations. The body players inhabit during first-person, you don’t have a torso there, so it’s a different model to the body you get in third-person. It’s a lot of behind-the-scenes work to support, but I think it’s been well worth it for us.”


It seems like nothing. You’re playing an open-world game, maybe Fallout 4 or Oblivion, and when you want to swap perspectives, you just tap a button. Simple. But that kind of fluidity takes serious design work. Likewise, when it comes to subtly but certainly guiding players in particular directions, Patel and the Avowed team have to pay close attention.

“One of the big challenges of designing in first person is thinking about the players’ spatial awareness and their sight lines,” Patel continues. “It can be very hard to predict where they’re going to be looking at a particular moment, but you can use certain layouts and certain audio and visual cues, and certain details in your design, to help draw attention. We want to make sure that we’re placing those details in ways that reward exploration and also encourage further exploration.

“When I joined the project in 2021, we wanted something that brought the Pillars of Eternity experience and that world to a new audience, with a style of gameplay that also felt very visceral. I think we enjoyed the combat and exploration experience that we were able to get from The Outer Worlds, and we looked at that and thought about how we could recreate it for Avowed, but in a way that also brings something fresh and new.”

It’s another of Obsidian’s specialities, this ability to surreptitiously direct the player in the right direction. When I think of New Vegas, though, still to my mind the studio’s best work, what I remember most fondly is my time spent with the companion characters, like Boone, Arcade Gannon, and ED-E. Patel says that the companions are one of her favorite things about Avowed.

“I always love hearing them interact with one another – that, for me, is some of the most entertaining dialogue to come across. It feels like you’re watching two friends get to know each other.”

While we wait for Avowed to arrive, check out some of the other best sandbox games, or maybe get the best games like Fallout, if you want something else to fill the New Vegas gap.

You can also follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides, or grab our PCGN deals tracker to net yourself some bargains.

https://www.gamesradar.com/games/ac...-your-build-and-newbie-friendly-fantasy-lore/

Playing Avowed feels like an Obsidian RPG with Skyrim-like combat, dialog options that reflect your build, and newbie-friendly fantasy lore​

Preview | I cast spells as a mage, clobbered enemies as a barbarian, and learned more about the Pillars of Eternity universe

(Image credit: Xbox Game Studios)

In Avowed, I'm being absolutely bombarded by a group of skeletons. Some fire arrows at me from their bows, while others slash and bash me with their swords and shields. When a priest enters the fray who continually heals every enemy I try to take out of the picture, I quickly realize I'm going to have to do some very quick crowd control to get out of this unscathed.
At the beginning of my hands-on demo, I was given the choice of playing with one of three premade character builds: barbarian, mage, or ranger. The idea of flicking a wand as a mage in combat steered my decision, but this gaggle of bony foes put my magical skills to the test. Armed with a wand in one hand and a grimoire in the other, the latter outfits me with four different spells I can fire out. Using RT to bring up my abilities on the Xbox Series X controller, I try out an electric power that zaps multiple skeletons around me with bolts of lightning. As they momentarily fry, I jump back and throw several bombs in their direction. All the while, I constantly fire shots from my wand to whittle down the priest's health. The fight is increasingly frantic, pushing me to use everything I have in my arsenal (as well as a handful of potions). When I take one too many hits, I decide it's time to switch gears and try out the beefier barbarian.

Might and magic​

(Image credit: Xbox Game Studios)
To begin with, I'm pulled into a quest to find an Aedyran expedition team in a cave system, complete with some pretty impressive cavernous vistas. Accompanied by Kai, one of the main companions in Avowed, I’m immediately gleeful to discover he shares the same voice actor with Garrus Vakarin from Mass Effect, which brings a sprinkling of familiarity to an otherwise alien world.

My introduction to combat highlights stealth, with a prompt encouraging me to sneak up on a nearby lizard and stab it in the back with my Divine Thorn. As the mage, I immediately opt to take this less confrontational route, plunging the luminescent blade that extends from my hand right into the enemy.

As the barbarian, I can do the same thing, but I’m far less subtle this time. Instead, I run right up with reckless abandon and bash the creature with my two-handed club. The former approach feels far slicker, while the latter sends the small lizard flying with a satisfying thump.

I stumble upon a poor fellow by the name of Caedman who's in need of some healing. From the off, it immediately feels like an Obsidian RPG, with dialog options that allow for role-play by reflecting my chosen character’s background and strengths. For the mage, I can choose more insightful responses, while the barbarian lets me pick an option that aligns with my experiences in war and battle strategy.

As someone who's completely new to the Pillars of Eternity universe, I've been a little intimidated by the world of Eora, but some of my initial fears have been quelled thanks to a very useful feature you can use during conversations. There's an option to toggle lore keywords, which provide contextual pop-ups for key events or locations in the universe whenever they’re referenced. It’s a very welcome touch, and will hopefully help me get to grips with its story.

 

[Alienman]

Oh my god oh my god oh my god it's finally happening

A XAURIP GUYS A XAURIP!!!!!!!!!!!!

And not even a standard one, but a Xaurip Elder. Which implies there are going to be multiple kinds of xaurip!!! I've never been more excited for anything in my life

Imagine the wisdom this elder Xaurip holds. Xaurip diplomacy skill, here I come!

 

[Butter]

Half an hour of Avowed:

Every time the Aumaua companion interjects it's pure cringe. Really great innovation in RPG dialogues.



Lest you guys think Sawyer had no influence over this project:

Behold Might 2 giving +6% damage, and 149.5 health.

 

[dutchwench]

The character running around with random shit in their hands visible in first person reminds me of games like Clive Barker's Undying or Nosferatu: Wrath of Malachi. It's kind of cool to see non-weapon items floating in front of you make a comeback, even if it kind of messes with the visibility.

 

[duskvile]

Oh my god oh my god oh my god it's finally happening

And not even a standard one, but a Xaurip Elder. Which implies there are going to be multiple kinds of xaurip!!! I've never been more excited for anything in my life

What about fampyrs ?

 

[Jermu]

based on attributes picture seems like you don't allocate points in character creation or maybe only couple points (depending on int buff*)

perception does not increase hit chance so maybe can't miss anymore. also no concentration mentioned

dexterity seems best stat by far 3.5% attack speed + 7.5% action speed each point compared to might 3% increased dmg

also resolve gonna be dump stat as is tradition oh way no dump stats anymore since its a trash system

anyway its gonna be shit game

here is poe 1 attributes:

 

[Vulpes]

Half an hour of Avowed:

Every time the Aumaua companion interjects it's pure cringe. Really great innovation in RPG dialogues.



Lest you guys think Sawyer had no influence over this project:

View attachment 54168

Behold Might 2 giving +6% damage, and 149.5 health.

Sawyer in a nutshell:

And what the fuck is the difference between attack and action speed?

 

[Infinitron]

Josh Sawyer isn't actually working on this game, but its systems were always going to be somewhat inspired by Pillars of Eternity.

That said, Avowed is an action-RPG where you control one character, so I'm not actually sure what the problem is with this kind of percentile-based progression. The problem people had with that in a game like Pillars is that it was hard to make sense of in the context of party-based tactical combat, but in this game it just means the stuff you're directly doing as your character becomes more (or less) effective. What does it matter if it's a plus, a percentage, or a label saying your damage is now "Very Good"?

 

[Butter]

Josh Sawyer isn't actually working on this game, but its systems were always going to be somewhat inspired by Pillars of Eternity.

But Avowed is an action-RPG where you control one character, so I'm not actually sure what the problem is with this kind of percentile-based progression. The problem people had with that in a game like Pillars is that it was hard to make sense of in the context of party-based tactical combat, but in this game it just means the stuff you're directly doing as your character becomes more or less effective. What does it matter if it's a plus, a percentage, or a label saying your speed is now "Very Good".

Percentages were never the problem. The problem is assuming players are going to care about unnoticeable increments. What would be wrong with giving more significant improvements per point spent on the attribute? I want 10 Might/1 Intellect to feel vastly different than 1 Might/10 Intellect, and this system doesn't look like it's going to provide that (note that he's getting +5 Essence per point of Intellect, and it results in 170 total, meaning the attribute is doing jackshit).

This is the illusion of character-building. You're getting a highly curated experience with only very minor opportunities to customize that experience. And it's actually worse in this game than in Pillars, because you're spending an attribute point each level rather than distributing a bunch of points all at the start. That means it's going to take most of the game for the player to notice any kind of mechanical difference between different attribute spreads.

 

[Tyranicon]

Why do every single one of these articles that praise the game sound like it was the journo's first RPG?

In Avowed, I'm being absolutely bombarded by a group of skeletons. Some fire arrows at me from their bows, while others slash and bash me with their swords and shields. When a priest enters the fray who continually heals every enemy I try to take out of the picture, I quickly realize I'm going to have to do some very quick crowd control to get out of this unscathed.

Why did you waste words on this? I'm convinced nobody reads these but LLMs.

 

[Alienman]

It's really damn weird, because that shit is standard as hell. The dungeons seem to be very linear as well, going by the demo video.

 

[Bester]

Half an hour of Avowed:

More than 30 minutes, but not more than 30 fps.