Eternity Avowed - Obsidian's first person action-RPG in the Pillars of Eternity setting

[Tenebris]

Didn't Obsidian talk about eventually remastering the first Pillars during that campaign? I wonder if they'll ever actually do that. If Avowed ends up selling well, there's a healthy amount of new comers probably wanting more of the world. Whether or not they'd be too braindead for a cRPG is another story though.

Why remastering the first Pillars if their graphics is better than Avowed?

It's less for us autists and more for the nu-Obsidian crowd. I don't particularly need or want it but I remember Ferargus mentioning it back during the Deadfire campaign.

 

[AwesomeButton]

nu-Obsidian crowd

Literally who?

 

[Dark Souls II]

Collecting 73 xaurip tongues, 84 fampyr dicks and 15 litres of fishnigger cum in order to upgrade my boots from +10% to speed to +12% to speed... Truly the pinnacle of RPG gaming.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

good

platforming

 

[Morgoth]

All the haters already playing the game. How curious.

 

[JarlFrank]

Remember when Oblivion tier was an insult? Now games are sub Oblivion tier. Thanks diversity hiring and ESG...

What strikes me the most here is something I noticed about modern games in general, not just Avowed, compared to games from the mid to late 00s: a lack of physics, or just response from the environment.

The mid to late 00s had a lot of decline, sure, but at least they experimented with physics and it looked like the future of gaming would become more and more interactive.
Half Life 2 started the trend, where almost every prop object in the environment reacts to physical forces. Shoot a barrel, it falls over. Throw a grenade on a table, it will launch everything on the table through the air.
I started replaying some games of that era recently, and it's insane how much better physics were at the time. Started Stranglehold yesterday, its core gameplay is a pretty mediocre third person shooter, but its environmental destruction is still unmatched. Almost EVERYTHING you shoot at will react. Most things will break apart, some things - like metal pots and pans - will simply move when shot. Nothing is static, everything reacts.
Not even gonna mention games that relied big time on destruction physics, like Red Faction Guerilla, or Crysis, or Silent Storm where you could blow up an entire ground floor and then the top floors of the building would collapse due to lack of support. Groundbreaking (pun not intended).

Play any game from the mid-late 00s, and you'll notice that a lot of environment objects will react to being hit. There's stuff on a table? Punch it or shoot it, and it will scatter.
Nowadays, many games have the average clutter items be completely static. They won't react to anything. Shoot an apple? It won't burst into juices like it did in Stranglehold, a game from 2007. Nor will it fly away like it did in Oblivion, a game from 2006. No, in 2025, your average big budget game's apples will simply remain in place, no matter how much you punch and kick and stab and shoot at it.

This laziness when it comes to world interactivity is the most glaring sign that the modern gaming industry has failed, and it's about time for it to collapse so devs who actually care can take their place.
This shit should be standard. It doesn't even take any effort, modern engines all come with physics engines incorporated. Fucking Thief, from 1998, managed to have most clutter items be pickupable and throwable and they'd react to being shot with arrows. 1998!!!
And before someone like Roguey comes in and says "But Obsidian never cared about a simulationist approach to game worlds, this isn't their focus" SHUT THE FUCK UP this should be standard, particularly in a first person game with relatively realistic-looking visuals. If Obsidian's devs aren't capable of simulating the most basic environmental interactions, maybe they shouldn't make first person RPGs.

New Vegas, which they also made, had more environmental reactivity than this. There is no excuse.

 

[thesecret1]

Remember when Oblivion tier was an insult? Now games are sub Oblivion tier. Thanks diversity hiring and ESG...

What strikes me the most here is something I noticed about modern games in general, not just Avowed, compared to games from the mid to late 00s: a lack of physics, or just response from the environment.

The mid to late 00s had a lot of decline, sure, but at least they experimented with physics and it looked like the future of gaming would become more and more interactive.
Half Life 2 started the trend, where almost every prop object in the environment reacts to physical forces. Shoot a barrel, it falls over. Throw a grenade on a table, it will launch everything on the table through the air.
I started replaying some games of that era recently, and it's insane how much better physics were at the time. Started Stranglehold yesterday, its core gameplay is a pretty mediocre third person shooter, but its environmental destruction is still unmatched. Almost EVERYTHING you shoot at will react. Most things will break apart, some things - like metal pots and pans - will simply move when shot. Nothing is static, everything reacts.
Not even gonna mention games that relied big time on destruction physics, like Red Faction Guerilla, or Crysis, or Silent Storm where you could blow up an entire ground floor and then the top floors of the building would collapse due to lack of support. Groundbreaking (pun not intended).

Play any game from the mid-late 00s, and you'll notice that a lot of environment objects will react to being hit. There's stuff on a table? Punch it or shoot it, and it will scatter.
Nowadays, many games have the average clutter items be completely static. They won't react to anything. Shoot an apple? It won't burst into juices like it did in Stranglehold, a game from 2007. Nor will it fly away like it did in Oblivion, a game from 2006. No, in 2025, your average big budget game's apples will simply remain in place, no matter how much you punch and kick and stab and shoot at it.

This laziness when it comes to world interactivity is the most glaring sign that the modern gaming industry has failed, and it's about time for it to collapse so devs who actually care can take their place.
This shit should be standard. It doesn't even take any effort, modern engines all come with physics engines incorporated. Fucking Thief, from 1998, managed to have most clutter items be pickupable and throwable and they'd react to being shot with arrows. 1998!!!
And before someone like Roguey comes in and says "But Obsidian never cared about a simulationist approach to game worlds, this isn't their focus" SHUT THE FUCK UP this should be standard, particularly in a first person game with relatively realistic-looking visuals. If Obsidian's devs aren't capable of simulating the most basic environmental interactions, maybe they shouldn't make first person RPGs.

New Vegas, which they also made, had more environmental reactivity than this. There is no excuse.

It might be because of the rise of online multiplayer. Making physics act the same way on all clients is a massive BITCH, and if you don't have them act the same, you can't really do anything other than the most surface-level, cosmetic shit. Hence if the game is going to have MP, it's very likely any physics fun gets canned right from the outset. Even if they cut the MP later, it's too late to add it back in.

 

[Terenty]

What's wrong with Awoved aside writing? Does it really have good exploration and platforming?

A lot of complaints I've been seeing is that item progression is very boring. When you find a chest anywhere it's almost always going to be crafting materials.

I found these right at the docks, so I'm cautiously optimistic about the itemization.

Manipuate this essence? Did they come up with a new verb?

 

[JarlFrank]

It might be because of the rise of online multiplayer. Making physics act the same way on all clients is a massive BITCH, and if you don't have them act the same, you can't really do anything other than the most surface-level, cosmetic shit. Hence if the game is going to have MP, it's very likely any physics fun gets canned right from the outset. Even if they cut the MP later, it's too late to add it back in.

Really?

Half Life 2, the game that started the whole physics thing, had multiplayer with fully functional physics systems. One of its most popular mods is Garry's Mod, a multiplayer-focused game that is all about offering a multiplayer physics sandbox.
Red Faction Guerrilla, a game that had extremely detailed (and to this day mostly unmatched) destruction physics, had multiplayer with fully functional physics. I remember playing a match of than in a LAN party at a friend's house many, many years ago.

Battlefield Bad Company 2 was a multiplayer shooter with a focus on destructible environments and physics, and it worked fine.

Now I'm not an expert on how multiplayer works from a technical standpoint, but shouldn't all the calculations be performed by the host's machine in any given game? You start a multiplayer session on your PC, invite others to join in, and it's your CPU that does all the calculations, other players' machines just put out what yours calculates, so everyone gets the same thing.

If they had it figured out by the 00s, it shouldn't be an issue in the 20s.

 

[thesecret1]

It might be because of the rise of online multiplayer. Making physics act the same way on all clients is a massive BITCH, and if you don't have them act the same, you can't really do anything other than the most surface-level, cosmetic shit. Hence if the game is going to have MP, it's very likely any physics fun gets canned right from the outset. Even if they cut the MP later, it's too late to add it back in.

Really?

Half Life 2, the game that started the whole physics thing, had multiplayer with fully functional physics systems. One of its most popular mods is Garry's Mod, a multiplayer-focused game that is all about offering a multiplayer physics sandbox.
Red Faction Guerrilla, a game that had extremely detailed (and to this day mostly unmatched) destruction physics, had multiplayer with fully functional physics. I remember playing a match of than in a LAN party at a friend's house many, many years ago.

Battlefield Bad Company 2 was a multiplayer shooter with a focus on destructible environments and physics, and it worked fine.

Now I'm not an expert on how multiplayer works from a technical standpoint, but shouldn't all the calculations be performed by the host's machine in any given game? You start a multiplayer session on your PC, invite others to join in, and it's your CPU that does all the calculations, other players' machines just put out what yours calculates, so everyone gets the same thing.

If they had it figured out by the 00s, it shouldn't be an issue in the 20s.

The problem with calculating it all on the host's machine is that you'd have too long a latency. You shoot a bullet at a thing, you expect it to go flying the moment it hits. Not half a second later (latency sending the info to host that you shot the thing, latency of host sending you back the result). The ideal scenario of course would be for client and host to compute the physics the exact same way without need to even communicate it between each other, but for technical reasons I don't want to get into here, that's not what happens. Solutions of course exist, but not out of the box even on modern engines (try syncing physics across clients in UE5 for example. If it's just one item, it behaves kinda alright. If it's five, it already starts shitting itself), and all the solutions are usually non-trivial and oftentimes don't really look as good as one would like because there's some degree of faking and masking shit involved. Unless the game specifically markets itself as being about physics, most devs will likely just do away with the entire headache and spend the time on other aspects of the game.

 

[JarlFrank]

What I'm getting out of this is that any game should implement physics by default unless it is specifically marketed as multiplayer, which Avowed is not, so there is no excuse for every item being this static.

 

[Konjad]

So is this as good as Veilguard?

Thanks,
Sherry
This post is pending Infinitron's approval

 

[H. P. Lovecraft's Cat]

Remember when Oblivion tier was an insult? Now games are sub Oblivion tier. Thanks diversity hiring and ESG...

What strikes me the most here is something I noticed about modern games in general, not just Avowed, compared to games from the mid to late 00s: a lack of physics, or just response from the environment.

The mid to late 00s had a lot of decline, sure, but at least they experimented with physics and it looked like the future of gaming would become more and more interactive.
Half Life 2 started the trend, where almost every prop object in the environment reacts to physical forces. Shoot a barrel, it falls over. Throw a grenade on a table, it will launch everything on the table through the air.
I started replaying some games of that era recently, and it's insane how much better physics were at the time. Started Stranglehold yesterday, its core gameplay is a pretty mediocre third person shooter, but its environmental destruction is still unmatched. Almost EVERYTHING you shoot at will react. Most things will break apart, some things - like metal pots and pans - will simply move when shot. Nothing is static, everything reacts.
Not even gonna mention games that relied big time on destruction physics, like Red Faction Guerilla, or Crysis, or Silent Storm where you could blow up an entire ground floor and then the top floors of the building would collapse due to lack of support. Groundbreaking (pun not intended).

Play any game from the mid-late 00s, and you'll notice that a lot of environment objects will react to being hit. There's stuff on a table? Punch it or shoot it, and it will scatter.
Nowadays, many games have the average clutter items be completely static. They won't react to anything. Shoot an apple? It won't burst into juices like it did in Stranglehold, a game from 2007. Nor will it fly away like it did in Oblivion, a game from 2006. No, in 2025, your average big budget game's apples will simply remain in place, no matter how much you punch and kick and stab and shoot at it.

This laziness when it comes to world interactivity is the most glaring sign that the modern gaming industry has failed, and it's about time for it to collapse so devs who actually care can take their place.
This shit should be standard. It doesn't even take any effort, modern engines all come with physics engines incorporated. Fucking Thief, from 1998, managed to have most clutter items be pickupable and throwable and they'd react to being shot with arrows. 1998!!!
And before someone like Roguey comes in and says "But Obsidian never cared about a simulationist approach to game worlds, this isn't their focus" SHUT THE FUCK UP this should be standard, particularly in a first person game with relatively realistic-looking visuals. If Obsidian's devs aren't capable of simulating the most basic environmental interactions, maybe they shouldn't make first person RPGs.

New Vegas, which they also made, had more environmental reactivity than this. There is no excuse.

Control has wonderful physics. It's still relatively new.

 

[Skinwalker]

MANIPUATE

 

[thesecret1]

What I'm getting out of this is that any game should implement physics by default unless it is specifically marketed as multiplayer, which Avowed is not, so there is no excuse for every item being this static.

Well, the reason for it is simple – Avowed was supposed to have multiplayer because of Feargus:

Avowed developer Obsidian Entertainment has been very open about how the original intention for the game was for it to surround cooperative multiplayer.

Obsidian Entertainment CEO Feargus Urquhart spoke about this during a new documentary celebrating the 20th anniversary of the studio.

"One of the things where I really pushed was that Avowed was going to be multiplayer, and I kept on that for a long time. I think in the end… no, I know in the end it was the wrong decision to keep on pushing on it," he explains.

https://www.radiotimes.com/technology/gaming/is-avowed-multiplayer/

Hence, no physics. Then they probably found out they weren't meeting deadlines so they cut the MP, but there was no time window to go and add physics. You are correct that they come out of the box with Unreal, but if you want them to actually be any good, you need to prepare the items for them, namely give each item a proper weight (otherwise they'll all act as though they were made out of paper, and fly away at the slightest touch) and physical material (otherwise they'll all be treated as glass smeared with soap and have virtually no friction). And of course, you need to test and fine tune it all to make sure it all looks good, etc. – it takes time.

 

[ArchAngel]

If they didn't want to bother with fallout of player going full postal in the middle of the city they should've just disabled using your weapons and spells while in towns. It's not like you can attack every NPC in all RPG games out there. Most JRPGs simply don't account for that and neither do Pathfinder games, Cyberpunk disables firing whenever you point your gun at an actually important NPCs and people weren't bitching about that.

Stalker 2 also disabled shooting at important NPCs. I tried to shoot Strelok the other day just to see if the game allows it.

And? You couldn't kill important NPCs in previous stalkers either.

That just means previous Stalkers were also bad in this department.

 

[ArchAngel]

So is this as good as Veilguard?

Thanks,
Sherry
This post is pending Infinitron's approval

No, Veilguard was secretly making fun of females and twinks, but this brave game empowers them!

 

[ciox]

That video comparing Avowed with Oblivion is wild, like damn.

Anyway, you can use the Bioshock series as a yardstick for this physics issue. The games all used Unreal Engine 2.5/3 and had "physics out of the box" technically.
Bioshock - 2007, had physics that ran at 30fps but they ran, no multiplayer
Bioshock 2 - 2010, had physics and had multiplayer, you could throw barrels around in multiplayer like in HL2 DM
Bioshock Infinite - 2013, no multiplayer and no physics, same level of environment interaction as in Avowed

It's a dev issue.

 

[Child of Malkav]

MANIPU(L)ATE

There, fixed it for you.

 

[S.torch]

The mid to late 00s had a lot of decline, sure, but at least they experimented with physics and it looked like the future of gaming would become more and more interactive.

I think the decline in interactivity has something to do with the rise of hyperrealistic graphics. Oblivion, Skyrim and Fallout have in common they go for very stylistic and often cartoony designs, and this simplicity not only makes the world more coherent from an aesthetic point of view but also easier to handle interactions.

It might be because of the rise of online multiplayer.

Doesn't Divinity and Baldur's Gate 3 have multiplayer mode despite the insane amount of physics and interactivity? Seems like this is more of a problem of negligence on dev part and using the same few engines than it being impossible to achieve. Unless is an MMO the game won't handle dozens or hundreds of players either.

 

[Tenebris]

Feargus seems to love sabotaging everything with his incompetence.

 

[sebas]

Ah, the famous "+x% attribute", the peak of modern itemization (yes, I know it kind of started with The Witcher).

Collecting 73 xaurip tongues, 84 fampyr dicks and 15 litres of fishnigger cum in order to upgrade my boots from +10% to speed to +12% to speed... Truly the pinnacle of RPG gaming.

Funny story, the other game I am playing right now is Wizardry 6.

So now, what is a good example of boots in RPG?

 

[Konjad]

Skinwalker do you just add to your list people you dislike or what?

Thanks,
Sherry
This post is pending Infinitron's approval

 

[Skinwalker]

Skinwalker do you just add to your list people you dislike or what?

Thanks,
Sherry
This post is pending Infinitron's approval

I was tipped off by Sherry (who is you) that you're a wokesister, so don't resist and get in the chopper.

 

[Butter]

So now, what is a good example of boots in RPG?

Boots of Blinding Speed:

Constant Effect
Blind 100 pts on Self
Fortify Speed 200 pts on Self

A fun meme item that becomes surprisingly useful when you realize that Magic Resist negates the Blind effect, so you can craft a 100% Magic Resist for 1 second spell, cast it, then don the boots and you get a free 200 Speed.