Eternity Avowed - Obsidian's first person action-RPG in the Pillars of Eternity setting - coming February 18th

[Qarthadqart]

Any FPS ever made? No.

In Half Life 2, only two enemies can target the player. If both slots are full they have to take a different action.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Obsidian broooos, what are you doing?!

View attachment 57682

As I said three pages back - their newest excuse will be that Microsoft raised the prices too much for a game of Avowed's scope It's a matter of months until they reach for it, mark my words:

You don't get the 4D chess. They are setting up the excuses for the bad reviews - Microsoft misunderstood the AA scope, and made us charge AAA price.

Let's see who rated me "Meh"? Oh, it's Infinitron

What frustrates me about Obsidian's failed projects more than anyone else's mediocre RPGs is that almost everyone there is seemingly doing their 9 to 5, sipping gingerbread-flavored latte, corporate workday. It seems as if it has become part of the culture. And I hate that, because we are RPG genre fans here. I think I speak for most us - we are people who would most likely work on an RPG for free, if they have the organisation and project management going, and they like the game concept. 9 to 5 "Microsoft employees" are showing the antithetic attitude. Never in their engagement with players, do I get the spirit of "we're a company making cool games".

Let me just go through the list again:

2000s-2013: publishers are greedy, they don't understand rpgs don't have to be flashy 3D. Also, outsourcing corporate masters fucked us with Fallout NV, but we fixed the bugs post-release.
2013-2014: we're a small indie studio please donate to our KS, and we will blow every Infinity Engine game out of the water. You are our boss now, we love you so much, please send us money!
2014-2015: "Spiritual successor" means whatever Josh says it means - i.e. "gamers don't really know what they want"!
2015-2018: Whoops, looks like they actually do! And it's NOT turn-based mechanics in a RTwP game, nor a system that is class-based in name only. And we overdid the stretchgoals, and we didn't have time to deliver everything in the quality we envisioned... cue sad violin.
2019-2020: "Manage your expectations, we are not making the next Fallout. We're actually making, well, damned if we know what it is. Also we are publisher-owned now, and this will give us more creative freedom than being indie" (I wish I was joking about this)
2020-2024 ...? Being publisher-owned definitely gave us more creative freedom in our Twitter accounts.
2024: So, we are on the MS payroll, but going to the office, it's so tiresome. And we have to put out another one folks. Did I say that out loud, no, look at how excited we are, in stream after stream. You can see it in our eyes, we are totally not bored of our own games and we play them out of our own free will.
To be continued...

 

[thesecret1]

Obsidian broooos, what are you doing?!

View attachment 57682

As I said three pages back - their newest excuse will be that Microsoft raised the prices too much for a game of Avowed's scope It's a matter of months until they reach for it, mark my words:

You don't get the 4D chess. They are setting up the excuses for the bad reviews - Microsoft misunderstood the AA scope, and made us charge AAA price.

Let's see who rated me "Meh"? Oh, it's Infinitron

What frustrates me about Obsidian's failed projects more than anyone else's mediocre RPGs is that almost everyone there is seemingly doing their 9 to 5, sipping gingerbread-flavored latte, corporate workday. It seems as if it has become part of the culture. And I hate that, because we are RPG genre fans here. I think I speak for most us - we are people who would most likely work on an RPG for free, if they have the organisation and project management going, and they like the game concept. 9 to 5 "Microsoft employees" are showing the antithetic attitude. Never in their engagement with players, do I get the spirit of "we're a company making cool games".

Let me just go through the list again:

2000s-2013: publishers are greedy, they don't understand rpgs don't have to be flashy 3D. Also, outsourcing corporate masters fucked us with Fallout NV, but we fixed the bugs post-release.
2013-2014: we're a small indie studio please donate to our KS, and we will blow every Infinity Engine game out of the water. You are our boss now, we love you so much, please send us money!
2014-2015: "Spiritual successor" means whatever Josh says it means - i.e. "gamers don't really know what they want"!
2015-2018: Whoops, looks like they actually do! And it's NOT turn-based mechanics in a RTwP game, nor a system that is class-based in name only. And we overdid the stretchgoals, and we didn't have time to deliver everything... cue sad violin.
2019-2020: "Manage your expectations, we are not making the next Fallout. We're actually making, well, damned if we know what it is. Also we are publisher-owned now, and this will give us more creative freedom than being indie" (I wish I was joking about this)
2020-2024 ...? Being publisher-owned definitely gave us more creative freedom in our Twitter accounts.
2024: So, we are on the MS payroll, but going to the office, it's so tiresome. And we have to put out another one folks. Did I say that out loud, no, look at how excited we are, in stream after stream. You can see it in our eyes, we are totally not bored of our own games and we play them out of our own free will.
To be continued...

Of course they just do their 9 to 5 and sip their lattes. Would you be excited to work on Avowed? I'm pretty sure most of the employees know they're working on pushing out a big turd, but they need to pay the bills and the management is adamant that this is what the gamers want, so they do their job while quietly bitching about it all

 

[AwesomeButton]

Of course they just do their 9 to 5 and sip their lattes. Would you be excited to work on Avowed? I'm pretty sure most of the employees know they're working on pushing out a big turd, but they need to pay the bills and the management is adamant that this is what the gamers want, so they do their job while quietly bitching about it all

And they will reap just what they sowed.

Honestly if the developers down to the rank and file, are not excited about the game, why should the player be? Big corporations can push out quality, albeit souless, "products" with uninspired direction, as long as the project management is doing a great job, (read: "cracks the whip proficiently") and as long as the technology team is solid (meaning the game runs well and there are no annoying bugs). I'm thinking of AssCreed games as examples. But this is not Obsidian's case.

Off the top of my head, developers who are "passionate" about their projects and its shows in their games are:
- the Underrail team,
- the Battle Brothers team
- Warhorse

Obsidian needs a bit of the good old "I'm here from Mitch and Murry" approach:

 

[scytheavatar]

Obsidian broooos, what are you doing?!

View attachment 57682

As I said three pages back - their newest excuse will be that Microsoft raised the prices too much for a game of Avowed's scope It's a matter of months until they reach for it, mark my words:

You don't get the 4D chess. They are setting up the excuses for the bad reviews - Microsoft misunderstood the AA scope, and made us charge AAA price.

Let's see who rated me "Meh"? Oh, it's Infinitron

What frustrates me about Obsidian's failed projects more than anyone else's mediocre RPGs is that almost everyone there is seemingly doing their 9 to 5, sipping gingerbread-flavored latte, corporate workday. It seems as if it has become part of the culture. And I hate that, because we are RPG genre fans here. I think I speak for most us - we are people who would most likely work on an RPG for free, if they have the organisation and project management going, and they like the game concept. 9 to 5 "Microsoft employees" are showing the antithetic attitude. Never in their engagement with players, do I get the spirit of "we're a company making cool games".

Let me just go through the list again:

2000s-2013: publishers are greedy, they don't understand rpgs don't have to be flashy 3D. Also, outsourcing corporate masters fucked us with Fallout NV, but we fixed the bugs post-release.
2013-2014: we're a small indie studio please donate to our KS, and we will blow every Infinity Engine game out of the water. You are our boss now, we love you so much, please send us money!
2014-2015: "Spiritual successor" means whatever Josh says it means - i.e. "gamers don't really know what they want"!
2015-2018: Whoops, looks like they actually do! And it's NOT turn-based mechanics in a RTwP game, nor a system that is class-based in name only. And we overdid the stretchgoals, and we didn't have time to deliver everything... cue sad violin.
2019-2020: "Manage your expectations, we are not making the next Fallout. We're actually making, well, damned if we know what it is. Also we are publisher-owned now, and this will give us more creative freedom than being indie" (I wish I was joking about this)
2020-2024 ...? Being publisher-owned definitely gave us more creative freedom in our Twitter accounts.
2024: So, we are on the MS payroll, but going to the office, it's so tiresome. And we have to put out another one folks. Did I say that out loud, no, look at how excited we are, in stream after stream. You can see it in our eyes, we are totally not bored of our own games and we play them out of our own free will.
To be continued...

Of course they just do their 9 to 5 and sip their lattes. Would you be excited to work on Avowed? I'm pretty sure most of the employees know they're working on pushing out a big turd, but they need to pay the bills and the management is adamant that this is what the gamers want, so they do their job while quietly bitching about it all

I might have been excited to work on Avowed at the beginning of the project, when it looked like Obsidian's version of Skyrim. Like surely you would have too? Problem is, when they rebooted the project and downgraded the scope we got a very different game.

 

[thesecret1]

Honestly if the developers down to the rank and file, are not excited about the game, why should the player be?

More common than you think. Asked around the office of one certain game dev studio that makes FPS titles, whether they play their games themselves. Answer of about 90% of the devs: "No, never, I don't like FPS games. I enjoy RPGs/adventure games."

 

[Inec0rn]

Time will tell if soulless fantasy rpg will do well or not, i'd prefer pick up a couple of janky indy rpgs at least trying to be creative for the cost of this.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Honestly if the developers down to the rank and file, are not excited about the game, why should the player be?

More common than you think. Asked around the office of one certain game dev studio that makes FPS titles, whether they play their games themselves. Answer of about 90% of the devs: "No, never, I don't like FPS games. I enjoy RPGs/adventure games."

Yeah, I'm not surprised at all. But in such cases, that's where the project management comes in. You give those devs who "don't like FPS games" a well defined and strictly written roadmap of what features need to be in and how those features need to work. In the end it won't ooze "passion", but if the management did a good job, will be a solid and consistently good experience for the player.

Obsidian are the worst of both worlds - the passionless attitude of the corporation with the lenient management of the indie dev studio. And I bet if someone tries to establish a more disciplined development process there will be grumbling among the employees, because that's how they've been trained, to sip lattes and wait for the handout from their corpo-daddy.

 

[sebas]

You should want your users (and prospective users) to not have to wonder if they or their children will be harassed, intimidated, ridiculed or otherwise face abuse,” Warner concluded.

Source here

Your children shouldn't be unsupervised on the Internet you fucking adhd sperg spawning shithead! That's why they are CHILDREN because they need to be supervised!

I have two kids and I am so fucking tired of parents complaining about youtube or whatever else on the internet when the real problem is them throwing away their kids with tablets around their necks into a room for hours on end so they themselves can doomscroll their two neurons into stupor. Fucking animals should be castrated!

 

[Infinitron]

You don't get the 4D chess. They are setting up the excuses for the bad reviews - Microsoft misunderstood the AA scope, and made us charge AAA price.

Let's see who rated me "Meh"? Oh, it's Infinitron

The "meh" is because you're describing an Obsidian MO from back when they were an independent company. It's harder to go with the "blame the publisher, not us" excuse when the publisher owns you.

 

[Butter]

Any FPS ever made? No.

In Half Life 2, only two enemies can target the player. If both slots are full they have to take a different action.

Insidious design that neuters the difficulty. Players probably won't ever notice "Hey, only 2 guys are ever attacking me at once", but they will notice that HL2 is a cakewalk compared to the first game.

 

[Riddler]

I think I speak for most us - we are people who would most likely work on an RPG for free

Lmao, no.

 

[Yosharian]

Any FPS ever made? No.

In Half Life 2, only two enemies can target the player. If both slots are full they have to take a different action.

Insidious design that neuters the difficulty. Players probably won't ever notice "Hey, only 2 guys are ever attacking me at once", but they will notice that HL2 is a cakewalk compared to the first game.

Ehh playing on the hardest difficulty I don't think I ever wished it to be harder, in fact I definitely remember dying a few times, granted it was a long time ago

 

[AwesomeButton]

You don't get the 4D chess. They are setting up the excuses for the bad reviews - Microsoft misunderstood the AA scope, and made us charge AAA price.

Let's see who rated me "Meh"? Oh, it's Infinitron

The "meh" is because you're describing an Obsidian MO from back when they were an independent company. It's harder to go with the "blame the publisher, not us" excuse when the publisher owns you.

You have a point, though I wouldn't have thought of that from just the "meh"

 

[AwesomeButton]

I think I speak for most us - we are people who would most likely work on an RPG for free

Lmao, no.

Quote the full sentence though.

 

[cvv]

You should want your users (and prospective users) to not have to wonder if they or their children will be harassed, intimidated, ridiculed or otherwise face abuse,” Warner concluded.

 

[sosmoflux]

Obsidian broooos, what are you doing?!

View attachment 57682

As I said three pages back - their newest excuse will be that Microsoft raised the prices too much for a game of Avowed's scope It's a matter of months until they reach for it, mark my words:

You don't get the 4D chess. They are setting up the excuses for the bad reviews - Microsoft misunderstood the AA scope, and made us charge AAA price.

Let's see who rated me "Meh"? Oh, it's Infinitron

What frustrates me about Obsidian's failed projects more than anyone else's mediocre RPGs is that almost everyone there is seemingly doing their 9 to 5, sipping gingerbread-flavored latte, corporate workday. It seems as if it has become part of the culture. And I hate that, because we are RPG genre fans here. I think I speak for most us - we are people who would most likely work on an RPG for free, if they have the organisation and project management going, and they like the game concept. 9 to 5 "Microsoft employees" are showing the antithetic attitude. Never in their engagement with players, do I get the spirit of "we're a company making cool games".

Let me just go through the list again:

2000s-2013: publishers are greedy, they don't understand rpgs don't have to be flashy 3D. Also, outsourcing corporate masters fucked us with Fallout NV, but we fixed the bugs post-release.
2013-2014: we're a small indie studio please donate to our KS, and we will blow every Infinity Engine game out of the water. You are our boss now, we love you so much, please send us money!
2014-2015: "Spiritual successor" means whatever Josh says it means - i.e. "gamers don't really know what they want"!
2015-2018: Whoops, looks like they actually do! And it's NOT turn-based mechanics in a RTwP game, nor a system that is class-based in name only. And we overdid the stretchgoals, and we didn't have time to deliver everything... cue sad violin.
2019-2020: "Manage your expectations, we are not making the next Fallout. We're actually making, well, damned if we know what it is. Also we are publisher-owned now, and this will give us more creative freedom than being indie" (I wish I was joking about this)
2020-2024 ...? Being publisher-owned definitely gave us more creative freedom in our Twitter accounts.
2024: So, we are on the MS payroll, but going to the office, it's so tiresome. And we have to put out another one folks. Did I say that out loud, no, look at how excited we are, in stream after stream. You can see it in our eyes, we are totally not bored of our own games and we play them out of our own free will.
To be continued...

Of course they just do their 9 to 5 and sip their lattes. Would you be excited to work on Avowed? I'm pretty sure most of the employees know they're working on pushing out a big turd, but they need to pay the bills and the management is adamant that this is what the gamers want, so they do their job while quietly bitching about it all

You're giving them far too much credit even still. They're not highly skilled yet privileged and bored 9-5ers who would otherwise be competent if only a fire was lit under thier asses.

No, they are dribbling npcs who care about video games as much as you care about what's for dinner tonight. They work in games because they got baited by the contemporary medium of our time in a YouTube ad. They're here because making games looks fun and easy, and hey they played Halo 3/Oblivion so they're really into this stuff!

Modern game devs and especially those in these libtard US companies are truly the worst incapable useless limp wristed bugmen you could imagine. My heart goes out to the rare 1/10,000 talented and hard working programmers and artists whose potential and efforts get flushed down the drain working for these retards.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Come to think of it, I probably would be excited to work on Avowed, and this would last about a month. Then Carrie would call me up and give me a good old managerial go-over Or, more accurately, from Tim Cain's likely experience, she is more on the passive aggressive side of approaches.

Hey, at least now Josh can release a PnP PoE campaign parallel with the game and we can have our own Avowed the way we want it, right?

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Avowed at the beginning of the project, when it looked like Obsidian's version of Skyrim.

I didn't keep up with early development, so how ambitious was the project actually in the beginning? (Also paging Roguey I guess.)

 

[kapisi]

Why does Microsoft fuck with Obsidian? The price and release window is crazy. It's like they want it to fail, but what do they possibly gain from that?

Push it to January for 40-50 bucks, geez.

 

[Riddler]

I think I speak for most us - we are people who would most likely work on an RPG for free

Lmao, no.

Quote the full sentence though.

Why? It's still as delusional and self-seeking.

 

[ColonelMace]

It's like they want it to fail, but what do they possibly gain from that?

A reason to lay people off and keep what they actually see as valuable : IPs, assets, some key people eventually.

 

[Old Hans]

Why does Microsoft fuck with Obsidian? The price and release window is crazy. It's like they want it to fail, but what do they possibly gain from that?

Push it to January for 40-50 bucks, geez.

Before Microsoft, Obsidian was living on the streets, eating out of garbage cans. Microsoft gave them their big opportunity to really shine, and how did Obsidian repay them? By releasing some of the most underwhelming rpgs ever designed by the human race.

This is based on hard facts, and if you dont believe me, just do some research on the internet super highway. its all there.

 

[ColonelMace]

Come to think of it, I probably would be excited to work on Avowed, and this would last about a month. Then Carrie would call me up and give me a good old managerial go-over Or, more accurately, from Tim Cain's likely experience, she is more on the passive aggressive side of approaches.

Hey, at least now Josh can release a PnP PoE campaign parallel with the game and we can have our own Avowed the way we want it, right?

Iirc you did some modding back then. You already did your part.

 

[thesecret1]

Why does Microsoft fuck with Obsidian? The price and release window is crazy. It's like they want it to fail, but what do they possibly gain from that?

Push it to January for 40-50 bucks, geez.

Before Microsoft, Obsidian was living on the streets, eating out of garbage cans. Microsoft gave them their big opportunity to really shine, and how did Obsidian repay them? By releasing some of the most underwhelming rpgs ever designed by the human race.

This is based on hard facts, and if you dont believe me, just do some research on the internet super highway. its all there.

Microsoft means well and tries to get Obsidian to let go of their delusions. "Obsidian. My friend. You saw what a dumpsterfire Awowed was, you're simply not cut out for this. So please, come to your senses and do what you're actually good at. Make Grounded 2."