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

[markec]

Still Mostly Positive on Steam.

I keep seeing that argument, not just in relation to Avowed, but all media.

Positive player/viewer reviews don't mean much other than those who elected to buy it liked it. But for such a product, many have already opted not to buy it at all because they can already tell it's going to be unenjoyable. These days there is so much "content" that people only select what they think will be good. We have rating inflation because of that. And overall bad reviews means the content was shit in the eyes of people who thought it would be good, which is a way bigger fail than back in the day when there was little choice and everyone played the same few games / watched the same movies.

What you have to look at is the absolute number of reviews. Saying 3000/4000 people thought it was ok, like in the case of Avowed, even if you assume that only say 10% of early buyers/superfans rate the games they play, just shows that not many people even considered it good enough to buy.

So positive reviews are not a sufficient indicator of reception.

Seems like you may have had a kneejerk reaction to this sentence so I'll repost the rest of it.

The core Obsidian demographic is happy as they usually are. They're admittedly not a very large bunch, maybe a few hundred thousand at most. Bioware Jr never got anywhere close to a Bioware-sized audience, much less Bethesda.

Obsidian fanboys with their usual happiness while playing Obsidian games while giving positive reviews to justify spending 90$ to play a single player game few days earlier.

 

[Takamori]

Once again I will say the marketing of this game was retarded and all over the place. I mean it doesn't matter if you say your game ain't fucking Skyrim when your first impression was ok we are gonna be that first person RPG that everyone knows.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YS8n-pZQWWc
The watered RPG mechanics is very similar where you can be anything, wandering like a retard feature and so on. What boogles my mind is that the game is a direct downgrade to Outer Worlds(And for fuck sake the game was already mid as hell), they had the tech to make the world more reactive if they wanted, its not like they lost it.
Its also a direct downgrade compared to what they learned in PoE series, they returned with the heavy lore dumps instead of making a contained story where new players could appreciate without knowing what the fuck happened in PoE 1 and 2.
And excuse me this game didn't even pass Deadfire numbers, when your previous game sold more than the new one with similar dev cycle you are fucked and not even saying in a Business perspective. I'd be ashamed to see my talent depreciating as years go by.

 

[BrainMuncher]

Again, Oblivion's problems derive from bad systems design that was done deliberately, particularly to target a playerbase that was too stupid to find Caius Cosades in Morrowind.
Lack of development time or cut content were not a source of its problems, so I don't know what you're trying to get at.

Here's a long list of developer lies about Oblivion https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/which-oblivion-dev-lied-the-most.15427

There were multiple devs who outright stated that they weren't going to scale the whole world to your level knowing full-well the issues that would cause. They ended up shipping like that anyway, they just had no time to fine-tune it. They corrected it with Fallout 3.

Todd got that 80s Fleetwood Mac song as his theme meme song for a reason. He lies, that is, he promises features that end up having to be cut for time.

This shit from Oblivion development days, I'm VERY much informed on it, shows 2 things: "Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies" and FUCKING AMBITION! Back when Games Industry had BALLS and was made by men for men every new big budget game had AMBITION. Game Studios wanted to one up each other, and be better then their past selfs, push the limit of possible. Now when it's made by eunuchs, lesbians and trannies, it's just one more corporate office job to them. More fun to be had in Microsoft Excel then in Avowed

You've already posted a bunch of messages in the thread, and not a single one is actually about THE GAME. You keep going on these rants about the developers, the industry, the agenda, Infinitron, Roguey, and everything else. It's nonstop. You're painfully boring and obnoxious. All your posts are the same and say absolutely nothing.

And just to be clear: is the game bad? Does it suck? Is it nowhere near as good as some other games? I might even agree with you on that, sure. But you're fucking unbearable with all these USELESS, identical posts in every thread. You make it impossible to read a discussion and actually get opinions on THE GAME BEING PLAYED.

I want to know HOW and WHY the quest design in THIS GAME is bad, IN THIS GAME. I don't give a damn about reading a hundred posts about how the devs have pink hair. You're fucking unbearable, idiot.

"Why was The Wall banned again?"

Pot, meet kettle. Don't see you talking about the game

Angry off-topic ragepost accusing others of off-topic posts. Learn to use the ignore function before you drown in your own butthurt

 

[BrainMuncher]

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!"

To me the best comparison is probably Dungeon Siege III. Obsidian team assigned to make console slop sequel to game they don't care about. Results exactly as you would expect. A playable but utterly generic console game.

 

[Litmanen]

Don't see you talking about the game

Because I'm trying to READ and UNDERSTAND about the game, which is one of the reasons to be on a forum, you low-IQ idiot.

Angry off-topic ragepost accusing others of off-topic posts.

Imagine going off-topic just to tell someone they're off-topic for commenting on a continuous off-topic rant. You have to be so stupid not to realize it.

Learn to use the ignore function before you drown in your own butthurt

Well said, use it with me.

 

[JarlFrank]

The funniest thing about Dungeon Siege 3 is that there was a Dungeon Siege fanbase, however small.
None of them liked Dungeon Siege 3, it was a total flop among people who rated the first two games highly. Because whoever was in charge of designing that game didn't want to make a faithful Dungeon Siege sequel, but conduct his or her own experiments. Kinda like what Sawyer did with Pillars when it was promised as a Baldur's Gate like that plays like Baldur's Gate, including D&D-like rules.

Obsidian's issue is that they don't really want to make the games people want them to make, the only exception being New Vegas - they really did want to make a Fallout game. Other than that, all their games try to be a subversion or twist of the thing they're supposed to do. Sometimes it works (KotoR2, MotB), but mostly it doesn't.

 

[Takamori]

The funniest thing about Dungeon Siege 3 is that there was a Dungeon Siege fanbase, however small.
None of them liked Dungeon Siege 3, it was a total flop among people who rated the first two games highly. Because whoever was in charge of designing that game didn't want to make a faithful Dungeon Siege sequel, but conduct his or her own experiments. Kinda like what Sawyer did with Pillars when it was promised as a Baldur's Gate like that plays like Baldur's Gate, including D&D-like rules.

Obsidian's issue is that they don't really want to make the games people want them to make, the only exception being New Vegas - they really did want to make a Fallout game. Other than that, all their games try to be a subversion or twist of the thing they're supposed to do. Sometimes it works (KotoR2, MotB), but mostly it doesn't.

I mean old Obsidian sure, but the newer game not even going for the subversion and M Night Shalaman what a twist thing. Seems like everyone working in this feels they are dead inside, Uncle Phil and Faggus took their souls and will to develop a game.
Maybe the negative perk system in Outer Worlds but it was so shy and not even a thing in the game as much they marketed it at first that I'm not sure I could call it a proper a subversion, maybe an attempt?

 

[Mauman]

Do you agree?

Having a discussion with someone who thinks that peak concurrent user count on Steam is the same as total sales.

Oh, sorry, I thought I time traveled back a few months in the veilguard thread for a minute.

 

[Lemming42]

Still playing this, near the end of the third map now and the refusal to allow itself to just be what it wants to be - a straightforward ARPG - is what damages it. The game would genuinely be better if it had less content; if you never had any dialogue options and if cities were just tiny hubs to get quests. The thing is, this is already almost the case - the options you pick don't matter and if you try to pick the most off-script ones, NPCs just give unfitting responses because they only have one response that's the same no matter what you pick. Cities are tiny hubs with very few interactive NPCs, but are still needlessly large for what they are.

I don't get why they didn't just drop all the final tattered remnants of the Bethesda formula. The combat here is actually okay, though could do with a few more active abilities to spice it up (and definitely some more enemy types; the game as is has far too few). The mechanics and art assets here have all the ingredients you need for a fun party-based dungeon crawler that's deliberately very light on story, but instead it's trapped inside the shell of a Skyrim-like game, and it fucks itself over completely. Like, I find myself having decent mindless Diablo-style fun in the combat encounters, but then I have to re-engage with a main story mission and suddenly I'm thrust back into long boring conversations with shallow characters for a plot I don't give a fuck about, and in which the game repeatedly insults me by offering me meaningless dialogue options and then ignoring my choice anyway.

None of this was necessary, they could have just had the story be a paper-thin "there's a weird magic plague going on and you have been sent to find the cure" cutscene at the start, and then let it fade totally into the background so it's out of the way while you go dungeon diving. The companions didn't have to have these stupid-ass BioWare type interactions either, they could have just been hirelings who sometimes have a few funny lines (which is exactly how they function outside the pointless campsite).

 

[Takamori]

Still playing this, near the end of the third map now and the refusal to allow itself to just be what it wants to be - a straightforward ARPG - is what damages it. The game would genuinely be better if it had less content; if you never had any dialogue options and if cities were just tiny hubs to get quests. The thing is, this is already almost the case - the options you pick don't matter and if you try to pick the most off-script ones, NPCs just give unfitting responses because they only have one response that's the same no matter what you pick. Cities are tiny hubs with very few interactive NPCs, but are still needlessly large for what they are.

I don't get why they didn't just drop all the final tattered remnants of the Bethesda formula. The combat here is actually okay, though could do with a few more active abilities to spice it up (and definitely some more enemy types; the game as is has far too few). The mechanics and art assets here have all the ingredients you need for a fun party-based dungeon crawler that's deliberately very light on story, but instead it's trapped inside the shell of a Skyrim-like game, and it fucks itself over completely. Like, I find myself having decent mindless Diablo-style fun in the combat encounters, but then I have to re-engage with a main story mission and suddenly I'm thrust back into long boring conversations with shallow characters for a plot I don't give a fuck about, and in which the game repeatedly insults me by offering me meaningless dialogue options and then ignoring my choice anyway.

None of this was necessary, they could have just had the story be a paper-thin "there's a weird magic plague going on and you have been sent to find the cure" cutscene at the start, and then let it fade totally into the background so it's out of the way while you go dungeon diving. The companions didn't have to have these stupid-ass BioWare type interactions either, they could have just been hirelings who sometimes have a few funny lines (which is exactly how they function outside the pointless campsite).

Yeah that made me wonder, everyone at least praise the combat. They should had went for Dungeon Rats style game, the premise is that you found another dungeon like in Caed Nua.
Let the player focus class and party composition instead of this godlike watered down shite and just go for item hunting autism and pit the players against increasingly difficult encounters as he descents in the dungeon. No need to explain what the fuck is happening previously except the necessary and on going things.

 

[fantadomat]

At this point people shitting on skyrim are just a bunch of cringy old artists.

Shitting on *any* Bethesda game used to be the bread and butter of the Codex. The fact that it's now defending garbage like Skyrim just shows how much the Codex has declined.

No,it shows how shit games have become when even game like a skyrim looks like a gem next to them.

 

[Zibniyat]

Roguey

Why do you seem to be keen on defending Obsidian? Any particular reason for why you appreciate Josh Sawyer and similar? I've mostly ignored Obsidian since it rarely made games I care about, and after POE 1 I was pretty disappointed. I did play and finish The Outer Worlds, and since I am not one of the masochists & incoherents who play what they hate, it means I liked TOW enough.​

 

[Baron Dupek]

A more professional review is online

Other than having no redeeming qualities, pretty good game overall!

 

[Curious_Tongue]

A more professional review is online

Other than having no redeeming qualities, pretty good game overall!

"Kingdom Cum In Guys"

Very codexian.

 

[Cryomancer]

I posted a video in this very thread. https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...llars-of-eternity-setting.152606/post-9327764

ou mean like in Greedfall? https://f.rpghq.org/YGgG7RmUOLDH.mp4

There are others. I don't go around attacking random NPCs like a psycho.

There is a HUGE difference.

Greedfall was marketed itself as an low budget AA game. Was not a mainstream M$ US$70/US$90 AAA game made in half a decade.

We could compare Avoided with Tainted Grail : the fall of avalon.

 

[Lemming42]

Speaking of GreedFall, the comparisons with Avowed are so strong that I'm baffled Obsidian didn't change the plot just to distinguish themselves.

My knowledge of both games' plots is vague - I played GreedFall a while ago and forgot most of it, while I've started skipping dialogue in Avowed - but here's my understanding of plot points both games share:
- The player is the agent of a colonial empire who visits an exotic colonised realm for an important mission
- The player's overriding goal is to cure a plague, and the answer lies deep within the exotic land
- The player has an unusual appearance with distinct facial markings which other characters frequently comment on
- The player realises early on that they have a strange innate connection to the island, despite having never visited before
- The moral clarity of the player's mission is complicated the more they learn about the reality of colonialism (though GreedFall treats it with nuance while Avowed is much more of a boring unambiguous "we're the bad guys" deal)
- The player has run-ins with religious zealots (though again, they're a proper fleshed-out believable faction in GreedFall while they're one-dimensional villains in Avowed)

The similarities struck me about twenty minutes into Avowed and they only deepened from there. Of course the punchline is that GreedFall, despite being a middling game with a not-entirely-memorable plot, nonetheless completely blows Avowed out of the water in terms of writing. Obsidian must have realised they'd end up inviting comparisons, and that those comparisons would be unflattering for them given that they fucking suck at writing, so why did they go with this plot?

 

[Quillon]

A more professional review is online

Other than having no redeeming qualities, pretty good game overall!

watched this -recommended by YT- vid after that:



pretty much covers everything

 

[flyingjohn]

Outer worlds was greenlit a sequel with only 20k max player count on steam. There is something else driving sales for this thing that Microsoft sees value.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Friendly reminder that Monster Hunter Wilds is only 1 week away.

I think you know which game deserves your money more.

First we want to see what happens when you shoot arrows around and if you can kill NPCs.

 

[ropetight]

The funniest thing about Dungeon Siege 3 is that there was a Dungeon Siege fanbase, however small.
None of them liked Dungeon Siege 3, it was a total flop among people who rated the first two games highly. Because whoever was in charge of designing that game didn't want to make a faithful Dungeon Siege sequel, but conduct his or her own experiments. Kinda like what Sawyer did with Pillars when it was promised as a Baldur's Gate like that plays like Baldur's Gate, including D&D-like rules.

Obsidian's issue is that they don't really want to make the games people want them to make, the only exception being New Vegas - they really did want to make a Fallout game. Other than that, all their games try to be a subversion or twist of the thing they're supposed to do. Sometimes it works (KotoR2, MotB), but mostly it doesn't.

I completely erased from the memory that DSIII was another one of Obsidian's hired gun projects.
It was that bad.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Speaking of GreedFall, the comparisons with Avowed are so strong that I'm baffled Obsidian didn't change the plot just to distinguish themselves.

My knowledge of both games' plots is vague - I played GreedFall a while ago and forgot most of it, while I've started skipping dialogue in Avowed - but here's my understanding of plot points both games share:
- The player is the agent of a colonial empire who visits an exotic colonised realm for an important mission
- The player's overriding goal is to cure a plague, and the answer lies deep within the exotic land
- The player has an unusual appearance with distinct facial markings which other characters frequently comment on
- The player realises early on that they have a strange innate connection to the island, despite having never visited before
- The moral clarity of the player's mission is complicated the more they learn about the reality of colonialism (though GreedFall treats it with nuance while Avowed is much more of a boring unambiguous "we're the bad guys" deal)
- The player has run-ins with religious zealots (though again, they're a proper fleshed-out believable faction in GreedFall while they're one-dimensional villains in Avowed)

The similarities struck me about twenty minutes into Avowed and they only deepened from there. Of course the punchline is that GreedFall, despite being a middling game with a not-entirely-memorable plot, nonetheless completely blows Avowed out of the water in terms of writing. Obsidian must have realised they'd end up inviting comparisons, and that those comparisons would be unflattering for them given that they fucking suck at writing, so why did they go with this plot?

What I find amusing is that the sequel of Greedfall is going to be an isometric CRPG.

 

[Quillon]

Outer worlds was greenlit a sequel with only 20k max player count on steam. There is something else driving sales for this thing that Microsoft sees value.

TOW was a very well hyped up gaym that would've made at least 100k concurrent on steam at launch(and only at launch) if it wasn't epic exclusive for a year.

 

[Cryomancer]

Power fantasy in RPGs.
2002 - Morrowind You maybe is the reincarnation of Nerevar, maybe was just the right guy in the right time
2011 - Skyrim You are the dragonborn
2025 - Avoided - You have fungus in your face.

 

[FreeKaner]

This is a really fun action game with quite bit of narrative choice and in a website that puts Dark Souls as pinnacle of RPG gaming with multiple Dark Souls games in top 10 RPGs complaining that you can't kill everyone you meet or there not being a dedicated Bethesda thievery system is quite deaf. In Pillars 1 you can kill everyone including people you meet in the tutorial area and the game even gives you a unique slider for it and it didn't earn them any favors anyway.

Frankly I am surprised just how much reactivity the game has in terms of narrative so far, it has a lot of choices you make just in act 1 some of which immediately have consequences in act 1 and others later. Definitely makes it more of a RPG in my eyes than Dark Souls or RDR2. Overall just a pretty game that feels fun to play and has a lot of narrative flexibility, that could have benefitted from having a bit better itemization at the level of PoE2 and a bit wider skill tree especially in melee combat.

My primary complaint playing it is that this is clearly something that they narrowed down a lot and it shows, mainly in a lack of activity in hubs and enemy diversity in general though it still offers quite a bit of variance in boss fights at least.

 

[FreeKaner]

- The moral clarity of the player's mission is complicated the more they learn about the reality of colonialism (though GreedFall treats it with nuance while Avowed is much more of a boring unambiguous "we're the bad guys" deal)

This doesn't happen and if anything Obsidian bends over backwards a lot to make Aedyr appear a lot more benevolent, even your first companion who is the primary representative of the colonial area concedes on many points that Aedyr brought order and safety but that locals don't want authority, while the Aedyr ambassador is shown as a man who understands lay of the land and importance of dealing with locals. Only dilemma that is shown as outright bad guys is Steel Garrote and even with Steel Garrote it is mostly shown as a personal initiative of Lödwyn that they have became as zealous as they are, like the conversation that happens between a Steel Garrote soldier and a former member near the tavern in Paradis where the former member says Lödwyn made the organization something he didn't want to be part of anymore.

It also just shows it doesn't matter what you actually have in the game, once the mainstream fronts are drawn around culture war, anyone who falls on one side of it will just project whatever belief they have towards the game they have about it. Now we have people talking about how power fantasy is when you are the most chosen one like in Skyrim and Avowed is not a good power fantasy even though you are literally the agent of the ruler of a colonizing empire with personal relationship to said emperor and have both institutional and personal power to decide the outcome of the entire story from start to finish. Else how Avowed has no narrative RPG elements when it has more reactivity than anything Bethesda put out and really any first/third person action-RPG I can think of right now unless you count Kotor2 and MoTB as third person or something.

Basically an entire group of people who stopped looking at games on what they do or don't but fighting a second order make believe argument that has nothing to do with anything of substance or at best asking why this game isn't Elder Scrolls: Red Dead Deliverance, on a supposed RPG website that counts Dark Souls as a RPG with absolutely no narrative choice, hubs, dialogue or decisions whatsoever.

Nevertheless I agree with the main point you made that this game was mismarketed, it really should have been compared to something like Dragon's Dogma or Greedfall, instead of being touted as Obsidian's Skyrim (where thievery makes it best game that came out in last 15 years). Indeed I don't think it would have even been too difficult for them to make it possible to attack each NPC, they probably didn't just want to let you do that without giving you ability to proceed the story to finish while murdering everyone like they have done in Pillars1/2 with very few exceptions to it. That's even talking about a game where like Pillars1/2 you can choose to die and get a unique ending for it which most games don't but real attention to detail is when you follow a NPC around in town.