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

[Drowed]

The thing that makes me look at these "I played Avowed for X hours" analyses with a certain suspicion is that they all seem to be exactly the same, citing the same points, in the same way. They start by saying they had no expectations, to say how surprised they are with the game. They soon get into the idea that the game is smaller in scale than Skyrim and other similar games, but that exploration is rewarding. And then they start talking about reactivity.

But above all, the point I find most suspicious is that none of them, at any point, comment on the obvious and most evident problems. None talk about how lifeless the NPCs are, they look like dolls, with stiff animations. None comment on the strange and lifeless art direction, which makes the environments look generic and soulless. Everyone says they "don't know why" Obsidian didn't let them show character creation, as if there wasn't an obvious reason behind this choice.

I mean, I'm not saying it's a conspiracy or anything. But it sounds to me like these creators received at least a suggestion to mention certain points and talk about the game in a certain way... Really, it seems that way. Either that or they really must be plagiarizing each other, which wouldn't be shocking either.

 

[Fenix]

The Youtube algorithm suggested me that Iberian bitch

She is good, I could image what are her breasts and nipples like...

 

[Fenix]

None comment on the strange and lifeless art direction, which makes the environments look generic and soulless.

The signs of it were already ar TOW - didn't play it, but screenshots were crying out loud about some diasability of artists, like - I see the world that way.
I'm sure science could explain it with some neurophisiology like how brain work if this or that gland under-over performing or some such.
But it was obvious artists there are un-normal with un-normal vision of eastetics.
Visuals were simply uncomfortable.

 

[Fenix]

timestamp lmao ahaha

 

[countrydoctor]

I see a lot of people on social media comparing Avowed and KC:D2 but I don't really see the similarities aside from that they're both first-person rpgs. Very different combat systems, rpg mechanics, environments, story, everything.

They are first person RPGs coming out in the same month, that's enough for people to compare them. KC has a very clear mass appeal to it, it's a historical RPG about a man becoming a warrior, and it comes out a week earlier.
But who the hell is Avowed's target auditory? Do Pillars fans even exist at this point? Are there actually nu-Obsidian fans thinking this studio can deliver good gameplay or writing, especially from a hoe who was behind Deadfire?

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Time to pull a barve

 

[Maculo]

The thing that makes me look at these "I played Avowed for X hours" analyses with a certain suspicion is that they all seem to be exactly the same, citing the same points, in the same way. They start by saying they had no expectations, to say how surprised they are with the game. They soon get into the idea that the game is smaller in scale than Skyrim and other similar games, but that exploration is rewarding. And then they start talking about reactivity.

But above all, the point I find most suspicious is that none of them, at any point, comment on the obvious and most evident problems. None talk about how lifeless the NPCs are, they look like dolls, with stiff animations. None comment on the strange and lifeless art direction, which makes the environments look generic and soulless. Everyone says they "don't know why" Obsidian didn't let them show character creation, as if there wasn't an obvious reason behind this choice.

I mean, I'm not saying it's a conspiracy or anything. But it sounds to me like these creators received at least a suggestion to mention certain points and talk about the game in a certain way... Really, it seems that way. Either that or they really must be plagiarizing each other, which wouldn't be shocking either.

I don’t find it hard to imagine the streamers sounded pleasantly surprised, because the Obsidian trailers were so shit.

From I understand the experience was on rails though, and so I don’t think the streamers needed much direction.

 

[Raghar]

Vavra in a few months:

View attachment 58035

I'm not sure about that. Isn't his company owned by THQ Nordic?

 

[DKunit]

Vavra in a few months:

View attachment 58035

I'm not sure about that. Isn't his company owned by THQ Nordic?

Yes, sort of. Warhorse is owned by Plaion, which is owned by Embracer Group(formerly THQ Nordic AB).

 

[Late Bloomer]

 

[Takamori]

The fucking non existential art direction is what bothers me most. The NPCs look weird and the facial animations don't help at all.
Skill up the guy who took a fat shit over veilguard seems to be enjoying this, so there is something in this that makes this at least palatable if you are desperate for something to play?

 

[Maculo]

For the sake of discussion, how many RPGs follow the same formula where the special MC always wins/saves the world against just in time? Here, you and the pantheon were out-maneuvered. It just wasn’t clear how badly the pantheon screwed up until it was too late.

You weren't outmaneuvered, though, that would imply you had the opportunity to succeed at some point and that's not the case with Deafire, not in the writing nor in the design. The PC simply doesn't play a part in the critical plot events, they are merely an observer or a... watcher, if you will. If you want the full TLDR breakdown, I've ranted about it before:

Which only further emphasises how Eothas's gambit is batshit crazy. Try telling a live service's sysadmin to shut the servers down without a backup and he'll chase you out with a broomstick, but the supposed "god of wisdom" goes all YOLO on the world's life service and he doesn't even put up a downtime notice.

But if Deadfire's main plot is dubious, it's the narrative design that really scuttles the skiff. I originally meant to write a long screed on the subject but I've long since lost the interest to expend too much effort over Deadfire, so riddle me this - what if the Watcher doesn't pursue Eothas? How do the plot's critical events change if you just decide to kick your feet up on a Neketaka beach and sip margaritas? Nothing, Eothas goes on and destroys the Wheel. All you're doing is chasing after him, your only role in the main event is to find out what he's up to. Oh, sure, you get to make one (and only one!) side request 'cause he admires your persistence, but who gives a crap?

Concerning the final "battle", and this what really vexed me about Sawyer's reaction to this criticism, I remember seeing a response from him along the lines of "we literally told you that you couldn't beat him, what more do you expect?" Yes, Josh, you did! In the final act, the other gods literally tell you something like "I dunno, go see if you can talk him down, not sure what else you could do", there are repeated suggestions through the game that Eothas is beyond your power. One problem, though... "nobody can make that shot on the Death Star", "no way you can carry the Ring across Mordor", "no chance in hell Ford can take Ferrari at Le Mans" etc. etc. et-fucking-cetera! You implemented the precise pattern of setting up impossible odds to overcome in a heroic plot and now you're surprised that the consumer expected the rest of that pattern to play out to the end!

Basically, Deadfire's an RPG about futility. You never stood a chance to begin with, and that's a hard concept to centre yourself around in a genre that's essentially the videogame equivalent of the Bildungsroman. CDPR arguably did a better job in Cyberpunk by shifting the focus, at least in retrospect, to the protagonist's struggle with their own inevitable mortality, how they cope with that, but Deadfire remains fixated on a main event you play no part in. You can make an RPG about failure, but futility?... Your narrative had better sing, and Obsidian's didn't. Oh, and just to twist that knife in, I'll remind you that Durance, in the first Pillars of Eternity, already killed Eothas - that's right, a former companion achieved more than you get to... in his backstory!

Now indulge me for just one more paragraph with what could've been... Eothas is basically a big rock colossus, right? Hey, you know what people have used in the past to "fight" rock? Cannon! Which is to say, exactly the sort of crap you've got lying around on all those ships littering the game. So here goes - you forge an alliance with one or more factions, sail through the storm and then blast Eothas with cannon shot! As his legs crumble under him, he gets one last blow in and smashes the Wheel and they both plummet into the depths. Or, if you chose to go it alone, you arrive at Ukaizo but you don't have enough guns to do the job, Eothas still destroys the Wheel and you've snuck in a nice little Saturday morning cartoon message about the importance of friendship. Either way you achieve two things: 1) you meaningfully rope the factional conflict into the resolution of the main plot, and 2) you turn a story of futility into one of failure. You failed, Eothas succeeded regardless of whether he also fell, and the setting moved where Obsidian wanted it to, but the task was doable!

And I'm not even saying this is how it should've been, this is just an example of what I came up with waiting for the office kettle to boil a few days after I finished the game and I'd expect professional writers and designers to do better. But enough, I ended up writing more than I meant to here anyway.

Your point about canons is interesting, although didn’t Eothas shrug off a volcanic eruption to the face, a tsunami wave, and krakens? I recall there was an island of fire giants where the watcher pinpoints Eothas and the pantheon tried to hit him with all the supernatural bullshit that they could muster to no avail. What would a canon do that a volcano couldn’t?

Arguably, Durance didn’t kill Eothas, and instead gave Eothas the means to pull back the curtain and show the gods as something less. Hence, Magran killed off all of Durance’s companions (it had been a while).

That is not to excuse the problems with PoE and Obsidian. PoE2’s main story was never its strong point. Similar to PoE1, I give Obsidian some credit for certain ideas, but the execution of which was incredibly flawed.

 

[Raghar]

I spend about 3 hours by trying to find name of that action RPG that featured 3rd person view of a female main character, and it was action RPG, and it was something about either roman era influenced or about valkiries. And it has simple but passable graphic. The graphic of awoved kinda reminded me of that game.

 

[Stokowski]

Skill Up's review process:

d100:
1-10 Review
11-80 Shill
81-100 Shill harder

 

[Gargaune]

Your point about canons is interesting, but didn’t Eothas shrug off a volcanic eruption to the face, a tsunami wave, and krakens? I recall there was an island of fire giants where the watcher pinpoints Eothas and the pantheon tried to hit him with all the supernatural bullshit that they could muster to no avail. What could a canon do that a volcano wouldn’t?

Just don't write the volcano bit then, it's not essential. We're not constrained to filling in the gaps between previously established events here, the authors could've written quite literally anything else, and my bombardment example was just an exercise to illustrate how you could've better involved both the player and factions into the given material. I didn't mean that's exactly what they should've done and I wasn't humble-bragging when I said I'd expect professional writers to do better than what I pulled out of my backside waiting on the kettle.

 

[DKunit]

I spend about 3 hours by trying to find name of that action RPG that featured 3rd person view of a female main character, and it was action RPG, and it was something about either roman era influenced or about valkiries. And it has simple but passable graphic. The graphic of awoved kinda reminded me of that game.

Valkyrie Elysium?

 

[Maculo]

Your point about canons is interesting, but didn’t Eothas shrug off a volcanic eruption to the face, a tsunami wave, and krakens? I recall there was an island of fire giants where the watcher pinpoints Eothas and the pantheon tried to hit him with all the supernatural bullshit that they could muster to no avail. What could a canon do that a volcano wouldn’t?

Just don't write the volcano bit then, it's not essential. We're not constrained to filling in the gaps between previously established events here, the authors could've written quite literally anything else, and my bombardment example was just an exercise to illustrate how you could've better involved both the player and factions into the given material. I didn't mean that's exactly what they should've done and I wasn't humble-bragging when I said I'd expect professional writers to do better than what I pulled out of my backside waiting on the kettle.

I got you; I took it too literally tbh. I just remembered that part of the story, which felt like the only highpoint in the main quest imo.

 

[Fenix]

The fucking non existential art direction is what bothers me most. The NPCs look weird and the facial animations don't help at all.
Skill up the guy who took a fat shit over veilguard seems to be enjoying this, so there is something in this that makes this at least palatable if you are desperate for something to play?

Artist is an unavoidably a mediator of his artistical aestetical feelings, his inner self.

This is what his inner world looks like. Simple neurophysiology.

 

[Drakortha]

I don't think that Avoided will sell poorly.

It's 70 USD for a smaller, uglier, worse Skyrim-clone with modern writing and a lack of marketing.

This thing is DOA.

they want you to subscribe to gameslop.

 

[Raghar]

I spend about 3 hours by trying to find name of that action RPG that featured 3rd person view of a female main character, and it was action RPG, and it was something about either roman era influenced or about valkiries. And it has simple but passable graphic. The graphic of awoved kinda reminded me of that game.

Valkyrie Elysium?

It was made with much smaller budget.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Alright, you guys got me, Fallout New Vegas is a beloved mainstream AAA classic with broad appeal to a general audience, which is clearly why the Codex loves it.

Where did you get that idea from? Everywhere I look, I find information that paints a different picture:
F3 has around 16.000 reviews on Steam and 80% of them are positive.
FNV has around 175.000 reviews on Steam and over 95% of them are positive.

Fallout 3 did not launch on Steam, it used Games for Windows Live and was bugged for years because of it.

FNV was panned on consoles due to the bugs and the lack of level scaling ("Bro why am I dying to deathclaws outside Goodsprings??"). Many have forgotten but the PC market was a tiny fraction of what it is now.

To what extent retro-hipster pre-built PC enjoyers bought FNV on discount for $5 and started saying it's a masterpiece is another question, and if that brought in normies to play Outer Worlds, welll.... I'm not seeing it. Outer Worlds more likely benefitted from the Fallout 4 audience and mainstream looter shooter popularity.

The game actually looks... inoffensively bland? Like a Fable spinoff or something.

I don't think that Avoided will sell poorly.

It's 70 USD for a smaller, uglier, worse Skyrim-clone with modern writing and a lack of marketing.

This thing is DOA.

they want you to subscribe to gameslop.

Never underestimate the appeal of bog standard fantasy tropes and even a small open world. To this day I'm still shocked there are not 100 Skyrimlikes.

 

[Utgard-Loki]

Somehow even Oblivion managed to have less plastic looking NPCs

If you pretend Oblivion takes place in Germany or the Netherlands, the NPCs are very natural looking.

Case in point.

tfw your mom fucked a bosmer.

 

[scytheavatar]

Alright, you guys got me, Fallout New Vegas is a beloved mainstream AAA classic with broad appeal to a general audience, which is clearly why the Codex loves it.

Where did you get that idea from? Everywhere I look, I find information that paints a different picture:
F3 has around 16.000 reviews on Steam and 80% of them are positive.
FNV has around 175.000 reviews on Steam and over 95% of them are positive.

Fallout 3 did not launch on Steam, it used Games for Windows Live and was bugged for years because of it.

FNV was panned on consoles due to the bugs and the lack of level scaling ("Bro why am I dying to deathclaws outside Goodsprings??"). Many have forgotten but the PC market was a tiny fraction of what it is now.

To what extent retro-hipster pre-built PC enjoyers bought FNV on discount for $5 and started saying it's a masterpiece is another question, and if that brought in normies to play Outer Worlds, welll.... I'm not seeing it. Outer Worlds more likely benefitted from the Fallout 4 audience and mainstream looter shooter popularity.

The game actually looks... inoffensively bland? Like a Fable spinoff or something.

I don't think that Avoided will sell poorly.

It's 70 USD for a smaller, uglier, worse Skyrim-clone with modern writing and a lack of marketing.

This thing is DOA.

they want you to subscribe to gameslop.

Never underestimate the appeal of bog standard fantasy tropes and even a small open world. To this day I'm still shocked there are not 100 Skyrimlikes.

Games like Elden Ring, Witcher 3 and even Breath of the Wild ARE already Skyrim-likes....... there is not much point in cloning the Skyrim formula alone when it is already outdated, as Starfield showed.

 

[Late Bloomer]

Games like Elden Ring, Witcher 3 and even Breath of the Wild ARE already Skyrim-likes....... there is not much point in cloning the Skyrim formula alone when it is already outdated, as Starfield showed.

Nobody has been able to replicate the Skyrim formula, not even Bethesda. Elden Ring did a good job at bringing Dark Souls to an interesting (mostly) open world. Decent exploration. From Software was the closest. If Witcher 3 tried to replicate Skryim, they did a horrible job. I don't believe they did. They have a very focused narrative in a very boring landscape for actual exploration. Witcher 3 is good when following the main and sidequests but as an open world game (skyrim like) it is not. Breath of the Wild is very gamey, as most JRPG's are. Very formulaic. The player is acutely aware they are in a very paint by numbers world design. It's a fine game, but not a Skyrim clone. Starfield is not Skyrim (or Fallout 4) in space. It is an abomination of game design. It is not the natural progression of the Skyrim open world design. The copy pasted locations that are not a part of the main / side quests is nothing like Skryim. In Skyrim, every location is unique. Every cave, every fort, every camp, every dwarven ruins etc. In Starfield, there are copy pasted locations (not a part of the main questline) on every single of their 1000's planets, from a very limited pool of locations. Their reliance on substandard procedural generation holds no resemblence to Skyrim, at all.

 

[Morality Games]

Somehow even Oblivion managed to have less plastic looking NPCs

I'm just tickled that some of the women have long hair.

Although I think that was less an aesthetic choice in the Outer Worlds so much as a physics-based issue that they leaned into.