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

[Brap God]

The game feels unpolished. Every aspect of this game SCREAMS that it needed more time in the oven. I think pushing the development time further would not have helped this game, so they pretty much just had to ship it as is.

Feels to me like in most cases where you get this feeling, it's more like the game needed someone else behind the helm. Like you said, giving it more development time would not have helped most likely and that's because this is what the main devs behind the project amount to and they won't do any better, even with more resources.

The lizard in question, her soul twin, is literally on the next little "island", right behind the same house. You can attempt to communicate with it and later talk to the woman about it. While the story might be dogshit, it's you being a midwit that made that quest look bad. And both the lizard and the woman get a cameo later in the game, depending on what you've done.

The quest is still crappy. The way the xaurip soul twin is presented sucks ass for multiple reasons. First, he's in a spot adjacent to where the quest wants you to go so a player that just wants to focus on the quest, as opposed to also exploring the immediate area before moving on, will just return to the quest giver after interacting with everything inside the house. Then the other issue is that when you discover the xaurip, the way the encounter is set up, the game has you try to communicate with a fucking lizard by clicking your tongue at it, which leads you nowhere and there's a good chance you'd want to kill it because there's no in game reason not to at that point. They should have had the fucker be inside the house as a passive NPC that obviously remains docile after you clear the antagonistic xaurip so it's more clearly telegraphed the fucking thing isn't out to get you, and you're less inclined to murderize it. The alternative ways the quest can end serve no other purpose than to screw you out of a reward. It's already bad enough that most of the loot you find is shit, now you have to be wary of quests that provide you with nothing at the end of them if you don't find the optimal solution to them.

 

[Jhonson the Two]

Now that I got it very legally out of curiosity I'm really weirded out by Avowed. Apart from the debate if it is good or bad, the feeling is extremely different compared to the first opuses. Normal you would say, but I still can't understand their choice to make a straightforward first-person game type while POE 1&2 are the complete opposite. Just, why? We were satisfied with the initial formula.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

That story about the Euro knock off is funny, honestly, because it shows that even bad games from 15 years ago are better than the "good" games of today. I remember feeling a similar way when I saw the Lolipop Chainsaw remake, checked out the original, and realized that a middleware hack and slash game that was basically forgotten was genuinely better than most AAA offerings of today. No wonder softcore porn gambling simulators out of Asia outsell Western games by leagues...

The question that I keep asking myself is where did the time and money go? You had games 20 years ago with the engine made from scratch, way more assets, smaller teams, 20% of time allocated, and smaller budget (accounting to inflation). But nowadays making games has never been easier yet 10 years of development brings barely playable shit with less features.

 

[Deus Exica]

Feels to me like in most cases where you get this feeling, it's more like the game needed someone else behind the helm

Yeah, I'm sick of this idea that if devs had more time they could miraculously polish a turd into gold. Games are already taking 8-10 years on average to release. It has become clear that the issue is a personnel one, not a matter of time or resources.

When you have the dangerhairs, troons, and literal faggots more interested in collecting an easy paycheck and politically posturing than making videogames at your company, the last thing you want to do is let them spend even longer on their games.

The world is paper thin, full of uninteractable objects and NPCs, not because they needed more time, but because the developers are lazy and technologically incompetent. Five more years isn't going to get them to miraculously realize that they should retool the NPC systems to make the world react to you, or to add a proper evil path, it's going to just result in them adding more niggers and troons.

 

[mooted]

A friend of mine has been playing (game pass) it because he likes RPG like this one.
1.- After 10 hours he told me that the game is the definition of mid, its not bad neither good, just really mid.
2.- He feels that they tried to do too much stuff but nothing really good, all is just kinda dull.
3,- Some quest are fun and really well done, and others are terrible, he suspects 2 teams working on quests.
4,. The color palette is fortnite but RPG.
5.- He doesnt remember a single song or sound effect, like something unique to the game like fus ro dah or megalovania or Storwind song for WoW.
6.- He doesnt recommend it, he think that its WAY WAY overpriced, he says that its like those movies that you "watch" at background noise.
7.- Some NPC are really ugly

Thats the stuff I remember when we were talking today

 

[Fount of BadSpeak]

The question that I keep asking myself is where did the time and money go? You had games 20 years ago with the engine made from scratch, way more assets, smaller teams, 20% of time allocated, and smaller budget (accounting to inflation). But nowadays making games has never been easier yet 10 years of development brings barely playable shit with less features.

It's going to corporate welfare for women, brown people, homosexuals, and trannies, not to developing the game. I guarantee that of the entire team that made this game, at most 10% of the employees actually worked on it, and they were likely amongst the lowest paid and worse treated employees there. Game development teams have increased in size tenfold, with development times doubling or even tripling, but the only reason that happened was so that more ideologically corrupted losers could latch onto gaming companies and make six figures for existing. This is the same in all Western entertainment, which is why everything is so much more expensive than before despite the quality being a fraction of what it was a couple of decades ago.

For the games 20 years ago, pretty much every person on the team worked on the game in some meaningful capacity, and brought actual utility to making the final product. This meant you could have a small, directed, engaged team with a sense of comradery that would require a relatively small budget to make a phenomenal product. Look at the original Halo Combat Evolved, developed by roughly 40 people, yet is one of the best games ever made and made one of the biggest gaming franchises ever. By contrast, Halo Infinite had roughly 1200 people """work""" on it, and look at what the awful results of that was. Do you seriously think those 1200 people contributed meaningfully to that game? I would bet at most 60 actually did anything of actual value or meaning in developing that game.

 

[BScCollateral]

Dear poster I'm Retarded?, yes you are. LMFAO!!!

I don't know what the fuck you expected.
In other news, people call "MovieBob" "MovieBlob" because he is fat.

 

[Pepe Cortisona]

The game feels unpolished.

You just have to accept the girldick jank or you're a nazi!

 

[moocow]

If you're wondering where I'm going with this, there is this notorious aspect of Two Worlds where you can beat the game in like a minute and it doesn't involve any crazy out of bounds teleporting major glitches or whatever the fuck, just a massive sequence break. You see, the final boss is a character who appears in the starting town, if he's flagged as dead you beat the game, the way you beat him a minute into the game is to provoke him to attack you, then you run around the town and all the town guards and townsfolk aggro on him because he's committing a crime and kill him.

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.

It doesn't make a shitty buggy game good, but it can certainly help make it fun slop to play.

Max is a game I always keep installed.

You can fire it up just meandering around and feel great doing so. It nails the proper Road Warrior vibes perfectly. The combat feedback was done really well too. When you hit someone in that game it feels like you turn their jaw into powdered sugar just meaty nasty impacts. The wasteland, immersion, sounds all of it just amazing in every aspect.

Those vicious sandstorms that would occasionally blow through the map ... holy shit I've never seen storms done as well in any other game. Huddling in a cave or under an outcropping juuuuust right so it doesn't eat your health (and kill you) while you watch your car hoping it survives the slow damage it's eating is a tense, pulse-raising, nail-biting experience. The lightning, the endless dust, the visceral feeling of it. Great stuff.

Damn I need to go play it again now.

 

[ScurvyRat]

A friend of mine has been playing (game pass) it because he likes RPG like this one.
1.- After 10 hours he told me that the game is the definition of mid, its not bad neither good, just really mid.

Leaning more towards "good" than "mid" for me

2.- He feels that they tried to do too much stuff but nothing really good, all is just kinda dull.

Real

3,- Some quest are fun and really well done, and others are terrible, he suspects 2 teams working on quests.

Agree, definitely an 'A' team and a 'B' Team

4,. The color palette is fortnite but RPG.

Disagree, but I get where he's coming from. I need to fix my graphical issues with the game, it seems like they really phoned in the optimization

5.- He doesnt remember a single song or sound effect, like something unique to the game like fus ro dah or megalovania or Storwind song for WoW.

real

6.- He doesnt recommend it, he think that its WAY WAY overpriced, he says that its like those movies that you "watch" at background noise.

I was pretty engaged and I recommend it ONLY as long as you don't pay for it.

7.- Some NPC are really ugly

yep

 

[TrainWreckWatcher]

After 10 hours he told me that the game is the definition of mid, its not bad neither good, just really mid.

He doesnt recommend it, he think that its WAY WAY overpriced, he says that its like those movies that you "watch" at background noise.

Exactly it.
This is why it will fail.
They're charging premium price for something that isn't even funny to laugh at when you play it. It is bland and lazy.

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.

 

[Mr. Manchester]

All right, I got through the tutorial area. So far I have to admit that the gameplay is pretty fun. I liked the temporary little blue guy that they gave me, he didn't piss me off at all really so that's a start. The game also looks really good and I'm pleasantly surprised that they're using so much of the original lore... so far...

Then I got to town. The big blue guy that they replaced my little blue guy with is already irritating and will be disposed of as soon as possible. Half the NPCs in town are also irritating and I am unable to dispose of them. Very sad.

Attitude toward the game is neutral so far.

 

[Endless Torment]

A friend of mine has been playing (game pass) it because he likes RPG like this one.
1.- After 10 hours he told me that the game is the definition of mid, its not bad neither good, just really mid.
2.- He feels that they tried to do too much stuff but nothing really good, all is just kinda dull.
3,- Some quest are fun and really well done, and others are terrible, he suspects 2 teams working on quests.
4,. The color palette is fortnite but RPG.
5.- He doesnt remember a single song or sound effect, like something unique to the game like fus ro dah or megalovania or Storwind song for WoW.
6.- He doesnt recommend it, he think that its WAY WAY overpriced, he says that its like those movies that you "watch" at background noise.
7.- Some NPC are really ugly

Thats the stuff I remember when we were talking today

So it has the exact same problems as Outer Worlds.

 

[Max Free]

Is the colorful skeleton they advertise this game with supposed to be the player character? Was he a mastermind warlock, just short of conquering the world but desintegrated himself before achieveng his goal, and you are about to restore your power? Or is he just a wild amalgation of stuff that represents the game in a very abstract way?

I'm of the opinion that you actually can judge a book by its cover, and this isn't telling me anything. If at all, it tells me they just throw a bunch of stuff together and hoped some of it may stick.

 

[Brap God]

The big blue guy that they replaced my little blue guy with is already irritating and will be disposed of as soon as possible.

I have bad news for you, chief.

 

[Mr. Manchester]

Is the colorful skeleton they advertise this game with supposed to be the player character? Was he a mastermind warlock, just short of conquering the world but desintegrated himself before achieveng his goal, and you are about to restore your power? Or is he just a wild amalgation of stuff that represents the game in a very abstract way?

I'm of the opinion that you actually can judge a book by its cover, and this isn't telling me anything. If at all, it tells me they just throw a bunch of stuff together and hoped some of it may stick.

It has to do with the main quest.

There's a plague turning people in to infected mushroom people exactly like The Last of Us, but magic. I'm assuming the skeleton represents death and the colors are a bunch of colorful mushrooms, which the game is full of.

 

[Disdainer of the Plebs]

He... made a time machine? Troika games was founded in 1998. It went defunct in 2005.
Tim is in semi-retirement, working for Obsidian as a contractor. I believe he's involved with TOW2. He was co-director for TOW1.

I was talking about the first time he left Black Isle in the late 90s after Fallout 2, which came out in '98. By the time he got back to Obsidian, the high water mark had been reached

 

[The handsome tard]

eels to me like in most cases where you get this feeling, it's more like the game needed someone else behind the helm. Like you said, giving it more development time would not have helped most likely and that's because this is what the main devs behind the project amount to and they won't do any better, even with more resources.

Yeah, I'm sick of this idea that if devs had more time they could miraculously polish a turd into gold. Games are already taking 8-10 years on average to release. It has become clear that the issue is a personnel one, not a matter of time or resources.

When you have the dangerhairs, troons, and literal faggots more interested in collecting an easy paycheck and politically posturing than making videogames at your company, the last thing you want to do is let them spend even longer on their games.

The world is paper thin, full of uninteractable objects and NPCs, not because they needed more time, but because the developers are lazy and technologically incompetent. Five more years isn't going to get them to miraculously realize that they should retool the NPC systems to make the world react to you, or to add a proper evil path, it's going to just result in them adding more niggers and troons.

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.

 

[Mr. Manchester]

Playing a little more, the game definitely took a lot of inspiration from the first two pillars games, at least gameplay wise. I can't say that I'm not enjoying it a little. I do have another major gripe with it though, a gripe I have with all these first person RPGs.

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.

 

[SpellforceFan]

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

Spoiler

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