Avowed Announced (Obsidian new AAA RPG, Xbox Series X and PC, same world as Pillars of Eternity)
- Thread starter Raigor
- Start date
Well shit, I completely misread the person's post. Thought they were looking forward to playing it on PS5, but they were actually hoping to play it: https://www.resetera.com/threads/av...lars-of-eternity.253839/page-13#post-40805148
I still can't believe that by the time Avowed comes out a new Elder scrolls game will still be several years away...
Hell I wouldn't be surprised if it comes out before of even a few months after Starfield.
Really looking forward to seeing the game playable and hopefully we'll see it next Summer.
Hell I wouldn't be surprised if it comes out before of even a few months after Starfield.
Really looking forward to seeing the game playable and hopefully we'll see it next Summer.
That new info sounds amazing.
This is the game that's keeping me hyped about buying a series x.
This is the game that's keeping me hyped about buying a series x.
is it tho? Skyrim is one of the best selling games of all time and acclaimed critticaly and is still a point of comparison to this day. i never got around playing it, it has a dated gameplay and game design but i can see it's value, especially in 2011.
they are taking their sweet time with 6 and that is def not a sign of a mismanaged IP.
Once they went MMO, why go for standalone releases when you can get a steady microtransaction revenue stream instead?
How is it mismanaged? It takes time to develop huge games like Elder Scrolls, Fallout, GTA, and Red Dead, plus they're literally working on a huge AAA new IP right now, Starfield
Fable and Avowed won't release the same year. My guess is Fable will come in 2022 since we knew about it as far back as 2017. Avowed will probably be 2023.
I mean they can but there has to be almost a year apart. I think Avowed will actually come out before Fable though on the basis that Fable is being built by a new team while Obsidian's has been there from day one.
Outer Worlds went from reveal to release in around 12 months, right? I know Obsidian went through some rough times pre-Microsoft acquisition but I'm not sure how much Obsidian needed to staff up given they were doing contract work so they didn't have to lay people off iirc. I'd be pretty disappointed if we had to wait until 2023 to get their next big release.
Having said that, I'd also hope that Avowed is a little more ambitious in scope than Outer Worlds was. And they're doing Outer Worlds DLC (and likely a sequel), so who knows.
Having said that, I'd also hope that Avowed is a little more ambitious in scope than Outer Worlds was. And they're doing Outer Worlds DLC (and likely a sequel), so who knows.
What makes you think so? We didn't see *anything* from Fable. At least for Avowed we at least had some characters/environments that felt like they were at least based on key art for the game.
According to a pretty solid Xbox insider on Era, the game has been in development for 2 years and 7 months already. The first seven months were with a smaller team, and two years of full production (I think they said with around 200 people).
They also I believe said that the game was aiming for a late 2022 release, and that it's supposed to be absolutely massive in size.
I just think Fable has been in active development for a longer amount of time.
I could also see it being the other way around (2022 Avowed/ 2023 Fable). I don't think MS will release 2 massive titles the same year. Especially when they share a somewhat similar genre/setting (yes I know they'll be wildly different. But still). I think it'll be 1 major first party game a year filled with some slightly smaller, but still great games from Compulsion, Double Fine, etc..
Yeah, Obsidian has had around 100 people on Avowed for over two years. Playground started building their second team from scratch in late 2017 and has been staffing up over time. In other words, Obsidian's Avowed team and Playground's Fable team probably started their RPG projects around the same time but Obsidian has had more people to cover more ground during that time plus they are building off of an established world and lore they built themselves over several years and two games. I'd be surprised to see Fable release before Avowed.
Also one of the big things the head of obsidian talked about was that the aquisition lets them have a much bigger outsourcing budget, so i imagine theres a fair bit more than 100 working on it
It saddens me that it bombed. I love PoE2, finished in PoTD with the 1 save option, facing those mega-bosses were such a thrill (monk is op). I'm excited for Avowed.
Just want to point (again) to what a beautiful title PoE is and its expansive set of options it had pertaining to character customization:
I wonder how much of this scope will carry over into Avowed.
I wonder how much of this scope will carry over into Avowed.
If you haven't done one with some of the Deadly Deadfire/community balance mods you should!
I hope they stick with the 'no new stats' style of character creation. I love D&D but this is a very refreshing way to go about making your character. You define character stats early, and that's all you get outside of feats/abilities.
Eh I'm not a POTD type dude. I play on hard (or is it veteran?) and that tends to feel about right for me.
Hey that's the same character portrait as my character/cipher :O
I hope they alter the existing stat system as little as possible, personally. I think It's probably my favorite in an RPG and a lot more flexible than the usual "Strength for warriors, Intellect for mages, Dexterity for rogues" we normally get.
I also wonder how classes will be handled. Pillars' lore doesn't really accommodate the classless system of TES, for instance.
100% - the idea of Might is brilliant.
I also hope it's a lot more strict than TES is when it comes to classes. You make what you make and you focus in on it, not widen into an all-encompassing character.
Did you complete the campaign and like it? I dropped out of PoE1's campaign after playing for around 70 hours after I received a life altering phone call. Now, I have been contemplating going back to PoEII (which I backed on Fig) for a while now.
Yeah from both a gameplay and roleplaying perspective having fixed classes would be great. Pillars was so good about making your character class and background choices really matter in how you navigated both combat and dialogue. But it's probably harder to pull off in an open world game, along with dealing with player expectations for these types of games. Especially with comparisons to TES.
But to really keep it in line with PoE setting and just to create a product of their own and not simply copy TES I think implementing a class based system of some kind would be best. Even if they can't adhere strictly to what PoE had.
Even with how new player friendly the PoE system is with how Attributes and everything works, you fundamentally can't avoid that massive initial choice/commitment that many players simply lack any context or real understanding of at the start of the game. And that's something that many people just found way too daunting. That commitment of these are my stats, this is my class which then can't be changed can be rather crippling and cause anxiety for players, especially when their choices feel like they were bad or just aren't as fun as they wanted. Sure you can respec and decide on different skills and abilities at level up, but you can't change your class(es), subclass(es) or attributes. Being able to completely pivot in recent TES games is a huge advantage for that, but it's not without it's own faults.
But to really keep it in line with PoE setting and just to create a product of their own and not simply copy TES I think implementing a class based system of some kind would be best. Even if they can't adhere strictly to what PoE had.
Even with how new player friendly the PoE system is with how Attributes and everything works, you fundamentally can't avoid that massive initial choice/commitment that many players simply lack any context or real understanding of at the start of the game. And that's something that many people just found way too daunting. That commitment of these are my stats, this is my class which then can't be changed can be rather crippling and cause anxiety for players, especially when their choices feel like they were bad or just aren't as fun as they wanted. Sure you can respec and decide on different skills and abilities at level up, but you can't change your class(es), subclass(es) or attributes. Being able to completely pivot in recent TES games is a huge advantage for that, but it's not without it's own faults.
I'm also in the camp that would like a fixed class selection. Really helps from a role playing perspective.
Yeah, Pillars 2 is such a gorgeous game. Character models and animations are so much better than the first.
By what metric? Skyrim is objectively one of the most beloved and successful games of all time, and TESO has been rather quietly doing well for years now. It's maddening to me as an Elder Scrolls fan that doesn't care for MMO's that it'll likely be 2026, a full fifteen years after Skyrim, before TES6, but I wouldn't call it mismanaged.
I'm pretty sure Josh Sawyer's Pillars of Eternity TTRPG is classless. And I would be surprised if Avowed weren't too. Not that a few sharp distinctions from TES wouldn't be a good idea, but limiting the number of hard choices (e.g., you're a bleakwalker paladin, so you can't ever see this content) seems like a core part of Skyrim's appeal that Obsidian would want to copy.
as much as it sucks to wait for TES6, not gonna lie, if they put out a next-gen RT patch for Skyrim, I'd gobble that shit up
please don't make me succumb to my weakness obsidian
I wonder if it recreate Pillar's (esp. II's) phenomenal and at times, cozy aesthetics, on an equally large scale given the resource, time and money it would cost:
It would be amazing to see this level of detail and quality in a first person RPG.
Fingers crossed!!
I meant it in regards to how long it will be between entries into the franchise. I don't dispute their success at all. To the contrary. I just can't imagine sitting on such a successful series for 10+ years. I guess ESO is a big reason for this.
Maybe mismanaged was the wrong term.
You can change everything about your character if you want. You basically build a new character and then import your choices to them. So feel free to change class, race whatever.
Stop on by the Deadfire OT if you want. Plenty of helpful folks still subbed to it I think.
You basically reroll your character but keep your choices when you import.
Edit: too slow.
This level of detail and quality was insane for an isometric RPG, best-looking game in that style BY FAR.
Right, I get what you're saying. It is crazy, but considering how long it takes Todd and Co. to make a game, it all adds up. After Skyrim was Fallout 4 and DLC, after Fallout 4 was the Skyrim Special Edition, after that was 76, and now hopefully within the next year or two we get Starfield. Plus with TESO on the market and the years it took them to turn it around and then reap the rewards from it, the last thing Zenimax would want is a another game out under their own umbrella to cannibalize sales.
I've always wanted to see Obsidian basically make the Elder Scrolls version of New Vegas, but this could end up being cooler since it's their own universe and their not beholden to another IP. Here's hoping this game isn't too far out.
Yeah this is one of the reasons I think a lot of the systems will be quite a bit different. A lot of that stuff exists as it is in PoE because it had the burden of being a spiritual Baldur's Gate game with all the things that entails. If it wasn't then stuff like dwarfs, elves etc. wouldn't exist and it'd probably be turn-based/classless.
I suppose, and I'm not dead set against the idea of a classless system by any means, but I hope they don't go too far down the route of 'limiting the number of hard choices' that cut you off from content. Their willingness to do that has always been one of Obsidian's greatest strengths.
I agree. I think you need restrictions to make the choices (and role-playing) meaningful. And I'm sure plenty of folks at Obsidian do too. But the series Obsidian is taking as its model here has famously de-emphasized that sort of role playing and only grown more commercially successful.* So I have a hard time imagining that the direction from the top won't be to follow the leader in that respect, even if Obsidian still tries to bring its own RPG sensibilities to the game in other ways.
*We can debate how much this shift in emphasis meant to Oblivion's/Skyrim's popularity, but it seems pretty clear to me that the ability to see and do just about everything in a single playthrough is appealing to a lot of players.
I did not lol. I got the ultimate edition or w/e through Twitch Prime and loved it but while looking up build stuff I got spoiled by a giant plot point at the end of act 2. That and the game becoming piss easy even on hard and real life responsibilities made me stop playing but eventually I am going to go back and finish it up.
I don't know if my laptop will run Pillars 2 though which is annoying, also worried about importing from Twitch to Steam especially if I ever end up getting a better PC.
I hope they'll find a middle ground. A completely classless system just doesn't make for very interesting roleplaying options and I very much hope they can maintain that here since it was so well done in PoE. And they don't necessarily have to be classes, but maybe more expanded on character background selections. Placing more weight on our race, culture and early job to factor more in dialogue choices. Having fixed Attributes could still work in a classless system as well and could still be used somewhat heavily throughout the game. FO still utilizes this, even if they have softened it up a good deal giving players even more options and chances to increasing their SPECIAL stats.
They could also go with a system where you have your core Class that has certain unique characteristics that you always maintain, but still have the ability to dabble in basic elements of other classes. Basically a freeform version of dual classing, but in this case you can choose your second class at will and gain access to a basic suite of their abilities. So you'd be able to explore and develop combat abilities outside of your core class, but the world would still see and react to your core class.
And with that kind of system they could introduce their own version of TES's Mage/Fighter/Assassin guilds as ways for players to learn and unlock these additional secondary classes.
They could also go with a system where you have your core Class that has certain unique characteristics that you always maintain, but still have the ability to dabble in basic elements of other classes. Basically a freeform version of dual classing, but in this case you can choose your second class at will and gain access to a basic suite of their abilities. So you'd be able to explore and develop combat abilities outside of your core class, but the world would still see and react to your core class.
And with that kind of system they could introduce their own version of TES's Mage/Fighter/Assassin guilds as ways for players to learn and unlock these additional secondary classes.
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