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

[Grauken]

Didn't know Asmongold was a codexer

 

[Skinwalker]

You forgot FreeKaner, Skinwalker. Also Lemming42.

For Vileguard or Awoked? Or both? It's both, isn't it. I'll just put them in for both.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Didn't know Asmongold was a codexer

Might as well be tbqh.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

You forgot FreeKaner, Skinwalker. Also Lemming42.

For Vileguard or Awoked? Or both? It's both, isn't it. I'll just put them in for both.

Avowed AFAIK.

 

[Skinwalker]

Awokesisters:

1. Infinitroon (decline-enabler)
2. Rougay (decline-apologist)
3. Yosharian
4. frajaq
5. Perkel
6. Sherry a.k.a. Konjad
7. Ibn Sina
8. Lord_Potato
9. aweigh
10. Crispy a.k.a. Liberal
11. ArchAngel
12. Heroic Liberast
13. Camel
14. Icewater
15. cvv
16. Lovely Feather Pillows of Eternity
17. Anomander
18. SayMyName
19. FreeKaner
20. Lemming42
21. Asmongold (who tf is this?)

 

[Berengar]

Earlier in this thread or in one of the other Avowed threads I said I'd probably get this when it was bargain bin priced. Honestly, the more I see the more I'm good just not playing it ever lol. Life is too short

 

[Bad Sector]

Games like Invisible War or Thief 3 had reduced or truncated level design because the shitbox memory couldn't handle more than that.

OG Xbox has games with way larger worlds than DX2 or Thief3 (e.g. despite what you may think about Pariah, it has much larger maps with more detail - and runs on Unreal Engine too), even if you ignore games with streaming worlds (e.g. Morrowind), so i'd take the whole "xbox memory couldn't handle that" with a grain of salt and i think the real reason was the mess they seemed to have made with their codebase (e.g. restarting the entire engine on PC every time a map loads). Blaming Xbox instead of their engine choices/changes was most likely easier to explain/admit to Eidos, especially when the latter had shut down their Dallas office not too long before.

 

[Berengar]

Didn't know Asmongold was a codexer

He's an RPGHQ man through and through!

 

[Stavrophore]

Does this game have at least some scenic cool locations to explore? I watched some sneak peeks and it looked like.

 

[Quillon]

aight I give up, can't stand it anymore; no engaging plot, no interesting characters, everyone's out the lecture me about morals and shit like ima 5 year old, every square meter of an area quickly becomes a chore to *explore*. DUMBFUCKSIDIAN deserve to go out of biz

the game actually surprised me with its technical competency; I guess it wasn't the programming talent made them chicken out on attempting something more ambitious ...or they might have got too much help from other MS studios idk, but as I said before it wouldn't have been worth it anyways with these writers/designers

 

[Skinwalker]

22. Quillon

 

[luj1]

aight I give up, can't stand it anymore; no engaging plot, no interesting characters, everyone's out the lecture me about morals and shit like ima 5 year old, every square meter of an area quickly becomes a chore to *explore*. DUMBFUCKSIDIAN deserve to go out of biz

Why you fucking torturing yourself? 30 years of playing RPGs and other videogames isn't enough to smell shit from a mile away?

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Can you expand a bit on the ending in terms of context, choices etc?

Sure:

Spoiler

The plot is by-the-numbers garbage until the end of the third map. The player has very little, if any, control over the plot. The story focuses around a conflict between the natives of the Living Lands (who are in touch with nature and such), and the Steel Garrotte, a brutal group of colonial fascists who are going around hanging people and razing places. It's incredibly boring.

At the end of the third act, a few things happen:
- Sapadal, the god entity in your head (that the writers desperately want you to sympathise with, often forcing you to pick dialogue options that express your love and support for it), turns out to be the cause of the plague you're trying to fix.

- Inquisitor Lodwyn, the villain who until now has been an entirely one-dimensional cardboard cutout, tries to reason with you by telling you the truth about your god and asking you to destroy it.

- There's the game's one and only impressive piece of long-term reactivity here - Lodwyn will ally with you or attack you depending on your previous actions, and judges you on your response to three previous incidents.

The fourth map is then mostly pointless busywork, until:
- You enter the Garden, where Sapadal is trapped. Here, the world design and encounter design goes completely to shit and you're forced to fight a number of spongey bosses.

- You are given the choice to destroy Sapdal or let it live. Like the rest of the game, this choice feels quite awkwardly implemented, and characters seem to have largely the same responses whatever you do. Destroying it grants you one special power. I think Sapadal's dialogue might change depending on your own actions, but obviously I can't be sure.

- After this, you return to the starting city to find out that, for no real reason at all, Lodwyn has set it on fire in the name of the Empire. This doesn't really follow on from anything else - the real plot ends in the Garden, but since that was boring, this is here to give the game a big dramatic final setpiece. This situation appears to happen totally regardless of what you've done in the entire game so far; again you'd have to ask someone who played very differently to me if it went differently for them.

- Regardless of everything you've done up to this point, the game gives you the basic choice of "side with Lodywn and the Steel Garrotte" or "side with the natives". This choice is totally void of meaning because:
a) you've been forced to side against Lodwyn for the entire game up until the end of the third act (up to and including killing a large number of Steel Garrotte, who tend to attack on sight)
b) all your companions tell you not to do this, and you're not given any in-character or in-universe reason to do it
c) the choice comes down to a single binary dialogue option. You can suddenly and inexplicably swear fealty to the cartoon villains you've been slaughtering up to this point, or you can decide to be a cool rebel and push the empire you represent out of the mystical nature island they're trying to massacre. Both options come despite everything you've said and done up in the preceding 18 hours.

It's hard to get across how dumb this scenario is without showing you the whole game leading up to it, but suffice to say - there is absolutely no motivation whatsoever for you to do anything other than side against the Steel Garrotte, as you already necessarily have about fifteen times before.

- For context, I kept spiting the game by picking the most pro-Steel Garrotte dialogue options throughout, on the scant few occasions they were available. The devs didn't really expect you to do this because it leads to some very funny dialogue with your companions in this scene - one who had her city burned down by the Steel Garrotte earlier says "I never thought you'd do this! I guess I never really knew you after all!" This is despite the fact that I looked her dead in the eye as her home burned and said "I think the Steel Garrotte have a point here"*. Yeah no shit you didn't know me mate, you never listened to a word I fucking said.

*they didn't have a point at all, for the record - they were being Skeletor-tier comedy villains as usual

- Regardless of who you side with, you have to fight through the same map filled with the same enemies, only their faction is different depending on who you have sided with. If you chose Lodwyn, your companions all abandon you, meaning you have to do it alone (which is a bit more exciting, I suppose). This is, oddly, easier and shorter than the combat in the Garden, even if you're doing it alone.

- Lodwyn is waiting for you on either route, and immediately prepares to attack you, again entirely regardless of your previous actions up to this point. You can say you want to join her, or you can kill her; either route ends the game. You then get ending slides because, of course, New Vegas had them so this needs them too. Like the rest of the game, the ending slides end up a bit confused if you didn't do what the devs wanted you to do - I became Lodwyn's second-in-command and we "ruled the colony with an iron fist" and hanged dissidents or something, but also the colony simultaneously flourished and became a utopia because I did enough sidequests for merchants during the game.

This is a good example of how Current Year brainrot sabotages every aspect of a game, besides just the ugly troon aesthetic.

The writers are so mentally crippled by the mindset of COLONIALISM = BAD they can't tell even a coherent plot within the fictional world they've created. There's ZERO reason for the player to oppose Lodwyn, you're both on the same side and enforcing the exact same authority. If the developers wanted the player to side with the rebels maybe not make the player part of the faction that the rebels are directly opposing? The way the game is set up, joining the rebellion should be the alt, non-standard choice. Classic hallmarks of bad female writing.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

And there ARE hot bitches

So apparently the deal with this chick is she is asking you to smuggle birth control for her, which is illegal in the empire. Even when they make an okay looking girl, they somehow give her the 1000 cock stare.

These guys are so progressive they have no issue with female leaders and gay marriage, yet so fascist they won't let people have abortions. Was any thought put into this lore tidbit? Just a cheap and meaningless jab at current year politics.

This era of gaming will age *incredibly* poorly.

 

[Quillon]

Why you fucking torturing yourself? 30 years of playing RPGs and other videogames isn't enough to smell shit from a mile away?

I woulda played through it if it was akin to ubisoft mindless timewasters but couldn't do it when I started dreading the next conversation with someone, I don't have the ability to roll my eyes any harder

 

[The Wall]

Broes, I'm dead serious with you now: Have you fucking SEEN the creatures that call themselves Devs for this game? Have you? You have. Ok.

WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU EXPECT?

 

[jaekl]

I'm judging this purely on the video thumbnail, only an idiot would need more than that to come to a fair conclusion on this game.

I'm gonna guess this is the group of friends that you're going to be forced to adventure with in this travesty. I see danger hair on the left, looks to be some kinda unbinary gnome which is antisemitic. I will be faxing this to the ADL tonight after work. Then second from the left is a eunuch covered in body paint wearing a potato sack. Third from the left is the diversity black woman that every game requires now. Actually, she might be two black kids trying to sneak into an R rated movie judging by the length of her torso and the stubby legs. Then they gave the dwarf a bow - another hate crime.

I rate this game and will be rating purchasers of this product with the button as you deserve.

Who was right? As usual.

 

[Lhynn]

View attachment 61504

This review score is from people hyperfans who paid 20 extra USD just to play it early.

This game is gonna get slaughtered on full release.

Will it? It's a test for my theory of the "Obsidian fanboy advantage" in Steam ratings:

It's adorable to read pages upon pages of people talking about some vicious, widespread backlash against PoE1, and yet never showing any evidence that it actually exists.

What's interesting is that Tyranny, which is widely and less controversially considered to be a second-rate/meh game, also has excellent Steam reviews.

Basically, Obsidian's fans really like Obsidian. Nobody has the heart to review bomb them. They're really lucky to have that.

There always seemed to be an undercurrent of discontent about the quality of Obsidian's isometric RPGs - Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny, Deadfire. On all the forums (not just RPG Codex but also Something Awful etc) there seemed to be significant numbers of people who thought they were bad and boring. But it just never showed up on Steam. Games get review bombed on Steam all the time - inXile's Torment and Bard's Tale IV got killed - but Obsidian has always managed to avoid this. They shrugged off the Firedorn culture war incident with ease, an event the likes of which would have destroyed lesser companies.

As I've said before, Obsidian's fans really like Obsidian. They can't bring themselves to review bomb their games. You could argue that this is actually hurting Obsidian because it hides necessary criticism from them.

You are always such a retarded, miopic cunt Infinitron

 

[TheDarkUrge]

View attachment 61504

This review score is from people hyperfans who paid 20 extra USD just to play it early.

This game is gonna get slaughtered on full release.

Will it? It's a test for my theory of the "Obsidian fanboy advantage" in Steam ratings:

It's adorable to read pages upon pages of people talking about some vicious, widespread backlash against PoE1, and yet never showing any evidence that it actually exists.

What's interesting is that Tyranny, which is widely and less controversially considered to be a second-rate/meh game, also has excellent Steam reviews.

Basically, Obsidian's fans really like Obsidian. Nobody has the heart to review bomb them. They're really lucky to have that.

There always seemed to be an undercurrent of discontent about the quality of Obsidian's isometric RPGs - Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny, Deadfire. On all the forums (not just RPG Codex but also Something Awful etc) there seemed to be significant numbers of people who thought they were bad and boring. But it just never showed up on Steam. Games get review bombed on Steam all the time - inXile's Torment and Bard's Tale IV got killed - but Obsidian has always managed to avoid this. They shrugged off the Firedorn culture war incident with ease, an event the likes of which would have destroyed lesser companies.

As I've said before, Obsidian's fans really like Obsidian. They can't bring themselves to review bomb their games. You could argue that this is actually hurting Obsidian because it hides necessary criticism from them.

You are always such a retarded, miopic cunt Infinitron

Why? I think he's right. Same thing happened with veilguard, people eat up any slop if it has bioware or obsidians name on it and even veil had decent reviews for a while. But they still didnt sell enough cause obviously most people see it as mediocre, even if they arent part of the culture war. I think that most intelligent people dont work on video games in the big companies any more, you'd have to be stupid to take a paycut to work on these garbage games if you could get a job anywhere else for more money so it's a feedback loop where games just get worse and drive out passionate talented workers. Does anyone here want to work on a dragon age game with corrine bush as your boss? Hell no.

Sure we still have the die hard RPG fans like Vince from Iron Tower that make decent games with their own studio but they have such limited budget it still seems kinda silly to even step one foot into this industry

Anyway my point is these big studios are the only ones with big budgets so everyone kinda has to play them as that's all that's being released with a big enough scope. The smaller games like Drova dont last very long and dont generate a lot of hype