You absolutely can. With the success of games like ER, DOS2, BG3, Dishonored, Prey etc. and their focus on verticality you don't need spikes at all. Just cliffs, wooden floors, breakable crates or doors, fire sconces or any other environmental hazard. Plus with the way the spells affect the environment and the enemies and the DOS2 example with surfaces and other imsim interactions it's 100% possible.
Another thing to consider is longevity of how long this will actually be fun to play. Dark Messiah was only 12 hours long, but the endgame was a boring chore to play, it had already worn out its welcome. Stretching that out to dozens of hours?
Nobody bothers to do that because it involves too much sifting through the menus. Should ask Todd why he refuses to do anything about the game's terrible interface despite admitting to using UI mods himself and rereleasing the game several times.
Avowed's enjoyable Gamescom demo makes me want to check out Pillars of Eternity - Preview
Of all the first-party games Xbox showcased at this year's Gamescom, the one that is probably of most interest to us at RPG Site is Avowed, the next game from the role-playing veterans at Obsidian Entertainment. Set in the world of Eora, Avowed is related to the Pillars of Eternity series, but Obsidian continues to promise that the game will be welcoming to newcomers.
I'm a fan of several Obsidian titles already, but admittedly, I haven't yet made the time to check out either entry of Pillars of Eternity myself. I enjoy CRPG-style games, so that's not a concern, and Bryan's glowing review of Deadfire piqued my interest years ago. But actually sitting down and getting a chance to play through Avowed's enjoyable Gamescom demo may finally push me to boot up those titles that have been sitting dormant in my Steam library.
The demo of Avowed at Gamescom sees the player character and Aumaua companion Kai (voiced by Brandon Keener, known for Garrus Vakarian in Mass Effect) head into a cavern to seek a missing expedition team, which takes place relatively early in the game. Three player builds were available: a melee 'barbarian' warrior type, a dual-pistol-wielding ranged type, and a magic "blood mage". In the time allotted, I had the chance to check out the melee and ranged builds, but not the magic one.
Avowed is a nicer-looking game than I expected, at least in some ways, with a vibrant color palette full of greens, blues, and reddish tones alongside some satisfactory lighting. The artstyle goes for a slightly stylized look over high-fidelity realism, and I got acquainted with it relatively quickly. Some components of the user interface could use some small adjustments for my liking, as there's a lot of floating text and indicators. There's time for polish before the game releases, however, and I'm not certain what options will be available to the player in the full game.
You navigate a wooded and partially submerged cavern in first-person, taking on a handful of aggressive Xaurip lizards and other creatures that inhabit the area. Combat is, for the most part, separated into main-hand and off-hand attacks, using a stamina bar that dictates when actions can be performed.
First-person melee combat is a little bit chaotic, as it tends to be, being in the center of the mayhem with adversaries potentially attacking you from multiple directions. Due to the game's perspective, it can be tricky to manage the battlefield around you. Kai would at times shout lines such as "On your right!" to clue me into where enemy threats would be as we fought. Some abilities and actions could be tied to shortcuts on your d-pad (seen in the bottom left of the game UI). Alternatively, you can pull up an ability radial with a shoulder button, Mass Effect style, to select from a larger suite of actions available. For example, you can call on Kai to perform a jumping AoE attack, which I certainly found useful for crowd control.
The ranged class option was a little bit more refined than the melee one, as you could more readily step back from the chaos and approach combat from afar, keeping better vision on the battlefield. As you might expect, this class is a little bit less damaging in general than the barbarian, but has a higher emphasis on aiming, dealing critical hits, and laying on status effects.
After exploring a bit, I met a young, lone member of said expedition team, who was poisoned and requested assistance. This dialogue options here had a few tied to my character's perception stats, and broadly speaking, I could assist the lad or leave him to die. Kai chimed in at times during the dialogue here, offering his own commentary about the situation, although there was no explicit indication of any sort of "companion approval" that is commonly seen in this style of game.
After seeking a little further into the cavern, you stumble across an encampment of sorts housing a large statue several stories tall. Here you meet the lone Sargamis, a golden deific avatar of sorts. This led to the longest dialogue sequence in the demo.
The dialogue with Saragmis was full of Proper Nouns, talking about concepts such as 'Godlikes" and the "Wheel", mentioning world locations such as Deadfire & Ukaizo, as well as some of the gods such as Eothas. While I'm sure I would have been a little less burdened by the jargon had I played Avowed from the beginning - rather than jumping in partway into the game for the demo - it was a little bit overwhelming to reconcile all of the lore and terminology thrown at me in quick succession.
Luckily, there is an in-game codex system, where you can highlight certain words & phrases during dialogue to get a quick encyclopedic summary of its meaning, if you so choose. Clearly, those who had played Pillars would more readily understand the discussion taking place here, and even if Pillars isn't *required* to play Avowed, I still found myself wishing I had that context myself.
After some discussion about the world of Eora and the gods who inhabit it, Sargamis requests that you seek out an artifact - the Splinter of Eothas - needed for the statue he is building. The second half of the demo has the player dive even deeper into the caverns, taking on more monsters while tackling some light exploration and puzzle-solving as well.
One thing I appreciated most about going through the wooded caverns is that it was not a linear pathway, nor was it an empty open zone. Moving from room to room, sometimes you would see a container, chest, or some other object of interest through a crevice or across a gap, and I found myself looking around to try to make my way there. Sometimes this would involve finding a breakable wall, sometimes opening a long-abandoned gate, or sometimes some light first-person platforming. Some of these optional rooms would house different lore items, while others would have new equipment accessories for me to try out.
I think it's pretty clear that Avowed will be more than just linear battle corridors and dialogue sequences. Some doors in the cavern had "Godlike" rune icons nearby, and you have to figure out the mechanism needed to activate them. In this case, it often came down to tossing electrified throwables at certain objects in the world. The cavern also had a few vines/webs that could be destroyed with fire-based techniques, as well as walls torn down with explosives.
According to the Obsidian representatives on-site, even actually finding the expedition team in the demo was optional, and many demo players didn't manage to locate them, despite it being the main objective of the mission to begin with. This sort of quest design is interesting and promising in how outcomes don't solely rely on choices made in dialogue, but also on exploration & discovery.
While the demo allowed me to open the menu and check the skill trees and equipment settings available, it's difficult to evaluate RPG progression systems in such a short snippet of the game. What I could see looked promising, though, and I'm eager to explore these systems in the full game.
Overall, my experience with Avowed's Gamescom demo was a positive one. The variety in gameplay styles between the character builds available, the evident quest choices you could make, environment navigation, and the solid vertical slice of combat ... it was about as good a demo as you could have for an RPG of this nature. Hopefully, the longer-form storytelling, companion writing, and character progression all shape up to make Avowed a compelling RPG next year.
Avowed is set to release on February 18, 2025.
Avowed Hands-On: A Funnier Skyrim Successor For Fantasy Fans
Obsidian's upcoming action RPG has some great voice acting and wit that is getting me excited.
Xbox
At Germany's Gamescom 2024 event, I was able to sit down and get hands-on playtime with the upcoming Xbox-exclusive Avowed. Developed by Obsidian Entertainment, known for The Outer Worlds and Fallout: New Vegas, Avowed seems to have all the charm and clever writing we've come to expect from the beloved studio. This preview was exclusive for the press and set behind-closed-doors in Gamescom's business hall, while the massive booth on the showfloor showed off a video presentation for the public to enjoy.
Sargamis the quest giver.
Xbox
We're still half a year away from Avowed's release date next February, but I left it feels excited. As a first-person fantasy action game, it reminded me a lot of playing Skyrim when I got into heated melee brawls, swinging my weapons and using abilities. But my chats with non-player characters were filled with amusing lines and the quest I followed was quite interesting in how it branched and could play out differently based on my actions, fitting Obsidian's reputation for well-written narratives.
My preview lasted about an hour and followed one of the side quests of the game, though we weren't told how far it was into the story. The PR at the booth noted that Avowed doesn't have specific character classes but they had set up save files each with a different build mimicking some of the more standard classes you'd expect in a fantasy action game. These included Mage, Rogue, and what I chose, Barbarian. This gave me a character that was dual-wielding a sword and an axe imbued with ice magic, which felt great to when freezing enemies on contact and allowing me more time to attack.
The quest started with me conversing with an NPC named Sargamis over his lost relic, while I searched for a party of missing knights. He led me to a cavern where his relic was supposed to be but expressed he hadn't been able to retrieve it since it had become full of water after a cave in. I began my search through the caves, fighting off giant spiders and orc-like creatures. This is also where the game taught me about the backstab mechanic. By crouching, moving slowly and not alerting the enemy, I was able to sneak up behind an opponent and get an instant-kill take down.
The sunken cavern.
Xbox
However, if stealth isn't a choice, as most of my encounters proved, then an all-out brawl would begin. Each trigger button controlled a different weapon for my character which allowed me to get off successive attacks quickly. I also had several special abilities, such as a loud and wide spanning scream as well as a forward dashing slam attack, each assigned to different buttons on the controller's D-pad. The slam was especially useful since it could stun an enemy on contact, allowing me to get in a few extra hits before needing to back off.
My companion Kai, who joined me in fights, also had their own set of skills that I could unleash at will. By holding down the LB button, a radial menu of options would come up and pause the action – very similar to how Mass Effect's combat works. From there I could select my companion's skill and target and watch the chaos unfold. My companion's skills were arguably way cooler than my own. The first was a high jump and powerful downward slam while the second had them teleport to the selected enemy and then blast them with their close range pistol.
Kai, your companion, attacking a giant beetle.
Xbox
One of the more comical moments in the quest was when I encountered an injured man in the caves. He needed a potion from me to stay alive, specifically because -- I kid you not -- he didn't want to die a virgin. Players familiar with modern RPGs will see a lot of similarities in the conversation trees you'll find here in Avowed. You're presented with a handful of options of how to respond, from kindly benevolence to sneering selfishness, and many will lead to different outcomes. In my session I handed the man a potion before continuing on. After talking to some of the other media people, it was revealed to me that if you kept the conversation going without helping the man, he would die mid chat.
After fighting and traversing my way through the sunken cavern, I came to find the relic at the end which led to a boss fight. This was a powerful skeleton knight that would often summon additional support for me to contend with. The only time I died during the preview was during this fight, so it was definitely a step up in difficulty. Successfully beating him allowed me to open a shortcut to return back to the quest-giving NPC but it also led me to a side area where I found the lost party of knights I had set out to find -- however, they had all been killed.
This led to a very interesting conversation when I returned the relic to its owner which hinted at the possible plethora of choices in Avowed that could lead to branching story paths. Sargamis revealed he believed himself to be a god and killing the knights was the only option. We chatted back and forth for a bit, him waxing poetic about his mission and me trying to understand. One conversation response kept coming up as an option: attack. After rolling my eyes at this character a few too many times, I decided I wasn't going to just leave and interrupted him mid-sentence with my fist.
Area near the beginning of the quest.
Xbox
This optional boss battle began and my companion and I took on the enemy and his fire sword. Luckily, this boss didn't have continuous support from additional spawning enemies so it was much easier than the last one. I was able to loot his body and claim that magic sword for myself. Allowing my character to wield an ice-ax on the left and a fire-sword on the right, a fitting end to the quest and my preview of the game.
I went into my preview with the basic knowledge that this would be similar to the ever-popular (and ever-re-released) Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and came out surprised by how much funnier the writing and dialogue was. It has me excited for what else there is in the game and how differently this quest could have ended had I made other choices. In my game, that injured man will go on to find love (I hope), but maybe he won't in someone else's.
Avowed was recently delayed to February 18, 2025 in order to avoid a very busy fall release window later this year. It will be playable on Xbox and PC and available day one for Game Pass Ultimate subscribers.
If the system is fun to use, responsive, you will derive enjoyment from it. Sure you're gonna get bored after a while but that happens with all games no matter the genre or format. Different biomes, levels, enemies, tools, options, approaches will ensure replayability as well. And the open world doesn't need to be massive, but smaller and more dense, vertical and interactive, with shortcuts and interconnected paths. It can be done but all this requires talent and a vision.
This is one a massive issue with Skyrim, and a demonstration of just how console-oriented TES design has become. Implementing a rudimentary hotkey system would be laughably simple and make the combat less of a snorefest but they never do it because it can't be leveraged on consoles in the same way.
Even the most simplistic encounter in Dark Messiah - fighting the most basic enemy type on flat, featureless terrain, as shown in this video - is lightyears more fun than anything we've seen from Avowed.
Vermintide is just light and heavy attacks. The melee combat in Dark Messiah isn't perfect, but it's a lot more sophisticated, as different weapons have their own distinct movesets. Add in magic, archery, stealth and use of the environment and you have by far the best first-person fantasy RPG combat system.
The physics-based interactions in Dark Messiah also mean you can replay the same encounter and it will always play out differently.
Josh Sawyer said:
It sounds like you and Sawyer are just bad at playing games. If the game cheats that much to help you, why did you have trouble hitting enemies that were lying motionless on the ground?
Oh yes, the exciting gameplay of getting killed because a dude with a scythe hit you for 200 damage because of 'physics' despite having a weapon like 2 feet shorter than yours. Jousting in M&B looks really cool but always ends up being random jank as soon as you try to attack anyone using a polearm. In practice you just do slow ridebys with a fucking halberd and feel like you're mowing a lawn.
It's actually a cry for help in disguise
So you dont like morrowind? Ban he.
I stand corrected, there is a right and a wrong way to depict mushrooms, there.
