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

[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.

 

[Tom Baker's Arse]

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.

Damned well said. I could not agree with you more.

 

[mediocrepoet]

View attachment 57963

You know... I never thought Soyer would be the best part of Obsidian, but now I'm forced to contemplate that possibility.

 

[countrydoctor]

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".

Eora was just a dogshit setting, and ultimately it ruined the entire PoE1. "Hollowborn" was really the perfect name for it. But i have no god damned idea what happened with Outer Worlds, that was the safest, blandest corpo shit i've seen in the genre before Veilguard, and it's amusing given its anti-corporate theme.

 

[mediocrepoet]

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".

Eora was just a dogshit setting, and ultimately it ruined the entire PoE1. "Hollowborn" was really the perfect name for it. But i have no god damned idea what happened with Outer Worlds, that was the safest, blandest corpo shit i've seen in the genre before Veilguard, and it's amusing given its anti-corporate theme.

Eora was a good setting and even had interesting parts in its history. The problem is that they decided to make a game that happened after most of the cool shit happened and set up a conflict that didn't resonate with anyone because the setting didn't have an actual history with anyone so the big reveal is kind of a wet fart.

 

[Cryomancer]

The game has only 3 out of 11 classes, missing the most cool ones like Cipher and many cool abilities for Fighters, Rangers and Wizards aren't into the game. Probably there is more things removed from PoE 2 to Avoided than from Morrowind to Oblivion to Skyrim...

 

[processdaemon]

Did anyone here play Pentiment? How really is it?

I did and I absolutely hated it. I found the protagonist(or protagonists I guess) uncompelling, the NPCs unlikeable and the story dull. I felt like I was going insane when I googled 'pentiment shit' when I was done to see if other people felt the same and found everyone slobbering over Sawyer's cock across the entire internet (and I'm saying that as someone who generally likes most of the games he's been involved with). The only thing I really liked about it was the marginalia, but that really isn't worth slogging through 15 hours of game for when you can just look at medieval manuscripts.

To be a bit more fair, I jumped into thinking it was going to be an RPG so I recognise that I probably should have read around before buying since I know perfectly well that I don't like visual novels unless they're C&C heavy and if I'd researched for 5 minutes I would have known that it wasn't the game for me. Someone into that sort of thing could probably give you a fairer review than I can, but personally I wouldn't recommend it to anyone unless I wasn't very fond of them.

 

[Silverfish]

Pillars 2 and Outer Worlds were already woke as hell almost on the same level of degeneracy as BG3.

I suspect you didn't play The Outer Worlds.

Strong womyn characters everywhere, asexual companion whose quest is about hooking them up in a gay romance, cartoonish evil corpos etc etc.

This overlooks the fact that what Obsidian are actually saying is "look at the kinds of people that can tolerate and carve out a niche in the capitalistic post-apocalypse."

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When a suicide bomber makes it to the afterlife.

Obsidian was supposed to be the saviors of RPGs, "if only those pesky publishers didnt get in way of their visions!".

It's crazy that, with the benefit of hindsight, Bethesda jerking them around during New Vegas' development is why that game turned out as well as it did.

 

[kapisi]

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

Considering Eothas returned the reincarnation process to its natural chaotic state, and that the storms around Ukaizo stopped, people would eventually reach the island and get the gist of the situation. Conversations with Woedica imply that Watcher's pursuit is already part of mortals' rising to the challenge.

Deadfire's "god of wisdom" is a monstrously dangerous imbecile

He is not a god of wisdom. Look at this description from Deadfire encyclopedia:

Eothas is the god of light, redemption, hope, and rebirth. Priests of Eothas are honest and kind in their dealings, condemning all expressions of cruelty and falsehood. Gaun is an aspect of Eothas that emphasizes the natural ending of mortal life. Commonly represented as a farmer carrying a lantern and sickle, Gaun is a figure of cyclical death as opposed to Rymrgand’s entropic one or Berath’s cold inevitability. The sickle he carries, reaps what is sowed in life, and the lantern guides the deceased through death and rebirth. It is believed that Gaun, instead of Berath’s avatars, visits those who embrace death with acceptance.

Consider that his portfolio is universal, for mortals and gods alike. Are not his actions perfectly in line with it?

and Durance was right to blow him to smithereens in the first game's backstory.

And yet we see that a god cannot be killed with a big bomb, however cool that sounds.

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.

Not every story is a hero's journey, and stories have layers. The Watcher has personal stakes - the souls of his people are imprisoned, part of his soul is taken, he is brought back from the dead on the condition of following Eothas - take your pick, roleplay.

At no point during the journey he is tasked with destroying Eothas - it is presumed to be impossible, even for gods themselves (see Wordica, Abydon, the Godhammer). You can stop him temporarily with a titan (yes, DLC) and it unfolds exactly like you described with cannons - he crashes into the Wheel. At least it's more dignified than galleon cannons.

At multiple points throughout the games you see that you can't skillcheck change a god's mind either. They are more preprogrammed machines than Greek gods, however man-like their behavior is.

On a higher layer the story is about the world itself, the nature of mortal and divine in a world with natural reincarnation, and the relationship between both. If you reframe both games in this way, you can see them as acts 1 and 2 in a traditional story structure.

Game 1 is introduction to the relationship and call to adventure (Woedica vs Eothas using mortals). Game 2 ends in the lowest point - the axis of the relationship is broken - the gods will presumably cease to exist without the Wheel, while the mortals will be left alone in chaos. So, yes, the exposition for Game 3 is identical - it is Act 3 and you can't start it with the Wheel intact.

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.

Each faction gives you the means to reach Ukaizo - teleport through the storms, go underwater, calm the storms or sail the ghost ship. You can fit your ship with an ultimate upgrade to go through alone if you wish.

Thinking about all this, Dune comes to mind. Paul is the protagonist, we explore the world largely through him. Despite being in the center of the events, he has little agency in the overall story (although for different reasons) and he himself knows it. It doesn't make the story less interesting, because the story is not about Paul in the end. It also doesn't make Paul's adventures less exciting.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Strong womyn characters everywhere, asexual companion whose quest is about hooking them up in a gay romance, cartoonish evil corpos etc etc.

This overlooks the fact that what Obsidian are actually saying is "look at the kinds of people that can tolerate and carve out a niche in the capitalistic post-apocalypse."

It might be that at some degree if we take their writing purely at face value, but otherwise it's more of an unfortunate combination of girl power nonsense coupled with fight the power nonsense all wrapped up in bad satire. It's no FNV with nuanced factions and a sensible approach to worldbuilding.

 

[processdaemon]

Each faction gives you the means to reach Ukaizo - teleport through the storms, go underwater, calm the storms or sail the ghost ship. You can fit your ship with an ultimate upgrade to go through alone if you wish

Yeah, I found the ability to side with anyone or no-one to be one of the saving graces of PoE2. I preferred PoE in most ways, but despite being somewhat lukewarm on the game in general it was satisfying to abandon or betray everyone I didn't like (in my first playthrough I didn't bother building the fancy ship before going it alone, I just progressed the pirate quest until I got the ghost ship, didn't give it to the pirates, killed everyone I could, sailed to the endgame and got what I think must be the worst set of ending slides I've ever gotten in an RPG, which suited me fine as I wasn't fond of any of the factions or most of the characters.
You can tell that the writers don't really want you to go down that route, but I respect that they at least allowed it as an option, especially since there seems to be a push against allowing you to be evil or even reckless in video games now. I'll be interested to see how Avowed measures up in that regard.

 

[Ol' Willy]

View attachment 57963

Would the ones on the both sides. Avoid center

 

[Vulpes]

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.

The Outer Worlds was a commercial success because tons of normalfags fell for the "From the creators of Fallout New Vegas!" meme. The game itself has shown to a lot of people, both old fans and newcomers, that Obsidian does not have it in them anymore to make a game that's on par with FNV. They can't play the same card twice. Worst still, KCD 2 is coming out a week earlier, so now Avowed will be compared to both it and Skyrim.

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"?

Do I really have to spell it out? This sad cope of "It can't be us that's wrong! No! Never! Everyone else is!!!" is getting pretty tiring. I already get more than enough of that from gaming journalists. I hate to break it to everyone, but this place is not some grand authority when it comes to everything RPG-related.

Edit: On second thought I'd like to retract my statement, you're absolutely right. Screw the unwashed masses, RPG Codex knows best! Everyone should listen to what the Codex has to say! After all, Colony Ship turned out to be a huge commercial success! What does that cuck Swen know anyways? His game lets you have sex with a druid in bear form!

 

[Morality Games]

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?

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.

Looking back over their old Kickstarter, I don't think you can lay that charge at Obsidian's feet. They might have tapped into the mood but never overtly 'eaned into Fargo's anti-publisher rhetoric.

 

[sser]

The key art for this game is one of the coolest I've ever seen. A shame the gameplay doesn't seem to lean in that direction, that or if it does they have been hiding it extraordinarily well. Getting mentally blasted by fungi and disassociating yourself as the protagonist and falling down k holes and the like could be a sick contrast to the generic fantasy heroism.

 

[Gargaune]

He is not a god of wisdom. Look at this description from Deadfire encyclopedia:

My bad, it's been years, dunno why I got stuck on him and "wisdom", maybe the deity thing. Still, the plan is moronic and arguing chaos as legitimising Eothas working against his own interests is a hard sell, even old D&D 3E charts agreed that "[Chaotic Neutral] is not as likely to jump off a bridge as to cross it."

And yet we see that a god cannot be killed with a big bomb, however cool that sounds.

Kicking the can down the road is still a victory.

Not every story is a hero's journey, and stories have layers. The Watcher has personal stakes - the souls of his people are imprisoned, part of his soul is taken, he is brought back from the dead on the condition of following Eothas - take your pick, roleplay. [...]

But RPGs typically are often monomyths as a matter of necessity, the format requires that developmental curve at a mechanical level and it's fitting that the narrative progression mirror it. If your growth in ability doesn't enter the dimension of the plot thread you're following, it's narratively meaningless (i.e. yes, you're better at smashing Xuarips, and that doesn't matter for shit).

I brought up Cyberpunk 2077 as a comparison because that also reveals its conflict to ultimately be a hopeless struggle, but it works because CDPR's plot is focused on the personal, it's all about V and their way of dealing with their impending demise, not some external, world-changing event. Deadfire, however, is traditionally patterned around the antagonist (Eothas is that, functionally) and his plan, they are not a mere worldbuilding backdrop for a personal adventure. In fact, it follows very similar beats to BG2's plot around Irenicus, where the PC's despoiled of a part of themselves, they pursue the antagonist to discover his cataclysmic scheme, and then try to put an end to it (even in Deadfire's, sort of, I think Woedica suggests you see if you can "talk him out of it"). The stakes and progression are set up in a familiar way but the agency is missing, and it's not about the outcome itself (the alternative example I gave earlier would still see the Wheel destroyed), but having a part to play. You can't stop him, you can't trouble him along the way, he doesn't have to adapt to your progress, none of it.

The problem with Deadfire as the second in your three-act structure is that the PC and their efforts are redundant, they don't drive or affect any of the central events - if the Watcher never existed, Deadfire would still play out the same. It's not just that it's a linear story to play through, it's that not even at the writing level does it reserve some meaningful role for the protagonist within that linearity.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Each faction gives you the means to reach Ukaizo - teleport through the storms, go underwater, calm the storms or sail the ghost ship. You can fit your ship with an ultimate upgrade to go through alone if you wish

Yeah, I found the ability to side with anyone or no-one to be one of the saving graces of PoE2. I preferred PoE in most ways, but despite being somewhat lukewarm on the game in general it was satisfying to abandon or betray everyone I didn't like (in my first playthrough I didn't bother building the fancy ship before going it alone, I just progressed the pirate quest until I got the ghost ship, didn't give it to the pirates, killed everyone I could, sailed to the endgame and got what I think must be the worst set of ending slides I've ever gotten in an RPG, which suited me fine as I wasn't fond of any of the factions or most of the characters.
You can tell that the writers don't really want you to go down that route, but I respect that they at least allowed it as an option, especially since there seems to be a push against allowing you to be evil or even reckless in video games now. I'll be interested to see how Avowed measures up in that regard.

For peak nihilist ending, you can also do Rymrgand's bidding.