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

[Vulpes]

By that logic, Oblivion was a masterpiece

There are a lot of elder Zoomers and Millennials who in fact say that.

The Elder Scrolls is an anomaly because it was the first RPG series to successfully go multiplatform. It's not that hard to put Oblivion on a pedestal when its predecessor Morrowind, which had some of the worst gameplay and cookie-cutter quest design ever seen in a Western ARPG, was the first (and probably only) open-world RPG for most XBox players during the sixth console generation. Obsidian does not have this luxury. Avowed will be negatively compared to Skyrim just like how The Outer Worlds was to Fallout New Vegas.

And why should tastes of the masses matter, especially here of all places?

Because the Codex is too small of a community to sustain game dev studios by itself? Just look at Iron Tower.

The photo was someone complaining that a bunch of women "ruined" Obsidian. Well, Obsidian's been doing just fine by any metric (financially, critically, user reception). The people on the Codex who hate the games they're putting out now very likely also hated the games they were making back then as well, so what's changed here really?

PoE 2 and Tyranny were both financial flops, and the vast majority of Codexers who like FNV happen to hate TOW.

 

[markec]

Are you a developer? If not, why do you care what some developer thinks?

I accept my unimportance.

The photo was someone complaining that a bunch of women "ruined" Obsidian. Well, Obsidian's been doing just fine by any metric (financially, critically, user reception). The people on the Codex who hate the games they're putting out now very likely also hated the games they were making back then as well, so what's changed here really?

Sure they are doing "fine", they make safe mediocre games that will cover the production costs and maybe even earn a few bucks, will be praised by critics and fans will give a positive review on release day only to admit year later that the game was bland and forgettable.

People at Obsidian might be happy with such arrangements but I personally only feel disappointment.

Games before PoE no matter their flaws had some spark of creativity to them. A grossly overused term used describing PoE was that it lacked "soul".

I enjoyed and defended pretty much every game Obsidian released before PoE and I even backed PoE. Obsidian was supposed to be the saviors of RPGs, "if only those pesky publishers didnt get in way of their visions!". "PoE will be that game that they always wanted to make and without publisher interference!"

Instead we only got mediocrity, safe, sanitized, mediocrity.

 

[S.torch]

Sounds like you prefer the lowbrow and find the highbrow very intimidating.

Obsidian is not highbrow, they write stuff that pretends to be deep in the surface but in reality is extremely shallow. They're basically midwits in the bell curve. Old Bethesda would be on the left and hardcore stuff like Dark Souls or Elden Ring on the right.

If a game has tens of millions of players on Game Pass

That's still not selling millions. Because nobody is paying to actually play an Obsidian game, they're paying for Gamepass in the same way they're paying for Netflix.

 

[Tihskael]

View attachment 57963

That photo is from March 2018, they've released four games since then. Zzzzzzzzzzzz

Poe 2, The Outer Worlds, Grounded and Pentiment

4 timeless masterpieces

Did anyone here play Pentiment? How really is it?

 

[Yosharian]

The photo was someone complaining that a bunch of women "ruined" Obsidian. Well, Obsidian's been doing just fine by any metric (financially, critically, user reception). The people on the Codex who hate the games they're putting out now very likely also hated the games they were making back then as well, so what's changed here really?

PoE 2 and Tyranny were both financial flops, and the vast majority of Codexers who like FNV happen to hate TOW.

Tyranny is also a shit game.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Tyranny is also a shit game.

The premise was cool, but the execution leaved a lot to be desired even outside of the unfinished main story. It might have had replayability and all, but I outright disliked all factions besides the Disfavored hence it did nothing for me in practice. Crazy faction was cringe, native factions were cringe (primarily the matriarchal cringe), fedora tipper assassin was cringe.

 

[thesecret1]

And why should tastes of the masses matter, especially here of all places?

Because the Codex is too small of a community to sustain game dev studios by itself? Just look at Iron Tower.

And what does that have to do with what I've asked? What's the logic here? "Codex is too small a community to sustain gamedev, therefore it should embrace the shit tastes of the mainstream"?

 

[Tyranicon]

Why would any game developer care about whether or not something is considered a timeless masterpiece on the Codex?

The importance of the codex can be both under and overstated, but let's look at some facts.

1. RPGCodex is probably the largest, independent forum for discussion for video roleplaying games.
2. Codex has a 20 year+ history and a long reputation, both good and bad.
3. Numerous big name developers have dropped in over the years, and while most are wise enough not to maintain a public presence here, we can comfortably assume that at least a few lurk.

You can call codex a lot of things, a gentlemen's club, a hive of scum and villainy, etc. But if you are a developer who is passionate about RPGs, you should probably care about about the opinions here, not because codex is representative of the consoomer mobs, but because it is a niche enthusiast forum that will tell you things you need to hear, not what you already am bombarded with in one of your various echo chambers.

Delete Twitter, forget about bluesky(lolwut?), reddit's overrun with bots. This is where you should be honing your craft.

Grow some thicker skin and dive right on in. The water's shit.

 

[Roguey]

Avowed will be negatively compared to Skyrim just like how The Outer Worlds was to Fallout New Vegas.

Didn't stop The Outer Worlds from being a success. It's getting a sequel. Avowed may very well end up being successful enough to get a sequel as well. The preferences of this forum are ultimately not a very good indicator of whether or not something is a success.

PoE 2 and Tyranny were both financial flops, and the vast majority of Codexers who like FNV happen to hate TOW.

Deadfire was eventually profitable.

Likely Tyranny as well, given current sales estimates; it had a pretty good long tail like most RPGs do. Paradox just isn't interested in doing those kinds of games.

Obsidian is not highbrow, they write stuff that pretends to be deep in the surface but in reality is extremely shallow. They're basically midwits in the bell curve.

Obsidian has had writers of varying backgrounds and skills. Vast majority of their current writers are mids, yes. Avellone was also a mid, though a mid with very good sensibilities. Stout was another. As I've broached on before, Sawyer is a history autist, Fenstermaker was a Harvard grad, Ziets had an MA in psychology, Gonzalez had an MA in social work (lol but) with a "perfect academic record," MacLean majored in physics and philosophy. These were some very educated men writing our computer role-playing games. What Obsidian has now are a bunch of Creative Writing and English majors (like Avellone with only a fraction of the good sense). But Pillars of Eternity was shaped by the Very Educated Men, and they laid down the foundation in Deadfire, though the Mids ended up inheriting the Earth (thanks Patel, Kirsch, Dollarhyde, Scokel, Starks).

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Is MCA doing any writing for upcoming titles that we know of atm, Roguey?

 

[Roguey]

Is MCA doing any writing for upcoming titles that we know of atm, Roguey?

WolfEye and Red Info.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Is MCA doing any writing for upcoming titles that we know of atm, Roguey?

Red Info

We're so back.

 

[ColonelMace]

Is MCA doing any writing for upcoming titles that we know of atm, Roguey?

WolfEye

Didn't know about WolfEye. He did work for Arkane on some key characters from Prey iirc, and I'm eager to see him with Colantonio and pals at it again.

 

[Gargaune]

Also saying that the Watcher achieved nothing is very surface level.

The Watcher found Ukaizo and actually learned what exactly Eothas did and why. This information at least gives people a headstart in solving the broken Wheel shit. Without the Watcher nobody would even know it's broken.

An idiotic achievement that shouldn't need achieving to begin with - if you want to force someone to rise to a do-or-die challenge, it's vital they're aware of that challenge. Breaking the Wheel and not telling anyone would not serve Eothas in his already moronic plan, Deadfire's "god of wisdom" is a monstrously dangerous imbecile and Durance was right to blow him to smithereens in the first game's backstory.

Setting that monumental writing failure aside, the point stands - Deadfire's main throughline is Eothas breaking the Wheel and the PC plays no part in the unfolding of those events, nor indeed could they in any capacity. With or without the protagonist's involvement, the exposition for a hypothetical sequel is identical, Eothas manifested as giant rock, waded through the ocean, and broke the recycle bin. The player is presented with no agency in that course of events, nor even the prospect of agency, and anything they could affect is purely peripheral.

Roping factions in? They help you get to Ukaizo.

Do they? I know the game pretends that's the case, but the way I recall it, all they do is sail with you through a big storm. Which you can also do on your own. Big whoop.

A failure instead of futility? You can have Wael's titan fight Eothas.

Is that a DLC thing? You'll forgive me if I didn't throw more good money after bad.

Anyway, just go through my TLDR again, I know it's rambling but I did cover it from every angle and whichever way you turn it, Deadfire's critical thread is fucked.


P.S. If any of you actually play Avowed, do share how exactly it relates its timeline to the events of Deadfire. I guess you don't have to worry about reconciling conflicting player choices for a sequel if you never gave the player any choices in the first place.