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

[Zombra]

Ask yourself what sounds more exciting: a Bioshock Infinite clone or a medieval version of The Outer Worlds. Then it should be obvious which game deserves more hype.

I honestly have no idea which you're tying to say sounds good.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Is brennecke not in obsidian anymore?

 

[santino27]

Is brennecke not in obsidian anymore?

AFAIK, he is. He's the Director of Grounded.

 

[FreeKaner]

Is brennecke not in obsidian anymore?

AFAIK, he is. He's the Director of Grounded.

It makes sense he is on their best release.

 

[axedice]

Edit: Carter Thomas claims he's been working on Avowed since January 2017, over six years. https://www.linkedin.com/in/carter-thomas-84726757 So uh, they were planning this before Microsoft bought them?

IIRC, Avowed was the "secret project" they showcased to Microsoft in hopes of selling the company. The publishing deal for Outer Worlds was already spoken for at the time, so it must have been another game.

I also bet that what they marketed to MS back in 2018 is way better looking than the current state of Avowed, but MS seems to be beyond caring at this stage. They just want a steady stream of acceptable games being churned out every year.

 

[whydoibother]

MS seems to be beyond caring at this stage

Valve missed out on MINECRAFT, by being too exclusionary with their platform. Overcompensating, they started letting all sorts of trash on Steam.
Microsoft missed out on the most important console generation, the one recruiting people unto online services. Overcompensating, they started buying out studios and funding all sorts of projects to draw people in (that Red vampire game from Arkane being a recent expensive flop).

 

[Lord_Potato]

Awavered and clockwork imitation. That's what Obsidian and inXile are doing now, just releasing games into a hole left empty by Bethesda and 2K, as basically knockoffs.

To be fair, its in Obsidian's niche to do that: New Vegas and Neverwinter Nights 2 are mercenary sequels.

KOTOR2 too. Still, better than Bioware/Bethesda originals. Not sure about NVN though, didn't manage to complete original campaings in neither 1 or 2, but I heard good stuff about Mask of the Betrayer.

 

[Lord_Potato]

Ask yourself what sounds more exciting: a Bioshock Infinite clone or a medieval version of The Outer Worlds. Then it should be obvious which game deserves more hype.

They ended up with "medieval version of TOW" but their pitch was Skyrim clone, which shoulda been more appealing premise for MS; Skyrim was a much more successful game than Bloomshock. Also Obs had made high budget games before so it shoulda been more of a shot in the dark trusting InXile more but it seems to the case somehow.

Yes, but in the meantime Microsoft acquired Bethesda, so Skyrim Clone stopped being so appealing when you can have the real shit.

 

[NaturallyCarnivorousSheep]

I've been waking up every night with my pajama pants all sticky after dreaming about Avowed ever since the trailer was shown. Is this healthy?

 

[Lord_Potato]

So they didn't learn from Pillars 2 and decided again to scrap the classic environments and go exotic with the weird world and biome.

Meanwhile Baldur's Gate 3 sells millions copies with the classic forests and meadows and so will do the Witcher 4 and Elder Scrolls 6.

But hey, let's find an original setting nobody cares, the one with alien vegetation and strange colors!

Morrowind with its exotic setting sold pretty well (not Oblivion/Skyrim well, but probably on a level fully acceptable for AA studio like Obsidian). Skyrim wasn't also only about classic forests - with lots of map having arctic climate.

 

[Turn_BASED]

Monomyth is going to shit all over Avowed

 

[whydoibother]

People reposting my Codex posts on 4chan again.

 

[ferratilis]

Salagdo quit

Shame. He designed two of my favorite maps in both PoE games, Raedric's Hold and Fort Deadlight. Now his talent is wasted on Call of Duty.

 

[DeepOcean]

I'm not that concerned about a lower scale, never seen an open world game that kept consistent quality and good graphix is always an excuse for shit gameplay but the comparisons with Outer Worlds are concerning not in terms of size but in the assumption that the Outer Worlds is a good game.

If I said "You look like Outer Worlds, Greta.", she would probably say: "How dare you?!"

 

[Kem0sabe]

Indeed, any reference to Outer Worlds by Obsidian is a massive red flag. It's their worst rpg by a wide margin.

Obsidian being the grifters that they are, they sold Microsoft on next gen Skyrim, got bought out on that promise, will fail to deliver it in a spectacular way, because as soon as they started development they realized that they are not Bethesda.

 

[hayst]

Indeed, any reference to Outer Worlds by Obsidian is a massive red flag. It's their worst rpg by a wide margin.

Obsidian being the grifters that they are, they sold Microsoft on next gen Skyrim, got bought out on that promise, will fail to deliver it in a spectacular way, because as soon as they started development they realized that they are not Bethesda.

Microsoft is really building up their reputation as the bane of gaming again.

 

[0sacred]

Indeed, any reference to Outer Worlds by Obsidian is a massive red flag. It's their worst rpg by a wide margin.

Obsidian being the grifters that they are, they sold Microsoft on next gen Skyrim, got bought out on that promise, will fail to deliver it in a spectacular way, because as soon as they started development they realized that they are not Bethesda.

Microsoft is really building up their reputation as the bane of gaming again.

I call it corporate gaming. 9 to 5 mentality of churning out games, games as political vehicles and a woke/ESG mindset. It means only shit will come out of those studios.

 

[gabe1010]

I think they probably started out wanting to do a genuine open world comparable in scope to Skyrim, but they got a ways into the project, realized they were over their heads, and that they also didn't want to start over on their quest/LOD/optimization/level/lighting/AI etc...tech they built out for the semi-open hub world of separate levels in TOW, and just decided instead to make a medieval mod of TOW. Maybe after a reboot they decided that anyway.

It's a shame, but from a tech perspective it's understandable. There is a significant gulf between even quite large levels connected with loading screens, and a genuine open world that cleverly hides all the loading in and out in a seamless and performant way.

There are a few AA-AAA quality, Unreal engine, open world (and sometimes content-dense) Unreal Engine games that have released and done well:

Ark
Hogwarts Legacy
PUBG
Sea of Thieves
Days Gone
Conan Exiles
Fortnite

And more in development, so Unreal is not the limitation. I suspect those studios just had/have more experience with AAA, 3D, open world dev. Obsidian's claim to fame is mostly using either the Creation Engine to make what amounts to a mod of an existing game (ie FNV) where they could just focus on the writing + making a few new assets, or in using Unity for 2D/Isometric games (POE/Tyranny/Pentiment) where, again, the writing is front, and center and all the minutiae of 3D animations and graphics, and gameplay in first person up close, were not relevant. They did of course also make Grounded, but it seems like that game has a cartoony art style, restricted vistas, not that large or open of a world, is not an RPG, does not have complex combat, is AA at most in its production values (14 person team?), and was also not made by the same TOW/Avowed team anyway.

Honestly, it's a bit strange that this studio tried to make TOW, and that they are now trying to make a game like Avowed. It would have made more sense for Microsoft to have founded or purchased an existing studio with experience in AAA, 3D, First Person, Unreal, Open World Games, and just sent them a few of Obsidian's writers (they could have even still called it an Obsidian game for marketing purposes if they wanted to I guess?). There's not really that much overlap in skillset between Unity/C#/2D/writing/narrative focused games and Unreal/C++/3D action/combat focused games.

That is to say, TOW wasn't, and Avowed won't be, a genuine open world game, because Obsidian couldn't figure it out. They just aren't capable of making Skyrim.

Oh well, I guess the gap in the market for a non-TES Skyrim-like game remains empty.

 

[Forest Dweller]

Indeed, any reference to Outer Worlds by Obsidian is a massive red flag. It's their worst rpg by a wide margin.

Obsidian being the grifters that they are, they sold Microsoft on next gen Skyrim, got bought out on that promise, will fail to deliver it in a spectacular way, because as soon as they started development they realized that they are not Bethesda.

And then Microsoft will fire Feargus!

 

[Immortal]

Honestly, it's a bit strange that this studio tried to make TOW, and that they are now trying to make a game like Avowed. It would have made more sense for Microsoft to have founded or purchased an existing studio with experience in AAA, 3D, First Person, Unreal, Open World Games, and just sent them a few of Obsidian's writers (they could have even still called it an Obsidian game for marketing purposes if they wanted to I guess?). There's not really that much overlap in skillset between Unity/C#/2D/writing/narrative focused games and Unreal/C++/3D action/combat focused games.

Obsidian developed their own in house game engine, with it's own state machine, renderer, input system, etc, AFAIK.

It was called Onyx.. and it was only used for two games.. Stick of Truth and Dungeon Seige III

This company knows how to burn cash / waste velocity on worthless blackholes of nothing.. but unless they fired their entire engine development team I assume they have at least 2 or 3 people who can write optimized C++ code.

Alpha Protocol was also done in Unreal. (Unreal 3 though)

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Honestly, it's a bit strange that this studio tried to make TOW, and that they are now trying to make a game like Avowed. It would have made more sense for Microsoft to have founded or purchased an existing studio with experience in AAA, 3D, First Person, Unreal, Open World Games, and just sent them a few of Obsidian's writers (they could have even still called it an Obsidian game for marketing purposes if they wanted to I guess?). There's not really that much overlap in skillset between Unity/C#/2D/writing/narrative focused games and Unreal/C++/3D action/combat focused games.

Obsidian developed their own in house game engine, with it's own renderer, input system, etc, AFAIK.

It was called Onyx.. and it was only used for two games.. Stick of Truth and Dungeon Seige III

This company knows how to burn cash / waste velocity on worthless blackholes of nothing.. but unless they fired their entire engine development team I assume they have at least 2 or 3 people who can write optimized C++ code.

Alpha Protocol was also done in Unreal. (Unreal 3 though)

So they've developed like two engines while still depending on the goodwill of major publishers?

Is Feargus fucking insane?

 

[Immortal]

Honestly, it's a bit strange that this studio tried to make TOW, and that they are now trying to make a game like Avowed. It would have made more sense for Microsoft to have founded or purchased an existing studio with experience in AAA, 3D, First Person, Unreal, Open World Games, and just sent them a few of Obsidian's writers (they could have even still called it an Obsidian game for marketing purposes if they wanted to I guess?). There's not really that much overlap in skillset between Unity/C#/2D/writing/narrative focused games and Unreal/C++/3D action/combat focused games.

Obsidian developed their own in house game engine, with it's own renderer, input system, etc, AFAIK.

It was called Onyx.. and it was only used for two games.. Stick of Truth and Dungeon Seige III

This company knows how to burn cash / waste velocity on worthless blackholes of nothing.. but unless they fired their entire engine development team I assume they have at least 2 or 3 people who can write optimized C++ code.

Alpha Protocol was also done in Unreal. (Unreal 3 though)

So they've developed like two engines while still depending on the goodwill of major publishers?

Is Feargus fucking insane?

Obsidian has developed games in:

Electron (In-House Modification / Partial Rewrite of Aurora Engine)
Creation Engine / GameBryo
Unreal
Unity
Onyx (In-House Engine)
Odyssey Engine (Spinoff of Aurora Engine)
CryEngine

---

We can excuse a few of these since they were basically licensed to make one-off sequels.. but JFC.. any engine they HAVEN'T used / rewrote / extended??

This is development suicide.. the amount of tech stacks they need expertise in and the amount of time they waste ramping up on new engines. (Many of these engines were used ONCE for one shipped game.. then on to the next shiny ball)
It looks like they are finally settling down to just extending Unity / Unreal.. but talk about mismanagement.

 

[NaturallyCarnivorousSheep]

Indeed, any reference to Outer Worlds by Obsidian is a massive red flag. It's their worst rpg by a wide margin.

I'll concur because dungeon siege 3, alpha protocol and nwn2(all of them) exist, but I think this is not really them talking about it's TOW with swords but rather that its scale is similar to TOW and one thing you can't say about TOW is that it tried to do too much and ended up too buggy or unfinished.

 

[Immortal]

Indeed, any reference to Outer Worlds by Obsidian is a massive red flag. It's their worst rpg by a wide margin.

I'll concur because dungeon siege 3, alpha protocol and nwn2(all of them) exist, but I think this is not really them talking about it's TOW with swords but rather that its scale is similar to TOW and one thing you can't say about TOW is that it tried to do too much and ended up too buggy or unfinished.

If there's a hell.. and bad people go there for endless suffering.. I bet they are forced to play Dungeon Siege 3.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

tried to do too much and ended up too buggy or unfinished.

That's the trademark of an Obsidian game, tbh