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

[Whoopsie Daisy]

Anyone still comparing this game to TES is a shill trying to maximize the number of people tricked into buying this shit on release. The game looks and plays like a very watered-down Dark Messiah/Dishonored with a gear grind and Bioware hub city + dialogue system.

I used TES as a catch-all term, but you're right, it feels a lot more like a Dishonored; magic edition, than TES.

The target audience is not pre-teens (there would be romance options and sex scenes if that were the case), it's 35-year-olds who played POE and 25-year-olds who want Skyrim 2.

Mentally, whats the difference?

 

[TrainWreckWatcher]

Official Launch is in 2 days.
I wonder if we'll see it hit 25k+
I honestly don't know, I feel like people who were willing pay $70 for it are the same as those who would buy it at $100 for the early access so the sales won't go up that much.
I pray it doesn't.

 

[Judge Dredd]

My question is, is it because they're lazy? or they're too scared that additional systems will bug out in unexpected ways?

I'd take a game with a tonne of jank over this sterile flat nonsense any day.

It's a few things. Incompetence, politics, etc. have all been mentioned. I think it's worth pointing out how it manifests. There was a video by Tim Cain that went viral describing his frustrations working in modern AAA.

Edit: It was already posted, but will leave it here anyway.

A related problem goes back to the whole "Eldan Ring has bad UX" discussion back when that released. Game devs that come out of university seem to have these ideas of what does and doesn't make for good game design. And while it makes sense in isolation or as a rule of thumb, when applied en mass it produces slop. CalArts beanmouth is an easier to show example. Simple shapes = cheap animation and identifiable outlines = memorable characters is good advice, but when that's done at the expense of all else, everything blends together.

 

[30+GameOvers]

I decided to get the repack of this game as I've been itching to play a fps/rpg for a while.

I think this game is being undeservedly mocked. Here's my impressions after an hour:

• Simple and straight forward, which focuses the fun on the genre
• woke-lite (so far)
• Looks better than most AAA slop that releases nowadays.*
• Levels very static *
• Simple-mid skill trees and branches.
• Dialogue is bog-standard modern-day AAA RPG guff. It's not offensively bad and I believe that's because it has been toned down to be aimed at kids.
• The whole game makes sense when you consider the target audience is pre-teens.

I would sum this game up as popcorn-flick version of TES games. It's the Michael Bay of RPGs - where bright numbers and colourful spells make it seem like you're a total badarse, even if, below the surface level, it's just press A to win.

Personally, I'm against any woke, even if it's woke-lite, so I didn't, and can't encourage others, to pay for it. If you enjoy this genre, it's worth a play.

*I think having to target Series S console specs is why it runs so well on my rig vs other modern games with zero optimisation, and would explain why object interaction, and enemy AI is set at 0.

From what I've seen, this makes for a good dungeon clearing game where you just kind of fuck about in the open world and kill some dudes. If you treat it like that, then yeah it's a decent pirate if you have nothing else to play right now. If you're expecting a deep RPG with meaningful choices, world interactivity and good nuanced writing, you know what Obsidian is known for, then you're SOL.

I don't really think this game is worth 80gbs of space on my hard drive. I wouldn't mind playing another fantasy RPG tho, maybe Planscape Torment, Morrowind, any of the Baldur's Gate games, fucking Diablo if all I am going to be doing is dungeon clearing. All of these take up way less space and are much more enjoyable, if we're being honest.

 

[Michael Wade]

So is it shit? Is the writing decent? Can I mass effect renegade my way through the story?

 

[Brap God]

So is it shit? Is the writing decent? Can I mass effect renegade my way through the story?

From what I've seen a few hours in after pirating the game, the writing is downright atrocious. Gives me Troonguard vibes.

 

[30+GameOvers]

So is it shit? Is the writing decent? Can I mass effect renegade my way through the story?

From what I've seen your responses don't actually effect anything, ie if you shit on someone during one conversation the NPC defaults to their neutral stance next time you talk to them. Your companions will always stick by you no matter how much you insult them, for example. I doubt there is much renegade options here, like many modern RPGs you either play exactly how the devs intended you or you find another game.

 

[Michael Wade]

From what I've seen a few hours in after pirating the game, the writing is downright atrocious. Gives me Troonguard vibes.

Ok pass.

From what I've seen your responses don't actually effect anything, ie if you shit on someone during one conversation the NPC defaults to their neutral stance next time you talk to them. Your companions will always stick by you no matter how much you insult them, for example. I doubt there is much renegade options here, like many modern RPGs you either play exactly how the devs intended you or you find another game.

Well at least you can superficially be an asshole to stupid characters. I appreciate that.

 

[Mike Matei's Penis]

Don't tease me with Dark Messiah comparisons, that game was actually fun

 

[Brap God]

From what I've seen your responses don't actually effect anything, ie if you shit on someone during one conversation the NPC defaults to their neutral stance next time you talk to them. Your companions will always stick by you no matter how much you insult them, for example. I doubt there is much renegade options here, like many modern RPGs you either play exactly how the devs intended you or you find another game.

Depends on what he means by renegade choices. There are quests where you can do the opposite of how the writers intend for the quest to go, mainly snitching instead of helping someone out from what I've seen, but in turn you get lectured for it by the quest NPC and Kai, aka discount Eder. I've also looked up endings and there is supposedly one where you take over the Steel Garrote but it's written in a "you won but it won't get you anywhere" type way.

 

[Male Idiot]

I decided to get the repack of this game as I've been itching to play a fps/rpg for a while.

I think this game is being undeservedly mocked. Here's my impressions after an hour:

• Simple and straight forward, which focuses the fun on the genre
• woke-lite (so far)
• Looks better than most AAA slop that releases nowadays.*
• Levels very static *
• Simple-mid skill trees and branches.
• Dialogue is bog-standard modern-day AAA RPG guff. It's not offensively bad and I believe that's because it has been toned down to be aimed at kids.
• The whole game makes sense when you consider the target audience is pre-teens.

I would sum this game up as popcorn-flick version of TES games. It's the Michael Bay of RPGs - where bright numbers and colourful spells make it seem like you're a total badarse, even if, below the surface level, it's just press A to win.

Personally, I'm against any woke, even if it's woke-lite, so I didn't, and can't encourage others, to pay for it. If you enjoy this genre, it's worth a play.

*I think having to target Series S console specs is why it runs so well on my rig vs other modern games with zero optimisation, and would explain why object interaction, and enemy AI is set at 0.

It gets worse. I enjoy some of the fighting like shooting the guns and casting magic. But there's hardly anything in the game worth interacting with. The npcs are static, the character models are hideous, and the way everyone moves is like the world exists on one huge ice hockey table sometimes. There's way too much side lore to this game and I don't even remember what my character was supposed to be doing. The characters are also boring so far, but I have only met a few companions. I have not met the purple furry character yet in all the promo material so I am mentally preparing myself for that.

These mirror my experiences.

The game is a fantasy Starfield.
Pros:
-Using dagger and pistol, the combat is fine. Not complex but fun.
-Controls are surprisingly good.

Cons:
-If that is the world map, it is tiny!
-Characters are ugly and npcs are very static.
-You can only do godkind elf or human, a yuge downgrade.
-the director is a woke shithead and this costs 70 bucks?
-npcs aren't interactive and can you even steal in the game? At least in Rogue Trader it made sense that you could take your subject's stuff.


If this was an indie game with a 20 dollar budget and the art design was korean, it could have been a dumb fun stab and shoot lite game.

I wouldn't spend money on it, and with the woke dev and huge price I can't recommend it. The core gameplay loop works surprisingly well, so this is a bit of a shame.

But so far it isn't as horrible as Veilguard or as controversial as KCD2.
What it reminds me of is Dragon age 2: tiny map, railroading story, declined quality.

 

[Maude Snew]

View attachment 6991851
Official Launch is in 2 days.
I wonder if we'll see it hit 25k+
I honestly don't know, I feel like people who were willing pay $70 for it are the same as those who would buy it at $100 for the early access so the sales won't go up that much.
I pray it doesn't.

It'll probably do 25k. On the upper limit I'd say 100k is just out, not a chance, probably a decent chance it won't do 75k, with the outside chance it won't do 50k. That's not quite Concord levels of bad but it's really fucking sad for Obsidian, just look at the top sellers.

I was gonna say it's even bad compared to their dumbass survival game but that shit peaked at a bit over 30k.
.
If Avowed can't beat that I'll laugh so fucking hard.

 

[Male Idiot]

Its buggy, it is mid, it just elder scrolls with a modern day makeup and companions whose gear you can't even edit.

It is a whimper, not a banger. Like Starfield. It isn't even the collossal trainwreck of Veilguard, which while being worse, stood out for being just that bad, not that that meant sales.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

The conversation here reminds me what Ross from Accursed Farms said, that RPG players will literally read anything if it has enough words.

 

[Jace on ice]

How long was Avowed in development for?

Veilguard had 250k peak players or whatever but still flopped financially because it had like a nine year dev cycle.

 

[hawkisnight]

Its buggy, it is mid, it just elder scrolls with a modern day makeup and companions whose gear you can't even edit.

It's not even elder scrolls. Those games are impressive even today compared to Avowed.

 

[Deus Exica]

It's not even elder scrolls. Those games are impressive even today compared to Avowed.

Yeah, fucked as it is to say the comparisons to Elder Scrolls are genuinely insulting. This game doesn't even have the same amount of features or interactivity as fucking Oblivion, let alone Skyrim. This is an embarrassing showing and anyone who is impressed with this is a genuine NPC who would probably play any slop that has numbers go up when you hit enemies.

 

[RandomTwitterGuy]

View attachment 6991851
Official Launch is in 2 days.
I wonder if we'll see it hit 25k+
I honestly don't know, I feel like people who were willing pay $70 for it are the same as those who would buy it at $100 for the early access so the sales won't go up that much.
I pray it doesn't.

I don't think it will.
It has middling hype, and it is on Gamepas, so there are a lot fewer who will play it on steam. I will still play it as I like the universe, but that's me.

 

[Asian tech support]

How long was Avowed in development for?

Development started after the Microsoft buyout (Nov 201 but I can't imagine the game got much further than pre production before the coof. Like Starfield, this is very much a coof project and it bears all the hallmarks.

Veilguard had 250k peak players or whatever but still flopped financially because it had like a nine year dev cycle.

Hardly 250k.

 

[Male Idiot]

Yeah, fucked as it is to say the comparisons to Elder Scrolls are genuinely insulting. This game doesn't even have the same amount of features or interactivity as fucking Oblivion, let alone Skyrim. This is an embarrassing showing and anyone who is impressed with this is a genuine NPC who would probably play any slop that has numbers go up when you hit enemies.

It isn't as good as the Elder scrolls, no, but the core fighting works better. But it is missing a lot of TES systems, it was definately shallower. Same with Starfield being shallower than Fallout.

It is really a very shallow game. I don't think it can dethrone KDC2: We wuz.