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

[luj1]

For a storyfag game like Avowed

lol this nigga

 

[JarlFrank]

Yeah, sure, you can deflect again by saying "But this was made by Ubisoft, they're a AAAA company who can afford spending money on frivolous details!"

AC Origins was made by a team of over 700 people using entirely different tech and building on top of an engine that's been in use since 2007.

lol, lmao

 

[KVVRR]

For a storyfag game like Avowed, it's unimportant. If I were in Carrie's position I would have made the same call.

A lot of games could be better with a lot of features, sure, but they can't have them. Might as well wish for the moon.

It's a missing cosmetic feature at best, sure, but that stuff piles up. Physics shouldn't be hard to implement for a company like Obsidian, or at least I'd hope not, and even if it's not the focus of the game, it helps a lot in investing the player into the world and making them curious about it which is one of the main focuses of an RPG. It's like when people complain about Bioware's facial animations having stagnated for a decade and a half now. The games don't really need it to improve, it CAN work without it. But you're gonna be looking at people talk for a good chunk of your playthrough the same way you're gonna be exploring around the world in a very close and hands on manner in any fps RPG.
I don't think asking for what should be (in an ideal world, at least) a baseline cosmetic feature in an AA game from a company with a AAA tier support behind them is asking a lot, is it? It's not like adding voiced dialogue to an RPG with a 2 million word count which is both a financial and logistical nightmare.

 

[Roguey]

From what I've seen (not even gonna pirate it) you can literally go into town and repeatedly hit everyone in the head with a hammer and nothing happens. It's unparalleled lazyness and incompetence and has nothing to do with anything else. Even games 30 years ago had more reactivity.

You mean like in Greedfall? https://f.rpghq.org/YGgG7RmUOLDH.mp4

The real question I need answered is why are autistic people so hypnotized by this company in particular?

Roguey: "Judge Avowed a failure on its own merits, idiots."
A number of Codexers: "No, we have to compare it to Oblivion! We love Oblivion! All other games are lacking compared to Oblivion!" Did you take the Bethesda forum word filter from the 00s literally?

It's a missing cosmetic feature at best, sure, but that stuff piles up. Physics shouldn't be hard to implement for a company like Obsidian, or at least I'd hope not, and even if it's not the focus of the game, it helps a lot in investing the player into the world and making them curious about it which is one of the main focuses of an RPG. It's like when people complain about Bioware's facial animations having stagnated for a decade and a half now. The games don't really need it to improve, it CAN work without it. But you're gonna be looking at people talk for a good chunk of your playthrough the same way you're gonna be exploring around the world in a very close and hands on manner in any fps RPG.
I don't think asking for what should (in an ideal world, at least) a baseline cosmetic features in an AA game from a company with a AAA support behind them is asking a lot, is it? It's not like adding voiced dialogue to an RPG with a 2 million word count which is both a financial and logistical nightmare.

Avowed started off as a far more ambitious game and they couldn't do it. This was the best product they could ship.

 

[Skinwalker]

Roguey: "Judge Avowed a failure on its own merits, idiots."
A number of Codexers: "No, we have to compare it to Oblivion! We love Oblivion! All other games are lacking compared to Oblivion!" Did you take the Bethesda forum word filter from the 00s literally?

You seem upset.

 

[KVVRR]

Avowed started off as a far more ambitious game and they couldn't do it. This was the best product they could ship.

Maybe Sawyer was onto something when he made them do Pentiment, then.

 

[luj1]

From what I've seen (not even gonna pirate it) you can literally go into town and repeatedly hit everyone in the head with a hammer and nothing happens. It's unparalleled lazyness and incompetence and has nothing to do with anything else. Even games 30 years ago had more reactivity.

You mean like in Greedfall? https://f.rpghq.org/YGgG7RmUOLDH.mp4

I mean like even Morrowind had guards that you could aggro

That came out in 2002, or 23 years ago

I don't know what Greedfall is, and don't care

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Avowed ranking as discount Greedfall would be very funny.

 

[JarlFrank]

Avowed started off as a far more ambitious game and they couldn't do it. This was the best product they could ship.

Which just goes to show how much Obsidian have declined as a studio. Far smaller studios manage to deliver far better products.
They simply no longer have any talent left that can deliver a non-disappointing game.

 

[JarlFrank]

You know what it's fair to compare Avowed against? A game Obsidian, the very same company, made in the past.

Like New Vegas

 

[The Wall]

Every single post of Roguey's about this issue is mere justification for the laziness of Obsidian and many other modern companies.

Obsidian is his football club, and Roguey is leader of digital hooligans known as Josh Sawyer's Mad Brides. Tribalism. Pure, simplest form of tribalism. One which doesn't benefit him in any way cause Obsidian hasn't made good game in years, but he stays a loyal servant. Part of his identity, probably got by now sucking Obsidian cock written into his genes

 

[Roguey]

You know what it's fair to compare Avowed against? A game Obsidian, the very same company, made in the past.

Like New Vegas

They didn't make the engine.

You want pure Obsidian, try Alpha Protocol, Dungeon Siege III, South Park, Grounded, The Outer Worlds. Comparing Avowed negatively to TOW - that would be fair. Same engine, released just a few years ago.

 

[JarlFrank]

The amount of good games Obsidian has made can be counted on one hand, and even then they're all incredibly flawed gems at best, and not because of any technical limitations but because many of their design principles fucking suck.

KotoR2 is good, but the level and encounter design is mostly bad.
MotB is good, but the level and encounter design is mostly bad (also it's a DLC, the base game campaign is entirely bad).
New Vegas is great, here the main flaws are of a technical nature due to rushed development. Their best game.
Alpha Protocol, whose gameplay is too trend-chasing for the time (cover shooter) but which has a great premise and good C&C.

That's it, that's all their good games.
Everything else was mediocre or straight up bad.

 

[The Wall]

KCD 2 has shown on technical level and upcoming RPGs like Of Ash and Steel, ExeKiller, DawnWalker or Alkahest might show as well, that ONLY thing stopping Western Devs from making modern Fallout New Vegases, Skyrims, Gothics etc. is literally insane cultural zeitgeist in the West. Culture of weakness, victimhood, self-hatred, laziness and cringe

Czech, Polish and Russian studios, including occasional Mad Serb show that problem is indeed there where we have pointed our fingers from beginning - in Devs. One look at picture with modern Obsidian Devs tells you everything

 

[KVVRR]

You know what it's fair to compare Avowed against? A game Obsidian, the very same company, made in the past.

Like New Vegas

They didn't make the engine.

You want pure Obsidian, try Alpha Protocol, Dungeon Siege III, South Park, Grounded, The Outer Worlds. Comparing Avowed negatively to TOW - that would be fair. Same engine, released just a few years ago.

I mean. It's not like Obsidian made Unreal Engine 5, either. If they wanted to use gamebryo no one is gonna say no, specially now that Bethesda is under Microsoft's shadow too.
Still. TOW at least let you go on a murder spree across town and had characters react and try to defend themselves, and the game somewhat (kinda poorly imo but still) acknowledged this as a viable playthrough and had some stuff within it change to reflect it. Avowed just completely ignores you even trying.

 

[The Wall]

You know what it's fair to compare Avowed against? A game Obsidian, the very same company, made in the past.

Like New Vegas

They didn't make the engine.

You want pure Obsidian, try Alpha Protocol, Dungeon Siege III, South Park, Grounded, The Outer Worlds. Comparing Avowed negatively to TOW - that would be fair. Same engine, released just a few years ago.

I compare camel shit served as food to other food, not to cat shit or elephant shit. Such argumentation is Bull Shit

 

[almondblight]

The thing is eyecandy has been what AAA games have sustained themselves with for a looooong while now. It's all in favor of those ultra realistic graphix over any new gameplay experiences -- so why not go the extra mile and make physics part of those eyecandy assets, since it's the selling point? They're already doing it in other regards like with raytracing and imo that one is a lot less noticeable while in gameplay that a good, fun set of physics to interact with, even if purely cosmetic ones.

The selling point for people who value eye-candy over good gameplay, sure. But at that point you're already far into decline territory.

The big push for including physics that don't actually add anything to the gameplay was part of the decline. Style over substance, that, like you said, the big studios seems to thrive on.

 

[S.torch]

>Sorry bro, we can't do better than some 20 years old game, it is what it is
>No, it doesn't matter that we have infinite resources, money and people
>No, it doesn't matter if we promised the same experience from that other game
>That's still going to be $70 btw

 

[KVVRR]

The thing is eyecandy has been what AAA games have sustained themselves with for a looooong while now. It's all in favor of those ultra realistic graphix over any new gameplay experiences -- so why not go the extra mile and make physics part of those eyecandy assets, since it's the selling point? They're already doing it in other regards like with raytracing and imo that one is a lot less noticeable while in gameplay that a good, fun set of physics to interact with, even if purely cosmetic ones.

The selling point for people who value eye-candy over good gameplay, sure. But at that point you're already far into decline territory.

The big push for including physics that don't actually add anything to the gameplay was part of the decline. Style over substance, that, like you said, the big studios seems to thrive on.

I'd still take physics based style over substance over the purely lighting based ones tbh

 

[Roguey]

I mean. It's not like Obsidian made Unreal Engine 5, either. If they wanted to use gamebryo no one is gonna say no, specially now that Bethesda is under Microsoft's shadow too.

New Vegas wasn't Gamebryo out of the box, it was Gamebryo and all the custom code Bethesda wrote for it and their custom tools.

Bethesda would also say no, MS is giving their studios full autonomy.

Still. TOW at least let you go on a murder spree across town and had characters react and try to defend themselves, and the game somewhat (kinda poorly imo but still) acknowledged this as a viable playthrough and had some stuff within it change to reflect it. Avowed just completely ignores you even trying.

Yeah, Patel does not subscribe to the Tim Cain design philosophy of "You should be able to go through the game killing everyone or no one."

Blasts from the past:

CEO Feargus Urquhart told me that in scope Avowed is more akin to Obsidian's past RPGs like The Outer Worlds in size than it is a sprawling open world a la Skyrim, though that was actually Obsidian's initial pitch. When the developers sat down and focused on what Obsidian does best—stories and companions, in particular—the more compact scale came naturally.

"When we're starting up a product we basically say, all right, go play all these games, and even play our own games," said Urquhart. "It sounds silly, like why should we have our people play our own games? But it's important, and so we do.

"For Avowed, weirdly, it is go play BioWare games," said Urquhart, "go play Dragon Age, play Mass Effect,"

 

[Roguey]

>No, it doesn't matter that we have infinite resources, money and people

They did not have these, and it's childish to think they did.

 

[KVVRR]

"For Avowed, weirdly, it is go play BioWare games," said Urquhart, "go play Dragon Age, play Mass Effect,"

 

[frajaq]

You can make the argument early on that the protagonist, being the personal envoy of the Aedyr Emperor, shouldn't just start rampaging through the civilians fresh of the boat. Maybe a later option perhaps.

Still doesn't excuse a lack of more stealth mechanics since an agent of an empire could use more subterfuge skills...

 

[almondblight]

I'd still take physics based style over substance over the purely lighting based ones tbh

I mean, I'd rather have good gameplay myself. Even if we're talking about non-gameplay issues, stuff like art direction would come well before "cups falling off a table in a physically accurate way." That kind of stuff simply isn't that important for most game.

 

[KVVRR]

You can make the argument early on that the protagonist, being the personal envoy of the Aedyr Emperor, shouldn't just start rampaging through the civilians fresh of the boat. Maybe a later option perhaps.

Still doesn't excuse a lack of more stealth mechanics since an agent of an empire could use more subterfuge skills...

It can make sense within the story and setting but I'd still feel robbed out of my autonomy. I liked being able to merge the gameplay aspect with the story in a way other types of games even within the same genre just don't allow, be it being able to burn an entire settlement to the ground or just blast someone's kneecaps off the moment they said something halfway annoying. I can accept it if the story is engaging enough but... Avowed's really doesn't seem to be.
I don't play Obsidian games to play Bioware ones.