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

[Sibelius]

The art style in this game is absolutely disgusting, Matt Hanson should be fired for that before he is fired for the other stuff.

A return to form for Obsidian though, the Outer Worlds had a putrid aesthetic and probably the worst colour palette I have ever seen in a game. I played TOW with the monochrome Reshade shader, was the only thing that made it playable, and it actually fit the retro future style. I only used the reverend companion, felt like I was running around having a (shitty communist) adventure with Carey Grant.

Props to them for allowing the UI and interactable highlights and the like to be hidden, and they seem to have compromised on the pronoun thing as well. Question for the crazy people that have bought this, are the pronouns on or off be default? Do you have to actively switch them on or off? Just asking for information, would never buy anything from Microsoft, and the quality of art and writing looks so bad that I will not even pirate it.

 

[Butter]

Grown men lining up to taste the slop "for scientific purposes".

 

[Fedora Master]

I've acquired an Ingedient, fucky wucky!!!

It's like one of those Twitter posts. You know the ones.

 

[Fedora Master]

Played for about 3 hours or so. Initial random thoughts:

- the game is colorful, but not nearly as ultra-rainbow-twee as the screenshots I've seen. Maybe different settings account for this but I'm running default max so idk. Graphics look pretty good but that's nothing special these days right? Studios shit out good graphics every week.

-area/story progression seems to be gated largely by equipment, which needs to be upgraded using materials found by exploring/fighting. Enemies will be unreasonably resilient if your equipment is below an arbitrary level. This really highlights the explore-combat-upgrade loop, so I'll try talk about those specifically.

- So far it seems like the exploration is pretty solid but nothing groundbreaking. There are landmarks in the distance with good items in them. If you take the time to check behind waterfalls and other nooks youll be rewarded. I found an optional dungeon with good early-game loot and a tough boss. Everything's fine so far here.

- Combat appears to be a funky mishmash of all sorts of games we've seen. A foundation of statistical mechanics pulled from poe with some Larian style elemental effects and souls-lite dodge/parry/stamina management. Add some bioshock 2-ass left/right hand management and a dash of sekiro stagger gauge and you've got something approximating whatever the fuck avowed is.
I'm having a good time so far but it's too early for me too judge whether it's 40 hours fun.

-upgrade system so far is that enemies drop items and you slap that shit on your sword to make number go higher. Apparently there's enchanting but I haven't gotten to it yet. There's also cooking/crafting and whatnot.
Some of the craftable foods seem to give meaningful boosts as in poe. Craftable items don't seem useless either.

- character progression seems to be straightforward with mediocre variety. There are three generic fighter/rogue/wizard skill trees. The player gains one skill point per level that can be used between any tree. From the descriptions, some look like generic "number go up" skills while others seem to have more impact in how you play. It's limited in variety compared to any crpg but it has enough to explore for at least a playthrough. I can see it being fun playing a gish with this system.

You get one attribute point per level to spend on the usual poe attributes. The player also gets unique skills through story progression as the watcher did.

- you can play the whole game with a third-person camera. They bury this in the settings menu but if you like playing on harder difficulties then you probably want to know about it for practical reasons.

-writing is fine so far but I'm a psycho who misses the pages and pages of poe2 dialogue so I shouldn't comment.

Stop being part of the problem.

 

[Fedora Master]

Played for about 3 hours or so. Initial random thoughts:

- the game is colorful, but not nearly as ultra-rainbow-twee as the screenshots I've seen. Maybe different settings account for this but I'm running default max so idk. Graphics look pretty good but that's nothing special these days right? Studios shit out good graphics every week.

-area/story progression seems to be gated largely by equipment, which needs to be upgraded using materials found by exploring/fighting. Enemies will be unreasonably resilient if your equipment is below an arbitrary level. This really highlights the explore-combat-upgrade loop, so I'll try talk about those specifically.

- So far it seems like the exploration is pretty solid but nothing groundbreaking. There are landmarks in the distance with good items in them. If you take the time to check behind waterfalls and other nooks youll be rewarded. I found an optional dungeon with good early-game loot and a tough boss. Everything's fine so far here.

- Combat appears to be a funky mishmash of all sorts of games we've seen. A foundation of statistical mechanics pulled from poe with some Larian style elemental effects and souls-lite dodge/parry/stamina management. Add some bioshock 2-ass left/right hand management and a dash of sekiro stagger gauge and you've got something approximating whatever the fuck avowed is.
I'm having a good time so far but it's too early for me too judge whether it's 40 hours fun.

-upgrade system so far is that enemies drop items and you slap that shit on your sword to make number go higher. Apparently there's enchanting but I haven't gotten to it yet. There's also cooking/crafting and whatnot.
Some of the craftable foods seem to give meaningful boosts as in poe. Craftable items don't seem useless either.

- character progression seems to be straightforward with mediocre variety. There are three generic fighter/rogue/wizard skill trees. The player gains one skill point per level that can be used between any tree. From the descriptions, some look like generic "number go up" skills while others seem to have more impact in how you play. It's limited in variety compared to any crpg but it has enough to explore for at least a playthrough. I can see it being fun playing a gish with this system.

You get one attribute point per level to spend on the usual poe attributes. The player also gets unique skills through story progression as the watcher did.

- you can play the whole game with a third-person camera. They bury this in the settings menu but if you like playing on harder difficulties then you probably want to know about it for practical reasons.

-writing is fine so far but I'm a psycho who misses the pages and pages of poe2 dialogue so I shouldn't comment.

Thanks, nice to see some objective and informed opinion from someone playing the game

Keep your updates coming. Its relevant and makes an appreciated change from the rants from people going on and on about wokeness and culture wars but arent playing the game

Stop being.

 

[processdaemon]

Not being able to kill NPCs is by far the worst thing when it comes to the RP.

Yeah that's the one of the most disappointing things I've heard about the game so far barring the exclusion of Cipher. I'm more tolerant of that sort of thing in, say, Owlcat games because I go into them knowing they're pretty heavily scripted, but it feels at odds with how they've been marketing the game even with their backpedaling on the Skyrim comparisons.

I'm not put off entirely and I will still go into it with an open mind but it's a sign of how underwhelming the previews are that it's only just clearing my bar for being worth the £1 I'm going to spend on the gamepass trial.

 

[Perkel]

(...)
BTW. Here is Unreal Engine 5 tax to pay:

1080p, DLLS PERFORMACE, ALL LOW
57fps on fucking RTX5080 XD XD
(...)

This is RTX 5080 on a Ryzen 3600. You do not, ever, pair this GPU with such a low end CPU. This part of the video was showing CPU scaling - and the game handles that well.

On my PC, the game performs quite alright and might be the best performing UE5 game I've tried. I've got a Ryzen 5800X3D and an RTX 4070 12GB GDDR6X. With everything set to epic detail, DLSS Quality and frame generation, overriden with the new Transformer model, I get no less than 120 fps. Without framegen that would be a bit above 60 fps. Not ideal, but since this is UE5 with Nanite and Lumen, I'd say it's good. The graphics style may not blow your mind but Nanite is beautiful (no pop-ins) and hardware ray traced Lumen... is a bit hit and miss. Water reflections are nice, lighting and shadowing is nice, but some objects have huge noise on them, which is a thing I hate about current state of RT the most. Perhaps a patch will add ray reconstruction, which changed Cyberpunk 2077 from an ugly mess to something actually great looking.

As for the game itself, I spent 2 hours with it and I liked it. The writing is kind of meh but I didn't have a cringe moment yet. Can't say much about character progression because I barely levelled up, but so far it's all good for an action RPG. Combat feels a lot better than I expected based on videos. The only thing that I do not like is there seems to be no toggle for walking when playing with K&M.

I'll play some more later tonight.

Ryzen 3600 is one of the best CPUs premiered just 4 years ago. And that's better than 99% of what people usually have. It is still at minimum mid cpu. Not everyone is rocking X3Ds or i9s which are enthusiast grade expensive cpus.

You are a joke if you think that mid grade cpu shouldn't at least hold 60fps in fucking 540p which is what DLSS performance at 1080p is.

And it's not like Avowed does any simulation. It doesn't simulate shit.
Oh and that's on fucking LOW settings.

My rig is swell with 4090 and X3D proc but i am not dump enough to stan this shit because i used r3600 and lower gear for most of my life.

 

[luj1]

Its too early to assess if Avowed will be a success or failure but that will ultimately be determined by its sales and revenue generated

This is the kind of people who ruined game forums and markets, because they bring stupidity and decline

According to you, Van Gogh and Gaugin, Modigliani, John Cassavetes in film, Orson Welles and Tarkovsky, are all failures.

You should think this over whilst exiled to work in a coal mine for a few decades, without parole...

 

[Orange Clock]

Question for the crazy people that have bought this, are the pronouns on or off be default? Do you have to actively switch them on or off?

I’m not crazy to buy it, but display pronouns in PC character sheet (they called “Identifier”) is off by default. Also it appears you could name you character whatever you want, including Faggot, Nazi or Adolf Hitler. So here’s that I guess.

 

[Thalstarion]

Baldur's Gate 3 is liable to be the exception to the rule when it comes to modern RPG's allowing you to kill NPC's. The developers believe you are evil and need to be lectured if you think about criticising or siding with certain characters after all. This applies to regular players, too. Look at how many nutters believe someone to be irredeemable if they dare to dislike or like the 'wrong' factions in a video game. It's largely why so many modern titles are so sanitised and bereft of options.

 

[Ibn Sina]

It seems Avowed is following the Veilguard route where you are basically railroaded and forced to be a good holier than thou guy, and any deviation from this morality is heavily punished or not available. One of the reviewers spoke about how they wanted to side with the Steel garrote but that was not available because the game deemed it too evil.

Companions do not react to your decisions at all and will accept anything you do, even gaslighting themselves that it was a good decision lol even if its against them. Cannot be killed or dismissed.

NPCs are stuck to their location, with virtually no NPC movement in towns or in any area they are in. Which gives great suspicion that that the game was intended to be multiplayer and the towns as regional hubs for players. There is literally zero movement for NPCs, just some animations like sitting, sweeping ground all on the same tile lol.

In standard obsidian fashion any background you choose at character creation is just flavor texts and adds nothing to gameplay or open new routes, just text diarrhea.

Regions are locked beyond loot grind, you have to grind and upgrade loot to be able to touch any enemy in the next region.

This must be the least reactive and interactive Obsidian game ever.

 

[Yosharian]

FYI, the lead writer of New Vegas recently rejoined Obsidian: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/obsidian-general-discussion-thread.84849/page-392#post-9305326

Great, so in 5 more years there's a chance w might get a decently-written game from them

 

[Yosharian]

The art style in this game is absolutely disgusting, Matt Hanson should be fired for that before he is fired for the other stuff.

A return to form for Obsidian though, the Outer Worlds had a putrid aesthetic and probably the worst colour palette I have ever seen in a game. I played TOW with the monochrome Reshade shader, was the only thing that made it playable, and it actually fit the retro future style. I only used the reverend companion, felt like I was running around having a (shitty communist) adventure with Carey Grant.

Props to them for allowing the UI and interactable highlights and the like to be hidden, and they seem to have compromised on the pronoun thing as well. Question for the crazy people that have bought this, are the pronouns on or off be default? Do you have to actively switch them on or off? Just asking for information, would never buy anything from Microsoft, and the quality of art and writing looks so bad that I will not even pirate it.

Too bad there is no Vicar Max in this game, only gay fish man and gay dwarf man who are both giant pussies by all accounts

This is the company that once wrote Arcade Gannon, how the mighty have fallen

 

[Infinitron]

Thousands of ppl who dont realize that in few days you can play game on GamePass for cheap or are other ways retarded.

Read and weep: If as many people had bought Colony Ship as were willing to pay extra to play Avowed for five more days, Iron Tower would be working on their next game now.

 

[luj1]

The art style in this game is absolutely disgusting, Matt Hanson should be fired

fried*

It is enough to simply look at this man's face, who calls himself an 'art director', with his balding and unhealthy appearance, and insane political views (replacing all white people with blacks), to know that he cannot create anything remarkable. A pedigreeless, talentless mutt who belongs in the same basket as Patel, forgive me God.

 

[Paul_cz]

Great, so in 5 more years there's a chance w might get a decently-written game from them

After New Vegas he wrote the two Horizon games. I think his quality game writing days might be long gone.

 

[Yosharian]

I mean if Colony Ship was a better game it would probably have sold better

 

[Orange Clock]

It seems Avowed is following the Veilguard route where you are basically railroaded and forced to be a good holier than thou guy, and any deviation from this morality is heavily punished or not available. One of the reviewers spoke about how they wanted to side with the Steel garrote but that was not available because the game deemed it too evil.

Companions do not react to your decisions at all and will accept anything you do, even gaslighting themselves that it was a good decision lol even if it’s against them. Cannot be killed or dismissed.
[..]

This must be the least reactive and interactive Obsidian game ever.

But according to the list of achievements, provided by our dear Sherry, you can side with Steel Garrotes and as the result all your companions will leave you. So either reviewer is dumb, lying or didn’t play the game fully.

 

[Ibn Sina]

It seems Avowed is following the Veilguard route where you are basically railroaded and forced to be a good holier than thou guy, and any deviation from this morality is heavily punished or not available. One of the reviewers spoke about how they wanted to side with the Steel garrote but that was not available because the game deemed it too evil.

Companions do not react to your decisions at all and will accept anything you do, even gaslighting themselves that it was a good decision lol even if it’s against them. Cannot be killed or dismissed.
[..]

This must be the least reactive and interactive Obsidian game ever.

But according to the list of achievements, provided by our dear Sherry, you can side with Steel Garrotes and as the result all your companions will leave you. So either reviewer is dumb, lying or didn’t play the game fully.

Sherry is lying. You cannot side with them and companions never leave your side no matter what you choose, and there is not much choice to choose from anyway

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zpo4EqhF-Fk

 

[Readher]

It seems Avowed is following the Veilguard route where you are basically railroaded and forced to be a good holier than thou guy, and any deviation from this morality is heavily punished or not available. One of the reviewers spoke about how they wanted to side with the Steel garrote but that was not available because the game deemed it too evil.

This is unironically all because of jap influence. The reason writing in mainstream RPGs is so shit nowadays is that they copy jarpigs and anime. It's all "goodie two shoes hero wins against evil with the power of friendship and everyone gets along" infantile crap. Only depressed Eastern Euros are still capable of doing something else.

 

[Naraya]

 

[Perkel]

Its too early to assess if Avowed will be a success or failure but that will ultimately be determined by its sales and revenue generated

This is the kind of people who ruined game forums and markets, because they bring stupidity and decline

According to you, Van Gogh and Gaugin, Modigliani, John Cassavetes in film, Orson Welles and Tarkovsky, are all failures.

You should think this over whilst exiled to work in a coal mine for a few decades, without parole...

His point is that now that they are part of MS they can't make games that sell enough to have money for next game. They need to get that ROI up or they will be hacked to pieces by corporate MS.

Investors think on that this way:

I can invest 100 milion into Avoved and get 15% return.
or
I can invest 100 milion into spinning wheel toy to get 40% return.

That's how corporate works. They have shareholders not owners and they need ROI, and not just any ROI but high return. Either you do that or your are out.

Before selling out it was enough for them to make enough profit to get some money themselves and get new game in production. Now it is either they go high or they will be hacked.

That's why those biowares and other studios that are part of bigger conglomerates go with live service and other insane ideas. Because either they will do that or they won't get money.

 

[Grunker]

I mean if Colony Ship was a better game it would probably have sold better

you're my hero yosharian

 

[Dishonoredbr]

Baldur's Gate 3 is liable to be the exception to the rule when it comes to modern RPG's allowing you to kill NPC's. The developers believe you are evil and need to be lectured if you think about criticising or siding with certain characters after all.

Even bg3 punishes you siding with the "wrong side" by basically removing content out of the game. If you play anything other than the intended good side, you lose most quests.

 

[Orange Clock]

It seems Avowed is following the Veilguard route where you are basically railroaded and forced to be a good holier than thou guy, and any deviation from this morality is heavily punished or not available. One of the reviewers spoke about how they wanted to side with the Steel garrote but that was not available because the game deemed it too evil.

Companions do not react to your decisions at all and will accept anything you do, even gaslighting themselves that it was a good decision lol even if it’s against them. Cannot be killed or dismissed.
[..]

This must be the least reactive and interactive Obsidian game ever.

But according to the list of achievements, provided by our dear Sherry, you can side with Steel Garrotes and as the result all your companions will leave you. So either reviewer is dumb, lying or didn’t play the game fully.

Sherry is lying. You cannot side with them and companions never leave your side no matter what you choose, and there is not much choice to choose from anyway

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zpo4EqhF-Fk

Here’s the achievement in question: https://www.trueachievements.com/a467099/everyone-disliked-that-achievement

So, I don’t know, maybe it’s some joke ending or something, but it’s still there.

Edit: Also the YouTuber you linked is a known Bethesdatard, who somehow didn’t notice the Liberty Prime in FO3 until the end of the game.