Avowed - Obsidian's new game, like Pillars of Eternity meets Elder Scrolls

[Love Is Blue]

Spoiler

...unless near the end of the game you pick an obviously evil choice.

do you deadname your companions desu

 

[TheHarbinger]

I think people keep projecting the "New Vegas was rushed" situation into this as a cope. Not only that but they do enjoy to exaggerate how much time actually mattered at the end of it.

The problem wasn't really the 'rushing'. It was that Obsidian was told that Bethesda would be responsible for all of the QA for New Vegas. And that their in house team would take over all QA to certify the game as gold before release. Instead, Bethesda would tell Obsidian with mere weeks left, that they would need to do the QA themselves. This left Obsidian scrambling with a skeleton team to try to fix as much as they could but it was not possible. They would need years of work to get remotely working versions of New Vegas. And even then the latest official patch on all platforms for New Vegas cannot possibly qualify as being an actual stable release by any honest standards.

We know that Bethesda also struggled considerably with QA for Fallout 3 as well. Even getting the rare instance of a game being pulled from stores for being of low quality. The Pitt's initial release was corrupt and required manual deletion and then installing the newer stable version. They couldn't even figure out how to override the old corrupt files with a patch and required players just wipe the entire DLC (and sometimes main game files) and reinstall from scratch.

The game doesn't do things games from almost 20 years ago did. I look at it and to me, I don't think anyone who worked on this game actually cared about it.

The game industry is devoid of talent. These people live in a bubble and are told that they are geniuses. Criticism does not exist in their world. This type of mediocre game is probably all that they are capable of in all truth. This is their best effort and they will never achieve better.

 

[Maker's Mark]

Put another hour in tonight and I can't go on. My free time is far too valuable these days to waste it on soulless slop like this.

 

[Deus Exica]

think people keep projecting the "New Vegas was rushed" situation into this as a cope.

Probably, but the sad thing is even with the 13 months or whatever they had to make New Vegas they produced a game that was infinitely more ambitious and feature complete than this piece of shit. I shudder to imagine what Avowed would have been like without eight years of time for these incompetent fucks to make a glorified action game wearing Skyrim like a skinsuit. It would probably have been a visual novel of some kind that crashes on startup.

 

[Disdainer of the Plebs]

Put another hour in tonight and I can't go on. My free time is far too valuable these days to waste it on soulless slop like this.

Why would you do this to yourself?

 

[CyrusHowler]

I’ve just started (like, literally just got done with character creation and woke up by the ship) and so far I don’t despise it yet.
The controls feel more like Far Cry Primal than anything else. Especially with the dodge and slide when you hit the B button while sprinting.

soulless slop

Both those words are getting thrown around far too much these days. Soulless and slop are going the way of words like racism, Nazi, woke, and others. This game might very well be Soulless Slop, but I’m skeptical when I see that description of things these days.

 

[Brap God]

It would probably have been a visual novel of some kind that crashes on startup.

I hate that you said this, it sounds too real.

 

[CyrusHowler]

They really marketed this as an RPG? It’s an action game with light RPG elements at best.
Cyberpunk 2077 is much more of an RPG than this and that game was panned at launch for “not being an RPG”

I heard people call Cyberpunk 2077 a Far Cry game but this is much more Far Cry than Cyberpunk. I’m enjoying it less as I continue to play.
I like the little blue fuzzy guy tho. Sounds like a Beatle.

 

[Autistic Orson Welles]

I had a free unclaimed month of Gamepass and decided to finally use it to try Avowed along with some other shit. It didn't seem great, but it also didn't seem as bad as people were making it out to be.

Last night I played for about three hours and thought it was surprisingly good. It helps approaching with expectations lower than dinosaur bones. Your first companion is Garrus, which is jarring, but it's kind of cool to have him as a friend again. The combat is satisfying and lets you use guns, which is fucking awesome in any fantasy world., and it runs well and looks decent on my new PC. People have been shitting on the art because the character designs suck, fair enough, but the environments are actually gorgeous. The world looks incredible; it's unique, it seems fantastic, and it draws you in with interesting areas to explore. I've felt regularly interested enough to look around every map, despite the fact that I'm well aware there's not all that much to find and I'm not usually an explorer.

The open world reminds me of Kingdoms of Amalur or a Fable game. It has some element of verticality, but there are a lot of invisible walls. But sometimes the level design comes through with interesting secret-ish areas. I was rewarded with a rare item for exploring up a random path that didn't look accessible but was. Garrus even had a few lines of dialogue to commend me for being thorough!

But tonight I got to the city and am floored by how bad it's gotten. You take two steps inside and are randomly killed in a cutscene and then revived by the gods in a way that makes no sense, like the Cliffnotes version of a heroic origin story. It's one of the clumsiest bits of writing I've ever seen in an RPG. The entire setup of the game, that you play as a Godlike, is a cool idea; but they clearly were uncomfortable with the thought of forcing you to have a weird Cordyceps head, as Godlikes are established as having in PoE lore. So they let you turn the fungus off.

...except it's part of the lore, so people just keep commenting on your fungus anyway? Huh? It's totally bizarre.

The story has a lot of cool ideas. Its setup is good and could work. But the writing is bad, especially the dialogue options for the main character. There's no consistent voice at all, and it all reads like something some modern faggot college student would say if he was dropped into a D&D VR game, without any consideration of time or place. Other people have commented on the retarded overuse of adverbs. I thought people were overblowing the issue at first, but they weren't. It comes across as amateurish--almost all of the writing does. The characters all talk that way, straight out of the modern day, despite that the Pillars games did a good job of cultivating unique dialect and a sense of culture and fantasy through text most of the time previously. It's clear that the straight male writers have all been replaced with minority women and homosexuals who don't play games or know how to write. I would be shocked if anyone who worked on this narrative design team had a single worthwhile professional writing credit to his or her name.

But the writing isn't anything like Veilguard. There is still an attempt, even though it's bad, to construct the illusion of the world of Eora. No one talks about their gender fluidity or their pronouns. There are no trannies (yet). I've only encountered one lesbian so far, and I told her to get fucked. I realize that this is a low bar, but this is the competition these days.

I think it's pretty mid. People are overblowing how bad it is on the whole. For an Obsidian release, it's amazingly polished and well-optimized. It's not the Pillars of Eternity 3D that I wanted, and it's nothing like New Vegas. But it's probably a fine AA action-adventure semi-RPG to play, maybe with the sound off, for a discount price. It really reminds me a lot of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. I would not pay $70 for it. I would 100% take it over Veilguard or Starfield, though.

 

[CyrusHowler]

Avowed would have been like without eight years of time for these incompetent fucks to make a glorified action game wearing Skyrim like a skinsuit.

They spent 8 years on this? Looks like it has maximum 3 years put into it.

The combat is satisfying

Eh, idk about that.

lets you use guns, which is fucking awesome in any fantasy world

I do like that they went for 18th century style mixed with fantasy instead of the strictly medieval fantasy that we’re used to. Greedfall did the same thing but it’s much better.
Would have made it better is if it was a Weird West setting.

People have been shitting on the art because the character designs suck, fair enough, but the environments are actually gorgeous

Yeah I’ll give the game that. The open world is nice looking and would be cool to explore if it wasn’t devoid of things to do.

But the writing is bad, especially the dialogue options for the main character.

*Raises eyebrow* What do you mean? Everyone talks like this.
*Scoffs*

The characters all talk that way, straight out of the modern day

I hate when people make fantasy characters and historical characters talk like Tumblrites. Disney legit put the word shit into a Star Wars show.

I think it's pretty mid. People are overblowing how bad it is on the whole.

I had a feeling it was just gonna be a fantasy version of Outer Worlds and I was right except it’s less of an RPG but marginally less boring.

I would 100% take it over Veilguard or Starfield, though.

Veilguard yeah, but given the choice between this and Starfield…I’d prolly take Starfield. At least the handcrafted areas in Starfield are kinda cool. Like that one cyberpunky city on that drug world. And at least I can steal shit like in typical Bethesda games. Hate it all you want, the truth is that Starfield is much more of an RPG than Avowed.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

I have bad news for you, chief.
View attachment 7001786

The lack of lone wolf option in games is a great sign of bad writing that focuses more on character interaction than world building, you know, the reason why you play a fantasy/scifi game.

 

[Big Brown Schlub]

That's the thing I love about games like that -- yes, it's a silly mistake and a glaring sequence break, but it's something the player has to figure out (or hear about), and has to choose to do it. Little fuckups like that give games heart (or sovl, as /v/ would say). It's the distinguishing factor between a good sandbox and a shitty one. You can completely wreck a good one just by goofing around within the game, exploiting bugs or just abusing systems. A shitty sandbox railroads you into playing exactly how the devs want you to play and goes out of its way to punish you for fucking around.

I've played a ton of Eurojank PC games from various genres in the 00s and early 10s and a lot of them are extremely ambitious and innovative even today, but they're usually marred by instability so they crash or bug out a lot, they are usually unfocused and throw too much shit at the wall, and a lot of them also have feature creep - there's just too many mechanics and systems that don't really do anything other than either fuck you over or give such a minor bonus it's not worth even engaging with it. However, there are some where you're basically forced to engage with all of their systems which makes playing them a real pain in the ass. A game that I think was a great sandbox but overall an exhausting game is Xenus, more commonly known as Boiling Point Road to Hell outside of Russia and Ukraine.

You have a variety of factions to choose from, each is actually distinct and isn't just a shitty color palette swap though there are a few factions which are "minor" and feel pointless. The main 3 are the Realean gov't, the communist rebels and the mafia. The gov't pays meh, doesn't give you any concrete bonuses, but most of the map is "owned" by it so it makes getting around most of the map simple, you don't get roadside ambushed all the time. The communists pay like shit but their hospitals are free and buying weapons from them is cheap. The mafia doesn't offer any bonuses, they are the "hard mode" option but their missions pay insanely well. When it comes to the minor ones, there are civilians which feel pointless, their missions are super easy but they pay almost nothing, really you just wanna be neutral with them because otherwise the angry townsfolk of every town start trying to kill you. The bandits are just a shittier mafia, doing missions for them doesn't piss off the mafia or vice versa but there's no point doing missions for them since they pay less than the mafia but piss off the gov't, communists and civvies. The CIA is technically not allied with anyone but none of their missions piss of the gov't so if you wanna make a ton of money and are doing a gov't run you should do missions for them. They are very high-risk missions though. Lastly there are native Realians who are isolated and don't interact with any factions, their missions are unique and they pay you with items and artifacts, some of which fetch quite a high price if you sell them. You're not pigeonholed into joining any faction and if you want to you can switch at will, though it is going to make the game more of a pain in the ass.

The biggest problem with the game is that after a while it just becomes a boring grindfest where you have to pay a dude from one of the 3 main factions off to "progress" the story. And there's a lot of shit you have to pay for - gas for your car, you have to take care of your car as well, if it gets blown up and you need to buy a new one you can end up doing a sidequest at a loss and just waste your time completely. The main character can become addicted and build tolerance to healing items making them less effective, so you have to manage that by paying a doctor to cure you. You have to pay for buying and maintaining equipment and ammo etc. I did see someone review the game and the subtitle they gave the review was "The Don's Stretch Goals" and that's the perfect way to describe it. As you can tell, he worked off the mafia so he had to keep paying off the Don to get new info to progress the story and the more it went on the more sidequests he had to do and the more frustrating the game becomes.

It's a shame nobody really goes back and tries to make spiritual successors of games like that but with an actual focused direction and polish.

 

[Brap God]

The lack of lone wolf option in games is a great sign of bad writing that focuses more on character interaction than world building, you know, the reason why you play a fantasy/scifi game.

The worst part is that companions never shut the fuck up and talk like millenials, very much like in Troonguard.

 

[30+GameOvers]

I think people keep projecting the "New Vegas was rushed" situation into this as a cope. Not only that but they do enjoy to exaggerate how much time actually mattered at the end of it.

They still want to believe current Obsidian is the same as NV Obsidian, which just isnt true.

I wish people would leave New Vegas alone. It was a game made by devs that aren't at Obsidian anymore, made with a different mindset that modern Obsidian has and made by many of the same people that worked on Fallout 1 and Fallout 2, as well as the cancelled Fallout Van Buren. For many, it was an extension of their days at Interplay and Black Isle, one last chance to work on an IP they help build, where as for the rest of the employees it was a chance to work with some of the best in the industry. Triangle City has a good series of videos on the development of this game, along with exclusive interviews with the devs, the development has been a mess and the only reason the game came out in the state it did at launch was thru some last minute miracles and because a few devs had experience modding Oblivion so they knew how Gamebryo worked(at the start of the development nobody knew how Bethesda's modding tools worked and if you poke around in the maps that were made early on like Repconn Test Site, you will see just how janky and ineffective their development methods were). If anything, it goes to show just how lost that company would have been without those brilliant individuals, now that they are all gone we have nothing but incomplete, middle of the road slop from the new hires that takes years to make. New Vegas was a result of dumb luck and the sheer autism the devs behind it had into putting a good product, if modern Obsidian would make New Vegas it would be a pile of shit. Obsidian developers of today have no more right to claim New Vegas as their own as Bethesda does with Morrowind or Bioware with KOTOR or Baldur's Gate, these games belong to people no longer present at the company. This is their legacy, not yours, and you will never have a legacy of your own if you can't do anything but stand in the shade of the giants that overshadow everything in your career.

 

[SpellforceFan]

do you deadname your companions desu

Nah, you go "You know what, maybe the undead Hitler was right" and join her. Funnily enough, if you play your cards wrong, you get executed by said Hitler, while if you use your brain at the last choice, you get to become the Hitler 2.0.

 

[Jhonson the Two]

They really marketed this as an RPG? It’s an action game with light RPG elements at best.
Cyberpunk 2077 is much more of an RPG than this and that game was panned at launch for “not being an RPG”

I heard people call Cyberpunk 2077 a Far Cry game but this is much more Far Cry than Cyberpunk. I’m enjoying it less as I continue to play.
I like the little blue fuzzy guy tho. Sounds like a Beatle.

The publicity around the game was terribly handled, I don't know who decided to compare it with skyrim first but it was an horrible mistake. Add the agressive advertising on platforms when the game came out to catch up the weak marketing and now everyone is confused about what the fuck is this thing.

 

[Chapalapachapa]

Now that i think of it i havent enjoyed a Obsidian game since Alpha fucking Protocol and you can't even buy that game anymore

 

[TheGuntinator]

I can't make a fat person. Imagine the indignity of never being able to make Dr. Robotnik in one of these games and run around as a complete bastard. I refuse to settle for Jim Carry Robotnik either so don't even say it.

Never forget what bodytype A and B took from you. Real bodytypes like fat fuck are just ignored so lazy devs can push for male and female to be less distinct from each other.

 

[Get the rope Macaulay!]

Just, why?

they assumed people were going to consider them the successor to old school bethesda when they started working on the game back in 2019, they didn't realize how bad their reputation would drop.

. But nowadays making games has never been easier yet 10 years of development brings barely playable shit with less features.

management creep, because you're requiring 10x the amount of people then suddenly there's more middle management and because there is more management that means more meetings and more people looking over your shoulder.

beyond that is the quality of employee, the type of weirdo that was into making video games 20+ years ago was passionate about it, now the type of employee that makes games is passionate about tranny porn. someone on X compared gaming to south african jobs. you have twice the amount of hard working whites kicking ass in every business, but shit gets worse because you also have 20 nigs for every white by law in every business. and half the white's time is spent fixing what the nigs do.

like someone said about halo, despite a team 30x the size, the game itself is worse than one from 20 years ago because so much of the white dudes' time is spent fixing other people's busy work.

Fallout:New Vegas was like the video game version of Roger Rabbit, it was made by the best people in the business because they knew it was going to be a love letter to an entire era that would vanish so everyone that worked on it was like the best dude from other studios at the time, a true All-Star team. and just like obsedian, every other animated film the director, screenwriter, or actors of roger rabbit were a part of were complete dogshit that no one liked.

2012 was really the high watermark of gaming, and it slowly turned into vinegar thereafter.

 

[The handsome tard]

The game industry is devoid of talent. These people live in a bubble and are told that they are geniuses. Criticism does not exist in their world. This type of mediocre game is probably all that they are capable of in all truth. This is their best effort and they will never achieve better.

See it this way, the people that deserve to have any sort of say are forced to crunch until they are nearly dead. The people that DONT deserve to have a say keep failing upwards somehow if you catch my drift...