Preview Avowed Final Previews

[Tyranicon]

Back on my kick on how the quality of writers in the industry has really degraded - Deus Ex was written by Sheldon Pacotti who majored in English at Harvard and math at MIT at the same time. Absolute prodigy, running intellectual circles around the current Creative Writing/English majors filling up the ranks of narrative designers.

You don't even need a degree for that, much less one from Harvard.

Anyone who calls themselves a narrative designer instead of a writer is just an upjumped barrista.

 

[Roguey]

You don't even need a degree for that, much less one from Harvard.

Anyone who calls themselves a narrative designer instead of a writer is just an upjumped barrista.

It varies by the studio, but Avellone mentioned some years ago that the distinction made between writers and narrative designers at Obsidian is "people who send their text that someone else implements" and "people who write the text and also script and work with the editor to implement their content"

 

[MerchantKing]

Why is there so much shit happening on the screen. I feel like having a seizure from watching this gameplay. What is this crap:

In a Larian game, you would romance that bear instead of fighting it.

 

[Modron]

In a Larian game, you would romance that bear instead of fighting it.

The bear is heavily diseased having already been romanced by an average BG3 fan.

 

[shimadamada]

only 3 classes, and they are the most generic shit from PoE

It's even worse than that, warrior and ranger only have 5 active abilities each, because you're not supposed to play a pure melee build, you're supposed to at least multiclass with a wizard. You WILL pick pronouns. You WILL play a wizard. You WILL be a "godlike". You will be allowed to have fun specifically and only in the way that the old faggots and fat women at Obsidian want you to have fun in.

Fighters and rangers in bg1 have zero active abilities and people here consider it to have better gameplay than poe1 and 2.

 

[Dark Souls II]

only 3 classes, and they are the most generic shit from PoE

It's even worse than that, warrior and ranger only have 5 active abilities each, because you're not supposed to play a pure melee build, you're supposed to at least multiclass with a wizard. You WILL pick pronouns. You WILL play a wizard. You WILL be a "godlike". You will be allowed to have fun specifically and only in the way that the old faggots and fat women at Obsidian want you to have fun in.

Fighters and rangers in bg1 have zero active abilities and people here consider it to have better gameplay than poe1 and 2.

Rangers in BG1 get charm animal, stealth, and at lvl 8th they get druid spells.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Back on my kick on how the quality of writers in the industry has really degraded - Deus Ex was written by Sheldon Pacotti who majored in English at Harvard and math at MIT at the same time. Absolute prodigy, running intellectual circles around the current Creative Writing/English majors filling up the ranks of narrative designers.

You don't even need a degree for that, much less one from Harvard.

Anyone who calls themselves a narrative designer instead of a writer is just an upjumped barrista.

What about that chick with a PhD who created slam dunk magnum opus Homeworld 3?
I mean, the degrees mean something, right?

 

[Crescent Hawk]

Christ forgive us. Dont mention Homeworld 3, I still dont feel right with what happened, the despair is intense and the hatred is deep.

 

[Tyranicon]

What about that chick with a PhD who created slam dunk magnum opus Homeworld 3?
I mean, the degrees mean something, right?

Christ forgive us. Dont mention Homeworld 3, I still dont feel right with what happened, the despair is intense and the hatred is deep.

Homeworld 3 just announced it was shutting down. ROFL.

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/homeworld-3-from-blackbird-interactive.129286/page-24

 

[Sweeper]

Back on my kick on how the quality of writers in the industry has really degraded - Deus Ex was written by Sheldon Pacotti who majored in English at Harvard and math at MIT at the same time. Absolute prodigy, running intellectual circles around the current Creative Writing/English majors filling up the ranks of narrative designers.

You don't even need a degree for that, much less one from Harvard.

Anyone who calls themselves a narrative designer instead of a writer is just an upjumped barrista.

Given how good (and prophetic) Deus Ex is, maybe you do need a degree from Harvard in order to pen down some stellar writing for vidya.

 

[Gargaune]

In the above screenshot there is exactly 3 UI element groups and they're mostly contained to the side or the bottom of the screen so as not to suffocate the actual gameplay. The UI isn't in front of your face, it's to the side, away, is the point.

It looks like Obsidian is concerned about overscan which is weird because I thought that was a thing of the past. There may also be a concern that having the sustained abilities too far down will make them difficult to see during combat.

If you think it's weird, then maybe that's not what's going on? Overscan could explain shifting things away from the edges, but not cluttering the centre screen the way it is in that screenshot, and all those bars are jumbo-sized even by livingroom TV standards. Rather then bloviate on the reasons, I'm just gonna post these two totally random screenshots and you can decide which looks more Avowedish...

 

[Oberon]

FPS and RPG is always going to be an abomination combination that shouldn't exist.

Back on my kick on how the quality of writers in the industry has really degraded - Deus Ex was written by Sheldon Pacotti who majored in English at Harvard and math at MIT at the same time. Absolute prodigy, running intellectual circles around the current Creative Writing/English majors filling up the ranks of narrative designers.

I think a big problem is that so many of them these days are Twitter mush brains. The character limit and endless retarded flame war have been a disaster for the mental health and attention spans of that demographic of tech savy nerd who gets into a field like game dev.

 

[Roguey]

I think a big problem is that so many of them these days are Twitter mush brains. The character limit and endless retarded flame war have been a disaster for the mental health and attention spans of that demographic of tech savy nerd who gets into a field like game dev.

Twitter ended up working very well for a drop-out like Kurvitz. I believe these MFA midwits would be bad with or without twitter.

 

[Pink Eye]

It looks like Obsidian is concerned about overscan

Dude, I don't even know what that means. Again, compare this:

To these (first one is a Vermintide 2 true solo run so teammate UI is disabled, second one is Witchfire):

And for good measure, here's a hiking simulator Skyrim screenie:

 

[Roguey]

Dude, I don't even know what that means. Again, compare this:

Other than the one arrow, all of that makes sense to me. Your Skyrim screen is not in the same context, it'd look similar if you were in combat just coming out of stealth.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

I'm guessing that the arrow is for current quest objective (see the mirroring arrow on the minimap).

 

[Turisas]

Dude, I don't even know what that means. Again, compare this:

Your Skyrim screen is not in the same context, it'd look similar if you were in combat just coming out of stealth.

Ehh, not really.

 

[Gargaune]

Dude, I don't even know what that means.

Overscan is a thing where your TV stretches the image past its borders, cutting off the edges (dunno why, but I had to deal with it for my livingroom HTPC). So what Roguey was saying is that Avowed's widgets might be offset from the edges to compensate for that, but no, you're right, that UI's overall bloated and cluttered.

 

[Roguey]

Ehh, not really.

That's not fighting from stealth. They have eye icons showing their awareness.

 

[Turisas]

Ehh, not really.

That's not fighting from stealth. They have eye icons showing their awareness.

Oh sure, that makes all the difference.

 

[Black]

We're defending Skyrim?

 

[dutchwench]

To me, what stands out in that cluttered screenshot with xaurips the most is that stupid ass line. "Xaurips. They'll overwhelm you if you're not careful." You know, this really shows how confident Obsidian is in the universe they've been building up for the past ten years or so. Can you imagine playing a Bethesda game, say, TESVI, and listening to your companion explaining what goblins are?
It's honestly sad. Imagine having no confidence in anything at all as a game developer. Not in the player who you'd expect to put 2 and 2 together and figure out what kind of enemy xaurips are. Not in the fanbase (if more than five people and a half can be found amid its ranks) returning in waves large enough to make it so that you don't have to dump info they already know. Not in your own ability to design encounters in a way that follows the show don't tell rule that would allow for a more diegetic way of finding out this information. Nah. Fuck it. Record a line explaining what xaurips are and don't forget to double-check the audio level on the line we recorded a few weeks ago explaining how the arquebus is different from an AK-74.
If you're unfortunate enough to have seen the gameplay samples from earlier this summer, you know that the dialogue is consistently that bad. Even the normal battle quips read like lines rejected by Marvel execs because they have no life and no energy to them. Fucking Avowed.

 

[Modron]

We're defending Skyrim?

We?

 

[Butter]

To me, what stands out in that cluttered screenshot with xaurips the most is that stupid ass line. "Xaurips. They'll overwhelm you if you're not careful."

Funniest part is that not a single enemy type in the game will overwhelm you. It would be dirty pool for them to do anything except patiently wait their turn to die. Makes Deathloop enemies look intelligent by comparison.

 

[Pink Eye]

We're defending Skyrim?

I don't even like Skyrim, but if you say your game is like x y z, and it's clearly worse than the aforementioned titles that you're hyping up in order to sell your product, well, comparisons will be drawn.