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

[JarlFrank]

They said it was similar to The Outer Worlds.

... which it is not similar to, yet when people compare it to The Outer Worlds and mention what it lacks, you come up with yet another defense like "They didn't say it was going to be ENTIRELY like Outer Worlds!" or "Well the lead designer didn't care about THOSE aspects of Outer Worlds!"

 

[Roguey]

They never said Skyrim or New Vegas

Do you have reading comprehension problems?

They said it was similar to The Outer Worlds.

... which it is not similar to, yet when people compare it to The Outer Worlds and mention what it lacks, you come up with yet another defense like "They didn't say it was going to be ENTIRELY like Outer Worlds!" or "Well the lead designer didn't care about THOSE aspects of Outer Worlds!"

Is that what I'm doing?

Didn't watch, but finally an appropriate comparison.

 

[luj1]

"THEY NEVER SAID SKYRIM"



Bro you are a 3 in 1 package, liar, shill and probably a tranny too

I mean ?Bro?

 

[JarlFrank]

Short summary of how my conversations with Roguey in this thread have been going:

Me: "Avowed lacks basic interactivity features compared to Oblivion, a 20 year old game."
Roguey: "Most RPGs today have less involved reactivity than the old Elder Scrolls games, compare it to something new, not old."
Me: "Ok, even something mega casual like Assassin's Creed Origins has more environmental reactivity than Avowed."
Roguey: "That was made by a massive studio with lots of money, and in an established engine they used many times before. Doesn't count!"
Me: "Ok, Avowed lacks basic interactivity features compared to Obsidian's own past games, like New Vegas."
Roguey: "New Vegas doesn't count, they used Bethesda's engine for it. You should compare it to Outer Worlds instead!"
Me: "Ok, Avowed lacks basic interactivity features compared to Outer Worlds."
Roguey: "No, you're not supposed to compare it LIKE THAT! The director of Avowed didn't care about THOSE aspects of Outer Worlds, so it doesn't count!"

 

[fizzelopeguss]

Crap like soil erosion was not.

AFAIK soil erosion was used during the initial procgen of the game's world, it isn't something that the game does in realtime.

It didn't fucking exist, cyrodil was a typical height map.

Todd was chatting out of his arse like the hype master he is.

 

[Red Army Redux]

I bet Tim Cain consulted on this project, that would explain a lot.

 

[ropetight]

Problem that JarlFrank talked about, and that is lack of RPG systems in the game, should make 90% codexers avoid Avowed.
But Avowed is failing with normies too - having 10k concurrent player week after release in 2025 is not good enough for the game with billboards on the Times Square.

Obsidian forcing 1st person view to make-believe Avowed is AAA open world like New Vegas is big mistake.
Simulation has to follow level of detail fidelity and personal immersion that is dictated by the view of the game world.

For the isometry with fixed camera, top down perspective or fairly zoomed out sidescrollers - you can implement high reactive environment - it is nice to have, but you don't have to.
In 1st person lack of simulated physics, interactive environment and emergent gameplay have bigger impact on the players immersion.

Obsidian simply isn't able to make believable 1st person RPG anymore, even one with hub structure.
This incompetence and lack of detail was seen on The Outer Worlds, Avowed is even worse case of that.

Avowed is made 30+ years after Ultima Underworld, 20 years after Gothic - and offers far worse experience.
Skyrim didn't offer good RPG experience - but sometimes it successfully impersonated real world and sense of the exploration.
Game like New Vegas is completely out of Obsidian reach due to technical incompetence.

And that problem can't be solved with Patel and Hansen leading the project and disregarding technical side of the development.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

Short summary of how my conversations with Roguey in this thread have been going:

Me: "Avowed lacks basic interactivity features compared to Oblivion, a 20 year old game."
Roguey: "Most RPGs today have less involved reactivity than the old Elder Scrolls games, compare it to something new, not old."
Me: "Ok, even something mega casual like Assassin's Creed Origins has more environmental reactivity than Avowed."
Roguey: "That was made by a massive studio with lots of money, and in an established engine they used many times before. Doesn't count!"
Me: "Ok, Avowed lacks basic interactivity features compared to Obsidian's own past games, like New Vegas."
Roguey: "New Vegas doesn't count, they used Bethesda's engine for it. You should compare it to Outer Worlds instead!"
Me: "Ok, Avowed lacks basic interactivity features compared to Outer Worlds."
Roguey: "No, you're not supposed to compare it LIKE THAT! The director of Avowed didn't care about THOSE aspects of Outer Worlds, so it doesn't count!"

Intolerable faggot is our roguey.

 

[The Wall]

[...]Eunuch screeching[...]

I don't do stool tasting challenges. I recognize stool sample on pavement, in toilet or on Steam page. And warn others. Taste it for yourself

 

[luj1]

Roguey: "No, you're not supposed to compare it LIKE THAT! The director of Avowed didn't care about THOSE aspects of Outer Worlds, so it doesn't count!"

Remember what I said years ago,

Is Roguey connected to obsidian in some way?

Bingo. At first I thought he was a mere contactee like Bester or Infintron, but it actually goes way deeper. This person knows too much stuff. He knows who slept with whom, who cheated whom, who did drugs with whom. Even going as far as family ties. It's all pretty dark and sick. You can imagine what sort of stuff was happening at Obsidian. Honestly I don't wanna know lol. As a human being I will pray for Rogeuy, but as a Codexer I think he/she/whatever is a disgusting little weasel.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

Awowed xisters! Give me your updated shilling scripts! How to defend the honor of Carrie Patel, Matt Hansen and Avowed now?

That musket reload animation is absolutely pathetic.

 

[Roguey]

"THEY NEVER SAID SKYRIM"



Bro you are a 3 in 1 package, liar, shill and probably a tranny too

I mean ?Bro?

Feargus: We tried to make Skryim but just couldn't do it, so we cancelled that version and rebooted it as a something with a smaller scope.
You: So you're making Skyrim, right?

Short summary of how my conversations with Roguey in this thread have been going:

Me: "Avowed lacks basic interactivity features compared to Oblivion, a 20 year old game."
Roguey: "Most RPGs today have less involved reactivity than the old Elder Scrolls games, compare it to something new, not old."
Me: "Ok, even something mega casual like Assassin's Creed Origins has more environmental reactivity than Avowed."
Roguey: "That was made by a massive studio with lots of money, and in an established engine they used many times before. Doesn't count!"
Me: "Ok, Avowed lacks basic interactivity features compared to Obsidian's own past games, like New Vegas."
Roguey: "New Vegas doesn't count, they used Bethesda's engine for it. You should compare it to Outer Worlds instead!"
Me: "Ok, Avowed lacks basic interactivity features compared to Outer Worlds."
Roguey: "No, you're not supposed to compare it LIKE THAT! The director of Avowed didn't care about THOSE aspects of Outer Worlds, so it doesn't count!"

Putting words in my mouth at the end there. First sentence should be "Yeah, it does" instead and subtract the "it doesn't count" at the end.

 

[markec]

The point still stands that the game was marketed as game similar to Skyrim/New Vegas/Outer Worlds depending on the source, not a Bioware like game.

They never said Skyrim or New Vegas. They said it was similar to The Outer Worlds. Feargus also namedropped Dragon Age and Mass Effect.

When we're starting up a product we basically say, all right, go play all these games, and even play our own games," said Urquhart. "It sounds silly, like why should we have our people play our own games? But it's important, and so we do.

"For Avowed, weirdly, it is go play BioWare games," said Urquhart, "go play Dragon Age, play Mass Effect,"

They name dropped a bunch of games in interviews. But again the game MARKETING was focused on comparing it to Skyrim/New Vegas/Outer Worlds. Go read all game previews and see how many of them focus on Skyrim/New Vegas/Outer Worlds and how many does for Dragon Age/Mass Effect.

Im not talking about what Patel or Urquhart said in some random interview. What Im talking about what media marketed to players and what expectations that marketing made in players.

And even that is not important as again even if its Bioware game first and foremost my original point still stands. Even if you dont care or focus on reactivity there are easy ways to mask that without breaking the suspension of disbelief, something that seasoned developers should have knew and implemented.

There is no valid excuse in how poorly they made certain parts of the game.

 

[Litmanen]

[...]Eunuch screeching[...]

I don't do stool tasting challenges. I recognize stool sample on pavement, in toilet, in mirrors or on Steam page. And warn others. Taste it for yourself

FTFY

 

[Roguey]

They name dropped a bunch of games in interviews. But again the game MARKETING was focused on comparing it to Skyrim/New Vegas/Outer Worlds. Go read all game previews and see how many of them focus on Skyrim/New Vegas/Outer Worlds and how many does for Dragon Age/Mass Effect.

Im not talking about what Patel or Urquhart said in some random interview. What Im talking about what media marketed to players and what expectations that marketing made in players.

Microsoft/Obsidian marketing never mentioned Skyrim. Retarded game journalists kept bringing it up and devs kept saying "No, it's not Skyrim" as a response to that.

 

[Roguey]

But Avowed is failing with normies too - having 10k concurrent player week after release in 2025 is not good enough for the game with billboards on the Times Square.

The gamepass effect is a big factor here.

Most single-player xbox games do similar numbers, Starfield being the big edge case because Bethesda had already built up a huge audience who wanted to own and not rent it. Who knows what MS's expectations are? We'll find out when Obsidian either gets layoffs or the announcement of Avowed 2.

 

[The Wall]

Feargus: We tried to make Skryim but just couldn't do it,

YES! YES! YOU ARE SO CLOSE!

"and they JUST! couldn't do it"


That's what we are talking about!

Can or cannot you do it? Obsidian no longer can. Straight from company Head's mouth

 

[JarlFrank]

That musket reload animation is absolutely pathetic.

Where does the ramrod even come from? It just appears in the left hand, then disappears.

Your average indie game and even free mods set in the musket era does a better job than that.

 

[Old Hans]

It didn't fucking exist, cyrodil was a typical height map.

Todd was chatting out of his arse like the hype master he is.

im still convinced even todd bamboozles himself. His design team probably showed him a proof-of-concept idea for soil erosion, and instead of telling the team "lets see if we can fully implement this" he just calls up IGN and tells them Oblivion has soil erosion that possibly happens in real time

 

[markec]

They name dropped a bunch of games in interviews. But again the game MARKETING was focused on comparing it to Skyrim/New Vegas/Outer Worlds. Go read all game previews and see how many of them focus on Skyrim/New Vegas/Outer Worlds and how many does for Dragon Age/Mass Effect.

Im not talking about what Patel or Urquhart said in some random interview. What Im talking about what media marketed to players and what expectations that marketing made in players.

Microsoft/Obsidian marketing never mentioned Skyrim. Retarded game journalists kept bringing it up and devs kept saying "No, it's not Skyrim" as a response to that.

Do you think that when marketing people give review copies to the journalists they dont tell them what to write. If they didnt want to they would have told them so and we would not read about it. The marketing people are well aware that normies dont actually read articles but only titles, so you namedrop popular names to get their attention. Then you make few interviews where you point out its not true so you have a excuse when in the future people expecting brand new shiny Skyrim get abomination that Avowed is.

 

[SayMyName]

Nobody gives a shit about muh physics.

Physics are important for creating a world with believable interactions, something that even Ultima Underworld had 33 years ago.

According to who exactly? Planescape Torment has no physics and is older than Ultima Underworld.
Is it a bad game because it doesn't have physics. Are you the judge of what mechanics games should have? All I see is bad faith crap and retards propping up dogshit Bethesda games

But you should also check more than the video thumbnails as they point out more than just the physics, which if anything are among the more minor issues. The Oblivion video for example shows the difference between NPC behavior (i.e. when you attack friendly NPCs - something that doesn't even register in Avowed - or how guards come to help you against foes, etc), you being able to steal stuff in front of NPCs with an increasingly hostile reaction from them when they notice you and even them taking back their stuff from you, etc.

Damn, must be why normalfaggots went CRAZY for Witcher 3

Oblivion has a lot of flaws but these flaws are largely Bethesda actively trying to improve their stuff, especially the simulation of their world and falling flat on their face in pretty much all of them.

No, those flaws are them making babby's first RPGs with no actual committment to choice, progression that shapes the player avatar and level scaling to appease Dads with kids who want to play fantasy RDR2. The worst RPG is still 10 steps ahead Bethesda trash. You now what was cut from Oblivion? Radiant quests mostly. Bethesda only ever does bad. If they are working on something, they are always actively making it worse.

I don't want to judge on the whole game without playing it, but the videos give me the impression that instead of trying and falling flat on its face, Avowed just lied down on the floor with its face on the ground because why bother trying if you are going to end up falling anyway? Just skip the whole "try" part and kiss the ground.

Yeah instead of wasting budget on complete meme features, they actually made a fucking game. They made branching quests that aren't radiant. They made enemies that have attack animations. They even had the audacity to replace the same exact repeated Oblivion gates with actual dungeons that aren't 5 rooms in a row or the same cave layout. How dare they? Where is the base building and settlement that needs my help?

Also, the whole line of argument that Avowed doesn't follow the same design philosophy, that it's a "Bioware style" game, that it doesn't need to have any of these details... it's just a fucking cop out.

It's not

Pick any classic from the golden age of gaming and you'll see a shitload of unnecessary details. Did the games need those? No, but the devs implemented them anyway because they cared!
Even when technology wasn't quite there yet to have physics and all that stuff, developers cared about making the world interesting and reactive.

Games like Morrowind and Gothic didn't have physics, but they let you pick up clutter, and you would provoke guards if you picked up things that belonged to others.
Ultima VII also let you pick up and move everything, and NPCs had schedules, and you could BAKE BREAD because why the fuck not? Was there any gameplay reason for baking bread? No, but you COULD because it is COOL! And it wasn't a stupid abstract crafting screen like we get now, but you put FLOUR into WATER to get DOUGH which you put in the OVEN which creates BREAD. And baker NPCs would do this as their job schedule. Was it needed? No, but it's great and people still remember the game for this reason.

Fucking adventure games in the 1980s took care to give you feedback for trying things on background items. If there's a rock in the scenery and you try to pick it up the game says "This rock is too heavy to lift." Yeah, it's not a system, it's just specifically hand-written descriptions for every impossible action, but the developers CARED! They could as well have written "You cannot do this." (which some adventure games, particularly later ones, do, showing a lack of effort compared to the earlier games that have unique responses) but they paid attention to add little details that enhance the experience.

FPS games, particularly the Build Engine games, added lots of little environment details to make clutter and even some wall textures react to being shot, like a computer screen texture turning into a broken screen and throwing sparks when shot. Was it necessary for gameplay? No, but it enhanced the atmosphere and the feeling of being in a world that reacts to your input.

That's a whole lot of cherrypicking and goalpost moving, most of those features aren't across games you mentioned. "Games like Morrowind and Gothic didn't have physics" neither they had AI routine, and thus they failed to meet the same standards you are setting for Avowed. By your own standards, Oblivion and Skyrim are better games than Morrowing and Gothic and Bethesda cares more and makes the ultimate best games of all times because they just put meme immersion features which means they totally care.
Have you played Bethesda Fallout? Does that look to you like the work of developers that care?

 

[JarlFrank]

"Games like Morrowind and Gothic didn't have physics" neither they had AI routine, and thus they failed to meet the same standards you are setting for Avowed.

I've said it before in this thread: the problem with Avowed is that it lacks any reactivity features, not just that it lacks one specific reactivity feature.

If it had NPCs reacting but no clutter physics, that could be excused. But it has nothing. Nothing and nobody reacts to anything at all.

 

[The Wall]

Feargus: We tried to make Skryim but just couldn't do it,

YES! YES! YOU ARE SO CLOSE!

"and they JUST! couldn't do it"


That's what we are talking about!

Can or cannot you do it? Obsidian no longer can. Straight from company Head's mouth

Obsidian in 2025: YES, THEY CAN'T!

 

[Sheepherder]

The first map was gorgeous, the cities - empty, the combat too easy. There is writing, it's there on my screen when I speak to an NPC, but I can't remember a word of it.
I'm in the middle of the second area which isn't as pretty as the first one and the easy combat is getting boring.
Apart from the pretty first map, there is nothing about it that I liked. But also nothing that I hated.

The game is military grade "meh".

 

[JarlFrank]

The game is military grade "meh".

Pretty much the entirety of Obsidian's oeuvre summarized.