Eternity Avowed Pre-Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Infinitron]

It was just a big dungeon crawl.

https://gamerant.com/avowed-preview-lore/

Avowed Hands-On Preview: A Feast for Lore Fans​

Obsidian Entertainment's Avowed takes the beloved world of Pillars of Eternity and transforms the isometric franchise into a full-blown action RPG. Players, as an envoy from the Aedyr Empire, travel to the wild frontiers of The Living Lands to investigate the Dream Scourge.

At Gamescom, Game Rant was able to play an hour of Avowed. The demo itself lasted around 30-40 minutes, and once it was complete, we were able to play it again utilizing a different build. We were presented with three possible builds for the demo—Barbarian, Mage, and Ranger—but it's worth mentioning that these were archetypes instead of in-game classes. Avowed features a classless leveling system so that players can build and fulfill whatever fantasy they want, mixing and matching a variety of melee, magical, and ranged weaponry. The demo gave us a good feel for the combat but also gave a bonafide feast when it comes to lore.

Avowed's Demo and Gameplay Are Solid​

Avowed's demo limited us to a single cave-like structure where we had to search for some missing explorers. As we made our wave into the cave system, we were met with some fantastical creatures to get our first taste of combat. One of the first things we realized when we were playing is that Avowed's first-person perspective feels a bit "floaty," more akin to games like Dying Light than more grounded first-person perspectives like Skyrim. This gives a little more freedom to the movement, but it also creates this odd, loose feeling. If this perspective and its feel is off-putting, it's worth noting that Avowed also features a third-person mode.

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As we fought our way through (with Avowed companion Kai alongside us), we eventually came across a dying explorer. In good Obsidian humor, his biggest complaint before his pending death is dying a virgin. We could save him with one of our potions or we could refuse and let him die, and we tried both options during our demo runs. Nothing major seemed to change from either choice, but having the power of life or death over a virgin elicited a laugh each time. As we moved through the demo, we noticed some mechanical devices on nearby walls that, when 2-3 were lit up, would open doors to secret paths or treasure. This exact puzzle type was a roadblock later in the demo, but we were able to solve all of them by finding all the devices and throwing an electric fruit at them. This was sometimes straightforward, while other times required us to do one device before finding another.

About halfway through the cave system, we came across an "Oracle" named Sargamis who, like the main character, is Godlike. He is completely gold and incredibly old, and exhausting his dialogue options was a real treat. He talked about his relationship with his god, talked to us about our Godlike status (since we are hearing voices and have never communicated with our unknown god before), and how all the godlike died—minus an apparent handful. He also referenced the events of Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire, with this dialogue and other factors making sure this game felt like it took place in PoE's Eora despite finding its home in a different genre. Finally, he tasked us with retrieving something deeper in the cave system but supposedly had no idea what became of our explorers. We doubted him, but we moved ahead.

Completing his task saw us face off with a horde of enemies before a mini-boss, and it was interesting that we could have returned to him without finding the explorers because it was marked optional. We intended to do that on our second run of the demo, but we didn't get that far before time was up. Nonetheless, returning to him and knowing he had to be the one to kill the explorers led to a boss battle with him, bringing our demo to an end afterward.

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Avowed Barbarian​

For our first demo run, we chose the "Barbarian" archetype since it seemed likely to be the simplest form of Avowed's combat. This build saw us dual-wielding two one-handed weapons, but we could also swap to a secondary, which was a heavy two-handed weapon. When dual-wielding, it's impossible to block because the same button controls that secondary weapon; we could only block with the two-handed weapon. In both loadouts, we were able to charge both our light attacks and heavy attacks. It also came complete with two abilities, one of which was the classic crowd-pushing yell and the other was a forward slam.

We also had access to some throwables to engage enemies at a range, and as we suspected, it proved to be simple enough to pick up and learn. However, it was engaging in every way one would expect a "Barbarian" build to be. While crowd control usually meant separating enemies and moving around the battlefield, it was easy enough to be a physically-dominating force smashing our way through this cave. Mechanically, stylistically, and immersively, Avowed fulfills that fantasy archetype easily.

Avowed Mage​

Although we were enticed by the premise of Avowed's guns in the "Ranger" build, we wanted to get a feel for how magic works in Avowed. We chose the "Mage" archetype, which saw us have a primary loadout as well. Both had a wand and a grimoire, but each one operated differently. One Grimoire would summon weapons for us to engage in magical melee combat, while another had a wider selection of ranged spells. Our wands, of course, would dish out ranged magic damage, and our abilities relied on our magic too. Fueling our spells was a limited magic resource, but the demo provided us with plenty of magic potions to replenish it. Notably, this combat was a lot more complex than the "Barbarian" build, but it fulfilled the fantasy archetype all the same. Because of the short time with the "Mage," we were still trying to learn all the exact controls and spells, which is both exciting and, to some degree, overwhelming.

Those who go all in the magic fantasy are going to have plenty of options, and that's great. That said, it does seem like the learning curve to master Avowed's magic is going to be higher than, say, a melee-focused character. Players will want to know what they have spell-wise on each loadout, and when that includes several spells as shortcuts, in the radial menu, and wand options, it's quite a lot. The good news is that the full game will let players mix and match as they choose. An enemy dropped a pistol during our gameplay, and we swapped one of our wands for it. Not only was it just as satisfying combat-wise, but a pistol and a grimoire simplified the combat to be more immediately digestible.

Avowed's Kai Comes In Like a Wrecking Ball​

Joining us on this adventure was Kai, a coastal aumaua who prefers skill and speed over bulky defenses. That doesn't stop him from hitting hard, however. In addition to all of the above companions, we could open the radial menu to issue him direct commands. Sometimes this was to use an ability made to solve puzzles, other times this was to hit enemies with an elemental attack, and our favorite was an ability that saw him jump and slam down in a small AOE. It was a great way to break up hordes of enemies and enjoyable to watch visually. He also made for a great distraction when fighting enemies directly, though there was a time or two where Kai just stood around. This is a common bug in any companion-based game, however, and hopefully something that will be sorted out by Avowed's February release date.

Avowed's Treatment of Lore Is Pitch Perfect​

The quest was engaging, the humor was solid, the puzzles were straightforward and understandable, and the overall combat did a great job of fulfilling fantasy archetypes. The true kicker for Avowed's demo though was its treatment of lore. Pillars of Eternity as a franchise and Eora as a fantasy world have so much to them that the shift to action RPG and to the previously unexplored Living Lands could easily be excuse enough for this new installment to be ultimately disconnected. That was not the case. Sargamis was a great way to get a look into the lore of Avowed and how things have changed since Pillars of Eternity 2, but more than that, fans don't have to rely on their memory alone to get their lore fix.

It's worth mentioning that Avowed is entirely playable without having an in-depth Pillars of Eternity knowledge, but for those who want that lore and for those who need brushing up, there is a fantastic tooltip feature. Not unlike Final Fantasy 16's Active Lore System, this tooltip feature highlights keywords and allows players to learn more about them should they so choose. This was as simple as explaining who a god was to more complex lore elements like explaining references to key events. It was admitted a bit bloaty to access and read, simply because there is so much, but it scratched that same itch as diving through wikis to learn everything you can about a specific piece of lore. It's basically an in-game wiki, and we easily found ourselves reading through them for the pleasure of reading them.

Ultimately, Avowed is an Obsidian RPG through and through. It clearly carries that internal DNA that has always made Obsidian RPGs special, and while this was only a taste of what it offers, we're ready for that full meal.

 

[scytheavatar]

Sawyer needs to make PoE3. Fact.

Sawyer made it clear he will come back for PoE 3 only if he got BG3 budget, if you are a Microsoft exec and you are willing to let Obsidian spend big bucks after how Avowed turned out then you need your head checked.

 

[Fedora Master]

[*]

N

 

[PunchYouInTheFace]

The noble mission to make as many mortal enemies as possible on the Codex continues unabated for PunchYouInTheFace

A decent non-retarded opinion from cuckdexian would be nice, because literally every 2 seconds some inbred pizza cutter from Jamel like Fedora Master comes out like this, lmao:

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N

...I mean at that point just go to 4ch, reddit for retards and inbreds.

 

[ArchAngel]

Sawyer needs to make PoE3. Fact.

Sawyer made it clear he will come back for PoE 3 only if he got BG3 budget, if you are a Microsoft exec and you are willing to let Obsidian spend big bucks after how Avowed turned out then you need your head checked.

Well M$ will decide how Awoved turned out after it releases and they see sales numbers and number of gamepass players playing it .

 

[PunchYouInTheFace]

Well M$ will decide how Awoved turned out

You underestimate the power of consumerism and capitalism, commie. (it will sell okay but not second coming of jesus level of well, which by the metrics of this shithole = failure)

 

[NJClaw]

N

Ngati!

 

[Fedora Master]

N

Ngati!

N'Gasta! Kvata! Kvakis!​

 

[Roguey]

He was everywhere, but he's a guy who loves talking about games. Patel's strengths apparently don't involve marketing so they're in an awkward position here.

Yeah this is something I don't understand, you have producers and community managers who can be the face of the game and interact with the public. While creative who are often if not usually uncomfortable with public appearances can just focus on making them. Why they are forcing Patel to a role she is clearly not comfortable with, I am not sure.

I would guess they really want everyone to know they have a female director or she wanted to do this to raise her profile, show that she can also be a Sawyer or an Avellone.

 

[luj1]

Patel sounds like a hysterical SJW woman with no talent, I doubt she can ever come close to Sawyer. However, it's also true that Sawyer kinda went insane after Pillars tbh. It seems no one wants him as lead anymore. His takes on RPG theory and systems have become completely bonkers. Dude claims that "Wizardry is not an RPG" yet he made a flash game about history and calls it an RPG. It honestly sounds like his political views messed him up.

Patel wishes she were Sawyer, Sawyer wishes he were Avellone. Funny how that goes. We are sinking deeper and deeper with every generation.

 

[Infinitron]

Dude claims that "Wizardry is not an RPG" yet he made a flash game about history and calls it an RPG.

Not true, he said the opposite. In fact he may have been responsible for the term "RPG" being removed from Pentiment's Steam page shortly after it was announced (which is why its thread is in the Adventure Gaming forum here). The game could have been marketed as an RPG but Obsidian chose to be honest.

 

[luj1]

>"Obsidian chose to be honest"

Oh please. If the term RPG was removed, who put it there in the first place? More like they got called out

Second of all, Sawyer literally said "if someone were to make Wizardry today, I would not consider it to be an RPG."

That sounds almost like a political take and a little insane tbh

 

[BlackheartXIII]

Patel was a low profile YA writer before she entered Obsidian and her writing career continued during her employment, I assume she hasn't reached her desired cultural recognition/authority in her field so she focused her cultural ambition on narrative design instead.

Hustling for clout is a standard pursuit for "creative" professionals, it's the prime driving force of the MFAfication of gamedev, if you think those writers and academics are participating all those conventions and lectures because they care about games you're delusional.

 

[FreeKaner]

Goofiness wasn't because Patel likes to write goofy, in fact Patel wrote Devil of Caroc which is about as dark as it gets with a bleak resolution whatever you do. It was because Sawyer can't read and doesn't understand feedback, he takes it at face value but also doubles down.

Sawyer and Fenstermaker were still the leads on The White March. Patel having more of a voice gave us Deadfire and then Peril on Gorgon.

Deadfire is a result of feedback from PoE1 of many points that Sawyer was very outspoken about especially in terms of tone. He also stated himself that they deliberately chose to take a more lighthearted approach with Deadfire. In either case, ignoring Sawyer's input and obvious direction choices, and then claiming Sawyer was a mute element and the difference between the tone of the two is because of difference of Fernstermaker and Patel makes him even more of a pathetic figure.

So what's it, Sawyer has no impact and is just there give the okay to whatever Fernstermaker or Patel was saying? Why do we even care about what he does or says then? That's obviously not the case of course, as he himself takes responsibility for many of the decisions for both games and it's just you trying to redeem Sawyer. This is especially true when we look at things that Patel wrote, which are in no way leaning towards goofy writing, it's to contrary.

 

[Roguey]

Deadfire is a result of feedback from PoE1 of many points that Sawyer was very outspoken about especially in terms of tone. He also stated himself that they deliberately chose to take a more lighthearted approach with Deadfire. In either case, ignoring Sawyer's input and obvious direction choices, and then claiming Sawyer was a mute element and the difference between the tone of the two is because of difference of Fernstermaker and Patel makes him even more of a pathetic figure.

So what's it, Sawyer has no impact and is just there give the okay to whatever Fernstermaker or Patel was saying? Why do we even care about what he does or says then? That's obviously not the case of course, as he himself takes responsibility for many of the decisions for both games and it's just you trying to redeem Sawyer. This is especially true when we look at things that Patel wrote, which are in no way leaning towards goofy writing, it's to contrary.

They are all voices that contribute to the ultimate result.

Many developers at Obsidian referred to the development of Pillars of Eternity and Deadfire as a studio-wide effort to bring Josh Sawyer’s vision to life. Sawyer doesn’t see it quite the same way. Yes, he’s the game director, and yes, most decisions are filtered through him. But game development is a collaborative effort, and Sawyer has always been willing to defer to peers if he finds merit in their input.

Sawyer followed Carrie Patel’s work on both Pillars of Eternity titles, saw that the tasks she performed and the quality of her work were of leadership quality, and extended his leadership on the narrative team to her. He trusted Adam Brennecke to make technical decisions that would facilitate faster development and more creativity. And, because he comprehended how much of his time writing would take, he asked lead area designer Bobby Null to step into the role of lead designer after Dave Williams, another systems designer, was needed on another project.

“Josh called me in one day and said he wanted to make me the lead designer,” Null remembered. The meeting took place almost one year into work on Deadfire. “At one point, Josh was doing lead narrative work because Eric Fenstermaker had left the company, and I was still the lead area designer. Between those jobs and the project director, there are five full-time jobs that Josh and I just figured out ways to do ourselves.”

 

[Beans00]

Obsidian fans and shills in constant cope mode lol.

No one even gives a fuck about this game, the shitty dragon age sequel has 150 more pages.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.gamereactor.eu/avowed-hands-on-preview-like-skyrim-with-good-combat-1425403/

Avowed Hands-On Preview: Like Skyrim with Good Combat​

At Gamescom we got to play an hour of Obsidian's fantasy RPG, and it's clearer than it ever was just how much focus has been placed on combat.​

"It's like Skyrim with guns." The infamous quote from the now-disgraced internet personality still seems to haunt a lot of gaming discourse. And so, to satisfy my ego and push the conversation away from a very strange bloke, I offer a new Skyrim-based comparative for Avowed. "It's like Skyrim with good combat." See? We even got all the way to "It's like Skyrim with g-"

While it might seem derivative of all that Avowed offers, that was the strongest feeling I had while playing through an hour of Obsidian's upcoming fantasy RPG. The gameplay demo centred on one dungeon, and a single quest within it. There are a few environmental puzzles, plenty of enemies to fight, and a mini-story that you can wrap up in one of a few ways. A classic Skyrim-like experience, complete with your companion crouching as soon as you get into stealth and delivering witty remarks whenever you round an important corner.

The design of the dungeon was mostly linear, but entertaining, nonetheless. There were a few places where we could blow a hole in a wall to find a new path, or charge a door with electricity for some extra loot, but otherwise the structure was rather circular, guiding you back to the quest giver at the beginning once you'd accomplished your task. In the dungeon, we had to track down a fragment of the shin bone of a former god to prove ourselves to his biggest fan. There were a few twists and turns we won't spoil, including the fate of a lost troop of looters, and the overall plan with the shin bone fragment, but it all ended in a player-based choice. The choices offered to me at the end of the quest were intriguing, and at first what I thought was a more evil option actually turned out to have the heavier narrative moment.

It's somewhat difficult to state exactly where the Skyrim comparison felt strongest for me. Kai as a companion felt like Lydia on steroids, not only with his increased presence throughout the quest but also his usefulness in combat. Perhaps the highest praise I can place on Avowed from my time with it was that - after a little bit of a shaky start - it felt very much like my early days with the fifth Elder Scrolls game. Stepping into a cave or dungeon, not knowing exactly what was lying in wait but knowing I'd get a story to remember.

I should probably stop comparing Avowed to a 13-year-old game now, because Obsidian has made a very good modern RPG from the looks of things. The visual fidelity may come at the cost of 60 fps on consoles, but the game world does look absolutely gorgeous. From the sweeping landscapes in the distance to the minor details right in front of you, on more than a few occasions I found myself idly looking around the environments like I was giving an E3 presentation. If I had to bring up one negative about the graphics it would be in the character models, where the non-human characters can end up looking rather uncanny at times. They appear almost too realistic, like a human who is wearing cosplay rather than a true fantasy creature. The enemies don't suffer this problem, but for the first ten minutes or so I had a jumpscare whenever Kai got a close-up.

The graphics may be beautiful, and the narrative may be branching, but it's clear from the videos we've seen so far and from the gameplay we've experienced that Avowed's main USP is its combat. Taking inspiration from Fatshark's Vermintide games, Avowed allows you to dodge directionally when you're fighting, creating a faster pace as you duck away from an enemy swing before diving back in for one of your own. A large stamina bar at the bottom of the screen is used when you attack normally, sprint, or dodge, so you'll want to keep an eye on it, as well as the pesky ranged enemies that like to take a vertical position in a fight, but otherwise the combat flows really well in Avowed. The quicker pacing really helps compared to other fantasy RPGs, and with the build variety you get you can quickly find a satisfying style to fight with.

It might be more challenging at first as you do have a lot of buttons to press, but I was somewhat perplexed as to why a character just wouldn't be a mage in Avowed. I did play some of what Obsidian termed the Barbarian in the demo, but the magic-wielder just seemed to have the far better toolbox. With spells, you essentially get access to solutions to all the environmental puzzles, whereas other builds would have to carry specific items, and while you may have more buttons to press, the sheer amount of stuff you can do because of those extra buttons felt increasingly rewarding as I got the hang of combat. It might just be personal preference and due to my limited time with the Barbarian or other builds, but it certainly felt like magic had an increased strength.

Some cringe dialogue lines and a lack of initial excitement had me feeling a little shaky when I first started Avowed, but as the game drew me in, I learned more of its systems and grew more confident with understanding what it is, my excitement swelled for the full release next year. I did run into one or two visual bugs so it probably is for the best Avowed is spending some additional time in the oven, but with combat that really sings combined with Obsidian's reliable hands on story and quest design, we are in for a very strong fantasy experience at this rate.

This is a big one: https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/xbox/avowed-preview-and-interview-gamescom-2024

Excerpt:

At the time of the announcement, Xbox quoted a very busy Holiday 2024 release schedule as the primary reason, with games like Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Life is Strange: Double Exposure, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Assassin's Creed Shadows, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle all occupying the same time frame. Out of curiosity, I asked Obsidian if this was really the main reason Avowed was delayed.

"Honestly, [the delay] is 100% because there were so many games coming out in the next couple of months," Warden confirmed. "We're grateful to our friends at Xbox for giving us the time where Avowed can just shine on its own. We're going to spend the intervening time just making it as good an experience as we possibly can."

"Early on in development, we realized that often the Xbox Series X performs better than the PC" — Playing Avowed for the first time while discussing the delay, Xbox performance, and ray tracing​

I finally got to play Avowed, including a character build almost no one else had access to, and I chatted with members of the Obsidian team.

When Obsidian Entertainment unveiled its latest project, a semi-open-world fantasy RPG set in the Pillars of Eternity universe, it immediately became one of my more anticipated first-party Xbox titles. I've adored every Obsidian game I've ever played, and a first-and-third-person fantasy RPG made by that team seemed to be a dream come true. My feelings on Avowed have fluctuated somewhat with each successive reveal and trailer, but now my excitement has never been higher.

During Gamescom 2024, Xbox flew me out to Los Angeles, California, for a chance to go hands-on with upcoming titles from Xbox Game Studios and its partners, including the very first hands-on demo for Avowed outside of Obsidian's studios. After I played the game, I had another opportunity to chat with some of Avowed's devs, this time Production Director Ryan Warden and Art Director Matt Hansen. My fun didn't stop there, though, as I got to play Avowed again — this time with a character build that was otherwise only shown on the Gamescom showroom floor.

I have a lot of thoughts on Avowed and a ton of new insight to reveal, and all of it points to why Avowed is one of the best upcoming Xbox games and absolutely deserves to be on your radar.

Finally getting to play Avowed for the first time​

Melee combat could still use some improvements in Avowed, but that doesn't stop it from being fun. (Image credit: Xbox Game Studios)
Avowed has shown off gameplay before, but outside of Obsidian's devs, QA team, and a handful of carefully selected play-testers, no one has gotten a chance to personally play Avowed. Gamescom 2024 changed that, giving invited media the opportunity to play one mission with up to three pre-built characters designed around common RPG archetypes (Barbarian, Ranger, and Mage). I was one of the few, and it's what I was most looking forward to when landing in LA.

In the mission, you're tasked with tracking down a missing expedition team within underground ruins dedicated to one of Eora's many gods. It was a great mission for Avowed's first-ever demo, featuring plenty of exploration, branching paths, combat and puzzle segments, choice-based dialogue and investigation, and one (or two) intense boss fights. I spent time as all three of the "classes," eventually finishing the mission and my time with Avowed (or so I thought) with the mage.

It's worth mentioning that Avowed is an entirely classless RPG, and that's 100% by design. Obsidian doesn't want to confine players to any preconceived genre tropes, giving players the freedom to get truly creative. "There are so many different ways to enjoy it and kind of break our combat," said Matt Hansen, Art Director at Obsidian Entertainment. I'll go into more detail in the next section, just know that none of the abilities or combinations I experienced are in any way mutually exclusive.

You can still find cracks if you look for them, but Avowed is certainly a looker now. (Image credit: Xbox Game Studios)
The first thing that struck me when I first began my new adventure in Eora is just how stunning Avowed looks. I'll be blunt, when Avowed's first gameplay trailer was unleashed, I wasn't blown away by the overall visuals. I never expected Avowed to be a showcase in graphical fidelity, but there was a distinct lack of polish. The game has come a long way since then, though, and I can confidently state that Avowed is gorgeous, even without relying on photorealism.

Obsidian planned for this progression of appreciation, though. "We took a risk with how we wanted to market," Hansen told me. "We decided really early on that we're just going to show the game exactly as it is whenever we have a marketing beat, no smoke and mirrors. It'll be what it'll be, and people will enjoy it more and more as we work on it more and more."

Avowed is uniquely colorful, with absolutely spectacular environmental design that truly brings Eora to life. Some have claimed the level design of the demo area is average, but I loved the bevy of secrets (with me discovering more with each successive playthrough of the mission), the multitude of potential paths, and the diversity in both setting and verticality. "It's an interesting place to play within, is vibrant fantasy. There's not a ton of it out there and I really wanted to challenge our team to make that work in a way that is satisfying," Hansen responded to my praise.

I truly believe Obsidian is succeeding. The wash of clashing colors is beautiful, and it's thorough, too. Combat and elemental effects like lightning and explosions interact with enemies and the environment in unique ways, making Avowed feel a little more dynamic than I expected it to be. It's not to the level of having destructible environments, but Avowed is generally overflowing with detail that helps build the world and its history. I remember clearing being struck with awe when going underwater briefly, as Avowed paints its 3D underwater environments with detail, whereas many other games neglect these niche spaces.

This is a screenshot of a compressed copy of the blood mage preview from Gamescom 2024, but you can still see a lot of the detail in this underwater environment. (Image credit: Xbox Game Studios)
"Honestly, the game is far prettier than I thought we could do [in the beginning]," Hansen admitted during our conversation. In terms of art design, lighting, and animations for both NPCs and enemies, Avowed has markedly improved versus its initial debut. "Pointing back to that early gameplay trailer, there's a lot of understandable skepticism around it, but as more polished content has been getting in front of people's eyes they're like, 'Okay, I think I get it,' and that's exciting," Hansen said.

"There have been some gasps and some people going, 'Oh, dang!' as they're playing, and just getting to see those reactions and see the joy on people's faces as they experience the world of Eora... It's a really good feeling," Warden said of people playing Avowed for the first time.

Hansen picked up where Warden left off, saying, "Candidly, I'm just over the moon right now. We may have felt a little differently if people weren't enjoying themselves, but everyone seems to be, and that's such a vindicating experience." Obsidian's efforts to polish Avowed over the months are also influenced by the transparently unfinished nature of earlier trailers, with Hansen telling me, "It's given us a really novel opportunity. When people are seeing things and go, "Oh, the combat is a little static,' we can go, 'Okay, what do we think they're reacting to here, and how can we address it?'"

A screenshot of a compressed preview video doesn't capture how fun Avowed is to play, although I do think there's still room for the combat to improve. (Image credit: Xbox Game Studios)
Speaking of the combat, how does Avowed feel to play? Well, this is another area where it's clear a lot of improvement has been made since Obsidian first showed off Avowed gameplay. Yes, Obsidian working to improve the responsiveness and tactility of combat in Avowed is well-known at this point, but it's different to actually feel those improvements. Obsidian also confirmed to me that the team continues to work on improving combat and gameplay even now, so what I played is a step beyond the last gameplay reveal.

Combat in Avowed is hardly going to compete with the best of the Soulslikes or action-RPGs, but for a traditional fantasy RPG, it's a ton of fun. Being able to independently use each hand to wield whatever weapon you want is awesome. You can dual-wield wands, main a shield and bash enemies, or be a blood-thirsty mage waving around a gruesome axe alongside their grimoire. I only got to see a handful of combinations, but the possibilities are intriguing. I also love the ability to instantly switch between two weapon loadouts at any point.

For a mage, that might mean two different grimoires with unique specialties. For a ranger, that might mean switching to dual short swords in close combat. It could mean anything to anyone, like switching between a defensive shield-and-wand combo and a massive two-handed battleaxe. Both using the unique weapon in each hand and switching between your two loadouts feels smooth and gives you a lot more freedom to react to new combat situations than most other RPGs.

This screenshot of the compressed Avowed "blood mage" preview video from Gamescom 2024 shows off the ability wheel. (Image credit: Xbox Game Studios)
Of course, Obsidian was in for one heck of a challenge translating Pillars of Eternity's CRPG tactical combat to Avowed's immersive, real-time gameplay, and that's where the ability wheel comes into play. This wheel is carrying a lot of weight to keep the two-handed and dual-loadout gameplay as smooth and effortless as possible, storing all of your extra abilities and spells, companion abilities, consumables, and throwables behind a menu that massively slows down in-game time.

In my limited preview, the ability wheel felt a little awkward solely because of how much is stored here, but there's plenty of customizability to tailor to the playstyle of each player. Between that and the four quick slots assigned to the D-Pad, I could clearly see how Avowed players will master their own ability wheels during the course of their playthrough, providing more utility in combat and gameplay without needing to go into your inventory to change equipment or find specific items.

I played as all three of the "classes" Obsidian created for the Avowed demo, and all three felt good to play as. Ranged combat and spells felt particularly smooth and tactile, although melee combat in practice feels much better than it looks with more reactive and responsive enemies than earlier Avowed gameplay footage. There's still room for improvement in terms of weapon impact and player mobility, but there's an excellent foundation here.

I did not run into any of these creepy critters during my Avowed demo. (Image credit: Xbox Game Studios)
Of course, the demo was much more than just combat, even if it does end with a nail-biting boss fight against a horde of skeleton warriors, rangers, and healers (a fight that actually seemed to be relatively challenging for many of the demoing players). The mission we played also featured a ton of exploration, with multiple possible endings depending on how thoroughly you explore and which secrets you discover, how your character is built and what they know, and what decisions you make in conversations.

In true Obsidian RPG fashion, you can also opt to skip straight to violence as the ultimate solution or inadvertently set new events in motion simply by exploring (like accidentally destroying a sacred statue and causing a powerful boss to attack you). Interestingly, the environment of the mission area also changed over the course of the mission, with more areas becoming flooded, caved in, or blocked by massive roots. In one mission I felt a good deal of replayability, enough that there was still more that I hadn't seen after four successive playthroughs.

Avowed even has various puzzles hidden throughout areas, giving you access to powerful loot or useful knowledge. There was one puzzle I didn't figure out, but I did discover a secret on my fourth run that Obsidian told me very few actually found, giving me a new way to complete the mission. That fourth run was my absolute favorite for many reasons, as I discovered additional secrets, had more opportunity to explore changing my gear and equipment, and played with a build almost no one else actually went hands-on with: the blood mage.

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Even getting time with the special 'blood mage' build​

My blood mage abilities had no issue making short work of this powerful (sometimes) foe. (Image credit: Xbox Game Studios)
"We were trying to figure out what the individual loadouts were going to be for the three builds we were creating for this demo, and Yan, one of our QA testers, put up his hand and was like, 'Uh, I've got a build for a blood mage,'" Warden recounted to me. Press and other invited people may have been able to play three distinct builds in Avowed, but there was one other build that was only shown to people.

On the Gamescom 2024 showroom floor, any and all participants could head to the Avowed booth to watch a hands-off preview of a "blood mage" take on the same mission as the hands-on demo. After my interview and toward the end of the Xbox Gamescom event in LA, I went back to the Avowed demo area to see if I could go another round, and Warden, Hansen, and the other two present Obsidian members set me up with the unique blood mage build. It was my fourth time going through the mission, this time with members of Obsidian actively watching, and it was absolutely my favorite.

Again, there are no classes in Avowed, but this "blood mage" build revolved around an ability to burn through health to cast spells when you run out of essence/mana. To supplement your health and turn you into a ceaseless spellcasting demon, this build utilizes spells and weapons that siphon health from enemies. It's a highly aggressive build, but the best part is that it was incomplete at the beginning of the mission.

"In the character creator, you don't press 'A' on 'blood mage' and then bam! you're a blood mage," Warden had said during our conversation. "You have to pick up all the constituent pieces and then piece that together. Yan did that and was like, 'I have something that's really fun. Y'all want to try this?'"

With a grimoire in one hand and a sword in the other, the blood mage build is well equipped to wreak havoc. (Image credit: Xbox Game Studios)
There's always gear and other loot to discover in Avowed's hidden places if you care to look for them, and Obsidian had stashed valuable loot behind puzzles and within secret holes for me to find. On my fourth playthrough, I managed to find all but one secret, and over the course of the mission, I picked up new gear that increased my damage output (but decreased my defense), made it so that all weapon damage siphons enemy health, and more.

By the boss fights at the end, I was a glass cannon who was continuously healing, dishing out absurd amounts of damage with my bloodthirsty grimoire in one hand and a sword in the other. It was by far the most fun I had with Avowed's combat because it wasn't your standard RPG archetype, instead relying on the creativity of a QA play-tester to build something really spellbinding. "There's an awful lot of discovery there where you can put together really interesting trinkets, pieces of armor, and weapons to create exactly the playstyle you want to play," Warden said.

This "blood mage" build is possible early in the game, too, showing that Avowed doesn't make you wait for the fascinating abilities. That did make me wonder, though, if Avowed falls into the trap so many RPGs do in that late-game progression is reduced to essentially stat boosts. Obsidian assured me this isn't the case. "At higher levels, when you might run into that trap [in other games] of, 'Oh, I'm just putting another perk point into Strength,' or whatever, some of the abilities you can unlock [in Avowed] are some of the most bombastic, meta game-changing abilities that you can have," Hansen told me.

This new trinket in this preview video screenshot isn't revolutionary, but it does hint at how one new piece of gear can change your entire build. (Image credit: Xbox Game Studios)
Avowed's only restriction is that you'll never have enough XP to unlock every ability, forcing you to commit to a unique playstyle, but that doesn't mean you're locked to one build. It'll be easy to fully respec your skills and abilities with a small in-game cost, enabling you to experiment with all-new loadouts whenever you pick up new gear with a unique attribute you can't find anywhere else or unlock a new ability.

Obsidian confirmed to me that Avowed won't have any New Game+ option at launch to carry your progress into future replays, but the sheer amount of choice you have with your character and how you can progress the story in different ways makes Avowed highly replayable.

Even Warden and Hansen couldn't tell me the limits of Avowed's character-building systems. When I asked if there were possible combinations with powerful and truly unique reactions that could make players practically unstoppable, both Obsidian devs agreed, with Hansen adding, "Obviously we want the game to be balanced so it's fun, but it's a single-player game — it's not competitive. If our QA team and our play-testers are breaking this and they're having a great time doing it, that's not a bug, baby. Let's keep it."

Playing the Avowed demo for the fourth time with the blood mage build was hands-down the highlight of my time in LA, but it was also a suggestion for just how flexible and creative you can be when building your character in Avowed.

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Discussing performance and ray tracing in Avowed​

Avowed honestly looks spectacular, and I don't care that it's not a photorealistic technical showcase. (Image credit: Xbox Game Studios)
Recently, Avowed went viral for another interview from the same Xbox event I attended, during which Hansen indicated that Avowed would run at a "bare minimum" of 30 frames-per-second (FPS) on Xbox Series X|S. Many criticized this for not being up to the 60 FPS standard of modern AAA games, but that piece of information may not only be incomplete but unconfirmed this far ahead of release.

During my own interview, Hansen and Warden wouldn't give me hard numbers, with Hansen saying, "We're so focused right now on polishing the content we have while simultaneously doing all the performance stuff, because that always comes at the end... So, a lot of that stuff is hard to pin down at the moment."

A "bare minimum" of 30 FPS for Avowed on Xbox Series X|S does not mean "only 30 FPS" despite how many seem to have run with the original quote, although Hansen did justify the potential 30 FPS cap during that other interview by saying, "You know, it's a first-person [and third-person] single-player game, you don't necessarily need that 60 frames."

The fact of the matter is, though, that it's too soon for Obsidian Entertainment to state exactly what the performance targets are for Avowed on Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, as finetuning performance goes hand-in-hand with the final development stage of polish.

Avowed's tone is very different from the debut teaser trailer, but I actually prefer this. (Image credit: Xbox Game Studios)
Matters may be more positive on this front than many currently believe, and at the very least, Obsidian seems extremely confident in the Xbox version of Avowed. "We've been developing [for Xbox and PC] in tandem the whole time," Hansen reassured me. "But, honestly, one of the things that surprised me most was that, early on in development, we realized that often the Xbox Series X performs better than the PC."

"The console is running [Avowed] really, really well," Hansen continued. "We haven't had to have that many specific affordances for Xbox. We're still figuring out the specs for Xbox Series S, just because it doesn't have some of the bells and whistles on the backend, but we have got an amazingly skilled engineering team."

The hands-on Avowed demo was running on a PC, so I obviously can't comment on Xbox performance, but the right mentality is there. "I'm a weird Art Director in that art is actually my third priority behind 'Does it run well?' and 'Is it fun?'" Hansen told me.

This mentality also applies to the possibility of using ray tracing in Avowed on Xbox Series X|S. NVIDIA recently showed off Avowed with DLSS RTX enabled, and it prompted me to ask Obsidian if the console version would receive similar treatment.

"We're figuring out what all components of ray tracing we want to utilize [on Xbox], but, absolutely, there will be elements of it," Hansen told me. It needs to be stated, though, that ray tracing is considerably more complex than what you may envision in your head. "Using ray tracing is one of those things where there are 12 different components of it that you can choose to utilize or not," Hansen explains.

Ray tracing is much more than enhanced reflections and shadows, and it may appear in a different form in Avowed on Xbox Series X|S than what most people see when they think of ray tracing. Right now, nothing is set in stone, which is another reason I'm hesitant to take that "bare minimum" framerate as being the hard, inalienable truth for how Avowed will run on Xbox. "When we're looking at the bells and whistles," Hansen said, "it's just figuring out which work best for us and which things are genuinely improving the look of the game."

I really like Avowed's interface and how it matches the overall art design, which you can see in this screenshot of the blood mage preview video from Gamescom 2024. (Image credit: Xbox Game Studios)
One area where Obsidian had no issue elaborating was with accessibility. I consider accessibility an incredibly important part of video games, as I believe everyone should have access to this wonderful pastime and all the art it includes. It's part of why I love Xbox, as the company puts accessibility front and center. In fact, Xbox just recently announced a new accessibility-focused Xbox nunchuck-style joystick and 3D-printed joystick caps.

During my demo, I already saw how approachable Avowed is with its easy-to-read user interface that includes extremely helpful (and beautifully designed) elements that help with things like locking onto a target with the bow. Approachability-first game design and a great interface are related to accessibility, but true excellence in this area requires going a step further. "There's a whole accessibility team within Xbox and they've reviewed [Avowed] and said, 'Okay, we've got a wishlist of items here,'" Warden told me. "One of the nice things is we don't have any must-dos at this point, we're just chipping away at... what we can achieve by the time we ship."

Avowed's extra development time will undoubtedly help with that list of extra accessibility options, but Obsidian was happy to remind me (and all of you) about one of the best. "One of the biggest accessibility features that we have is third-person [perspective]. That has been developed almost entirely as an accessibility feature because not everybody can play in first-person," Warden said.

Many gamers can't play first-person titles because of motion sickness, and the demand for a third-person mode in Avowed was massive; when Avowed finally revealed third-person support, the response was triumphant. Of course, there was never any doubt. "We were keeping [third-person perspective] in our back pocket," Hansen admitted. "[Third-person] was one of the first decisions we made on the project."

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The reasons behind Avowed's release date delay​

Knowledge about bugs and the time and resources to fix them are separate. Fortunately, Obsidian now has all of it. (Image credit: Xbox Game Studios)
Toward the beginning of August, we were given the devastating news that Avowed had been delayed from its original Nov. 2024 release window to Feb. 2025, increasing the wait for Xbox's next big RPG by four months. My feelings were bittersweet, however, as I already knew that Avowed was content-complete and nearly across the finish line — but extra time in the oven just means an even better game.

At the time of the announcement, Xbox quoted a very busy Holiday 2024 release schedule as the primary reason, with games like Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Life is Strange: Double Exposure, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Assassin's Creed Shadows, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle all occupying the same time frame. Out of curiosity, I asked Obsidian if this was really the main reason Avowed was delayed.

"Honestly, [the delay] is 100% because there were so many games coming out in the next couple of months," Warden confirmed. "We're grateful to our friends at Xbox for giving us the time where Avowed can just shine on its own. We're going to spend the intervening time just making it as good an experience as we possibly can."

"We were prepared to ship in November, but now we just get to sprinkle a little more on there," Hansen told me a little later in the conversation.

Come February, Avowed's gameplay and combat may be even better than what you see in this blood mage preview video screenshot. (Image credit: Xbox Game Studios)
Video game development is complicated, and every project comes with inherent compromise. Most of the bugs you, as the player, may discover in a new game were already known to the developers but were left alone due to time or budget constraints. "It's murder, when you see something that you're like, 'I really, really want to fix that' and we can't because it's too risky or there's not enough time," Warden said.

"Very candidly, before we knew [the delay] was going to happen, we were going, 'Oh man, we're going to feel bad about leaving that one on the cutting room floor' because we weren't going to get to it, and now we can," Hansen added.

Avowed may have been ready to go in November, but the list of "acceptable compromises" is about to get a whole lot shorter, thanks to the added time Xbox gave the Obsidian team. "We've been really diligent about preserving this last stretch of development for polish... which is a rare affordance and I'm glad we've gotten to act on that," Hansen said.

Obsidian gets more time to make Avowed even better, and that's nothing but good news for us. (Image credit: Xbox Game Studios)
There's more to polish than just squashing flaws or improving performance, though, although any progress in those departments will absolutely help Avowed be a better game come February. It means better accessibility, more refinement, and fewer trade-offs. "It's not just about bugs," Hansen told me. "We're not necessarily adding new features, but we're repolishing things that we had to compromise on for time and now we can go, 'Let's un-compromise. Let's do the original vision we had.'"

Avowed isn't just getting a little extra time, either. Four whole months of added development can mean a whole lot of improvement for Avowed, even without adding any new content or expanding the game at all. It reminds me of an IGN interview during which Watch Dogs: Legion Creative Director Clint Hocking discussed how that game's last-minute delay helped them reevaluate gameplay systems like being able to play as any NPC and take them to the next level. It's the kind of refinement that's much more difficult to do once a game is already out the door.

After seeing how good Avowed already looks and feels, I'm content waiting a little longer to give Obsidian Entertainment time to cook.

Now one of my most anticipated games in years​

I'm so ridiculously excited to dive back into Eora. (Image credit: Xbox Game Studios)
This is actually the second time I've interviewed members of the Avowed team at Obsidian Entertainment, with my first conversation centering around companions, quests, and choices in Avowed. I'm still very proud of that interview (go give it a read if you haven't already; there's some good stuff in there!), but it made me want to play the game even more. Now that I have, I can't say that yearning has abated in the slightest.

Avowed isn't setting out to be the most photorealistic, grittiest, largest, or most ambitious RPG ever made; instead, it's Obsidian's take on "vibrant fantasy" set in a beloved universe. Avowed is about player freedom, exploring the sandbox, and immersing yourself in an unapologetically fantastical world. Seeing how much Avowed has improved since its initial gameplay reveal and knowing how much fun I had in around an hour and a half of playtime make me unbelievably excited to play the full game.

The biggest mysteries remaining here are how well Avowed's story will add to the foundation built by Pillars of Eternity and whether the side quests and companions can properly enrapture players with depth, nuance, and character. I only got a hint in my demo, and it wasn't enough to truly sell me. Still, Avowed has every chance to become one of the best Xbox games of... well, next year. We still have a while longer to wait, as Avowed now releases on Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, Xbox and PC Game Pass, and Xbox Cloud Gaming on Feb. 18, 2025.

 

[luj1]

Deadfire is a result of feedback from PoE1

Deadfire is a result of clumsiness, greed and lack of vision.

Josh ignored the big oversights in core systems, which everyone on the official forums noticed and warned him about. Instead focusing on eye candy, cape physics, minigames, romances, exploding barrels and talking parrots. They believed feature bloat and petty shite will sell the game. Does no one remember Sawyer's Social Media Feature Compilation (TM) that ran on Twitter?

 

[Roguey]

Obsidian fans and shills in constant cope mode lol.

No one even gives a fuck about this game, the shitty dragon age sequel has 150 more pages.

I think it would be great if the people who haven't enjoyed a Bioware game in over ten years could move on with their lives as much as the average former Obsidian fan has.

 

[Silverfish]

"I agree" =/= Opinion Correct.

Yes it does.

 

[Infinitron]

Avowed at PAX West this weekend: https://west.paxsite.com/en-us/sche...-Game-within-the-Pillars-of-Eternity-Universe

From Pillars of Eternity to Avowed: Exploring the Evolution of a New Game within the Pillars of Eternity Universe​

Sat, Aug 31, 2024​

3:30 PM - 4:30 PM​

Blue Dragon Theatre​

​

Join us for an in-depth journey into the creation of the world of Eora in Pillars of Eternity and discover how the development team has woven its rich lore and systems into Obsidian Entertainment's upcoming fantasy RPG, Avowed. Hosted by Thomas Caswell (Lead at Limit Break Network), this panel features insights from Carrie Patel (Game Director) and John Cotto (Area Designer) as they discuss the lessons learned and the creative process behind bringing Eora to life in Avowed. Plus, don't miss a special pre-recorded, never before seen interview with Josh Sawyer (Studio Design Director), where he shares the origins of the Pillars of Eternity series, his experience building the world of Eora, and the unique journey of working with Kickstarter backers during development.

 

[Roguey]

Plus, don't miss a special pre-recorded, never before seen interview with Josh Sawyer

The man who simply can't be bothered to show even though he's not actually working on anything right now.

 

[Bulo]

Plus, don't miss a special pre-recorded, never before seen interview with Josh Sawyer

The man who simply can't be bothered to show even though he's not actually working on anything right now.

Give him a break, it's hot in his apartment

 

[ColonelMace]

If I were Patel or whoever's in charge of gameplay of this game, and saw Sawyer getting actively involved in the promotion, the relief of being backed up would certainly be outshadowed by the frustration of seeing this dude yet again monopolise the spotlight, even though he's not directly involved. Now I don't know about the actual leads on this project but I would be upset.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.polygon.com/gamescom/444408/avowed-hands-on-preview

Avowed feels like a fun fantasy spinoff for fans of The Outer Worlds​

Obsidian’s latest tackles companion-related storytelling, among other things

Would you give a dying virgin a healing potion? This was the first moral quandary presented during my hands-on time with Avowed, Obsidian’s upcoming first-person RPG set in the Pillars of Eternity universe. Caedmon — a member of the missing Aedyran Expedition Team I was tracking — was complaining about the inhumanity of his approaching doom, given that he’d “never even touched a girl.” Out of all the dialogue options, the most amusing involved asking my scaly cerulean companion Kai to “help” Caedmon with his predicament, which led to some chortle-worthy protestation. If I gave Caedmon the healing potion, he’d offer some handy tidbits about the rest of the mission — and if I refused, he’d slump to the floor, and I’d be able to loot a powerful elemental resistance ring from his unsullied corpse.

During my first playthrough of this demo dungeon, I backed out of the conversation and immediately lobbed a grenade at Caedmon. I figured it was more humane to put him out of his misery. However, like the other NPC I encountered in the demo, Caedmon was immortal in open play, shielded from a player’s intrusive thoughts or investigative foreknowledge, at least before a scripted dialogue decision. “I know it’s something that we’ve allowed in a lot of our previous games, but it’s also something that becomes a very expensive design decision,” said Carrie Patel, game director on Avowed. “Because in every single quest, every single piece of content, you’re always asking, ‘What happens if the player runs in here and [attacks] everything?’ And in a lot of cases where we often see players do that, it’s either an accident that they reload for, or it’s a third playthrough, like ‘I just kind of wanna see what happens.’ And those things are powerful and valuable, but we wanted to make sure that we were delivering on that core experience of the game.”

At least in that sense, Avowed is not a return to the halcyon systemic depth of something like Fallout: New Vegas. Instead, it played like a fun, fantasy spin on The Outer Worlds, a sharply written but streamlined RPG that I ultimately found quite forgettable.
Thankfully, there was still plenty to like about the Avowed demo once I accepted it for what it was and let go of my rose-tinted desire for what it could be. First of all, it was gorgeous. The demo opened with a blooming cavern vista, where fungal growths neighbored carved stone structures that flecked the rocky ceiling like authored stalactites. Instinctively, Kai puttered ahead and peered into the murky abyss, issuing a remark about the cavern’s grandeur.

I appreciated all of the steampunk-adjacent trappings I saw in Avowed, down to the bits of discarded ephemera, like wooden housings for glowing salt rock lamps. Face models were impressive, too, showcasing pockmarks on poor Caedmon’s skin and, later, the reflective golden dome of a 630-year-old oracle who was hell-bent on reincarnating a Once-Shining God. “One of the big touchstones of the [Pillars of Eternity] world is it’s a setting where reincarnation is real,” said Patel. “Every living thing has a soul, and on death, those souls go back into the Adra, into the center of the world, and come out and populate new souls. And that cycle, for centuries, has been controlled by the gods.”

But let’s rewind before we dig into the story at large and talk about how Avowed feels to play. First came the stealth mechanics, introduced as part of a light-touch combat tutorial. After skulking in the dark, I backstabbed a high fantasy Halo Jackal with a divine dagger as they dawdled carelessly in the half-light. Soon after came a full-blown encounter fronted by a family of spiders. The combat system in Avowed is an interesting beast. First-person melee and spellcasting often has a bit of jank to it, but Obsidian landed on something distinctly above-average.

Avowed’s combat felt far less clunky than it looked during June’s Xbox Showcase. There’s a slight but satisfying slowdown when you strike an enemy, as well as Destiny-style damage numbers and handy diamond headshot targets baked into the UI for rangers, evocative of Ace Combat. Enemies also boast a stun meter as well as a health bar, and you can dole out a slo-mo synced attack that deals extra damage and knockback. You’ve got grenades on the right bumper and a spell wheel you can pull up to commit magic abilities or command your companion to perform a daring leap into the midst of an encounter.

I mixed and matched across Barbarian, Mage, and Ranger, wielding a wand and a pistol for some time, but I ultimately gravitated toward a Spellblade Grimoire setup. With this loadout, I could pull LT and tap the face buttons to activate a defensive buff or summon spectral weaponry, such as an icy spear or a massive staff that would ragdoll my enemies into the echoing cavern hollows. It felt like playing every class in the game at once, though Avowed is opting for a respec-friendly classless approach anyway, where you aren’t punished for the weapons you favor. I had another grimoire in my locker to swap to in combat, offering more standard elemental skills, like a bouncing electric bolt and a bubbling mist of deadly corrosion. The particle effects were dazzling, with believably smoky fire emanating from my protagonist’s palms.

Image: Obsidian Entertainment/Xbox Studios

Enemy variety was decent, and there were a few occasions where I had to strategically focus on a healer to untap the health bar of a more dangerous close-quarters opponent. Regardless, I still beat the demo’s skeleton miniboss in a deeply ungratifying fashion by melting the “Godless Executioner” with a flurry of hand grenades. I felt slightly let down by the level of environmental reactivity in Avowed — there were dangling pots, but I couldn’t shoot them to create oil spills, and my arrows didn’t catch on fire if I held them over a cauldron of flame. I was not expecting Tears of the Kingdom-level nuance, but I guess I was left yearning for a unique dimension to Avowed’s combat that would distinguish it from peers in the genre. “It’s not going to be a fully systemic game, like a Breath of the Wild,” Patel said. “But you can burn away certain barriers, and there are some fun moments where you can freeze ice platforms to reach locations that you can’t otherwise reach.”

As the story goes, our protagonist is an envoy of the Aedyr Empire who sails to a frontier called the Living Lands to investigate a mysterious spiritual plague called The Dreamscourge. The Dreamscourge enthralls its subjects with a unique and terrifying madness, coating them in violent fungal growths. From what I could infer from the demo’s dialogue and menus, the protagonist has a mysterious voice in their head and coral-like protrusions lurching from their eyebrows and hair — and they’re trying to figure out the patron deity it could connect to. “Your growths are the result of being a Godlike of an unknown god,” Patel said. Per the Pillars of Eternity wiki, Godlikes are blessed by the gods before birth, resulting in mystical powers and unique physical aspects like “aberrant head shapes,” which would explain our hero’s busy bonce. When I enquired further, Patel said that finding out the god you’re aligned to is something you will “explore over the course of the game.” Obsidian hasn’t explored or really talked about a potential new game plus, but there won’t be any open exploration after you finish — Avowed will feature a clear point of no return.

The Dreamscourge is an eerie New Weird concept that I’m excited to see Obsidian expand on, especially with the studio’s pedigree for world-building. Speaking of which, it’s important to clarify that Avowed will not be open-world and will instead offer a series of interconnected areas. “One thing that we found with The Outer Worlds is that we could make a really strong RPG experience using these open zones,” Patel said. “And we could use that to give each location a very clear character and its own internal story and also to help the player make sense of the world and their progress through it.”

In Avowed’s “open zones” there’ll be encounters and overland points of interest like ruins and towers, as well as settlements and dungeons, like the one I found myself in during the Gamescom demo. Players will follow a critical path through these zones, but there’ll also be jumping-off points for side quests and ancillary content. “Following that structure allows us to tier up the difficulty as the player moves through the regions, balancing the enemies and the gear you’re getting from moment to moment, and tell a consistently escalating story,” Patel said. I didn’t encounter many memorable investigative opportunities during the demo, but I was told there’ll be plenty of environmental storytelling in the rest of Avowed so that players can build their understanding of the Living Lands beyond the confines of dialogue and narrative.

If players find Adra Pillars in an open zone, they can set up a party camp, described by Patel as a “roving home base” where they can rest, upgrade, and enchant their gear, craft food items, and get to know their companions.
You won’t be able to romance your companions in Avowed, a decision made by Obsidian to prioritize developing their backstories. “That allowed us to build on these companions as people who have roots and relationships outside of the party,” Patel said. “One really cool thing in Yatzli’s story is that she has a very committed relationship outside of the party, and so hearing her talk about that, and kind of reconcile her future and her ambitions with her home life… just really kind of having her heart in two places at once is, I think, really relatable.”

My concern for Avowed stems from the environment it’s spawning into, especially in the wake of an uncompromising genre-definer like Baldur’s Gate 3, which delivered a cast of characters that fans won’t forget in a hurry. Players have very recently experienced tabletop levels of role-playing depth, so what makes Avowed special, beyond the obvious RPG pedigree of the studio making it? Patel said that companion-related storytelling has been a considerable focus for Obsidian, and it’s easily the part of the game I’m most excited about. I’m keen to go on more adventures with Kai, whose sarcastic one-liners brought refreshing levity to the oracle’s jargon-heavy lore dumps. “I’ve done the majority of Kai’s writing — there’s a real story of regret and loss at the center of his personal journey,” Patel said. “Beneath all of this banter and jovial exterior, there’s a lot of pain that he slowly unearths, and hearing the way he performed a lot of those lines and the vulnerability he brought to them was incredible.”

Like in Pentiment, you can pull up definitions for lore-related words during conversations in Avowed, which will be helpful for those who haven’t played previous Pillars games — I counted 11 gods to chew on in the in-game Cyclopedia. I’m by no means averse to reading in my RPGs (I was more than happy to imbibe Disco Elysium’s million-word script), but there were a ton of one-page diary entries to pick through in my Avowed demo, and not all of them held my attention. The time pressure of my 50-minute appointment has to be considered here, though. I just hope Avowed’s opening does enough to ground me in the setting so I can better appreciate the game’s abundance of prose.

https://www.mmorpg.com/previews/avo...building-just-like-its-predecessor-2000132638

Avowed Hands-on Preview: Rich in Worldbuilding, Just Like it's Predecessor​

When Obsidian Entertainment announced Avowed I was surprised at the shift in genre. I’m not a huge first-person RPG fan myself and had played the Pillars of Eternity series on the merit of it being an Obsidian game and a CRPG. But after getting my hands on the game for a decent amount of time, I can say that I’m genuinely interested in the new direction Obsidian has decided to take the series. Because it seems like the core aspects of what made the Pillars of Eternity series interesting is still very much there.

Avowed is a gorgeous game — it’s vibrant and rich and there is a sense of character to the world that left me wanting more. Even though I spent the majority of my time in Avowed, trapped inside cavernous tunnels and long-forgotten ruins, I loved every bit of it. Green overgrowths popped against sandstone walls, flooded caverns were full of vibrant blue and purple coral. But everything had an uncanny edge to it. It was familiar, yet unfamiliar, with organic shapes and growths curling over every surface, and sometimes in places they didn’t belong.
I picked up discarded books, rummaged through broken shelves, and [redacted] as I looked for a group of missing adventurers. Accompanied by my companion Kai, a hulking Aumaua with teal and blue-tinged skin, we made short work of the enemies that barred our path. I had the opportunity to test both the Ranger and Mage builds, and more or less went in guns blazing — literally in the case of the Ranger. I was outfitted with a bow and two pistols, and just to test the durability of a ranged and stealth-focused build I actually did quite well just firing from the hip and getting random crits here and there.

And with Kai to protect me, we killed waves of reanimated skeletons with little effort. The player can actually instruct Kai to attack enemies or draw attention away from you in hairy situations, and that came in handy when I played the Mage. I had a total of eight spells at my disposal, which I could thumb through by swapping out spellbooks. I could shoot shards of ice from my hands with a simple gesture or bathe my enemies in flame.
But magic has other practical uses in the world as well. The area was full of puzzles, with the level design more or less leading the player on through contextual clues throughout the zone to show you that using lightning magic or lightning-imbued skills can power up generators to open doors. Or that using fire on spiderwebs can open up access to other paths. It’s done in a way that isn’t obtrusive and makes you feel like you’ve really accomplished something just by looking around and picking up on little hints here and there.
While I was able to check out those two specific builds, I was assured by the developers that players can more or less pick skills from each class tree to customize their builds. Naturally, you will have some skills that will carry over regardless of what you pick due to being Godlike, like a special takedown you can perform when sneaking up behind an enemy. But if I wanted to I could possibly combine spells with some offensive options offered by the Ranger to really make a unique build of my own, catered to my playstyle — which is running and gunning. It’s cool to see this facilitated in a game, and I’m not sure why I was surprised by this option being available in Avowed.
I never found any encounter to be particularly difficult, but that could largely be because of my playstyle. Or that the section of the game I played was at the start of the game. I couldn’t tell you. But the most fun I had was figuring out the puzzles and more or less combing through the environment for more lore or contextual clues that more or less enriched my experience as someone that’s knowledge-hungry for any morsel of information I can find in a game.

And while Avowed will be a shift for the Pillars of Eternity series, making the change from a CRPG to a first-person RPG, that doesn’t mean the game won’t be heavily focused on story and character interaction. There were two NPCs I interacted with during my time playing the game. One was a part of the expedition I was looking for. I helped patch him up and learned that the team had ventured a bit further in the cave, and another was a servant of a hugely important character in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire. For this specific NPC, there were a handful of different ways that conversation could go.
Some of these options were dictated by my stats or by bits of information I got by reading through notes and books scattered throughout the area. In one instance I broke the news to him that he probably wouldn’t be able to revive his god, and in another I encouraged his efforts even if they would mostly be in vain. Because of these factors I never had the same conversation twice, which was hugely impressive. Kai would occasionally chime in too, offering a bit of context to the conversation, and there was also an option to pull up an in-game glossary to fill gaps in the lore that I had forgotten.

Avowed seems to be shaping up to be an interesting new direction for the series, and one that I’m eagerly anticipating. Perhaps that’s because I enjoyed Pillars of Eternity, and its sequel, Deadfire. Or because there was enough lore and information fed to me through in-game documents that I was just eager to learn more about the events that transpired after Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire. Because if Obsidian is good at one thing, it’s worldbuilding. And it seems like Avowed will continue to extrapolate on the world of Eora and the various deities that inhabit it.