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Few new articles about Avowed out https://videogames.si.com/features/avowed-interview-carrie-patel
Third time's the charm maybe...?
...I wouldn't really describe Piillars of Eternity as "grimdark" though. It was grim and full of melancholy, but it wasn't full of edgy and gory moments like Dragon Age: Origins, that's not Sawyer's bag.
Looks like "no, we will not be doing noble savages" won out.
Now this will cause some seething https://readwrite.com/obsidian-avowed-the-outer-worlds-preview-length-hours/
20 hours? To the bone!
It took me 48 hours to complete TOW so maybe they're just once again ineptly underselling it?
“Deadfire players will recognize some references, like the dwindling existence of the godlikes, without us going too deep into it and making it feel like required reading for new players,” game director Carrie Patel explains.
Deadfire explored the impact of colonialism on cultures, and Avowed takes a similar route, examining the idea of order and chaos through the lens of the player character. As an envoy to the Empire, you’re an agent of ‘order’, but whether you wish to be their puppet or help the people of the Living Lands is completely up to you.
“As in previous Pillars games, there’s that political story, and then underneath that, there’s a metaphysical story about The Divine, about mysteries, about long-standing secrets and how those have affected the development of life in the region,” Patel explains.
Third time's the charm maybe...?
Still Bioware Jr of course.Avowed isn’t just close to Deadfire in terms of themes – it’s also similar in tone. Where Pillars of Eternity was grimdark and unrelenting, Avowed, like Deadfire, will balance its high-stakes story with moments of levity. Side quests and characters bring humanity.
...I wouldn't really describe Piillars of Eternity as "grimdark" though. It was grim and full of melancholy, but it wasn't full of edgy and gory moments like Dragon Age: Origins, that's not Sawyer's bag.
The setup, with you playing as an agent of an authoritarian regime, reminds me of another Obsidian game, Tyranny, in which you work for an evil overlord who’s already conquered the world. Patel tells me this is a result of Obsidian’s penchant for exploring moral complexities.
“We enjoy exploring morally gray themes, territory, and complicated questions that force the player to engage and choose an answer without giving easy answers,” she explains. “We wanted to avoid the idea of this very black and white, good and evil monolithic Empire versus everybody else who was really nice, and then create a situation that feels believably complex.”
Looks like "no, we will not be doing noble savages" won out.
That freedom to explore, be curious, and carve your own path through Avowed has its limits. One thing you won’t be able to do is murder everyone. Unlike in many other Obsidian games – some of which Patel has worked on – quest-critical characters can’t be killed in Avowed.
“We decided to forego the murder hobo playstyle,” Patel explains. Designing a game to fit around the possibility of a psychopathic rampage, as with adding anything in a game, comes with a series of design challenges.
“Often it’s something that people do accidentally, which means you can’t put combat in a crowded space because one stray fireball can aggro the whole town,” she continues. “Or it’s something that they do just for fun. I don’t want to discount the value of that, but I also see how many things we have to forego on the dev side to support it.”
Now this will cause some seething https://readwrite.com/obsidian-avowed-the-outer-worlds-preview-length-hours/
- Avowed will have a shorter length similar to The Outer Worlds, around 20 hours of gameplay.
- The game features multiple open zones with distinct characters and aesthetics, unlike a single open world.
- Avowed includes six character attributes and four skill trees, enhancing RPG elements and customization.
Game director Carrie Patel told TechRadar: “So in terms of both the scope and the structure of the game, I’d look to The Outer Worlds for a pretty good point of comparison.
“It’s going to be broadly similar in terms of the length and breadth of the experience, and it’s also similar in terms of the structure,” she said. Unlike some games, especially the role-playing games which Obsidian is known for, which can go on for as long as 100 hours, The Outer Worlds broke the mold at 20 hours.
Patel then goes on to explain that the structure of the world is divided into multiple open zones, similar to that of The Outer Worlds. “Rather than a pure open world where you have one enormous, continuous map, what you have is a series of open zones that unlock as you move through the story, and what that really allows us to do is give each one a distinct character — a really different aesthetic,” she explained.
“At this point, you’ve seen Shatterscarp which is a desert with these rocky highlands, and now we’ve also seen Emerald Stair which is almost the polar opposite; this very boggy, gloomy, lush, green forested area.
“So by having these open zones, it allows us to give each environment a really distinct sense of character, and it also allows us to create this sense of spread and distance between them as you’re moving from one part of the Living Lands to another.”
20 hours? To the bone!
It took me 48 hours to complete TOW so maybe they're just once again ineptly underselling it?